The purpose of this paper is not to provide an overall picture of care ethics, but, rather, to reflect upon the concept of care, which has gained significance in particular scientific contexts. Undoubtedly, the importance of the subject of care represents a challenge on the level of fundamental philosophical positions and a diversified look into the occurring forms of the psychological and social suffering, dependency, and vulnerability. I will shed light on tenets that are considered central to the care ethics (...) and that have led to the setting up of the relationship between care and democracy. By introducing the basic aspects of Carol Gilligan’s and Joan Tronto’s theories, I will emphasize their vocation to be politically relevant. A discussion on the relationship between care and justice on the one hand, and needs and rights on the other, will follow. Can hearing voices of care make democracy more just? How can care ethics provide a concrete support for democracy? On the political level, care ethics builds on the assumptions of the necessary relatedness and equality between individuals who are decisive in the light of the welfare state perspective. Upon closer examination, one may see that the setting up of these relationships is not new to the liberal perspective. Liberalism is historically rooted in the fundamental interconnection between freedom and equality. Virtues such as care and meekness can be formulated in the language of politics, but they still remain unpolitical. On the one hand, engaging in a critical reflection upon such virtues might be an indispensable measuring instrument for distinguishing a good democracy from a bad one. On the other hand, care ethics does not prove to be a real alternative to the ethics of justice. In this regard, care ethics seems to show its feet of clay. (shrink)

Nowadays democratic liberal societies face a rising challenge in terms of fragmentation and erosion of shared values and ethical pluralism. Democracy is not anymore grounded in the possibility of a common understanding and interpretation of the same values. Neverthless, legal and political philosophy continue to focus on how to reach consensus, especially through monist, objectualist, contractualist, discursive and deliberative approaches, rather than openly affording the issue of disagreement. Far from being just a disruptive force, disagreement and conflict are matters of (...) fact that no reflection on democracy can underevaluate. They are the major issues through which to look at the intersection of law, politics and morals. The inclusion of dissent is a powerful tool for moral recognition of different understandings of justice. That is where legal procedures become crucial. Law is a fundamental element in the building of a democracy. But it is also particularly exposed to disagreement. Language indeterminacy, dogmatic concepts and value pluralism constitute the main elements that lead to alternative and conflicting interpretations of law in a democratic framework. Major legal progress in the past has come from different understandings of the same legal materials. In this article I argue that respect for disagreement should be a moral principle in democracy and that the role of legal disagreement is essential to understand the evolution and the future directions of democracy as the government of a political community. To do so, a link between respect for disagreement and legal interpretation and argumentation must be established in order to make room for reason and avoid extreme skepticism on the contribution of law to the enforcement of democracy. (shrink)

This piece criticizes traditional formal and procedural conceptions of democracy, which fail to account for the development of contemporary constitutional democracy. The latter is characterized by a substantive dimension with respect to the content of the decisions taken through the democratic process. The validity of such decision is conditioned by the respect and actualization of fundamental rights, which are established by the constitution. The limits and constraints established by the constitution require juridical science to play a critical and programmatic role (...) vis - à - vis the ‘unlawful’ exercise of public powers, when these enter in contrast with the limits imposed by the constitution. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the tendency to view the extension of the class of social actors, which stems from the process of democratization of data, as also implying the extension of the class of the political actors involved in the process of governance of the Information Society. The paper argues that social actors can upgrade to political actors once they become real interlocutors, namely political actors that can participate in the formation of the political discourse and that this can happen only (...) once they are able to combine, to a greater or lesser degree, the reduction of information asymmetries with the reduction of power differentials. (shrink)

Among contemporary forms of constitutionalism, Luigi Ferrajoli’s Garantismo may be considered as the rather unfashionable attempt to build up a comprehensive and multi-layered theory, which still takes seriously the positivist heritage. This paper offers, in brief outline, a synthetic view of the social setting, the philosophical background, and the basic features of this conception of constitutionalism, when compared with legal positivism and other mainstream forms of (neo)constitutionalism.

Problem setting. Latin America and the Caribbean traditionally referred to as a large and ambiguous region in an out-side territorial scientific environment. A whole stratum of problems of identities, peculiarities of self-awareness, civilization affiliations of messianic ’appointments ’ in the history of the region and the world, the development of ways of cultural and historical development corresponding to them, the affirmation of the tendencies of state formation is in a scientific researcher focus. Among the many aspects that conceptualize the demandfor (...) research in the region and its implementation, we would like to highlight the following: 1) Latin America and the Caribbean are, to some extent, «a territory of historically significant validation of modern trends» in their speculative lengthening, the field ofdeveloping new ones political and economic novations, including regarding various projections of the correlation of socio-political practices, institutional design and legal technologies, derived from the understanding of nature and the purpose of law. 2) The region ’provides ’ a wide range of heterogeneous materials for analytical work, both concatenate-linear in nature, and combining poly-meaningful multidimensionality, multifaceted coexistence of values generated by contemporary media, the glare of meanings, signs, intentions of conscious transformations, random «breakthroughs» of network travel followers. In the discovery literature thatfollows only the analysis of statistical indicators, it is often noted that Latin America and the Caribbean is a region of polarization. 3) Considering the full amount of opportunities and perspectives available, Latin America in general, in some associative formulation, is clearly «boxing at levels below its weight and its impact on international canvases», that is, there are some reasons for internal and external character that significantly reduce the region’s role in the world, affecting accents of processes of political, legal and economic worsen the work «for the common good», underestimate «the bar of tasks and results» do not meet the expectations of the significance of the region. Recent research and publications analysis. The paper uses an interdisciplinary approach involving the research of representatives of various sciences. Concerning the approach to certain aspects of the constitutional process in the countries of Latin America and the Carribien was used the researches of Ukrainian authors Yu. M. Todyka, V. P. Kolisnyk, Yu. G. Barabash, M. P. Orzikh, T. M. Slinko, A. G. Kushnirenko, pertaining to in relation to consideration ofpeculiarities ofdevelopment andfunctioning of the model of the presidential state was launched analytical andfunctionality materials I. V. Protsiuk. On the conceptualization within the political science tradition in connection with the problems of the political regimes, their development in the conditions of conflict of the present, in the face of threats and challenges of a multifaceted nature are included the materials of methodological and theoretical importance M. P. Trebin, I. O. Polishchuk, D. Denisenko, G. M. Kutz, O. A. Fisun, M. A. Polovyi and, in the context of regional- geopolitical dimensions, V. Yu. Karasev. Among the foreign authors on the subject area of the study, we note the conceptual vision of the combination ofeconomic cycles and political and legal processes of the present Daniela Campello, the development of the author of the theory of «path dependence effect» by J. Mahoney and researchers of modifications of the development of neo-patrimonialism in Latin America and Karsten Bachle. Focused on the trends and innovations of the constitutional process in the countries of the region are the scientific orientations of Rogelio Nu'nez and P. I. Kostogryzov. A broad analytical and research base on the transformation of political regimes in Latina America and the Caribbean and the peculiarities ofpolitical processes in individual countries are provided by the works of B. Geddes, G. O’Donnell, L. Diamond, D. Ziblatta, S. Levitsky, Z. V. Ivanovsky, T. A. Vorotnikova, P. P. Yakovlev, D. V. Morozov, and others. Paper objective. The purpose of this work is to find out the broad contexts of the relationship between economic and political and legal processes in Latin America and the Carribien countries with attention to the peculiarities of the rule of law formation. The tasks are to analyze a set of approaches to finding the causes of the difficulties of socio-political and institutional-legal development in the region with the involvement of interdisciplinary scientific experience and to identify some essential features of meaning- forming and socio-constructing phenomena in the contextual contours. Paper main body. One of the options for designating the specificity of the current state of affairs is framed in the concept of the so-called «curse of volatility» - the dependence of local, mainly commodity and export-oriented with low internal economy savings from cycles, fluctuations of the world economy. This dependence is a definite structural factor and has been forming for a long time. Also, macroeconomic indicators within the framework of a certain political economy methodology in the projection for the sum ofpolitical and legal events allow us to see the spread of ideology, whether left or right, the rise of populism, the tendency for further democratization of the way of life or vice versa from democracy, the relative calm of the political process or the turbulence ofpolitical events are, after all, tied to basic economic indicators, and often more or less relevant to us and corresponding to figures about the level of safety of life. The trajectory of development was laid down by some decisions at a time of critical juncture when privatization created the basis of the local economy as a structural part of the world capitalist system with its dynamics of development that facilitated the formatting and reproduction of the reactive sequences caused by different types of liberal reforms. Conclusions of the research. The particular attention in Latin America and the Caribbean countries on the expectations and responsibilities of building the future is focused on the development of Constitutional law as a leading sphere in the system of national law. Hence the numerous constitutional changes in the countries of the region, the constitutional reforms of different grades, which are intensively continued today. The lifestyle liberalization, resolving key property issues, attempts at democratization in Latin America and the Carribien countries took place in different ways, but after the foundations ofpublic law that were borrowed in outline in the USA. Between enshrined key provisions in the Constitutions and the coexistence of essentially diverse mass consciousnesses and aspirations on different ’floors’ of the society, has raised multi-dimensional discord, that is emerging from the institutionalization of the liberal-democratic model of the state, generated in the context of understanding freedom as a key concept. Therefore the aspect ofan all-public agreement on coexistence rules does not appear to be fully realized, which gives rise to a search for a constitutional character. The focus remains on the relationship between multiple interests and ideas about the common good, by means of the formation of the general will in the structure and practice of constitutional-democratic regimes. It is inextricably linked to the transformation of the concepts of representation and citizenship. Democratic legitimation is correlated with ideas about the rule of the masses, the will of the majority in the living creation of the norms of life, and with the accompanying active and continuous participation in the political process of large groups, sectors of the population. The constitutional creativity of the countries of the region shows the element of an assertion of messianism, the designation of the special role of the country, its leader, ideology, the Constitution in the processes of historical implementation at the level of regional or the world. This moment of national pride for the country and its contribution to the cultural and civilizational space of history is realized in experimental projects of various expressions. (shrink)

La democracia del siglo XXI se enfrenta a nuevas imposturas: prácticas comunes en los extintos autoritarismos del siglo XX aparecen ahora como atributos de gobiernos que se declaran democráticos. Se trata, en realidad, de una crisis de identidad de la idea de democracia, que le obliga a reconocer su carácter intrínsecamente abierto y por ello mismo, incierto, lo que remite a su fundamento moral. La revisión de las distintas familias de teorías de la democracia revela que lo que la define (...) es la existencia de salvaguardas constitucionales y poderes limitados que permiten la emergencia de un agente moral autónomo. Pero entonces, se asoma una crisis del sujeto democrático: el régimen democrático, como sistema de separaciones, supone y exige sujetos moralmente comprometidos con la libertad, lo que a su vez peligra en tiempos de modernidad tardía. Palabras clave : incertidumbre; constitucionalismo; autonomía; separaciones; modernidad tardía. Theories of Democracy: Uncertainties and SeparationsDemocracy in the XXI century faces new impostures: practices that were common under the extinct authoritarianisms of the XX century appear now as attributes of self-declared democratic governments. The idea of democracy suffers an identity crisis, which obliges it to acknowledge its own intrinsically open, and thus uncertain, nature; in turn, this directs one to democracy’s moral foundations. The review of the different families of theories of democracy reveals that what defines the latter is the existence of constitutional safeguards and limited powers, which allow for the emergence of an autonomous moral agent. But then, a crisis of the democratic subject becomes visible: the democratic regime, as a system of separations, involves and demands subjects who are morally committed with freedom, which in turn is in jeopardy in times of late modernity. Keywords: uncertainty; constitutionalism; autonomy; separations; late modernity. (shrink)

En este artículo se señalan algunas condiciones que son necesarias para el desarrollo y estabilidad de la democracia contemporánea, las cuales están vinculadas tanto al problema de la limitación de su poder como al de la justicia social. El texto está estructurado en tres partes: en la primera, se presenta un breve panorama de los niveles de apoyo que tiene la democracia en América Latina, destacando en especial las condiciones de desigualdad que hay en México; en la segunda, se analiza (...) la propuesta de Norberto Bobbio, para quien la democracia se caracteriza por ser representativa, política y formal; en la tercera, se recuperan algunos elementos de uno de sus principales discípulos, Luigi Ferrajoli, quien ha señalado la necesidad de la democracia sustancial y los derechos fundamentales para limitar el poder de la democracia formal. Palabras clave: Democracia; derechos fundamentales; desigualdad social Limits of Democracy and Social JusticeIn this article I point out some necessary conditions for the development and stability of contemporary democracy; conditions which are linked to both, the problem of the limitation of its power and social justice. The text is structured into three parts. In the first I present a brief overview of the levels of support that democracy has in Latin America, focusing especially on the inequality conditions existing in Mexico. In the second part I analyze the proposal of Norberto Bobbio´s, for whom democracy is characterized by being representative, political and formal. In the third part, I recall some points dealt with by one of his disciples, Luigi Ferrajoli, who has pointed to the need for substantial democracy and fundamental rights to limit the power of formal democracy. Keywords: Democracy; fundamental rights; social inequality. (shrink)