Standard approaches to defining and evaluating environmental risk tend to reflect technocratic rather than democratic values. One consequence is that institutional mechanisms for achieving citizen participation in risk decisions rarely are studied or evaluated. This article presents a survey of five institutional mechanisms for allowing the lay public to influence environmental risk decisions: public hearings, initiatives, public surveys, negotiated rule making, and citizens review panels. It also defines democratic process criteria for assessing these and other participatory mechanisms.

ABSTRACT An intellectually charitable understanding of populism might begin by recognizing that, since populist citizens tend to be politically uninformed and lacking in higher education, populist ideas are likely to be inarticulate reproductions of the tacit assumptions undergirding non-populist or “mainstream” culture rather than stemming from explicit theoretical constructs, such as an apotheosis of the unity or the will of “the people.” What features of our ambient culture, then, could explain the simplistic and combative approach that populists seem to take (...) to politics and policy, their impatience with political debate and deliberation, their willingness to set aside democratic legal forms and political norms, their nationalism, their personalization of politics, their inclination toward conspiracy theorizing, their fondness for fringe sources of information, and their suspicion of political, scientific, and media elites? Using focus group and survey data, we can understand these populist traits as reflections of the culture of “democratic technocracy”: a regime in which we, the people, are assumed capable of rendering sound judgments about how to solve our social and economic problems. Whether or not this assumption is warranted, its cultural dominance seems likely to generate the ideas that populist citizens apparently take for granted. (shrink)

Bringing expert knowledge to bear in an open and deliberative way to help solve pressing social problems is a major concern today, when technocratic and bureaucratic decision making often occurs with little or no input from the general public. Albert Dzur proposes an approach he calls “democratic professionalism” to build bridges between specialists in domains like law, medicine, and journalism and the lay public in such a way as to enable and enhance broader public engagement with and deliberation about major (...) social issues. Sparking a critical and constructive dialogue among social theories of the professions, professional ethics, and political theories of deliberative democracy, Dzur reveals interests, motivations, strengths, and vulnerabilities in conventional professional roles that provide guideposts for this new approach. He then applies it in examining three practical arenas in which experiments in collaboration and power-sharing between professionals and citizens have been undertaken: public journalism, restorative justice, and the bioethics movement. Finally, he draws lessons from these cases to refine this innovative theory and identify the kinds of challenges practitioners face in being both democratic and professional. (shrink)

In the United States, organ transfer has generated a highly selective and overly specialized approach to bioethics. A dominant assumption is the myth of medical democracy: whereas professionals involved in this highly technocratic arena publicly embrace notions of medical equality, particularized practices expose another reality. The more specific ideological tenets of medical democracy read as follows: First, all potential transplant patients are equally deserving of replacement organs. Further, all citizens are entitled to equal access to these unusual commodities, which are (...) regularly described as precious and scarce “national resources.” Whether the premises of medical democracy are in fact played out in daily practice, however, is another matter entirely. Organ donation is driven by a universalized sense of humanity, whereby all bodies are assumed equal beneath the surgeon's knife. Yet the social worth of individuals varies radically: children, pregnant women, the unemployed, and prisoners, for example, expose a wide spectrum of responses to certain categories of bodies. So, too, do the cultural origins of organ donors. By drawing on anthropological knowledge of sociomedical practices relevant to organ transfer, this essay explores this theme of medical democracy specifically in reference to the needs of Latinos in New York City. (shrink)

The administrative reform of the datafied public administration places great emphasis on the classification, control, and prediction of citizen behavior and therefore has the potential to significantly impact citizen–state relations. There is a growing body of literature on data-oriented activism which aims to resist and counteract existing harmful data practices. However, little is known about the processes, policies, and political-economic structures that make datafication possible. There is a distinct research gap on situated and context-specific empirical research, which critically (...) interrogates the premises, interests, and agendas of data-driven public administration and how stakeholders can impact them. This paper therefore studies the conditions of participation in public administration datafication. It asks the overall research question of how citizens are problematized and included in policy and practitioner discourse in the datafication of public administration. The paper takes Norway as its case and applies Cardullo and Kitchin’s scaffold of smart citizen participation at the system level. It makes use of a unique empirical insight into the field, consisting of a survey, interviews, and an extensive document analysis. Unexpectedly, we find that citizens and civil society are rarely engaged in this administrative reform. Instead, we identify a paternalistic, top-down, technocratic approach where the context, values, and agendas of datafication are obscured from the citizen. (shrink)

Mauro Dorato charts pressing debates within the philosophy of science that centre around scientific expertise, access to knowledge, consensus, debate, and decision-making. This English-language translation of Disinformazione Scientifica e Democrazia argues that the advancement of science depends on an exponential process of specialization, accompanied by the creation of technical languages that are less and less accessible to the general public. Dorato reveals how such a process must align with representative forms of democracies, in which knowledge and decision-making ought to aim (...) at the society's general interest. Given the importance of the principle of competence, however, the role of experts as mediators of knowledge threatens the citizens' autonomy of choice. Consequently, the risk of technocratic regimes calls for new ways to increase literacy about science and its philosophical and probabilistic foundations. Stressing the conceptual conflict between pluralism and conformism, Science and Representative Democracyreveals the obstacles to the functioning of both science and democracy. (shrink)

This essay uses a specific example—proposals to exclude sugary drinks from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program —to explore some features of the contemporary U.S. administrative state. Dating back to the Wilsonian origins of the U.S. administrative state there has been uncertainty about whether we can and should separate politics and administration. On the traditional view, the agencies are to be kept separate from politics—technocratic and value-neutral—although they are indirectly accountable to the president and Congress. The SNAP exclusions example shows, however, (...) that agencies often must make complex and controversial decisions on their own, decisions that go beyond value-neutral technocratic administration. When authorizing legislation has multiple goals, as we’ll argue is the case in the SNAP example, an agency will have to choose between conflicting statutory mandates. Moreover, as the SNAP example shows, agencies often face complex normative questions of ethics and justice that go beyond the question of how to balance competing aims. The appropriate response to the SNAP exclusions example is not to keep politics out of administrative decision-making, but to develop procedures that allow ethical and political questions to be addressed in agency policy-making, consistent with overarching commitments to fairness and democracy. (shrink)

A political epistemology that enables us to determine if political actors are likely to know what they need to know must be rooted in an ontology of the actors and of the human objects of their knowledge; that is, a political anthropology. The political anthropology developed in Power Without Knowledge envisions human beings as creatures whose conscious actions are determined by their interpretations of what seem to them to be relevant circumstances; and whose interpretations are, in turn, determined by webs (...) of belief built from somewhat heterogeneous streams of incoming ideas. This anthropology, then, has two components. Ideational heterogeneity undermines the aspiration of technocracy to predict human behavior and the aspiration of social science to arrive at lawlike generalizations about it. Ideational determinism, however, which is less important than ideational heterogeneity to the critique of technocracy, may be more important to generating epistemological approaches to other forms of politics, all of which involve the actions of human beings who, as such, are largely at the mercy of the fallible ideas to which they have been exposed. (shrink)

What is the role of lay deliberation – if any – in health-care rationing, and administration more generally? Two potential answers are suggested by recent debates on the subject. The one, which I will call the technocratic answer, suggests that there is no distinctive role for lay participation once ordinary democratic politics have set the goals and priorities which reform should implement. Determining how best to achieve those ends, and then actually achieving them, this view suggests, is a matter for (...) experts, armed with the best evidence available to them, both of the subject area involved, and of management and administrative excellence. -/- By contrast, the second, deliberative, view holds that lay deliberation has an important role in the administration and execution of government policy, both because these latter inevitably have a political element which needs to reflect democratic norms and values, and because lay people are, themselves, a source of information, even of wisdom, that experts will want to use in fulfilling their professional responsibilities. Recent debates on the value of lay participation in healthcare provision can illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, as can the experience of NICE. So, I will start by examining two articles by Albert Weale, which attempt to clarify the role that lay deliberation should have in healthcare, before turning to the dilemmas for both the technocratic and deliberative views which emerge from the experience of NICE. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore argues that deliberation and the aggregation of citizens' dispersed knowledge should tend to produce better consequences than rule by the one or the few. However, she pays insufficient attention to the epistemic processes necessary to realize these democratic goods. In particular, she fails to consider the question of where citizens' beliefs and ideas come from, with the result that the democratic decision mechanisms she focuses on are insufficiently powerful to justify her consequentialist defense of mass (...) decision making. If “the few” are technocratic experts, Landemore supplies little reason to resist their rule on epistemic grounds, for she does not secure a knowledge base for the citizens that might compete with the knowledge that is often attributed to such “experts.” Aggregating and deliberating about poor information is no substitute for good information. Her book can therefore be seen as a call for a new phase of epistemic political theory that compares the real-world knowledgeability of ordinary citizens and putative experts, but it does not convincingly deliver on its goal to demonstrate the epistemic superiority of the former. (shrink)

In the wake of populist challenges throughout the past decade in the U.S. and Europe, liberalism has been described as elitist and out of touch, concerned with protecting and promoting material interests with an orientation that is pragmatic, legalistic, and technocratic. Simultaneously, liberal governments have become increasingly detached from the middle class and its moral needs for purpose and belonging. If liberalism cannot provide spiritual sustenance, individuals will look elsewhere for it, especially in illiberal forms of populism. -/- In Kant, (...) Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life, Jeffrey Church addresses the "meaning deficit" in contemporary liberal societies. Focusing on Immanuel Kant's largely neglected early lectures on anthropology from the 1760s and 1770s, Church argues that Kant's work can serve as a basis for a more meaningful liberalism, one that conceives of freedom and equality for all as a moral vocation of citizens and institutions. Church also asserts that Kant's early view of the meaning of life has important implications for understanding his political theory. Kant saw liberal community as something that helps us realize our destiny on earth as the distinctively free creatures we are. Liberalism, then, is not elitist but a participatory project of all members of society. It is not concerned primarily with material things but with our moral destiny. It is not pragmatic but principled. -/- Church holds that Kant's liberalism rests on a view of the meaning of human existence, and so analyzes Kant's view of the meaning of life and its application to his politics. In particular, Church contends that a fundamental concern included in Kant's liberalism, largely unrecognized by scholars, is to foster the meaning of life for citizens of liberal republican orders. At the same time, Church applies Kant's views of the meaning of life to contemporary problems in liberalism. In particular, he argues that Kant's view of a meaningful liberalism can provide a counterweight to the recent rise of illiberal nationalist or religious forms of community that seem attractive to liberal citizens hungering for meaning in a disenchanted world. Compelling and ambitious, Jeffrey Church provides the first extended treatment of Kant's understanding of the meaning of life and a powerful alternative to procedural liberalism. (shrink)

Drawing on an analysis of German national cybersecurity policy, this paper argues that cybersecurity has become a key site in which states mobilize science and technology to produce state power. Contributing to science and technology studies work on technoscience and statecraft, I develop the concepts of “territorialization projects” and “digital territory” to capture how the production of state power in the digital age increasingly relies on technoscientific expertise about information infrastructure, shifting tasks of government into the domain of computer scientists (...) and network engineers. The notion of territorialization projects describes states’ ongoing struggle to mobilize science and engineering in order to transform globally distributed information infrastructure into bounded national territory and invest it with patriotic meaning: making digital territory. Digital territory, in other words, is nationalized information infrastructure: it includes building and monopolizing infrastructure as well as normative ideas about nation—who is a digital citizen, and who isn’t; or what constitutes “good” and “bad” digital citizens. Nationalizing information infrastructure and placing statecraft into the hands of scientists and engineers might indicate an emerging form of “techno-nationalism”—a combination of nationalist and technocratic tendencies—raising urgent questions for STS scholarship to investigate the consequences of territorialization projects for justice, democracy, and civic life. (shrink)

Today the ethical and normative concerns of everyday citizens are all too often sidelined from the study of political and social issues, driven out by an effort to create a more "scientific" study. This book offers a way for social scientists and political theorists to reintegrate the empirical and the normative, proposing a way out of the scientism that clouds our age. In Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism: Reunifying Political Theory and Social Science, Jason Blakely argues (...) that the resources for overcoming this divide are found in the respective intellectual developments of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. Blakely examines their often parallel intellectual journeys, which led them to critically engage the British New Left, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, continental hermeneutics, and modern social science. Although MacIntyre and Taylor are not sui generis, Blakely claims they each present a new, revived humanism, one that insists on the creative agency of the human person against reductive, instrumental, technocratic, and scientistic ways of thinking. The recovery of certain key themes in these philosophers' works generates a new political philosophy with which to face certain unprecedented problems of our age. Taylor's and MacIntyre's philosophies give social scientists working in all disciplines (from economics and sociology to political science and psychology) an alternative theoretical framework for conducting research. "This book does an excellent job in identifying a real problem in mainstream political theory--its overly normative character and its separation from social science. It contains many original contributions to the field. I particularly liked the way in which the problems of naturalism are presented as institutional, cultural, and political as well as philosophical. The historical background to these problems is also interesting and sheds fresh light on the issues." --Nicholas Smith, Macquarie University. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment, there have been advocates for the rationalizing efficiency of enlightened sovereigns, bureaucrats, and technocrats. Today these enthusiasms are joined by calls for replacing or augmenting government with algorithms and artificial intelligence, a process already substantially under way. Bureaucracies are in effect algorithms created by technocrats that systematize governance, and their automation simply removes bureaucrats and paper. The growth of algorithmic governance can already be seen in the automation of social services, regulatory oversight, policing, the justice (...) system, and the military. However, there have also always been justified democratic and economic criticisms of autocracy, bureaucracy, technocracy, and algorithmic governance. Bureaucrats, technocrats, and algorithms embody biases that tend to serve the interests of elites, and all require transparency and democratic accountability, oversight individual citizens are ill equipped to exercise. As state apparatuses are increasingly automated, mechanisms for collective action and democratic oversight also need to be automated. Algorithms and cyborg citizenry will enable a posthuman democracy. Democratically accountable algorithmic governance, enabled by artificial intelligence and human enhancement, can automate bottom-up citizen surveillance, inform debate, aggregate decision making, and ensure the efficient working of the gradually withering state. As paid work disappears and we transition to a postcapitalist economy with a universal basic income, market mechanisms can be replaced with democratic planning. Indeed, only algorithmic governance can secure our future against accelerating threats from technological innovation. (shrink)

Of all the scientists discussed by Mitman, Keller, and Taylor, Odum stands out most as the technocrat, the social engineer. But less obvious candidates, like Allee, also fancied themselves in this capacity: “Our task as biologists and as citizens of a civilized country, is a practical engineering job.” Allee had in mind the establishment of an international cooperative order based on his biological principles. He apparently did not recognize the extent to which his principles were themselves an engineering feat: he (...) had already constructed a world in which eternal peace and order were possible.To an engineer in the traditional sense, the world is changeable, but not in all respects; there are constraints, and these constraints are taken very seriously. Scientists acting as engineers, in the traditional sense, must also pay attention to constraints. But scientists sometimes also take the option of engineering the very constraints, intellectually reconstructing the world so that it can (supposedly) be physically manipulated in the desired direction. There seems to be a lot of engineering, in the extended sense, going on in the very interesting stories that Mitman, Keller, and Taylor tell. (shrink)

Contemporary ‘crisis studies’ seek to advance democracy by emphasizing the threats that technocracy and populism pose to a specific form of it, liberal- democracy. Crisis studies argue that, since the 1970s, technocratic policymak- ing has deepened economic inequality. This has fostered citizenly anger, which populists exploit. Four well-known iterations of this argument are evaluated using a political realist lens. Political realism emphasizes the histor- ical context of politics, actors’ possible motives, and a normative orientation derived from the political order itself, (...) rather than an external ethico-moral ideal. The realist lens encourages comparison of crisis studies with historical political theory, which situates liberal-democracy within the long-term devel- opment of oligarchic systems of authority, and political history, which portrays technocracy as a product of the well-funded reaction to assertions of the democratic impulse that began in the 1970s. Populism is in this view not so much a perversion of liberal-democracy as it is a perhaps unintended conse- quence of anti-democratic reaction. The crisis studies make this error because based on a moral defence of the justice of the liberal-democratic order. Revealing the democratically unhelpful moralism at the core of crisis studies demonstrates the usefulness of political realism as a form of applied political theory, and not simply theory about theory. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt at examining the value configuration and the socio-demographical profiles of the local political elites in four countries of East-Central Europe: Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland. The treatment is a comparative one, predominantly descriptive and exploratory, and employs, as a research method, the case-study, being a quite circumscribed endeavor. The cases focus on the members of the Municipal/Local Council in four towns similar in terms of demography and developmental strategies (i.e. small-to-medium sized communities (...) of around 35,000 inhabitants, with economies largely based on food industry and commercial activities): Tecuci (Galați county, Romania), Česká Lípa (Liberec region, Czech Republic), Targovishte (Targovishte province, Bulgaria), and Oleśnica (Lower Silesia province, Poland). Hypothesizing that the local elites of the former Sovietized Erurope tend to differ in outlook, priorities, and value attainment, as compared to their Western counterparts, the paper considers the former’s attitudes and perspectives in regard to seven values: a series of values customarily connected with the concept of ‘democracy’ (i.e. citizen participation, political conflict, gradual change, economic equality), state intervention in economy, decentralization and increased local autonomy, cultural-geographical self-identification. The study uses, as well, five models of value attainment in what concerns the ‘ideal portrait’ of the local councilor (Putnam 1976): ethical, pragmatic, technocratic, political, and gender. According to the results of a study applying a standard written questionnaire among the local councilors of the three communities in the period December 2010-February 2013, the paper distinguishes among three corresponding types of local elites: (1) ‘predominantly elitistic,’ (2) ‘democratic elitist,’ and (3) ‘predominantly democratic,’ following two types of explanation accounting for the differences among the four cases: the legacy of the defunct regime and the degree of administrative decentralization. (shrink)

“Noverim me, noverim te.” – Saint Augustine, Confessions, 10.1.1. (397-400 AD). -/- What would and will an urban commons look like that is slowly and incrementally being re-socialized? How would that affect urban planning “now” and in times of crisis? How do we prepare for the likelihood of rolling similar crises with an eye on returning the urban commons to citizens? -/- There is the old adage that under capitalism, risk is always socialized and profit is always privatized. We are (...) seeing it now, under the COVID-19 crisis. The huge bailouts launched by governments are symptomatic of the crisis in political economy, just as they were post-2008. “Too big to fail” has sponsored monsters that refuse to back off without threatening the collapse of the entire system. Francisco Goya’s “The sleep of Reason produces monsters …” comes to mind. -/- Physical and immaterial culture, in our current Western civilisation, are intimately linked. Yet the focus for urban design is generally on the material or physical side, with the immaterial left to its own devices. Increasingly, urban design measures are merely ameliorative and aesthetic, with the larger share shaped by a political economy dictated by market ideology or “politicalology.” What transpires, nonetheless, is an immaterial commons that constitutes a public or private intellectual commons – often a mix of the two; but, in the case of domination by market ideology, the privatization of “general intellect” proceeds by abject appropriation. In such a technocratically driven model, subjective states become increasingly important. As Indian architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi once said, “Smart cities are smart people.” -/- How might these two otherwise contiguous and synchronous systems be brought back into a properly civic-minded rapport with or without crisis-driven change? Are there alternate models for the urban commons? What measures might be put in place in advance, or as provisional intercessions? (shrink)

In the eyes of its citizens, liberal democracy is connected to at least three promises—the promises of autonomy, equality and rationality. To what extent citizens can view these promises as being fulfilled will affect political trust and support for democracy. The rise of populism and trends towards technocratic government have rightly been interpreted as arising from a gap between normative aspirations and institutional and practical realities. Does this mean that we should adjust our ideals to reality, or that we should (...) strive to bring realities closer to the ideal? Self-proclaimed ‘realists’ argue that democratic ideals are unattainable and that we should therefore settle for a second-best alternative, such as a competitive oligarchy. Against this position, we point out that deliberative democracy offers an attractive ideal for successful representation that can inform democratic innovation. However, deliberative democracy also remains institutionally underdetermined and needs to develop better criteria that enable us to determine if, how and under what conditions the attempt to fulfil democracy’s promises succeeds in practice. In this paper, we suggest a criterion of deliberative responsiveness as a measure for representative democracy’s success in fulfilling promises of autonomy, equality and rationality. We go on to show in what respects these promises tend to be broken in contemporary representative democracies and discuss strategies for institutional reform that have potential to counteract these problems. (shrink)

On balance, Africa generally has made some progress in good governance under liberal, multiparty democracy in the past two or three decades. But there are well‐noted, wide‐ranging dysfunctions in governance, which inhibit human development and fulfilment. Several papers have been published, which propose various solutions to the dysfunctions. Among them are proposals for types of all‐inclusive democratic politics. I examine a couple of these proposals and conclude that they generate formidable feasibility challenges, even for the types of democracy they advocate. (...) This paper focuses on Ghana, but with a thrust intended to have import for the sustainability of democracy across Africa. The argument is basically that the operating democratic constitutions in Africa provide a normatively desirable liberal, multiparty democracy, which promises a reasonably good life for all without exception; but practice has resulted in enduring, multiple deprivations and low standards of living for millions of citizens. The reason for the undesirably wide gap between the ideal and the practice is not because multiparty democracy is inconsistent with African traditions or is otherwise not good for Africans, as some scholars claim, but because of those who tend to run it—their general incompetence, including or marked by their intellectual and ethical inability to rise above partisan limitations and failure to leverage the efficiencies of the free market system. The proposed solution for Ghana, intended to eliminate or significantly mitigate the dysfunctions just mentioned and to sustain the multiparty democracy, is to redesign the National Development Planning Commission (NPDC), a constitutional organ which serves the partisan executive, into a robust, non‐partisan, independent institution, anchored on the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances, to enable it to do at least the following two things: (a) to produce, with representation from key stakeholders, including political parties, technocratically objective, competent, efficient and accountable rolling and all‐inclusive National Development Plans (NDPs) in place of vote‐inspired and partisan manifestoes, with budgets approved by parliament; and (b) to monitor, evaluate and report on the governing party's implementation of the NDPs to parliament. Democracy will become sustainable as the general quality of lives grows steadily under the continuous implementation of all‐inclusive NDPs, which are to be crafted to efficiently and sustainably deliver public goods and services that serve district, regional and the common needs and interests of all Ghanaians rather than the interests of the few and powerful or, at best, of majorities. (shrink)

1. In the circumstances of the overgrowth signs the scientific-technical revolution the following events in essential way are influencing the activities of public administration : 1° the establishing, under thepressure of the technical progress and specialization, of the big economic units ; 2° the acceleration of the processus of urbanization ; 3° the increasing threat of the biological environment and the appearance of newpossibilities for its protection; and 4° the leveling of differences between the living standards of the population in (...) town and in countryside. In that situation the socialist state has first of all to develop its organizationalfunctions.2. The organizational functions of the socialist state are implemenied above all by the supreme and local representative organs of the state authority and by the subordinated to them organs of the state administration. In the result of this organizational activity the scope of civic rights is extending. The state apparatus therefore is responsible for calling into being and for activities of the public institutions and facilities being used by the citizens at their choice. The regulating role of the state has hence respect more to these public institutions and facilities, and it is addressed more seldom directly to the citizens. That takes place especially in the sphere of the administration of national economy, the organization of technical public services as well as the services rendering administration.3. The social and economic assumptions of the socialist system are putting into effect by the organizational activities of the state apparatus. One of the fundamental features of this system is to gain the conscioussupport of the overwhelming majority of the society for actions of the socialist state and to consolidate this support. Such support is possible to reach only by the development of the democratic principles of thestate activities. The democratic institutions are established by the law, and the law is one of instruments of the realization of the political tasks of the socialist society being organized into the state. The state apparatus' function is to embody in action the tasks established by the law. And this therefore makes the role of the state apparatus very important as welt as provides to the necessity of permanent improvement of this apparatus.4. The social and economic plans create the substantial basis for the state administration activities. In the both national and local plans, voted by representative organs of the state authority, there are determined theeconomic and social tasks as welt as the aims concerning in advancement of the living standards of the population. In the state enterprises plans are voted by the organs of the workers' self-government. The principles of socialist democracy and democratic centralism are reflected in the procedure of planning.5. The processus of the administration in the contemporary state becomes more and more complicated. This processus demands an improvement of th social nature, but not of the technocratic one. And that improvement, realized in conformity with the social necessities, is safeguarded by the fact that the state machinery in the socialist country is inspired and vivified by the political leadership of the working class' party. (shrink)

In his speech to an assembly of « corporate citizens » at the conference « Fibers and Textiles for the Future » at the University of Tampere in Finland, Hank Hardy Unruh of the WTO explains all the advantages of freedom and remote labor: After all, the American South, a great producer of textiles in its time, gained nothing from its localization of slavery. But remote labor demands close-up forms of surveillance and therefore creates a new market, for which the (...) WTO proposes a « textile solution » ... By passing themselves off as the representatives of an unbearable new world order to which businessmen and technocrats have not ceased to assent, the Yes Men create au extremely effective form of invisible theater, intervening’ in real situations and using various media to deliver their parodic and precise critique of neoliberal ideology. (shrink)

Discourse is central in promoting – or hindering – social change. This paper discusses the ethical-political dilemmas that academics face in developing progressive discourses on social welfare in the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. A central dilemma concerns the (implicit or explicit) target of their discourse. Speaking to elites reproduces dominant values and interests, reinforcing central elements of neoliberalism such as economisation and de-politicisation. Moreover, this approach remains technocratic (i.e. academics act as experts), thereby failing to address citizens’ distrust towards ‘scientific (...) evidence’ that characterises the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. A possible alternative is to work together with civil society and marginalised groups for promoting an oppositional discourse. In this way scholars may contribute to the democratisation of the public sphere but may fail to influence the content of policies, remaining trapped in marginal political positions. The paper illustrates this tension focusing on ‘social investment’. This discourse – which is today the most important framework for welfare reform among academics – emphasises the economic benefits of social policy for promoting alternatives to welfare retrenchment. Building on a research project aimed at re-thinking social investment from Sen's capability perspective, the paper discusses the conditions for developing a post-neoliberal discourse on social welfare. (shrink)

A consensus exists in the Christian tradition concerning the idea that a faith conviction based on the gospel also has ethical and political implications. Much disunity remains, however, with respect to the interpretation of the relationship between the two. Throughout the history of theological thought we can find a variety of hypotheses on the question ranging from ideas of theocracy and ‘status confessionis’ declarations to manifold interpretations of the ‘two kingdom’ theory.In the political praxis of modern secularised society, the latter (...) ‘two kingdom’ theory, even when it is not explicit, is given some preference because it responds to our desire to guarantee the autonomy of politics in the face of ecclesiastical or ideological paternalism. Such a position is theoretically rendered by the liberal ‘method of avoidance’ and those political theologies which make a clear distinction between one’s secular dealings as a citizen or politician and one’s ‘ecclesiastical’ dealings as a believer.An unconscious maintenance of the ‘two kingdom’ theory also bears witness to the fact that the sense of responsibility and the realism of those politicians who take the logic of power into consideration, who are not afraid to get their hands dirty, is often highly praised while the ‘naive’ idealism of those who permit themselves to be guided by their faithful adherence to ideological goals are just as frequently looked down upon and spoken of with disapprobation. In concrete political praxis, the tendency to make a sharp separation between an ‘ethics of conviction’ and an ‘ethics of responsibility’ is further reinforced by the increasing influence of the technocrats and the representatives of various interest groups who inhabit the inner circle of ministerial cabinets. In such contexts, a realistic, ‘no-nonsense’ balance of interests is all too often considered the only viable and desirable option at the government’s disposal.Nevertheless, the relationship between ‘Gesinnungsethik’ and ‘Verantwortungsethik’ remains of essential importance to the political world. Without directional perspectives and individuals oriented towards high moral goals which derive their significance from meta-ethical frames of meaning, the political machine with its strategic rationality is in danger of becoming a pointless, systemimmanent and even alienating reality for many citizens. (shrink)

In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the “shrinkage” of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency-focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency — a citizen politics that is different from ideological politics — and citizens as cocreators of political communities, Boyte and Finders explore the technocratic trends that have eclipsed agency. These disempower educators, students, and (...) communities. Using the case study of the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement and its translation into the Special Education Program and partnerships of Augsburg College, the authors conclude with an examination of how agentic practices have survived in “shadow spaces” in schools, how such spaces might be turned into “free spaces” for democratic change, and how teacher education needs to prepare “citizen teachers” as well as promoting pedagogies of empowerment. These suggest grounds for a movement of hope and democratic change. (shrink)

Teaching Joe Kincheloe is one of a handful of important recent books posthumously pushing Kincheloe's work further into the twenty-first century. Written and edited by former students and colleagues, the book underscores the depth and breath of his extraordinarily productive career. The text offers students and educators alike invaluable insights into transformative ways of seeing conducive to challenging the technocratic, imperialistic purpose of dominant forms education in an era marked by ruling elite desperation as U.S. power wanes globally. Through this (...) and other projects, Kincheloe would surely have been pleased to see his many postformal contributions counter-hegemonically providing critical pedagogy the theoretical and practical strength to contribute to the global uprising currently challenging the imperialist project of wealth extraction and cultural domination from Cuba; Venezuela; Peru; Chiapas, Mexico; Tunisia; Libya; Egypt; Yemen; and Iran, to regions in the United States. Teaching Joe L. Kincheloe will surely gain relevancy as the global movement against authoritarianism and domination intensifies and citizens begin to search for new ways to better understand their worlds and how those contexts interrelate with the historical development of their own identities. (shrink)

As a consequence of recent discussions on globalization in the last decade, cosmopolitanism has reappeared as an important topic of philosophical debate. The purpose of this article is to explore the possibilities and the limitations of this concept by distinguishing two opposing senses of the term. In one connotation, cosmopolitanism means the tendency to realize a cosmopolis, i.e. a unified and rationalized system of culture, commerce and politics. It implements the ideal of an encompassing logos, as is obvious not only (...) in stoicism, but in recent ideologies of technocratic globalism. On the other hand, cosmopolitanism can mean exactly the opposite: world citizenship as an attitude respectful of diversity and imperfection, and resisting all temptations of uniformity. It is shown that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is based primarily on such a pluralistic view, expressing the conditions under which a plurality of humans can share a public space. On the institutional level, recent ideas on a post-Westphalian world-order, implemented in theories of "cosmopolitan democracy", mesh well with this pluralistic connotation. They imply that citizens escape from the all encompassing and massive sovereignty oftraditional nation-states, not to stumble into an abstract universalism, but to reconfigure sovereignty into a plurality of concrete commitments that are also based on multi-layered trans-national associations of civil society. Potentialities and dangers of such proposals are studied. On the cultural level as well, it can be shown that citizens transcend particular national cultures, not to enter an uprooted global culture, but to enter new forms of concrete cultural environments. (shrink)

The Crisis of Capitalism and the Crisis of Political Representation History has taught us that there is no direct link between economic crisis and political revolution. Thefailure of Soviet socialism and the failure of European social-democracies can be traced to a commonorigin : the lack of intervention by the popular masses in the processes of social transformation whichhave been monopolised by the bureaucratic or technocratic elites. For want of a genuine democratisation of the political representation and of the modes of (...) government, state centralisation has createda persistent fracture between a caste of professional politicians and the mass of citizens, workers, andrecipients. A new bond must be created between the social movement “from below” and the instancesof political representation. (shrink)

In this contribution, we argue that three related developments provide economic, environmental and social challenges and opportunities for a new responsible professionalism in the food chain: the Anthropocene; the bio-based economy; Precision Livestock Farming. These three interrelated developments indicate a transition in the way we understand the role and function of the food chain on the micro-, the meso- and the macro-level. This transition can be understood in two fundamental different ways, namely either as an extension of technocratic management beyond (...) the micro level to the meso- and macro-level of the food chain, or as a transition to a new responsible professionalism. We argue that the technocratic approach is not able to address the socio-ethical issues that come along with these three development, and argue for a new responsible professionalism in the agri-food chain in the Anthropocene based on normative and action competence. (shrink)

In the 1970s Australian New Left theorists used the Technocratic Labor thesis to criticize the ALP. This held that middle-class university educated people were taking over the ALP and moving it to the right. Thirty years later there appears to be much substance to their argument. The ALP has increasingly been led by middle-class people and has moved to the right. It has also narrowed the recruiting base for its national parliamentarians, most of who are now groomed within the party (...) and its affiliates rather than being drawn from the wider community. Nonetheless, the political utility of the argument may be questioned since most of the Australian workforce is now in the services sector and many are also middle class and university educated. (shrink)

This essay examines and compares two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. I explore moving from technocratic paradigms to the emerging ecological paradigms of planetary person ecosophies. The dominant technocratic philosophy's guiding policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled for human ends. Its global practices are drastically altering the integrity of the planet's ecosystems. In contrast, the organic, planetary person approaches respect the intrinsic values of all (...) beings. Deep ecology movement principles give priority to community and ecosystem integrity. These deep ecology movement principles guide the design and applications of technology by principles following from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in philosophical paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

The paper brings the analysis of the peculiar features of Bacon’s utopianism, it’s linkage to and tensions with classical utopias, technocratic ideas, Christian humanism and Hobbesian ethics. The research is trying to revisit conventional views on the so-called Bacon’s technocratic perspective for the future of science, state and society. We argue that ethical framework of Bacon’s theory of science and it’s societal institutions has much in common with the Kenotic ethics of Christian humanism. His utopian novel follows this ethical pattern (...) as well. The “limitation of science by religion” described in “New Atlantis” and in early tracts was on the other side a step in later Hobbesian direction towards the development of secular civic moral. In spite of this Baconian ethics was altruist & collectivist, unlike Hobbesian moral of selfishness & individualism. (shrink)

Prior to Citizen’s United, particular types of corporate spending for purposes of influencing US-election-outcomes were limited due to an inherent skepticism of corporate influence in American politics. It was presumed that where corporations accessed wealth and resources for purposes of electing candidates that best serve corporate interests, American politics would be corrupted—indeed: democracy that is bought and sold. In the US, the juridical is entirely systematized by the ethos of the legal profession: legalism. It is the way in which (...) the law is supposed to be reasoned upon, deliberated upon, and decided upon. Although the Majority in Citizens expressed its reversal of law that limits corporate influence in American politics in legalese—the terminology within the system of legalism, the conservative Majority took an opportunity to establish conservative ideology as law—an ideology that subscribes to the equivocation between corporations and individuals, and, corporate spending with protected free-speech. (shrink)

This article analyses the Swedish TV series Hållbart näringsliv (HN) to study hegemonic discursive formations over the meaning of the climate crisis. Combining new materialist approaches in discourse studies with a political ecology understanding of the socio-ecological entanglement, we propose the concept of technocratic solutionism to understand how the neo-liberal green economy secures instrumentalist discourses on nature in the Swedish context. The discourse-theoretical analysis of nine HN episodes identifies four nodal points which articulate the technocratic solutionist discourse: capital’s leading role, (...) Nordic exceptionalism, substitutionalism and long-termism. We argue that the climate crisis can be understood as a materiality that dislocates capitalist assemblages, which then, in response, deploy a techno-solutionism discourse to protect the core principles of economic growth and profitability while marginalizing potential radical alternatives. (shrink)

Why should a citizen vote? There are two ways to interpret this question: in a prudential sense, and in a moral sense. Under the first interpretation, the question asks why—or under what circumstances—it is in a citizen's self-interest to vote. Under the second interpretation, it asks what moral reasons citizens have for voting. I shall mainly try to answer the moral version of the question, but my answer may also, in some circumstances, bear on the prudential question. Before (...) proceeding to my own approach, let me briefly survey alternatives in the field. (shrink)

This essay examines and compares two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. I explore moving from technocratic paradigms to the emerging ecological paradigms of planetary person ecosophies. The dominant technocratic philosophy's guiding policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled for human ends. Its global practices are drastically altering the integrity of the planet's ecosystems. In contrast, the organic, planetary person approaches respect the intrinsic values of all (...) beings. Deep ecology movement principles give priority to community and ecosystem integrity. These deep ecology movement principles guide the design and applications of technology by principles following from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in philosophical paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

In their efforts to prevent democratic backsliding, militant democrats have traditionally been sympathetic to technocratic arrangements. Does this sympathy imply a logical congruence? Comparing theories of militant democracy and epistemic technocracy (aka epistocracy), I discover a common approach to basic aspects of representative democracy. Both theories see voters as fallible or ignorant instead of capable political agents; and they both understand political parties to be channels of state rule rather than democratic expression. This shared suspicion of grassroots political agency explains (...) why they employ non-democratic means to pursue their goals. But the two theories appear to be also analytically co-extensive. Like militant democrats, epistemic technocrats polemicize antidemocrats inasmuch as the latter are proxies for epistemically foul decision-making. Conversely, militant democrats try to block ‘incorrect’ decisions as long as these lead to democratic subversion, thereby producing a distinct type of militant technocracy. The article ends by drawing the implications of this symbiosis of epistemic and militant democratic ideas for contemporary democratic theory. (shrink)