Democratic Situations

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Democratic Ideals

Democratic Situations places the making and doing of democratic politics at the centre of relational research. The book turns the well-known sites of contemporary Euro-American democracy – elections, bureaucracies, public debates and citizen participation – into fluctuating democratic situations where supposedly untouchable democratic ideals are contested and warped in practice. The empirical cases demonstrate that democracy cannot be reduced to theoretical schemes of conflict, institutions or deliberation. Instead, they offer an urgently needed renewal of our understanding of democratic politics at a time when conventional ideas increasingly fail to capture current events such as Brexit, Trump and Covid19.

Popular Access to the Decision‐making Process in Switzerland: The Role of Direct Democracy

1979 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Mowlam
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Popular Control

CENTRAL TO THE STUDY OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS IS THE IDEA of popular control over the activities of elites. More specifically, how can the preferences of citizens be aggregated into a political choice for a government policy or government personnel? Popular control, the effects of citizen participation in political life, is the basis of a major value orientation in the discipline: the notion of participant democracy. The degree of citizen participation becomes the key to the nature of democracry in a society : the more participation, the more democratic the political life of a country becomes. Political participation may take a variety of forms, e.g., running for office, holding office,voting, soliciting votes, and campaigning for, or contributing funds to, I the party of one's choice. However, voting is the most emphasized aspect of citizen participation, since it is the only form of active participation many engage in. The limitations placed on voting as a mechanism for popular control over political choices are well documented. Voters do not choose when to vote, nor the agenda. They have minimal input into the selection of candidates and the choice of issues which divide the parties at elections. Public participation in the selection and resolution of important policy issues between elections is severely restricted.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Braunstein
Keyword(s):  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Democratic Tradition ◽  
Democratic Ideals

Chapter 7 summarizes the key findings and contributions of the book. First, it highlights the book’s contributions to understanding how broadly shared democratic ideals can refract into different understandings of what it means to be a good citizen in practice, and ultimately, different styles of engaging in active citizenship. It then discusses the implications of these findings for American democracy itself. Although Interfaith and the Patriots disagree about how democracy ought to work and the proper role of citizens within it, they share an abiding faith in the American democratic project itself. Moreover, the book suggests that this disagreement is not new, and that the complexity of America’s democratic tradition is both a blessing and a curse, fueling perpetual disagreement over what it means to be a good citizen, but also encouraging political commitment. It concludes by suggesting that as long as groups like Interfaith and the Patriots continue to cultivate and enact many different stories of America, and no single story becomes dominant, then citizens can productively interrogate their respective benefits and drawbacks.

The Citizen as Respondent: Sample Surveys and American Democracy Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1995

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Verba
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Sample Survey ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Sample Surveys ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Citizen participation is the main way in which the public communicates its needs and preferences to the government and induces the government to be responsive. Since participation depends on resources and resources are unequally distributed, the resulting communication is a biased representation of the public. Thus, the democratic ideal of equal consideration is violated. Sample surveys provide the closest approximation to an unbiased representation of the public because participation in a survey requires no resources and because surveys eliminate the selection bias inherent in the fact that participants in politics are self-selected. The contrast between the participatory process and the sample survey is used to highlight the nature of the bias in the former. Surveys, however, are not seen as a practical way of providing more equal representation.

scholarly journals New Trouble For Deliberative Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Robert Talisse
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Practice

In the past two decades, democratic political practice has taken a deliberative turn. That is, contemporary democratic politics has become increasingly focused on facilitating citizen participation in the public exchange of reasons. Although the deliberative turn in democratic practice is in several respects welcome, the technological and communicative advances that have facilitated it also make possible new kinds of deliberative democratic pathology. This essay calls attention to and examines new epistemological troubles for public deliberation enacted under contemporary conditions. Drawing from a lesson offered by Lyn Sanders two decades ago, the paper raises the concern that the deliberative turn in democratic practice has counter-democratic effects.

scholarly journals New Technologies and Not-So-New Democracies

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (40) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schudson
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Impact Of Technology ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

Discussions of the impact of the new media on democratic politics often generalize too broadly about new technologies and almost always take for granted a uniformity about democracies. Democra- cies vary across nations and over time. For the USA, it is argued that Americans have had four different visions of what political spe- ech and participation should be. American democracy has shifted from a citizenship of deference, to one of party enthusiasm, to a model of the informed citizen, to the contemporary model of irreve- rent citizenship. Each model calls forth different versions of a public sphere. What is the democracy that technology is having an impact on? This question must be integrated in the discussion of the impact of technology on democracy.

More than Words: A Multidimensional Approach to Deliberative Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172095056 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Fabrino Mendonça ◽  
Selen A Ercan ◽  
Hans Asenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

Since its inception, a core aspiration of deliberative democracy has been to enable more and better inclusion within democratic politics. In this article, we argue that deliberative democracy can achieve this aspiration only if it goes beyond verbal forms of communication and acknowledges the crucial role of non-verbal communication in expressing and exchanging arguments. The article develops a multidimensional approach to deliberative democracy by emphasizing the visual, sonic and physical dimensions of communication in public deliberation. We argue that non-verbal modes of communication can contribute to public deliberation when they (1) are used as part of reason-giving processes, (2) enable the inclusion of marginalized actors in public debates and (3) induce reflection and encourage new ways of thinking about the public controversies at hand.

scholarly journals The political ambivalences of participatory planning initiatives

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabet Van Wymeersch ◽  
Stijn Oosterlynck ◽  
Thomas Vanoutrive
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Planning Approaches

This article explores the relevance of combining multiple understandings of democratic politics to analyse the ambivalent and contentious dynamics of citizen participation in spatial planning. Building forth on the ongoing efforts in critical planning theory to overcome the deadlock between collaborative and agonistic oriented planning approaches, we argue for the refraining from ‘over-ontologising’ the question of democratic politics in planning processes, and start from the assumption that participatory planning processes as an empirical reality can accommodate radically different, even incompatible views on democracy. In addition, it is argued that while current planning scholars predominantly focus on the applicability of the collaborative and (ant)agonistic approach to democratic politics, a third approach – based on Jacques Rancière’s notion of political subjectification grounded in equality – may be discerned. By mobilising an empirical study of a contentious participatory planning initiative in Ghent (Belgium), that is, the Living Street experiment, we illustrate that while different approaches to democratic politics do not necessarily align with each other, they are often simultaneously at work in concrete participatory planning processes and indeed explain their contentious nature.

Lessons From Democratic Innovations

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Graham Smith
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Participatory Budgeting ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Study Circles ◽  
Participatory Processes ◽  
Town Meetings

Democratic innovations, variously described as ‘empowered participation’ or ‘civic innovation’, are designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the decisions that affect them directly. This chapter reviews current understanding of participatory processes such as citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries, deliberative polling, participatory budgeting, study circles, town meetings, and online dialogues; and considers their impact along with an analysis of the implications of different participatory designs on democratic qualities and policy outcomes. One of the limitations of the burgeoning literature on democratic innovations is the tendency to focus on exemplary cases, which often underplays the variety of conditions that need to be in place for the success of these forms of public engagement. Close attention is given to the different approaches taken with participatory budgeting and randomly selected mini-publics in diverse contexts, to illustrate both the substantial potential of democratic innovations to improve democratic politics and their vulnerabilities to misapplication.

Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, and the Politics of Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 710-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Kim Butorac
Keyword(s):  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
Politics Of Love

Does love have a place in the inherently conflictual realm of democratic politics, particularly in a racialized democracy? This article engages the question of love’s politics by way of Hannah Arendt’s critique of James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind.” Troubled by his “gospel of love,” Arendt wrote to Baldwin, warning him that in politics, love will achieve nothing “except hypocrisy.” Contra Arendt, who argues that love is antipolitical, I show how Baldwin utilizes love to reclaim the lost promise of American democracy. Synthesizing Baldwin’s essays published between 1955–1972, my argument proceeds in two parts: part 1 focuses on the psychological and embodied demands of love, which, for Baldwin, are vital in transforming the consciousness of white and black Americans. Part 2 focuses on Baldwin’s critique of property, linking the project of self-transformation to the need for structural transformation. I show how love enables us to condemn the exploitative logic of capitalism and imagine new modes of relationality. In charting this underexplored point of contact between these thinkers, this article complicates Arendt’s critique of love and sheds new light on the role of love in Baldwin’s political thought.

The politics of becoming: Disidentification as radical democratic practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 136843102093578
Author(s):  
Hans Asenbaum
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Gender Theory ◽  
Democratic Practice ◽  
Democratic Practices ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Democratic Ideals ◽  
And Gender

Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance, which replicates external hierarchies and impedes the freedom of self-expression. To tackle this problem, this article seeks to identify ways to increase the freedom of the subject to explore its multiple self. Understanding the self as inherently fugitive, the article investigates participatory, deliberative and agonistic concepts of self-transformation. As all of them appear limited, it introduces a transformative perspective in democratic thought. Enriching the transformative perspective with queer and gender theory, the article generates the concept of a politics of becoming, which, through radical democratic practices of disidentification, advances the freedom of the subject to change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document