This article examines how British philosophers of the 1930s grappled with the relationship between reason, emotion, and democratic citizenship in the context of a perceived “crisis of democracy” in Europe. Focusing especially on Bertrand Russell, Susan Stebbing, and John Macmurray, it argues that philosophers working from diverse philosophical perspectives shared a sense that the crisis of democracy was simultaneously a crisis of reason and one of emotion. They tended to frame this crisis in terms (...) of three interrelated concerns: first, as a problem of balancing or integrating reason and emotion; second, as a problem of the relationship between emotions and democratic citizenship; and third, as a problem of how to properly train or educate the emotions. Significantly, British philosophers addressed these issues most directly in writings for a non-professional audience, as they sought to translate their professional expertise into popular works that might rejuvenate democratic citizenship. This historical episode is a reminder of how philosophers were deeply engaged in the cultural politics of the interwar period and is a telling example of how personalist concerns were central to philosophy even as the “analytic revolution” was gathering steam. (shrink)

The author analyzes three waves of the crisis of democracy during the 20th and early 21st centuries. The first crisis of democracy in the early 20th century is caused by the emergence and development of public politics, which challenged the possibility to govern the masses having conflict potential, it balanced the power of the people and universal suffrage with the control of the media in order to maintain the stability of political system. The second wave of (...) the crisis of democracy (the last third of the 20th century) is associated with the destruction of the conventional world and the weakening of the nation-state; and its markers were: the imbalance between the branches of government, the domination of economics over politics, the predominance of equality over freedom, the problematic implementation of human rights, and, as a consequence, the inability to put into practice the national form of democracy. The third wave of crisis (early the 21st century) is accompanied by the transformation of democracy into post-democracy, in which the power of the people is replaced by the power of global capital, and the illusion of consent is reinforced by the prohibition of alternative points of view and the narrowing of the space of issues allowed for discussion in the name of public security. The crisis of the policy to achieve peace through the transformation of the balance of powers into a balance of interests called into question the principles of democracy. On the contrary, post-democracies justify the use of force to spread democracy around the world, and they take an active part in contemporary military conflicts, which can rightly be defined as hybrid proxy wars. Drawing on J. Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality, the author concludes that to overcome the crisis of democracy it is necessary to accept the very possibility of an alternative to this form of government and allow to discuss these previously marginalized issues as well as to maintain the return of the majority to genuine communication and politics, contribute to its enlightenment. (shrink)

In this study, I demonstrate the consequences of the triumph of neoliberalism and media deregulation for democracy. I argue that the tremendous concentration of power in the hands of corporate groups who control powerful media conglomerates has intensified a crisis of democracy in the United States and elsewhere. Providing case studies of how mainstream media in the United States have become tools of conservative and corporate interests since the 1980s, I discuss how the corporate media helped forge (...) a conservative hegemony, failed to address key social problems, and promoted the candidacy of George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Key Words. (shrink)

The continued rise of populism and authoritarianism throughout the world has witnessed an alarming attack on basic democratic freedoms and led to a divided political and social world. Few thinkers have done as much as Jürgen Habermas to understand and critique these problems, perhaps most famously through his notions of the public sphere, deliberative democracy and discourse ethics. In this fascinating book, Emilie Prattico considers the crisis of democracy from a Habermasian standpoint via engaging interviews with an (...) outstanding line up of leading philosophers and thinkers. The following key topics are unpacked and explored: Can some basic rights and liberties be given up to safeguard democracy? With Hauke Brunkhorst, How does actual deliberation confer legitimacy to democratic decisions? With Cristina Lafont, Why is "fake news" a crisis of democracy? With Michael Lynch, How can we build a public sphere together and share it in a world characterized by divisiveness and tribalism? With Barbara Fultner, Can democracy survive without the voice of experts? With Kenneth Baynes, How dangerous are the current forms of authoritarianism we are seeing take hold all over the world? With Maria Pia Lara, What does the public sphere look like with new technologies? With Gertrud Koch, What duties do we owe descendants of slaves and how do we reckon with our antidemocratic and oppressive past? With Lorenzo Simpson. Also including a Foreword by Habermas himself, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the challenges facing democracy and liberalism today. It will be of great interest to those in philosophy, sociology and politics as well as related fields such as religion and law. (shrink)

This essay reassesses the German-Jewish social and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin's famous, yet widely misunderstood thesis of the aestheticisation of politics with reference to the development of the mass media and the crisis of democracy. I argue that his thesis of the aestheticisation of politics represents the focal point of his account of both the crisis of liberal democracy as a deliberative and representative political system and the emergence of fascism as a form of direct political (...) communication between a political power and the public. My examination of Benjamin's analysis of the interplay between fascist politics and the mass media leads to a wider critical consideration of the function of political spectacle in the media age. In so doing, I seek to draw out its theoretical relevance for our critical understanding of the linkage between new media and democracy, be it 'new' or 'old' democracy. (shrink)

ExcerptDemocracy of opinion? Television democracy? Market democracy? Whether one studies them in the context of the crisis or evaluates them in relation to the dynamic of postmodernism, the pathologies affecting contemporary democracies are attracting more and more attention. The general opinion is that these pathologies, far from being inherent to democracy itself, are the result of a corruption of its principles. The most superficial observers attribute this corruption to external factors or phenomena (hence the ritualistic denunciations (...) of fundamentalism, populism, communitarianism, globalization, etc.), which amounts to questioning solely the changes in morals and the transformation of society. Yet this confuses…. (shrink)

The Occupy movements in 2011 – this essay focuses mainly on Spain and the United States – have been more than moments of grassroots or direct democracy: they have been collective political practices testing forms of non-representationist democracy in the Europe of representative democracy to an unusually great extent. The precarious subjects of post-Fordism rejected political representation, and at the same time they struggled for a ‘real’ democracy. This oxymoron between representation and democracy structures the (...) political philosophy of Jacques Rancière and corresponds with his well-known distinction between police and politics. This is one of the reasons why his thinking is helpful to understand them as decidedly political ones. However, the assembly as one of the central topoi of theories of democracy plays no prominent role in Rancière’s political philosophy. In contrast to this, I focus on the central practice of the assemblies in the Occupy movements and develop a concept of presentist democracy. (shrink)

In the current crisis of liberal democracy, Confucianism has been cited as offering superior alternative models of government. With the resources from Dewey’s Pragmatism, this paper defends democracy, which should not be equated to de facto liberal democracies, as desirable for Confucian societies. It examines the affinities between Confucian and Dewey’s conception of the person and community and argues for an understanding of democratic values that brings together Dewey’s democratic values and Confucian ideals of personal cultivation and (...) virtuous governance. (shrink)

The crisis of democracy unfolding in the United States was identified by John Paul II as due to misunderstanding the relationship of truth and freedom. This crisis has grown worse due to a libertinism that sees objective moral truths as impositions on both free choice and fulfilling relationships, that identifies self-fulfillment with a self-creation in which one creates one’s own values, that seeks to build democracies apart from moral objectivity, and that dismisses the relevance of God for (...) living well. I argue that democracy cannot survive these libertine errors and that they cannot be successfully countered by utilitarianism, Rawls’s political liberalism, or democratic proceduralism. Survival requires adopting the Thomistic personalism formulated by Aquinas and developed by Karol Wojtyła as indispensable for understanding those lived experiences through which one encounters the ethical moment of self-determination, achieves moral objectivity, avoids loneliness by loving truly, and seeks—via collaboration with women exercising their feminine genius for discerning the welfare of others—the common good, without which democracies collapse into atheistic tyranny. (shrink)

This paper explores Erich Fromm’s contribution to Deweyan democratic education by referring to his psychoanalytic interpretation of John Dewey’s pragmatic theory. First, it employs the work by Gert Biesta to secure a space between critical pedagogy and Deweyan democratic education, from which Fromm’s theory can be discussed. Furthermore, it argues that Biesta’s perspective offers a valuable theoretical ground to extend the emancipatory potential of Deweyan democratic education, while avoiding some pitfalls of critical pedagogy. Subsequently, the paper contrasts Marcuse’s and Fromm’s (...) views on Dewey to show how Fromm’s understanding of Dewey was more effective than that of Marcuse for developing the potential of Dewey’s philosophy. Next, the paper clarifies key similarities and differences between Fromm’s psychoanalysis and Dewey’s pragmatism, as it is applicable specifically to emancipatory education. Finally, the paper argues that despite the differences between these two thinkers, Fromm’s theory further radicalizes Deweyan democratic education by adding new elements to the list of preconditions on the role of the emancipatory teacher. (shrink)

The contrast between the normative functions of political parties in representative democracies and their empirical working is stark and rapidly increasing. This article starts from a sober, realist account of the empirical state of affairs and from structural problems of democracy and participations – in terms of limits of time, information, qualification and relevant expertise – that have to be acknowledged by any realist–utopian proposal of alternatives beyond the exclusive alternative of ‘thin, realist democracy’ or emphatic ‘strong, participatory, (...) direct, or mass democracy’. We can do better. My search for institutional alternatives looks not for the replacement of political parties but for their relief. Many, not all, of their normative tasks can be shared with other functional networks, associations and organizations. In exploring such a new division of political labour I draw on older debates and designs of associative democracy and on recent discussions to democratize expertise and to expertise democracy in order to address urgent societal problems of high-risk decisions under conditions of extreme complexity, contingency, unpredictability and uncertainty and deep contestedness of our knowledge, problems that turn out to be unmanagable by party politics and representative democracy. (shrink)

Described both as "the Hobbes of our age" and as "the philosophical godfather of Nazism," Carl Schmitt was a brilliant and controversial political theorist whose doctrine of political leadership and critique of liberal democratic ideals distinguish him as one of the most original contributors to modern political theory.The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. First published in 1923, it has often been viewed as an attempt to destroy parliamentarism; in (...) fact, it was Schmitt's attempt to defend the Weimar constitution. The introduction to this new translation places the book in proper historical context and provides a useful guide to several aspects of Weimar political culture.The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

The issue of the crisis of democracy has been debated abundantly and intensively in recent years. The body of academic literature on the topic has gradually increased. However, a similar debate took place almost one-hundred years ago in the Central European region. At that time, the debate was closely intertwined with the geopolitical situation, especially with the rise of fascism and Nazism. The paper conceptualizes the intellectual discussion on the reasons of the democratic crisis in the 1930s (...) in Czechoslovakia from a sociological and philosophical perspective. The opinions of important Czech intellectuals, such as František Modráček, Emanuel Rádl, Karel Čapek, Edvard Beneš, František Žilka, F.X. Šalda, T.G. Masaryk, J.B. Kozák, and J.L. Fischer, are clarified. Furthermore, some main features of the nature of the past and present crises of democracy are compared. (shrink)

The result of 2007’s presidential election in South Korea symbolizes the decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right. They say it goes with the global retrogression of democracy, or the consolidation of the hegemony of the rightist versions of democracy. According to Choi Jang-jip, the general public in Korea has thought that the Roh Moo-hyun’s administration had betrayed them, handing power over to the market, and seeking to form a coalition government with theconservatives. Similarly, (...) Professor Jang Ha-jun asserts that the democratic governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun have mistaken economic democratization for neo-liberalistic structural adjustment. (shrink)

The essays in "The Crisis of American Democracy: Essays on a Failing Institution" seek to answer central questions about American democracy, such as: if American democracy is failing, what are the causes of this failure? What are the consequences? And what can be done to fix it? These standalone essays present diverse perspectives on some of the impediments to achieving a true democracy in the present-day United States of America, as well as prescriptions for overcoming (...) these obstacles. Leading academics from across North America, contribute their perspectives on this timely debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK R]]JVIEWS room for different theories and new developments. He does not try to tie up every loose end. Furthermore, he avoids the rut of the specialist by willingly and capably addressing questions of biblical exegesis, philosophy, psychology, science, and popular culture with even-handed competence. Space does not permit me to discuss his fascinating analysis of the psychology of near-death experiences or specific rejoinders to important objections (e.g., the (...) Bible depicts the dead as bodily beings, not immaterial spirits; dualism is a result of the Fall; dualism implies that the whole person does not die; at death we pass out of time, and, hence, there is no intermediate state). But I can assure you that his account is cogent and illuminating. Lenoir-Rhyne College Hickory, North Carolina PHILIP BLOSSER: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective. Edited by KENNETH L DEUTSCH AND WALTER SOFFER. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. Pp. ix+ 304. $54.50 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). For Leo Strauss, the superiority of classical political philosophy over modern social science (and political theory based on social science) lies in at least four principles. First, it treats political matters as they actually appear to man qua philosopher and, in a qualified way, to the good citizen. Because Strauss claims that social science (and much post-classical political philosophy) abstracts from his canon of intelligibility, he thinks that it cannot lead to a humane, rational politics. (See "What is Political Philosophy?", in What is Political Philosophy? [Westport: Greenwood], pp. 27-28, and "Distinction between Facts and Values" in Natural Right and History [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953], pp. 78-80.) Second, Plato and Aristotle believed that only the good man properly judges politics. This belief attracts Strauss, because it identifies virtue as the best claimant to political rule. ("What is Political Philosophy? ", pp. 36-38.) A third principle is derived immediately from this second: politics ought to be organized hierarchically. In the hierarchy, either the truly virtuous or gentlemen should rule, and those having a passive, obediential form of virtue should be the ruled. Fourth, this arrangement is rational and humane. For although the virtues of the ruler and the ruled are complementary in justice and necessary to it, still they are different and, in fact, require the stratification just mentioned. ("Classic Natural Right" in Natural Right and History, pp. 130-44.) BOOK REVIEWS 527 Because of the controversial nature of these principles and Strauss's eminence in political philosophy, one welcomes the present collection of essays by his disciples. They believe that in liberal democracies people confuse liberty with the uses to which liberty can and ought to be put. Doing so, people undermine that regime's foundations. Strauss and his disciples believe that modern natural right makes the clash between liberty and natural right inevitable, because its principal founders, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, conceived man as non-political. They conceived individuals as gaining certain advantages from governments hut as gaining no good in the exercise of politics itself. Classic natural right, by contrast, bases itself on the assumption that man is radically political. Moreover, it conceives politics as an arena for liberating, ennobling activities. Hobbes and Locke viewed the individual as independent of politics, which they placed at the low end of the range of human activity, along with everyday concerns and popular morality, rather than at the high end, as Strauss would. Thus for Strauss, liberal democracy is founded on modern principles, which are either apolitical and liberal (Locke) or apolitical and illiberal (Hobbes). Consequently, it cannot withstand the individualist and collectivist onslaughts that we have seen in this century. What, then, have Strauss's disciples to say about liberal democracy and the prospect of classic natural right in a Western world which is more or less permanently Hobbesian-Lockean? This can be answered by describing first the hook's divisions and then its diagnoses and prescriptions. In part one the contributors appraise the work of Strauss itself; in part two they define issues in liberalism ; and in part three they discuss liberalism in American political life. In the first part, Michael Platt outlines how Strauss's thought... (shrink)

A symposium on the subject "The Crisis of Bourgeois Democracy and Violation of Human Rights in the Capitalist World" took place in Moscow in December 1976. The symposium was conducted by the Institute of State and Law and the Learned Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences on Problems of Ideological Currents Abroad.

이 글은 자유민주주의의 위기를 진단하고 이를 극복할 수 있는 대안을 모색한 논문이 다. 현실 민주주의는 자유민주주의를 채택하고 있기 때문에 민주주의의 위기는 곧 자유민 주주의의 위기라고 하겠다. 자유민주주의는 방법론적으로 개인주의와 대의제를 채택하고 있다. 이 때문에 자유민주주의는 개인의 정치적 의사를 단순히 선호집합적으로 취합해서, 특정 시민을 대표자로 선출하지만 대표자는 시민으로부터 비교적 자유롭게 행동하기 때문 에 ‘대표성의 위기’를 낳는다. 자유민주주의의 위기를 극복할 수 있는 대안으로는 숙의민 주주의와 경합민주주의가 있다. 숙의민주주의는 합리성을 지나치게 신뢰하고 있고 또한 의견형성인지 의사결정인지 모호할뿐더러, 개인이나 집단의 다양성을 존중하기 어렵기 때 문에 (...) 자유민주주의의 위기를 극복하기 어렵다는 한계를 갖는다. 경합민주주의는 경합성 또는 다양성의 존중으로 말미암아 정치적 참여도를 높일 수 있고 개인이나 집단의 다양성 을 존중할 수 있다는 장점이다. 이 논문은 숙의 모델의 ‘배제 없는 합의’를 넘어 시민들의 다양한 정체성을 존중받을 수 있는 평등한 참여라는 경합 모델을 통해 자유민주주의의 위 기를 극복할 수 있는 이론적 가능성을 모색하고 있다. (shrink)

ExcerptIntroduction Is the neo-liberal era since the mid-1970s synonymous with a corporate capture of the state and the passage to “post-democracy”? And if so, might the failure of neo-liberalism since the onset of the international economic crisis in 2007 and the state-sponsored bailout of global finance presage a return to the primacy of democratic politics over “free-market” economics commonly associated with the post–World War II period? At the time of this writing, it is premature to analyze the aftermath (...) of the Great Recession (2007–09), which could yet mutate into a twenty-first-century Great Depression. However, the current…. (shrink)

민주주의(democracy)의 어원은 그리스어 demokratia로 demos(인민)와 kratia(통치/권력)의 합성어이다. 따라서 민주주의의 어원적 의미는 정체의 구성형태와 통치, 그리고 권력을 정당화하는 형태와 권력행사의 양상을 가리킨다. 하지만 현대의 정치담론에서 민주주의라는 용어는 통치기술과 더 자주 연관되는데, 이 때 민주주의는 대의민주주의의 형태를 갖는다. 오늘날 인민의 삶과 관련된 것임에도 불구하고 FTA같은 복잡하고 전문적인 현안들에 대해 국민의 인지적 한계로 말미암아 국민은 자기-입법과 자기-통치의 권리를 행사하지 못하고 있다. 대부분의 시민은 시간적으로나 능력에 있어서도 이들 분야에 대해 의사결정 과정에 참여하기에는 역부족이다. 또한 대의제에서 다수결 제도는 공리주의의 원리인 최대다수의 최대행복이라는 도덕적 정당성에 (...) 기초한 다수자의 전제를 정당화하고 있는데, 이것은 소수자에 대한 다수자의 지배를 의미하는 다수자의 전제로 귀결됨으로써 현대사회의 정치적 위기, 민주주의의 위기가 초래됐다. 인민이 대표자들을 선출하는 것만으로는 인민 주권이라는 민주주의의 이념을 충족시킬 수 없다. 따라서 현실 정치의 위기에 대한 해법은 인민 주권을 표방했던 시민사회의 입법권과 통치권을 인민에게 되돌려 주는 것이다. 그러므로 근대 시민사회의 원리를 제공한 루소의 사회계약론에서 일반의지를 고찰함으로써 민주주의의 이념을 구현하는 방법을 모색한다. (shrink)

French post-Marxist theory and Gauchet's model of critique -- French post-Marxist theory and the political : Gauchet and religion -- Gauchet and the genesis of modern society -- The legacy of French sociology and anthropology : Gauchet and the question of the post-secular -- The crisis of European democracy : the neo-liberal ideology and political radicalization.

This article proposes that autocratic democracy represents the natural political form of right-wing populism. It argues that while the emergence of autocratic democracy as a genuine political alternative to liberal democracy may be currently located primarily in states where liberal democratic norms were not well-consolidated, there are reasons to hold that structural features of contemporary politics in consolidated democracies relating to the decline of mass parties and the globalisation trilemma create the space for the right-wing mobilisation of (...) populism. It is further claimed that the dilemmas of the EU in conjunction with the politics of immigration and multiculturalism provide resources for the right-wing mobilisation of populist discontents such that we should not be sanguine about the ability of liberal democracy to be resilient in the face of continuing populist pressures. (shrink)

Title: Political Theology Publisher: The MIT Press ISBN: 0262192446 Author: Carl Schmitt Title: The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy Publisher: The MIT Press ISBN: 0262691264 Author: Carl Schmitt.

For theorists in search of a political theology that is more responsive to the challenges now facing Western democracies, this book tenders a new political economy anchored in a theory of value. The political theology of the future, Carl Raschke argues, must draw on a powerful, hidden impetus--the "force of God"--to frame a new value economy. It must also embrace a radical, "faith-based" revolutionary style of theory that reconceives the power of the "theological" in political thought and action. Raschke ties (...) democracy's retreat to the West's failure to confront its decadence and mobilize its vast spiritual resources. Worsening debt, rising unemployment, and gross income inequality have led to a crisis in political representation and values that twentieth-century theorists never anticipated. Drawing on the thought of Hegel and Nietzsche as well as recent work by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Joseph Goux, Giorgio Agamben, and Alain Badiou, among others, Raschke recasts political theology for a new generation. He proposes a bold, uncompromising critical theory that acknowledges the enduring significance of Marx without his materialism and builds a vital, more spiritually grounded relationship between politics and the religious imaginary. (shrink)