In the United States, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has proposed deliberative democracy as an approach for dealing with ethical issues surrounding synthetic biology. Deliberative democracy might similarly help us as we update the regulation of human subjects research. This paper considers how the values that deliberative democratic engagement aims to realize can be realized in a human subjects research context. Deliberative democracy is characterized by an ongoing exchange of ideas between participants, and an effort to (...) justify decisions that bind participants by appeal to reasons that the participants can understand and share. Even when unanimous agreement is not reached, the active participation of everyone along with the requirement that reasons be made accessible enhances the legitimacy of the ultimate outcome. Importantly, deliberative democratic structures avoid strict hierarchies and place participants, as much as possible, in the position of equals. Human subjects research has some features that may make deliberative democratic principles seem initially unappealing. For one, there are asymmetries in knowledge between expert researchers conducting the research and participants in the research process. For another, statistical validity is made easiest by research paradigms that produce standardized, quantitative data, which can be difficult to achieve if research participants are given the power to deliberatively reshape the research design as it progresses. These and other problems have tended to produce a human subjects research process where subjects do not actively participate in shaping research, but rather consent to a predefined set of interventions designed by expert researchers and vetted by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). In this paper, I suggest some ways in which human subjects research could do more to realize deliberative democratic values, and, in particular, how a revised Common Rule might help to realize these values. First, research participants could be treated not as passive subjects but instead involved in research design, ethical review, and the ongoing conduct and dissemination of research. Such participation might involve, for instance, including people who have served as research subjects on IRBs, or replacing IRB oversight for certain forms of research exempted from IRB oversight under a revised Common Rule with oversight by a body of community members or research subjects. It might also involve having the oversight of research that uses more participatory models be more participatory and less hierarchical in nature. I also raise questions about the exemption of research on public benefit programs from any research-level oversight and from consent requirements. While IRBs are likely not the correct overseers, there may be good reason to view such research with a critical eye, because of its potential for long-range impacts on the lives of participants. By giving research subjects a greater voice in research that aims at fine-tuning public benefit programs on which subjects rely, a deliberative oversight process has the potential to recast research participation as a form of active democratic participation and to address a “democratic deficit” in public health. Numerous proposals regarding health care have called for greater participation by laypeople and a more nonhierarchical approach to setting health priorities. Involving lay research subjects in the conduct of public benefits research and other forms of public health research may help to further these goals. (shrink)

Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity to participate (...) in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary. This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation. The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens. (shrink)

In this article I offer the deliberative systems approach as a normative and evaluative approach through which to appraise typically 'non-deliberative' animal activism. Although such actions can contribute to inclusive deliberation through the political representation of animals, I caution against an over-reliance on such tactics, and interrogate the claim that non-deliberative tactics are essential ingredients for prompting the reflection and reconsideration that animal rights philosophy demands. Instead, non-deliberative activism may serve not only to undermine further deliberation but actually to jeopardise (...) animal protection goals. (shrink)

Cities and local governments loom large on the sustainability agenda. Networks such as Fair Trade Towns International (FTT) and the Organic Cities Network aim to bring about global policy change from below. Given the new enthusiasm for local approaches, it seems relevant to ask to what extent local groups exercise power and in what form. City networks present their members as “ethical places” exercising _power with_, rather than _power over_ others. The article provides an empirical analysis of the power of (...) FTT and Organic Cities in Germany. In both cases, we found cities that are eager to emphasize their inclusive potential. Their willingness to compromise is demonstrated most illustratively by the fact that several cities are members of both networks: While the FTT campaign aims to address problems of international trade but does not abandon it, Organic Cities advocate for a new localism based on food supply from farmers in the same region. In both cases, city networks use their purchasing power to increase the share of certified products. By doing so, the city networks reproduce privileged positions of consumers benefitting from the global capitalist order (_power over_). However, our analysis revealed that networks also make citizens reflect upon agri-food challenges and allow developing alternatives for more sustainable systems (_power with_). (shrink)

Contemporary democracy has given primacy to thought. Building up institutions on thought and reasoned discourse excludes out human actions derived not from thought that one thinks. Ordinary life is visited by emotion and passion. Such actions of unknown origin are captured best in the drama. Indian theory and practice of drama and the poetics offer communion between the performer and the viewer. Blissful relish of the actions and the dialogues lift up the banal actions from the ordinary to a state (...) beyond simple event. Relishing thus resides in cognition. Drama in theory and in its practice thus offers foundation to institutions that could embrace independent actions as well. In relish there is cognition and reasoning alone cannot lay claim. Folk life and folk actions thus could be emancipatory. (shrink)

It is common to interpret Kant’s idea of public reason and the Enlightenment motto to ‘think for oneself’ as incompatible with the view that testimony and judgement of credibility is essential to rational public deliberation. Such interpretations have led to criticism of contemporary Kantian approaches to deliberative democracy for being intellectualistic, and for not considering our epistemic dependence on other people adequately. In this article, I argue that such criticism is insufficiently substantiated, and that Kant’s idea of public reason is (...) neither at odds with deference to a certain kind of authority, nor with making judgements of character in rational deliberation. This view is corroborated by recent work on Kant’s epistemology of testimony. (shrink)

Classroom discussion practices that can lead to reasoned participation by all students are presented and described by the authors. Their research emphasizes the careful orchestration of talk and tasks in academic learning. Parallels are drawn to the philosophical work on deliberative discourse and the fundamental goal of equipping all students to participate in academically productive talk. These practices, termed Accountable TalkSM, emphasize the forms and norms of discourse that support and promote equity and access to rigorous academic learning. They have (...) been shown to result in academic achievement for diverse populations of students. The authors outline Accountable Talk as encompassing three broad dimensions: one, accountability to the learning community, in which participants listen to and build their contributions in response to those of others; two, accountability to accepted standards of reasoning, talk that emphasizes logical connections and the drawing of reasonable conclusions; and, three, accountability to knowledge, talk that is based explicitly on facts, written texts, or other public information. With more than fifteen years research into Accountable Talk applications across a wide range of classrooms and grade levels, the authors detail the challenges and limitations of contexts in which discourse norms are not shared by all members of the classroom community. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of expertise in a democratic political system: the tension between the authority of expertise and the democratic values that guide political life. We argue that for certain problems, expertise needs to be understood as a dialogical process, and we conceptualize an understanding of expertise through and as argument that positions expertise as constituted by and a function of democratic values and practices, rather than in the possession of, acquisition of, or relationship to epistemic materials. Conceptualizing (...) expertise through argument leads us to see expertise as a kind of phronetic practice, oriented toward judgments and problems, characterized by its ability to provide inventional capacities for selecting the best possible resolution of a particular problem vis-à-vis particular expectations regarding the resolution of a problem. At its core, expertise thus comes to exist in reference not to epistemic but to dialogical, deliberative, democratic practice. (shrink)

Según cuentan algunos de sus colegas y discípulos, al momento de su temprana muerte, en 1993, Carlos Nino estaba comenzando a estudiar la posibilidad de trasladar sus teorías al plano internacional. En este trabajo pretendo retomar al menos un aspecto de aquel proyecto, preguntándome cómo hubiera trasladado Nino su teoría de la democracia al plano global. En otras palabras, intentaré especular respecto de cómo podrían insertarse las ideas nineanas en la discusión actual en materia de democracia global. Mi hipótesis es (...) que, por un lado, Nino habría reclamado la creación de nuevas instancias de participación popular en los procesos de creación e implementación del derecho internacional; pero a la vez, por otro lado, habría defendido el núcleo duro de la “constitución histórica” del derecho internacional, basada en un sistema interestatal y descentralizado. According to some of his colleagues and disciples, when Carlos Nino died, in 1993, he was beginning to work on a project trying to extrapolate his theories to the international realm. In this paper, I pick up at least an aspect of that project, and I analyze how Nino would have extrapolated his theory of democracy to the global arena. In other words, I speculate regarding how could Nino’s ideas be inserted into the current debates on global democracy. My hypothesis is that, on the one hand, Nino would have demanded new instances of popular participation in the processes of creation and implementation of international law, and on the other hand, that he would have somehow defended the “historical constitution” of the international community, based on an decentralized, inter-state system. (shrink)

The article sets out to explore the international legal dimension in Jürgen Habermas' latest publications on philosophy of law. It is our view that Habermas deals with the examination of just relations beyond the nation-state first and foremost from a legal perspective, and that the key to a Habermasian reading of international justice is not through an application of discourse-theoretical models of communicative or moral action as such, but primarily through proper legal institutionalisation of the rule of law. In asserting (...) this view, we will look closer at the Kantian influence in Habermas' legal construct at the international level, and show why this institutional approach is to be sharply distinguished from and preferred to any exclusively non-institutional approach to international justice. (shrink)

While a large social-choice-theoretic literature discusses the aggregation of individual judgments into collective ones, there is much less formal work on the transformation of judgments in group communication. I develop a model of judgment transformation and prove a baseline impossibility theorem: Any judgment transformation function satisfying some initially plausible conditions is the identity function, under which no opinion change occurs. I identify escape routes from this impossibility and argue that the kind of group communication envisaged by deliberative democats must be (...) "holistic": It must focus on webs of connected propositions, not on one proposition at a time, which echoes the Duhem-Quine "holism thesis" on scientific theory testing. My approach provides a map of the logical space in which different possible group communication processes are located. (shrink)

In this article, I will argue that the implementation of deliberative democracy needs to be supplemented by a specific political morality in order to cultivate free and equal citizens in exercising public reason for achieving a cooperative and inclusive liberal society. This cultivation of personality is literally an educational project with a robust ethical ambition, and hence, it reminds us the orthodox liberal problem concerning the relation between the state and its citizenship education. Following Callan’s reformulation of the political conception (...) of the person, I will argue that Rawls’s political liberalism can accommodate the ethical demand of deliberative citizenship education. Liberal civic education should legitimately specify its own ethical endowments for active citizenship and need not shy away from making proposals on the cultivation of liberal character that might result in influencing individual’s conception of the good. Rawls’s theory thus redefines the state neutrality problem on education and paves the way for a framework of deliberative citizenship education. (shrink)

Gert Biesta criticises deliberative models of democracy and education for being based on an understanding of democracy as a ‘normal’ order, which involves certain ‘entry conditions’ for democratic participation. As an alternative, Biesta introduces the idea of democracy as ‘disruption’ and the associated subjectification conception of education both of which he draws from the work of Jacques Rancière. This paper challenges Biesta’s critique of deliberative democracy by demonstrating that the ‘entry conditions’ for deliberation serve an important normative function. It is (...) also suggested that Biesta’s critique dismisses some important dimensions of the deliberative model. The paper further contests Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education by arguing, first, that his position involves certain contradictions that are problematic especially from a normative perspective. Second, the paper argues that Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education might result in dismissing crucially important questions concerning the long-term evaluation and improvement of democratic and educational institutions. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy aspires to secure political liberty by making citizens the authors of their laws. But how can it do this in the face of deep disagreement, not to mention imperfect knowledge and limited altruism? Deliberative democracy can secure political liberty by affording each citizen an equal position as a co-author of public laws and norms. Moreover, fundamental deliberative democracy—in which institutional design is ultimately accountable to public deliberation but not necessarily subject to its direct control—does not strain knowledge or (...) altruism. Thus, there is a place for deliberative democracy in a robust political economy. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has grown into one of the most frequent approaches to organizational sustainability. Stakeholder research has provided considerable insight on organization–nature relations, and advanced approaches that consider the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature. However, nonhuman nature is typically approached as an ambiguous, unified entity. Taking nonhumans adequately into account requires greater detail for both grounding the status of nonhumans and particularizing nonhuman entities as a set of potential organizational stakeholders with different characteristics, vulnerabilities, and needs. We utilize the philosophical (...) concept of ‘recognition’ to provide a normative underpinning for stakeholder theorizing on nonhuman nature in both universal and difference-sensitive terms. We discuss how the status model of recognition helps identify relevant nonhumans as organizational stakeholders, establish respect, and particularize nonhumans in their distinctiveness and in partner-like ways. The implications of the recognition approach for stakeholder research are explicated with an illustrative case that exemplifies the recognition and particularization of nonhuman nature. We contribute to stakeholder research on nonhuman nature by suggesting that recognition provides a conceptual tool for theorizing the stakeholder status and particularization of nonhuman nature. Thereby, this article reduces anthropocentric bias and increases the capacity of stakeholder theorizing to confront the challenges of the ecological crisis. (shrink)

Ethische Fragen der Pflegepraxis haben sich in den letzten Jahren zugespitzt. Sie sind häufig verbunden mit einer grundsätzlichen Sorge um eine kompetente und verantwortliche Pflege, die den Bedürfnissen von Patient*innen gerecht wird. Forschungen aus drei Jahrzehnten zeigen, dass strukturelle Beschränkungen, Konflikte mit Kolleg*innen, Patient*innen und Angehörigen sowie eine Managementorientierung und die Unsichtbarkeit der Pflegearbeit, Ursachen für die grundsätzlichen Sorgen sind. Sie führen zu moralischem Stress, fehlenden Beziehungen und einer Fragmentierung der Pflege. Teilweise reagieren Pflegende widerständig, indem sie beispielsweise die Regeln (...) beugen und eine passive „wait and see“ Position einnehmen. Einige Pflegende erheben ihre Stimme und suchen ein Klinisches Ethikkomitee auf. Klinische Ethikkomitees bieten eine Möglichkeit, die komplexen ethischen Fragen der Pflegepraxis zu thematisieren. Allerdings verweisen die Studien aus drei Dekaden auf einen Mangel der Thematisierung. Die Analyse der Ursachen lässt die Schlussfolgerung zu, demokratischen Lernprozessen Raum zu geben. (shrink)

Several prominent voices have called for a democratization of science through deliberative processes that include a diverse range of perspectives and values. We bring these scholars into conversation with extant research on democratic deliberation in political theory and the social sciences. In doing so, we identify systematic barriers to the effectiveness of inclusive deliberation in both scientific and political settings. We are particularly interested in what we call misidentified dissent, where deliberations are starkly framed at the outset in terms of (...) dissenting positions without properly distinguishing the kinds of difference and disagreement motivating dissent. (shrink)

The current discussion on the relationship of epistemic justice to democracy focuses on its relationship to deliberative democracy. This article concerns the relationship of epistemic justice—specifically, testimonial justice which I call “epistemic fairness”—to aggregative democracy or democracy by voting. The aim of this article is to establish that in a good theory of democracy, epistemic fairness is one of the founding principles of the democratic institution of voting, that is, the principles by which the democratic institution of voting is organized. (...) Under an arguably plausible interpretation, the democratic institution of voting turns out to be committed to realizing epistemic fairness. If a theory of democracy implies that epistemic fairness is a founding principle of the democratic institution of voting, a number of implications follow with respect to the issues related to the practice of voting in actual democracies, such as the problem of gerrymandering or the fairness of the aggregation rule. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘discourse ethics’ has been an important source of inspiration for theories of deliberative democracy and is typically contrasted with agonistic conceptions of democracy represented by theorists such as Chantal Mouffe. In this article I show that this contrast is overstated. By focusing on the different philosophical traditions that underpin Mouffe’s and Habermas’s respective approaches, commentators have generally overlooked the political similarities between these thinkers. I examine Habermas’s and Mouffe’s respective conceptions of democratic politics and argue that (...) they cannot be so neatly distinguished from each other. I show that much of Mouffe’s criticism of Habermas’s theory does not hold up to careful scrutiny, and discourse ethics shares important points of similarity with her own democratic theory. By using critical republican theory to show the similarities in their work, I push beyond the agonistic versus deliberative debate, and show that at the heart of both of these approaches is a critical republican emphasis on the need for civic solidarity, on the constructive role of conflict in democratic politics and on the vital importance of self-government. These are crucial ingredients for the regeneration of democracy in contemporary pluralistic societies. (shrink)

The antecedents of immigration attitudes have been extensively examined in academic research, in particular, with respect to media use and personal contact with immigrants. Research on the role of interpersonal discussions about the issue of immigration has been scarce, however. Results from a two-wave panel survey show that individuals holding unfavorable attitudes towards immigration engaged more often in interpersonal communication about immigration, which colored the overall effect of engaging in such discussions. The implications of these results are discussed in the (...) concluding section. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 94-115, March 2022.

ABSTRACTIn Against Democracy, Jason Brennan argues that public ignorance undermines the legitimacy of democracy because, to the extent that ignorant voters make bad policy choices, they harm their own and one another’s interests. The solution, he thinks, is epistocracy, which would leave policy decisions largely in the hands of social-scientific experts or voters who pass tests of political knowledge. However, Brennan fails to explain why we should think that these putative experts are sufficiently knowledgeable to avoid making errors as damaging (...) as those made by voters. Given the strong link between political knowledge and ideological dogmatism, as well as the tendency of social scientists to disagree with one another, the case for epistocracy is deeply implausible, at best. Moreover, given that there are important non-instrumental justifications of democracy—justifications of which Brennan appears to be radically ignorant—the epistocratic alternative would be unnecessary even if it were viable. (shrink)

Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are (...) legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimising forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated. (shrink)

This work studies the issue of political representation from the perspective of a specific legal culture, the exercise of political rights in the context of the occidental democratic system, a concept that has undergone a profound evolution to the present day. The essential aspects for an analysis of this progression are voting, decision making, and the relationship between representatives and their constituents. Overall, the phenomena making up the crisis of representation have been explained as a result of changes that have (...) affected the operation and structure of modern states constituted as representative democracies. The idea is that a well-functioning representative system comes primarily from the form of government and electoral system in which it develops. (shrink)

Two distinct approaches to the incorporation of animal interests within democratic theory are identified. The first, anthropocentric, account suggests that animal interests ought to be considered within a democratic polity if and when enough humans desire this to be the case. Within this anthropocentric account, the relationship between democracy and the protection of animal interests remains contingent. An alternative account holds that the interests of animals ought to be taken into account because they have a democratic right that their interests (...) are considered. This alternative account is defended in this article by utilising democratic theory and, in particular, the all-affected principle. The interests of animals are affected by collective decisions and, therefore, they, or – more specifically – their representatives, have a democratic right to have some say in the making of those decisions. This approach is favourably contrasted with an alternative, citizenship, account which relies on contested, capacity-oriented, claims current within the field of animal ethics. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives involve actors from several spheres of society in collaborative arrangements to reach objectives typically related to sustainable development. In political CSR literature, these arrangements have been framed as improvements to transnational governance and as being somehow democratic. We draw on Mouffe’s works on agonistic pluralism to problematize the notion that consensus-led multi-stakeholder initiatives bring more democratic control on corporate power. We examine two initiatives which address two very different issue areas: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the (...) Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. We map the different kinds of adversarial relations involved in connection with the issues meant to be governed by the two initiatives, and find those adversarial relations to take six main shapes, affecting the initiatives in different ways: competing regulatory initiatives; pressure-response relations within multi-stakeholder initiatives; pressure-response relations between NGOs and states through multi-stakeholder initiatives; collaboration and competition between multi-stakeholder initiatives and states; pressure-response relations between civil society actors and multi-stakeholder initiatives; and counter-hegemonic movements against multi-stakeholder initiatives as hegemonic projects. We conclude that multi-stakeholder initiatives cannot be democratic by themselves, and we argue that business and society researchers should not look at democracy or politics only internally to these initiatives, but rather study how issue areas are regulated through interactions between a variety of actors—both within and without the multi-stakeholder initiatives—who get to have a legitimate voice in this regulation. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship of pragmatism to the theory of deliberative democracy. It elaborates a dilemma in the latter theory, between its deliberative or epistemic and democratic or inclusive components, and distinguishes responses to this dilemma that are internal to the conception of deliberation employed from those that are external. The article goes on to identify two models of pragmatism and critically examines how well each one deals with the tension identified in deliberative democracy.

Agonist theorists have argued against deliberative democrats that democratic institutions should not seek to establish a rational consensus, but rather allow political disagreements to be expressed in an adversarial form. But democratic agonism is not antagonism: some restriction of the plurality of admissible expressions is not incompatible with a legitimate public sphere. However, is it generally possible to grant this distinction between antagonism and agonism without accepting normative standards in public discourse that saliently resemble those advocated by (some) deliberative democrats? (...) In this paper we provide an analysis of one important aspect of political communication, the use of slippery slope arguments, and show that the fact of pluralism weakens the agonists’ case for contestation as a sufficient ingredient for appropriately democratic public discourse. We illustrate that contention by identifying two specific kinds of what we call pluralism slippery slopes, i.e. mechanisms whereby pluralism reinforces the efficacy of slippery slope arguments. (shrink)

This paper argues that, because Science and Technology Studies lost contact with political philosophy, its defense of public participation in policy-making involving technical claims is normatively unsatisfactory. Current penchants for political under-laboring and normative individualism are critiqued, and the connections between STS and theorists of deliberative democracy are explored. A conservative normativity is proposed, and STS positions on public participation are discussed in relation to current questions about individual and group rights in a liberal democracy. The result is avenues to (...) normatively defend public participation, by analogy with identity politics and Habermas, while also theorizing its limits.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------. (shrink)

This paper considers the legislative debates in Australia that led to the passage of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act (Cth 2002) and the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act (Cth 2002). In the first part of the paper, we discuss the debate surrounding the legislation with particular emphasis on the ways in which demands for public consultation, public debate and the education of Australians about the potential ethical and scientific impact of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) research were deployed, and (...) the explicit and implicit framing of the scope of public consultation. We then ask whether, given the calls for public consultations, debate and understanding, current work in democratic theory could be helpful in analysing the process of policy-making in these areas. In particular, we canvass the literature relating to aggregative and deliberative models of democracy for processes that support the legitimacy of policy. We identify features of the debate that reflect the appeal of deliberative approaches as well as some of the possible hurdles or limitations to developing deliberative democratic approaches to policy in ethically contentious areas. (shrink)

One of the main problems of Albania since the overthrow of the communist dictatorship and the beginning of the transition in 1991 has been the consolidation of a functional constitutional democracy. Having a functional and applicable constitutional order by all institutions and mechanisms has been a significant challenge for Albania. Political parties are one of these mechanisms or vital elements in maintaining and improving the constitutional order in Albania. In democratic regimes, political parties continue to be the most important bridge (...) between the state and the mass of society. Political parties are the institutions that hold the position of a political leader in society, and democratic states cannot survive if they do not have political parties that fulfill their functions in consolidating, preserving, and improving democracy. The object of this study will be political parties in Albania and their role in the consolidation or not of the constitutional order during the period of democratic transition. In this study, the three main parties in Albania are taken as case studies, namely the Socialist Party of Albania, the Democratic Party of Albania, and the Socialist Movement for Integration. (shrink)

A prominent way of justifying civil disobedience is to postulate a pro tanto duty to obey the law and to argue that the considerations that ground this duty sometimes justify forms of civil disobedience. However, this view entails that certain kinds of uncivil disobedience are also justified. Thus, either a) civil disobedience is never justified or b) uncivil disobedience is sometimes justified. Since a) is implausible, we should accept b). I respond to the objection that this ignores the fact that (...) civil disobedience enjoys a special normative status on account of instantiating certain special features: nonviolence, publicity, the acceptance of legal consequences, and conscientiousness. I then show that my view is superior to two rivals: the view that we should expand the notion of civility and that civil disobedience, expansively construed, is uniquely appropriate; and the view that uncivil disobedience is justifiable in but only in unfavorable conditions. (shrink)

While to political theorists in the United States ‘community radio’ may seem a quaint holdover of the democratization movements of the 1960s, community radio has been an important tool in development contexts for decades. In this paper I investigate how community radio is conceptualized within and outside of the development frame, as a solution to development problems, as part of development projects communication strategy, and as a tool for increasing democratic political participation in development projects. I want to show that (...) community radio is an essential tool of democratization and democracy outside of the development frame. To do so, I will bring out the conceptual and structural dimensions of community radio through examples of existing community radios, both those which are independently created and those which have been created as development projects. These structural and conceptual elements provide community radio the potential to realize the goals of development practice while avoiding characteristic pitfalls. These ‘pitfalls’ of development are also pitfalls of democratization and democracy in existing democratic states, and include: depoliticization, limited participation, particularly of marginalized groups. (shrink)

Rawls champions the cause of the poor because of his strong moral sentiments about the eradication of poverty. I present these sentiments, which he converts into normative elements of his theory of justice. However, the conceptual framework and intellectual resources that he uses to articulate these sentiments are inadequate. His sentiments against poverty cannot be accommodated neatly, simply, and coherently in his liberal theoretical framework. Also, I point out that his definition of the identification of poor people as the least (...) advantaged members of society is not adequate. Therefore, his theory is refashioned so that it can properly account for the fundamental interests of poor people. An alternative conception is presented, revising Rawlsian liberalism to enable it to adequately champion the cause of the poor. I provide an alternative definition of poverty and apply Mill’s analysis of the relation between justice and utility to Rawls’ theory of justice. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the “spillover thesis” which constitutes a pillar of much of contemporary participatory democratic theory; specifically, we assess the claim that workplace democratization leads to a higher degree of political participation amongst labourers. The paper analyses the thesis as formulated by Carole Pateman, including its later revisions triggered by ambiguous results of empirical studies aiming to (dis)prove it. The spillover thesis is then confronted with important methodological and theoretical critiques, the upshot being that in order to be (...) able to arrive at determinate conclusions, more carefully designed empirical studies are needed. Normatively speaking, however, blame can always be laid on the wider environment of market economy and/or representative democracy, to the effect that the spillover thesis is both difficult to disprove and radically subversive. Given the recent dominance of deliberative democratic theory which incorporates a strong participatory element, we finally discuss whether a recent innovation – namely, the concept of deliberative systems – could be fruitfully employed as a flexible umbrella-type framework for the spillover thesis and the participatory ideals related to it. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivos presentar un concepto de sociedad civil desde una perspectiva crítica, una perspectiva que pueda dar razón del potencial de cambio y transformación social que encierra este ámbito de la interacción social. Con este fin, se adentra en primer lugar en la difícil relación entre democracia y sociedad civil, analizándola desde el paso de las democracias participativas a las democracias deliberativas. El carácter global de la sociedad civil y los problemas de realización práctica nos conducen, (...) en segundo lugar, a la discusión de la propuesta de autores como J. Habermas y M. Kaldor, destacando las insuficiencias de sus respectivos enfoques. A continuación, y en discusión con los trabajos de J. Keane, se presenta una propuesta de definición y fundamentación del concepto de sociedad civil apoyado en una hermenéutica crítica, capaz de justificar su núcleo moral como ética de la sociedad civil y, al mismo tiempo, de sus posibilidades reales de aplicación. Por último, se propone el concepto de recursos morales para reconstruir las características básicas que definen a los recursos propios de la sociedad civil.The objective of this paper is to present a concept of civil society from a critical perspective that can explain the potential for change and social transformation encompassed within this sphere of social interaction. To this end, we first explore the difficult relationship between democracy and civil society, through an analysis of the shift from participative to deliberative democracy. The global character of civil society and the problems of its practical achievement lead us, in a second stage, to discuss proposals from authors such as J. Habermas and M. Kaldor, and to uncover the inadequacies of their respective approaches. This is followed by a proposal, arising from debate on the works of J. Keane, in which the concept of civil society is defined and grounded –based on a critical hermeneutic– that is capable of justifying its moral core as the ethics of civil society and at the same time, justifying its real possibilities for application. Finally, the concept of moral resources is proposed to reconstruct the basic characteristics that define the resources characteristic of civil society. (shrink)

This paper argues that political civility is actually an illusionistic ideal and that, as such, realism counsels that we acknowledge both its promise and peril. Political civility is, I will argue, a tension-filled ideal. We have good normative reasons to strive for and encourage more civil political interactions, as they model our acknowledgement of others as equal citizens and facilitate high-quality democratic problem-solving. But we must simultaneously be attuned to civility’s limitations, its possible pernicious side-effects, and its potential for strategic (...) manipulation and oppressive abuse, particularly in contemporary, pluralistic and heterogeneous societies. (shrink)

Most political philosophers are reluctant to treat cultural rights as basic. Instead, the predominant view is that cultural interests are only important derivatively, in virtue of their contribution to some other interest. In this chapter I argue that political philosophers ought to follow international human rights norms regarding the importance of culture. Not only do international human rights courts and committees come to the right conclusion about the significance of culture, but, as importantly, they come to this conclusion because they (...) think about what cultural rights protect inthe right way. Contemporary political philosophers prefer to treat cultural rights as derivative in part because they tend to treat culture as a “resource” or a “good,” but this is a mistake. Cultural rights are better understood as protecting and promoting an activity. Respecting and promoting cultural participation is a constitutive element of showing respect for human dignity because, like free expression, political participation, and freedom of conscience, cultural participation is something persons do as part of making a life for themselves. (shrink)

One of the main contentions of the framework for Responsible Innovation (RI) is that social and ethical aspects have to be addressed by deliberative engagement with stakeholders and the wider public throughout the innovation process. The aim of this article is to reflect on the question to what extent is deliberative engagement suitable for conducting RI in business. We discuss several tensions that arise when this framework is applied in the business context. Further, we analyse the place of deliberative engagement (...) in several theories of business ethics. We conclude that there remains a tension between the ideal of RI and the way in which the competitive market operates. Hence, RI scholars should reflect more critically on changes that are required in the market in order to make RI possible, modify the ideal of deliberative engagement for RI in business, or attempt to strike a balance between these two responses. (shrink)

In our time, innovation is considered an important way to address societal problems. That we expect so much from innovation to solve the challenges of our time, makes the question what could count as ‘responsible innovation’ more pressing. And that is what this thesis is about. The aim of this thesis is to offer philosophical reflections on responsible innovation in the business context. Since that is still a quite broad topic, the main title suggests its further focus: deliberation and food. (...) The first focus originates from the idea in the academic literature on responsible innovation, that innovators should not just assess by themselves what ‘responsible’ is, but should invite others to think along with them about the social and ethical aspects of innovation. Chapter 2 to 4 zoom in on this aspect of responsible innovation. The second focus has to do with the specific context of application, namely food and the food industry. Chapter 4 and 5 relate the topic of responsible innovation to this context. The question I raise in chapter 2 is whether the ideal of inclusive deliberation is suitable for innovation processes in businesses. I argue that this is not so easy, and provide different reasons why companies might not be willing to involve societal stakeholders into their innovation processes. First, the requirement of deliberation can be tension with the ability of companies to exploit their innovations commercially within a competitive market. Second, deliberation requires a certain degree of transparency about the innovation strategy of a company. Companies might not be willing to provide this transparency, because they fear knowledge leakage to other companies. Third, companies are controlled most often by people with a financial stake. Therefore, we can expect that financial considerations are decisive in the investment decisions of companies. This could conflict with the ideal of responsible innovation to ‘democratize’ innovation processes. Hence, I suggest that scholars should modify the ideal of deliberation in order to make it suitable to the business context, or they should suggest changes in the governance and regulation of markets so as to make deliberation more workable. Chapter 3 discusses the place of conflict and self-interest in deliberation. It starts with a discussion of the literature on stakeholder dialogue. In this literature, the ideal dialogue is presumed to aim at consensus. This also implies that participants avoid conflict and set self-interested considerations aside. I argue that this ideal of dialogue is problematic, especially for a dialogue between companies and NGOs. I show that companies can never completely set aside their profit-orientation, and hence that this ‘self-interest’ always influences their input in a dialogue. Furthermore, conflict and criticism can be necessary to make clear that societal problems require more attention, whether from the general public or from companies. Since the market is an imperfect institution, we need critical citizens and stakeholders such as NGOs to assess the behavior of companies. A certain degree of conflict between companies and NGOs may therefore be more desirable than a focus on consensus. For these reasons, I develop an alternative approach to dialogue in which conflict and self-interest have a legitimate place, and can even play a productive role. In chapter 4, a case-study is conducted to better understand how participants in a dialogue deal with conflicts. In this case-study, I analyzed different dialogues organized by the foundation ‘Ik Kies Bewust’, which issued a front-of-pack health label. In my analysis, I investigate the conflict between, on the one hand, the value of public health and healthy food, and, on the other hand, the commercial interests of companies. In the responses of companies to this conflict, three patterns became visible. First, companies frame their critics as not constructive, because, in their view, they only criticize but do not help to improve the label. Second, they stressed that they are really and genuinely motivated to make food healthier or to make a healthy food choice easier. Thereby, they seemingly tried to counter the image that they are just motivated to make profit. Third, they called on the government to take more control over the label, because this would make the label more reliable and more broadly adopted. I qualify these responses as defensive, which means that the conflict between commercial considerations and public interests is suppressed or ignored. An active response would require to recognize and confront the conflicts and dilemmas that companies face. The case-study makes clear how difficult it can be to engage in dialogue with critical stakeholders. In chapter 5, I reflect on how food innovation can be responsible. In trying to answer this question, I take a certain detour, by starting a discussion about the place of food in a life well-lived. For this purpose, I use the philosophy of Albert Borgmann. On the basis of my analysis of his philosophy, I argue that there are good reasons for engaging with food in active way, for example by growing your own vegetables and home-cooking, instead of consuming food merely passively. I also draw some implications for food innovation. In my view, people responsible for food innovation should critically assess whether new products or services enhance engagement or disengagement. Is it desirable, for example, to develop even more and better pre-packaged meals, or should we stimulate consumers to cook by themselves? I argue that it would be problematic if our overall pattern of dealing with food is characterized by disengagement and convenience, and hence that food innovation should not only go in this direction. (shrink)

Must the participant to public discourse have knowledge of her beliefs, attitudes and reasons as well as belief-formation processes to have justified political belief? In this paper, we test this question with reference to Jeffrey Stout’s approach to public discourse and public philosophy. After defining self- knowledge and justification along the lines of James Pryor, we map thereon Stout’s view of public discourse and public philosophy as democratic piety, earnest storytelling and Brandomian expressive rationality. We then lay out Brian Leiter’s (...) naturalistic critique of public philosophy as “discursive hygiene” to see whether Stoutian public philosophy survives the former’s emotivist-tribalist gauntlet. Lastly, we find that Leiter’s critique proves less radical than it may appear and requires the moderating influence of a public philosophy like Stout’s. All in all, Stoutian public discourse and public philosophy powerfully illustrates a strong, necessary connection between self-knowledge and political justification. Post-truth is not post-justification. (shrink)

In this dissertation I explore the conceptual relationship between equality and resistance in political philosophy. Through examination of the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Dewey, and Jacques Rancière, I formulate a position called Fractured Social Holism. This is a problematic that attempts to articulate core issues at stake in the debates surrounding the purposes, meanings, and possibilities for politics. Through Fractured Social Holism I articulate a theory of equality that emphasizes the communities upon which societys institutions intend to (...) distribute equality, arguing that resistance on the part of a populationgroup opposition, formal or informal, to some element of the societal status quoconceptually grounds equality and its distribution by articulating its very possibilities. My central questionHow is equality constituted?focuses on the community itself in order to shift agency from institutions that distribute equality to those who demand it. It emphasizes the active role of the people in the constitution of a community of equals, as well as the fact that the very notion of the people is what is at stake in that constitution; popular resistance challenges the very meaning and content of any given people. I understand equality in the broadest possible sense, in terms of the opportunity of each and all within society to participate in dictating the terms of their public engagement with that society and with others within it. I argue for the possibility of resistance within egalitarian community in Rousseau, the limits of what that resistance in egalitarian society looks like in Marx, how egalitarian communities can organize themselves in Dewey, and how subjectivity relates to mechanisms of resistance and political action within society in Rancière. These historical interpretations and the conceptual framework they engender provide a novel means of thinking about issues of paramount importance in contemporary political philosophy, including pluralism, oppression and domination, and the purposes and meaning of politics, remaining true to a normative vision of equality while insisting on the necessity of the peoples resistance to the status quo in the name of a re-imagined vision of social harmony. (shrink)

We describe and analyze an important cognitive obstacle in inter- and intra-community ar-gumentation processes, which we propose to call 'Cognitive Systemic Dichotomization'. This social phenomenon consists in the collective use of shared cognitive patterns based upon dichotomous schemati-zation of knowledge, values, and affection. We discuss the formative role of CSD on a community’s collec-tive cognition, identity, and public discourse, as well as the challenges it raises to reasoned argumentation, and how different approaches to argumentation undertake to face this obstacle to (...) the reasonable debate of issues of public concern. (shrink)