In 2010, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research started a series of citizens’ dialogues on future technologies. In the context of the German history of public participation in technology-oriented policy making, these dialogues are unique for at least two reasons: The Federal Ministry retains the responsibility for the entire process and is heavily involved in its planning, organization and communication, and the number of participants and process elements is significantly higher than in most other participative events. The (...) paper presents insights into the political background of the citizens’ dialogues, its general concept as well as first observations from the dialogue rounds on energy and high-tech medicine. In addition, it discusses reactions of other political actors and expectations regarding legitimacy and representativeness of the dialogue results. (shrink)

Most participatory strands of democratic theory hold a conception of the transformative potential of democratic participation. According to those theories, involvement in deliberative or decision-making processes makes better citizens by teaching them political skills and orienting them towards the common good. This article draws from original interviews with residents of housing coops to argue that this phenomenon can also be found outside formal decision-making forums, in menial and quotidian tasks undertaken for the preservation and maintenance of the organization. Using (...) the political theory of Mary Parker Follett, we suggest that involvement in practical concrete activities is an overlooked but significant element of democratic life. Residents of the coops we studied grew ‘power-with’ by joining others in accomplishing everyday tasks, such as blowing snow, gardening, or fixing shelves, and this collective power made them feel responsible for the organization they were a part of. Broadening our understanding of political participation to include those practical activities could be useful in assessing and devising plans for participatory reforms in small-scale local democracies, but also possibly at a larger scale that would produce the benefits of participation without requiring individuals to overly engage in demanding and complex procedures. (shrink)

The SIMPOL Solution, spearheaded by the Simultaneous Policy (SIMPOL) Organization, gives voters around the world a new way to pressure their leaders to address global problems ranging from climate change to mass immigration and gross income disparities. Blending politics and psychology, The SIMPOL Solution shows how through simultaneous action--through cooperation--we can overcome the problems we face today and our children will face tomorrow.The authors argue that the chief barrier to tackling pressing international issues is a vicious circle of destructive global (...) competition, in which nations, corporations, and citizens are helplessly caught. Our current economic system--which rewards corporations and nations that offer the greatest profits no matter what the social costs--has the effect of hollowing out national politics and encouraging either voter apathy or populism championed by the Far Right.The good news is that it doesn't take masses of people to break this vicious circle and initiate lasting change. In fact, key transitions in human history were initiated by small numbers of activists. Already endorsed by leading policy-makers, visionaries, and public figures, this exciting book offers everyone a way to become a part of this important worldwide movement for change. (shrink)

In the study of the reproduction of state power through urban space, more attention has been paid to how states organize urban space to construct the disciplined subject than the converse of how states cultivate subjects who reproduce the material and symbolic significance of the built environment. Using the case study of public housing in the developmental state of Singapore, I argue that states attempt to shape how inhabitants navigate and interpret the built environment by constructing spatial-political subjects who (...) reproduce state hegemony through internalized mental and emotional schemas towards urban space. I analyze fifty years (1972—2021) and nearly 700 issues of periodicals by Singaporean housing authorities to illustrate two distinct phases of spatial-political subject formation which corresponded to deliberate shifts in the physical sites of state legitimacy. In the two decades following independence, the ruling People’s Action Party sought legitimacy for its program of slum clearance and public housing “New Town” construction, and accordingly cultivated the modern urban resident oriented towards the rationally-planned New Town and the high-rise apartment. Faced with political opposition in the mid-eighties but having already housed 80% of Singapore, the PAP then shifted the stakes of legitimacy towards the maintenance of existing common areas and cultivated the sociable urban citizen who equated ongoing municipal maintenance with ruling party provision while actively participating in state-sanctioned neighborhood activities. The following findings will illuminate an overlooked strategy in the state’s toolkit for reproducing its hegemony through urban space. (shrink)

This volume explores the ways in which civil society and governments employ transformative tactics of direct engagement in coordinating efforts toward the common good. Increasingly, these collaborative endeavors seek to share power and break down role boundaries in the pursuit of abundant human flourishing, as opposed to cost-saving austerity"--Provided by publisher.

Deliberative democracy is an account of legitimacy and participation whose purposes are to produce justifiable political outcomes and to involve the citizens in productive conversations with each other. This article argues for a greater reliance on the efforts of local conversational participants in the institutional construction process. Because of their epistemic advantages, local participants are usually the agents who are most optimally positioned to construct the deliberative institutions. As such, institutionalized deliberation ought not to be seen as an orderly (...) event that is capable of being planned out beforehand by philosophers, but rather as a complex process that flourishes when the conversation is developing—as much as is practicable—on its own. (shrink)

A crucial socio-political challenge for our age is how to rede!ne or extend group membership in such a way that it adequately responds to phenomena related to globalization like the prevalence of migration, the transformation of family and social networks, and changes in the position of the nation state. Two centuries ago Immanuel Kant assumed that international connectedness between humans would inevitably lead to the realization of world citizen rights. Nonetheless, globalization does not just foster cosmopolitanism but simultaneously (...) yields the development of new group boundaries. Group membership is indeed a fundamental issue in political processes, for: “the primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community” – it is within the political community that power is being shared and, if possible, held back from non-members. In sum, it is appropriate to consider group membership a fundamental ingredient of politics and political theory. How group boundaries are drawn is then of only secondary importance. Indeed, Schmitt famously declared that “[e]very religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is suffciently strong to group human beings e#ectively according to friend and enemy”. Even though Schmitt’s idea of politics as being constituted by such antithetical groupings is debatable, it is plausible to consider politics among other things as a way of handling intergroup di#erences. Obviously, some of the group-constituting factors are more easily discernable from one’s appearance than others, like race, ethnicity, or gender. As a result, factors like skin color or sexual orientation sometimes carry much political weight even though individuals would rather con!ne these to their private lives and individual identity. Given the potential tension between the political reality of particular groupmembership defnitions and the – individual and political – struggles against those definitions and corresponding attitudes, citizenship and civic behavior becomes a complex issue. As Kymlicka points out, it implies for citizens an additional obligation to non-discrimination regarding those groups: “[t]his extension of non-discrimination from government to civil society is not just a shift in the scale of liberal norms, it also involves a radical extension in the obligations of liberal citizenship”. Unfortunately, empirical research suggests that political intolerance towards other groups “may be the more natural and ‘easy’ position to hold”. Indeed, since development of a virtue of civility or decency regarding other groups is not easy, as it often runs against deeply engrained stereotypes and prejudices, political care for matters like education is justified. Separate schools, for example, may erode children’s motivation to act as citizens, erode their capacity for it and!nally diminish their opportunities to experience transcending their particular group membership and behave as decent citizens. This chapter outlines a possible explanation for such consequences. That explanation will be found to be interdisciplinary in nature, combining insights from political theory and cognitive neuroscience. In doing so, it does not focus on collective action, even though that is a usual focus for political studies. For example, results pertaining to collective political action have demonstrated that the relation between attitudes and overt voting behavior or political participation is not as direct and strong as was hoped for. Several conditions, including the individual’s experiences, self-interest, and relevant social norms, turned out to interfere in the link between his or her attitude and behavior. Important as collective action is, this chapter is concerned with direct interaction between agents and the in$uence of group membership on such interaction – in particular joint action. Although politics does include many forms of action that require no such physical interaction, such physical interaction between individuals remains fundamental to politics – this is the reason why separate schooling may eventually undermine the citizenship of its isolated pupils. This chapter will focus on joint action, de!ned as: “any form of social interaction whereby two or more individuals coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a change in the environment”. Cognitive neuroscienti!c evidence demonstrates that for such joint action to succeed, the agents have to integrate the actions and expected actions of the other person in their own action plans at several levels of speci!city. Although neuroscienti!c research is necessarily limited to simple forms of action, this concurs with a philosophical analysis of joint action, which I will discuss below. (shrink)

The article is devoted to clarifying the significance of a political performance, which acts as a theatrical communication action designed to draw society’s attention to the important problems of certain social or political groups. The purpose of the research is to establish the peculiarities of the interpretation of political performance in the paradigmatic and methodological dimensions of modern discursive democracy. The development of political performance under the conditions of the modern Russian-Ukrainian war is characterized. It was (...) found that an important task of modern political science should be considered the identification of paradigmatic dimensions (or “poles”) of analytical judgments regarding the assessment of the significance of political performances. It was emphasized that political performance acts as a postmodern alternative to the realization of the unfinished project of political modernity. The importance of political performance for the discussion of society’s problems at the political level and its dependence on a specific topic and the subjects of its application are analyzed. The importance of public discussion and manifestation as signs of broad involvement of citizens in democratic political activity is revealed. It was found that the ability to express political meaning in a theatrical form is beyond the limits of rational planning and organization. It is revealed that the functionality of political performance stems from its connection with specific social groups. It has been proven that political performances are a form that contradicts the formal procedure of expressing the will and approving the results of the discussion. It has been established that, subject to regulatory support from the state, discussions require voluntary participation and a significant level of competence. It is assumed that political performance can provide certain advantages in political competition due to the imagery and emotionality of the political message. The limited suitability of performance for promoting the values of deliberative democracy has been established, since many cases of the use of performances in the modern period are related to the defense of the right to freedom of speech. It was concluded that in the conditions of political discussions, the importance of political performance consists in creating preliminary conditions for political dialogue. (shrink)

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e‐participation platforms, location‐based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as (...) a catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development. (shrink)

Citizen participation today needs to be understood as both an empowerment practice to create urban futures as well as the perpetuation of entrepreneurial and neoliberal modes of planning. The exponential progress of technologies and the digitalisation of everyday life have led to a surge of innovation. Since hybridity has become a key factor, citizen participation now involves citizens and governments meeting online and offline in a multi-stakeholder setting to plan the city in parallel layers, often according to (...) controversial or even contradictory logic (Horelli et al., 2015). As digital citizen participation opens up new tools and means to mobilise people and shape urban futures, this chapter analyses these new aspects through the categories of top-down/bottom-up participation as well as formal/informal practices. Using four case studies comparatively, our aim with this chapter is to find a new theoretical basis and contextualisation for digital citizen participation. The case studies are situated across Europe and North America: we study participatory budgeting in Helsinki, digitalising citizen participation in Lubbock, Texas, the National Map of Security Threats in Poland, and digital placemaking by a grassroots movement in an urban planning participation process in Zürich, Switzerland. The findings of the article show that (1) digital citizen participation fosters novel multi-actor networks negotiating governance of the urban space, (2) studies of citizen participation need to acknowledge the multi-layered hybridity and (3) new modes of governance enable novel senses of informality in participation. (shrink)

How can finance be durably democratized? In the centers of financial power in both the United States and the United Kingdom, proposals now circulate to give workers and the public more say over how flows of credit are allocated. This article examines five democratization proposals: credit union franchises, public investment banks, sovereign wealth funds, inclusive ownership funds, and bank nationalization. It considers how these plans might activate worker and public engagement in decision making about finance by focusing on three modes (...) of public participation: representative democracy, direct democracy, and deliberative minipublics. It then considers the degree to which democratization plans might be resilient to de-democratization threats from business. It argues that of the five, bank nationalization goes furthest in guarding against de-democratization threats but is still pocked with pitfalls if it relies solely on representative democracy. It argues that two criteria appear necessary for democratically durable alternatives: the active direct participation of workers and citizens and the weakening of businesses’ capacity for democratic retrenchment. (shrink)

Anouck Alary | : La transformation du sang placentaire en une précieuse source de cellules souches a donné naissance à partir des années 1990 à une industrie globale de conservation de sang de cordon ombilical faisant désormais concurrence à un large réseau de banques publiques de sang de cordon. Cet article explore les soubassements socioculturels liés à l’émergence de cette industrie et tente d’élucider les enjeux éthiques et politiques qu’elle pose. Si les banques publiques de sang de cordon sont porteuses (...) des valeurs d’altruisme et de solidarité nationale traditionnellement liées au modèle redistributif d’échange de sang et d’organes né après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les banques privées renvoient, elles, à des formes de solidarité bien différentes. C’est effectivement sous couvert de la solidarité familiale et de la responsabilité morale des mères de protéger leurs enfants qu’elles définissent la conservation privée comme une forme d’ « assurance biologique » contre les risques à la santé de l’enfant. En permettant aux mères d’investir leurs tissus corporels à la fois dans le futur incertain de leurs enfants et dans des thérapies cellulaires expérimentales, ces banques promeuvent un nouveau modèle de participation du/de la patient.e à la coconstitution de futures innovations thérapeutiques. Nous inscrivons ce modèle de participation dans les reconfigurations contemporaines du biopolitique que le sociologue britannique Nikolas Rose voit s’incarner dans l’émergence d’une nouvelle forme de biocitoyenneté. L’article critique finalement ces services personnalisés en soulignant qu’ils ont le potentiel d’opérer de nouvelles formes de coercition sur les mères, dans un contexte sociopolitique caractérisé par une responsabilisation accrue des individus au regard de la « bonne gestion » de leurs risques à la santé. Ces services sont aussi jugés problématiques sur le plan éthique, au vu de leur incohérence avec un principe de justice distributive défendant l’accès égal pour chaque citoyen.ne à des soins de santé de base. | : Since the 1990s, the transformation of cord blood into a precious source of stem cells has given rise to a global cord blood bank industry, which is now competing with a large network of public cord blood banks. This article explores the sociocultural context surrounding the emergence of this industry and aims at elucidating the ethical and political concerns that this industry raises. Whereas public cord blood banks are purveyors of values such as altruism and national solidarity traditionally linked to the redistributive model of human blood and organ donation that emerged after World War Two, private banks engage very different forms of solidarity. It is indeed under the guise of family solidarity and mothers’ moral responsibility to do their best to protect their children that they come to define private preservation as a form of “biological insurance” against potential risks to their children’s health. By allowing mothers to invest their bodily tissues simultaneously in their children’s uncertain future and in experimental cell therapies, these banks promote a new model of patient participation in the development of future therapeutic innovations. This article analyzes this model as embedded in the contemporary reconfiguration of biopolitics that sociologist Nikolas Rose envisions as constituting a new form of biocitizenship. The paper finally casts a critical eye on these personalized services, in particular because of the new forms of social coercion on mothers that are brought about in a social and political context characterized by an increasing moral accountability of individuals with regard to the “good management” of their own health risks. These services also appear ethically problematic in relation to political demands of distributive justice—e.g., the ideal of equal access to basic health care for every citizen. (shrink)

On one day in 2009, in 38 countries around the world, 4,000 ordinary citizens gathered to discuss the future of climate policy. This project, 'WWViews', was the first-ever global democratic deliberation - an attempt to enable normal people to reach informed decisions on and impact the global policy process.This book, written by the international practitioners and scholars who facilitated the project, analyses the experiences and lessons from this ground-breaking event. Despite the apparent success of the individual deliberations, the recommendations had (...) little impact within the media or the policy process at Copenhagen. The authors examine these successes and failures, and the challenges and opportunities of such deliberative events. Through this they explore important themes for participatory approaches from the local to the global: the role of deliberation within global governance; methodology and practice; participant selection; policy impacts; engaging the media; how policy culture affects deliberation uptake; capacity building and knowledge transfer; process evaluation; content and argumentation analysis; and gender, race and class aspects.The global aims of the WWViews project, along with the opportunity to evaluate the same process in different national and cultural contexts, makes this a hugely valuable and informative study for all those interested in democratic deliberation and environmental governance from the small to the international scale. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology by Joshua HordernMichael P. JaycoxPolitical Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology By Joshua Hordern NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013. 312 PP. $125.00Hordern asks his reader to consider that the decline of participatory democracy in Western societies may be ameliorated by a renewed appreciation of the role of emotions in politics. Creatively retrieving many elements of the Augustinian tradition, he (...) argues that the “evaluative intentionality” of emotions is an imperfect type of moral insight whereby human beings both participate in and conform themselves to the created “order of value” (40, 77). Although the power of sin profoundly destabilizes human inclinations, emotions can become stable moral guides through a process of “intersubjective verification” (81). Hordern claims that the epistemological capacities of socially stabilized emotions are substantial enough to enable the community to “participate in and evaluate the goods with which institutional practices are concerned, recognize the authority of those who promote the proper ends of those goods, and initiate common political reflection and deliberation” (142).Bringing these insights to bear upon his own political context, Hordern claims the “resentment,” “alienation,” and “disillusionment” that some British citizens feel toward the cosmopolitan project of the European Union stands as [End Page 213] evidence that “law which is not primarily rooted in the locality which it governs will run the risk of opposing the affections of the people” (22, 23, 242). Working from the premise that “local loves are the fertile soil in which more wide-ranging loves may grow,” Hordern champions “the politically beneficial possibilities of a limited ethnocentricity,” by which he means that emotions shared in smaller communities and within nation-states motivate citizens to attend to the common good most effectively (224, 240).Anticipating the objections to this proposal, Hordern assures his reader that the influence of Christianity upon democratic processes minimizes the negative effects of ethnocentric nationalism, such as the oppression of socially vulnerable groups. Insofar as Christian emotions participate uniquely in the transcendent order of values, the participation of this community in the temporal order would “disturb, renew, or correct patterns of social trust” (271) and provide “a critical standpoint whereby affections in all institutions may be described and assessed” (164).This reviewer shares some of Hordern’s general premises regarding the intelligence of emotions and their motivational potential in public life. By way of evaluation, however, I find three significant problems with his argument. First, although Hordern grasps Martha Nussbaum’s emotion theory quite well, he habitually mischaracterizes the more central aspects of her moral thought in order to prop up his somewhat more conservative agenda. For example, he accuses her of denying the existence of a “stable moral order” and of endorsing an individualistic concept of agency (98). These inferences fail to account for the highly social and essentialist vision of human flourishing that provides the normative content of her capability theory and her feminist ethic.Second, he offers some weak arguments as he develops his account of emotional stabilization. For example, he alleges that virtue cannot stabilize emotion because it is a form of “epistemological self-dependence” that “tends to block repentant attentiveness,” but this assertion is grounded in his antecedent concern to discredit Aristotelian habituation as a moral theory (110, 101). As he develops his own alternative proposal about intersubjective verification by appeals to “the power of memory,” he glosses over significant counterarguments concerning the “contested” nature of social memories of historical events (110, 115).Third, Hordern does not propose any universal norms of justice capable of checking the authority of particular civil governments. For example, he seems dismissive about the moral dangers of emotionally motivated nationalism, the gravity of which he attempts to minimize by emphasizing the critical aspect of Christian political participation. (The historical record of fascism in Europe would hardly support such a claim.) Nevertheless, he presumes a tacit normative point of reference every time he offers a political judgment. For example, he claims that civil authority should caution “against overreaching [End Page 214] itself in pride,” but this is to beg the question of what the interventionist role of governments should be vis-à-vis systemic injustice (198).Political... (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the effects of religious denomination and patterns of church-going on the construction of political values for high-school students. I argue that religion plays a role in the formation of political attitudes among teenagers and it influences their political participation. I examine whether this relationship is constructed along denominational lines. From a theoretical perspective, previous research heralded the compatibility between Western Christianity and the democratic form of government. Samuel Huntington, in his famous Clash (...) of Civilization, argued that there is a natural symbiosis between Western Christianity and democratic forms of government, going insofar as to separate the world into religious civilizations. While, this approach essentializes religion as a fixed and immutable entity, Huntington also neglects the importance of dynamic historical, political and social contexts that can, and, in fact, do affect the functioning of religion in different countries, and hence their ability and willingness to accommodate democracy. Much research followed the Clash of Civilizations, either qualifying the central argument, by showing evidence of support for procedural democracy in most of the World, but without its liberal component or even arriving at the opposite conclusion that irrespective of religion, every country is “democratizable”. While I do not attempt to disconfirm fundamental huntingtonian thinking, I do raise the questions of how context can and does influence the intimate relationship between religion and politics. The analysis is conducted on survey data collected by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at Babes-Bolyai University with subjects of 14-15 years old, and the results show that, while Greek Orthodox students do not seem to differ in their political values form their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, they are more prone to participate politically. Nevertheless, their active participatory behavior is only more pronounced in what voting is concerned, an opposite effect being recorder for any other acts of political participation. (shrink)

The focus on deliberation as a central principle represents a common denominator between republican and deliberative theories of democracy (White, 2008, p. 9f). Both proponents of the ‘deliberative...

El objetivo de esta contribución es detallar el proceso para realizar un estudio sobre la población de un municipio que permita la elaboración de un diagnóstico sociológico. Para ello, se identificarán variables demográficas, económicas, sociales y de participación pública. El proceso permite alcanzar la información mínima y necesaria para el desarrollo de la primera fase de un proyecto enfocado hacia la planificación de políticas públicas: la fase de diagnóstico sociológico. El estudio de dichos elementos estructurales permite obtener resultados detallados de (...) la población y confeccionar las tesis fundamentales sobre las necesidades y problemáticas sociales que se presentan. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are interactive online tools designed to assist voters by improving the basis on which they decide how to vote. In recent years, they have been widely adopted, but their design is the subject of ongoing and often heated criticism. Most of these debates focus on whether VAAs accurately measure the standpoints of political parties and the preferences of users and on whether they report valid results while avoiding political bias. It is generally assumed that (...) if their methodology is sound, then VAAs can be seen as strengthening the democratic process. But as we argue in this chapter, the setup of VAAs raises basic questions of normative democratic theory as well. Insofar as VAAs are supposed to improve the functioning of the democratic process, it must be clarified in what sense they aim to make a contribution, before it even makes sense to discuss their effectiveness at doing so. -/- VAAs are often intended to enhance the democratic process by one or all of the following: (I) informing voters about the policy standpoints of political parties (or individual candidates), (2) increasing voter turnout, and (3) ensuring that the composition of parliaments more accurately reflects the political attitudes of the electorate. In the next three sections, we discuss three central bones of contention in current democratic theory that are crucial to these ways in which VAAs typically take themselves to contribute to strengthening the democratic process: -/- 1. Questions about citizen competence: What forms of competence do citizens need to have, and to what extent, for a democracy to function properly? -/- 2. Questions about political participation: What forms and extent of participation are vital to democracy? -/- 3. Questions about democratic representation: How should the relation between the elected and the electorate be understood? -/- For each issue we aim to show, first, how the design and setup of mainstream VAAs are tacitly structured by a specific conception of the democratic aim at issue and, second, what some alternative positions on these questions are within contemporary political theory. In the final section, we will discuss some of the implications of this analysis for the responsibilities of VAA developers, and particularly for the procedural neutrality to which they are typically committed. Our conclusion will be that once these issues are identified, developers of VAAs should either argue in favour of their views on democratic competence, participation and representation, or they should rethink the design of VA As in ways that move beyond their current assumptions, or both. (shrink)

The internet has been discussed as a major agent of change for political communication and participation. One important dimension of possible effects is the influence of online communication on the participation habits of citizens. In this article, panel survey data from Germany that cover almost the first decade of this century are used in order to test causal hypotheses about this transformation process. The results highlight that new forms of political communication are mainly a complement to existing forms (...) with few substitution effects. Additionally, the data demonstrate the strong role habitualization plays, particularly in the field of political information seeking and traditional forms of political discussion and participation, while online communication is still evolving with yet less fixed patterns of action. (shrink)

Reviewing the literature on political participation and civic engagement, the article offers a critical examination of different conceptual frameworks. Drawing on previous definitions and operationalisations, a new typology for political participation and civic engagement is developed, highlighting the multidimensionality of both concepts. In particular, it makes a clear distinction between manifest “political participation” (including formal political behaviour as well as protest or extra-parliamentary political action) and less direct or “latent” forms of participation, conceptualized here as (...) “civic engagement” and “social involvement”. The article argues that the notion of “latent” forms of participation is crucial to understand new forms of political behaviour and the prospects for political participation in different countries. Due to these innovations it contributes to a much-needed theoretical development within the literature on political participation and citizen engagement. (shrink)

One of the most urgent debates of our time is about the exact role that new technologies can and should play in our societies and particularly in our public decision-making processes. This paper is a first attempt to introduce the idea of CrowdLaw, defined as online public participation leveraging new technologies to tap into diverse sources of information, judgments and expertise at each stage of the law and policymaking cycle to improve the quality as well as the legitimacy of the (...) resulting laws and policies. First, we explain why CrowdLaw differs from many previous forms of political participation. Second,we reproduce and explain the CrowdLaw Manifesto that the rising CrowdLaw community has elaborated to foster such approaches around the world. Lastly, we introduce some preliminary considerations on the notions of justice, legitimacy and quality of lawmaking and public decision-making, which are central to the idea of CrowdLaw. (shrink)

On a proceduralist account of democracy, collective decisions derive their jus- tification—at least in part—from the qualities of the process through which they have been made. To fulfill its justificatory function, this process should ensure that citizens have an equal right to political participation as a respectful response to their equal status as agents capable of self-legislation. How should democratic participation be understood if it is to offer such a procedural justification for democratic decisions? I suggest that, in order (...) to overcome the structural procedural disadvantages affecting the actual, effective opportunities that citizens who hold nonmainstream views have to exercise their right to political participation, the enhancement of such opportunities requires securing space for contestation. Against this background, I vindicate the (currently underestimated) role of conscientious objection as a form of political participation. (shrink)

Recent empirical work has offered strong support for ‘biased pluralism’ and ‘economic elite’ accounts of political power in the United States, according a central role to ‘business interest groups’ as a mechanism through which corporate influence is exerted. Here, we propose an additional channel of influence for corporate interests: the ‘policy-planning network,’ consisting of corporate-dominated foundations, think tanks, and elite policy-discussion groups. To evaluate this assertion, we consider one key policy-discussion group, the Council on Foreign Relations. We first (...) briefly review the origins of this organization and then review earlier findings on its influence. We then code CFR policy preferences on 295 foreign policy issues during the 1981–2002 period. In logistic regression analyses, we find that the preferences of more affluent citizens and the CFR were positive, statistically significant predictors of foreign policy outcomes while business interest group preferences were not. These findings are discussed with a consideration of the patterns of CFR ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ for the issues in our dataset. Although a full demonstration of a causal connection between corporate interests, the policy-planning network and policy outcomes requires further research, we conclude that this has been shown to be a plausible mechanism through which corporate interests are represented and that ‘biased pluralism’ researchers should include it in their future investigations. (shrink)

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

Alongside fostering academic excellence in their students, many colleges and universities aspire to cultivate responsible citizens. In this article, I explore some challenges accompanying this task and offer my Ethics in Political Action course as one approach to support students’ development as ethically engaged citizens. I begin by outlining two obstacles which make pursuing this civic mission difficult, speaking both as a faculty member and Christian ethicist who works at the intersection of religion and politics. I then describe my (...) Ethics in Political Action course, which examines various forms of political participation so that students can explore ethical issues embedded in U.S. political life as well as critically reflect on their own political activity. By weaving together civic education with the questions and insights of the Christian ethical tradition, this course equips students with the political knowledge and skills they need to engage effectively and ethically in the U.S. today. (shrink)

Current debates surrounding Aristotle's Politics involve attempts to explain the role of political participation in the pursuit of Aristotle's human telos, eudaimonia. Many argue that political participation is crucial to eudaimonia, equating the good man with the good citizen. Often this argument is based on Aristotle's labelling of humans as zoon politikon, or ‘political animal’, and the misleading translation of eudaimonia as ‘happiness’. We provide supported explanations of eudaimonia and zoon politikon which do not force us (...) to equate the good man and the good citizen. We illustrate Aristotle's analogy between the eudaimon man and the eudaimon polis and emphasize the role political participation sometimes plays in the pursuit of eudaimonia. On the basis of this evidence, we argue that Aristotle did not equate the good man with the good citizen necessarily, nor did he find political participation essential to eudaimonia. We then demonstrate that even without political participation, the polis plays a unique role in the pursuit of eudaimonia. (shrink)

This paper highlights the complex and fractured nature of EU governance, before examining various ways of introducing more light into the various dark recesses of current governance structures. The debate on transparency at the EU level is viewed through the prism of deliberative democracy and enabling more effective citizen participation in the governing processes. This model of democracy considers political participation by citizens in a broad sense which is not limited to participation in strictly political institutions (voting). (...) From this perspective the ability of citizens to effectively participate in social dialogue, in the broad sense of the term, is a definite attribute of democracy. The ability to participate in social dialogue depends to a large extent on accessibility of information and accessibility of the dialogue itself. The role of advanced information technology is obvious. It not only facilitates access to relevant information crucial for will formation processes but also facilitates social dialogue among citizens. Some form of organized and networked ‘active’ citizenry is moreover required‐ aware, committed and potent. This paper will thus further argue that ‘civil society’ (defined as in any event embracing the not for profit, public interest sector) at the EU level has a special role to play in this regard and will explore in outline some possible means of institutionalising this role in the highly specific EU context. (shrink)

Recent empirical literature suggests that some of the most prominent environmental policies that the Chinese government has pursued have involved at least some measure of participation from citizen...

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

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)

Political participation lies at the heart of normative democratic theory. To foster participatory interactions between citizens, some advocates and designers are resorting to gamification as the use of psycho-motivational involvement strategies from games in non-game contexts. The hope is that through gamification mechanisms, citizens will be drawn more easily towards participation platforms, apps, and digital services, as well as remain there longer, thereby effectively enhancing participation numbers and time. In this article, I will explore the potential problems of these (...) involvement strategies, namely the worry that they may be able to undermine citizen’s individual and political autonomy by manipulating them into participating. Depending on the severity of the psycho-motivational effect as well as the covertness of the mechanism, gamification may constitute inadmissible forms of paternalism. (shrink)

The participatory economics model (ParEcon) of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel represents an important contribution to the debate about feasible alternatives to capitalism. What distinguishes the model from other proposals, like market socialism or cybersocialism, is the central role given to the participation of citizens in economic planning. Citizens form workers’ and neighbourhood consumers’ councils which develop production and consumption proposals. These councils form federations responsible for the coordination of planning. An Iteration Facilitation Board plays a mere perfunctory (...) role in the facilitation of the planning process. This way, economic planning is done entirely by the citizens themselves rather than planners at a central planning agency. The ParEcon model is thereby supposed to be more democratic than historical central planning.In this paper, I consider whether three possible justifications for democracy can also be used to support this kind of participatory economy. These justifications can be referred to as (1) the protection of citizens’ interests, (2) the revealing of preferences and (3) liberty. In my paper, I show that these three justifications of democracy do not in fact support democratic participation in concrete economic plans in the way envisaged by Albert and Hahnel. Instead of individual plans, citizens should choose general planning procedures. This prevents citizens from being subjected to the arbitrary power of their co-workers or neighbours. Such an algorithmic planning process also prevents central planners from holding arbitrary power since, much like the Iteration Facilitation Board in the ParEcon model, they simply facilitate the prescribed planning process without retaining significant discretion. As I elaborate in the case of consumption planning, citizens can still participate in planning, however they do so through their individual choices rather than a democratic vote. Individual citizens should not require the approval of their neighbours for their personal consumption. (shrink)

This article examines the common-sense and methodical ways in which “the citizen” is produced and enrolled as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning. Using Membership Categorization Analysis, we explicate how the categorization procedures in the Foreword of a draft regional planning policy interactionally produce the identity of “the citizen” and “civic values and obligations” in relation to geographic place and institutional categories. Furthermore, we show how positioning practices establish a relationship between authors (government) and readers (...) (citizens) where both are ascribed with the same moral values and obligations toward the region. Hence, “the citizen” as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning is viewed as a practical accomplishment that is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the task of producing orderliness in “text-in-interaction.”. (shrink)

This paper argues that social and political problems currently addressed by local governments through new forms of digital participation can be considered wicked problems, because they cannot be tackled through factual information alone. Addressing such problems means connecting diverse citizens’ values to empirically based and logically based arguments. The paper addresses the question of which role citizens’ personal narratives and emotions play in digital participation and how narratives and emotions articulate personal and social values. This line of inquiry is (...) illustrated by two examples of digital participation on the local and regional level of democracy. The examples show that citizens’ narratives and emotional expressions articulate diverse values and value conflicts. Finally, the paper develops some preliminary ideas about how online argument mapping tools could be combined with value mapping. (shrink)

This book develops and empirically tests a social theory of political participation. It overturns prior understandings of why some people vote more often than others. The book shows that the standard demographic variables are not proxies for variation in the individual costs and benefits of participation, but for systematic variation in the patterns of social ties between potential voters. Potential voters who move in larger social circles, particularly those including politicians and other mobilizing actors, have more access to the (...) flurry of electoral activity prodding citizens to vote and increasing political discussion. Treating voting as a socially defined practice instead of as an individual choice over personal payoffs, a social theory of participation is derived from a mathematical model with behavioral foundations that is empirically calibrated and tested using multiple methods and data sources. (shrink)

This study focused on the frequency of social media use. Through investigating and verifying the correlations between social media use frequency, online political participation, and social capital, we derived two models of socialization that affect citizen well-being and, accordingly, proposed strategic suggestions for democratic society construction and network management. This study drew upon the 2019 Taiwan Communication Survey database and used structural equation modeling as a statistical method to explore the causal relationship between these four variables. The data (...) analysis yielded an overall good fit with the overall fit indicators: χ2 = 214.417, df = 84, p = 2.293, RMSEA = 0.028, GFI = 0.998, CFI = 0.986, SRMR = 0.066, and CN = 993.411. Future communication scholars who wish to explore issues related to new media users can draw on this model for subsequent research. (shrink)

In EN V.3, Aristotle offers an abstract definition of distributive justice that is agreed to by all, namely that it should be governed by geometrical proportionality: ‘equals should be treated equally, unequals should be treated in proportion to their inequalities’. At the same time, he acknowledges that we need a more substantive definition of the currency of equality, i.e. to tell us who are equal and who unequal at each distribution, since this would be the only way to avoid each (...) group of people to identify its own conception with the universal concept of justice. In Pol. III.12 (1282b18-23) Aristotle is arguing that it is the task of the political philosopher to define what kinds of equality or inequality are relevant in distribution of political power. In order to do so, Aristotle has to answer the question who is a citizen, that is, who should share in the constitution (Pol. III.1 1274b40-41). First he clears away the false conceptions and claims about citizenship and then he offers two criteria for political distribution—political capacity and contribution to the polis—which prima facie seem inconsistent. This paper explores the relation of the two criteria and the fundamental role of political capacity within the context of political distribution; I intend to argue that they are actually two stages in the process of political distribution, where political capacity is indexical prior to the contribution to the polis. It is also suggested that the Aristotelian model is egalitarian, in the sense that all politically capable individuals, regardless of the degree of political capacity they possess, are awarded citizenship. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion about citizenship has traditionally focused on the questions of what citizenship is, its relationship to civic virtue and political participation, and whether or not it can be meaningfully exercised at the supra-national level. In recent years, however, philosophers have turned their attention to the legal status attached to citizenship, and have questioned existing principles of citizenship allocation and withdrawal. With regard to the question of who is morally entitled to citizenship, philosophers have argued for principles of citizenship (...) allocation that go beyond birth and lineage, and have focused instead on the value of political attachment and located life plans. These principles have several advantages over existing legal principles, but they suffer from being under-specified, as well as being over and under-inclusive. With regard to loss of citizenship, philosophers have primarily denounced citizenship withdrawal as a form of punishment by appealing to principles of fair and equal treatment. However, theories purporting to show that denationalization is always wrong have trouble explaining why loss of citizenship is so problematic for persons who have committed the most horrendous crimes against their fellow citizens, and who, in so doing, have in effect self-excluded from the political community. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper investigates whether, in theoretical terms, corporations can be citizens. The argument is based on the observation that the debate on “corporate citizenship” (CC) has only paid limited attention to the actual notion of citizenship. Where it has been discussed, authors have either largely left the concept of CC unquestioned, or applied rather unidimensional and decontextualized notions of citizenship to the corporate sphere. The paper opens with a critical discussion of a major contribution to the CC literature, the work (...) of Logsdon and Wood (Wood and Logsdon 2001; Logsdon and Wood 2002). It continues with a consideration of the nature and role of metaphors for business and of the contestable nature of the political concept of citizenship. It evaluates corporations as citizens through a four-dimensional framework of democratic citizenship offered by Stokes (2002). The analysis suggests that corporations do not easily fit the “liberal minimalist” model of citizenship. It finds, however some possibilities for fit with the three more participatory models. The paper concludes by cautioning against basing corporate citizenship on legal and administrative status or identity, and mapping out specific criteria by which we might determine whether corporations could be considered as citizens by virtue of their participation in processes of governance. (shrink)

The fact that people engage in collective action is one of the more puzzling aspects of political behavior. If one assumes that people rationally weigh benefits and costs, then analysis concludes that most people will choose inaction. Since we observe many more members of the public participate than predicted, there is a contradiction, often thought of as a paradox. We can, at least partially, solve the puzzle by acknowledging that people value relational goods. These are goods which cannot be (...) acquired by a person in isolation, but which only exist by mutual agreement as part of a relationship with specific others; moreover, sharing the good provides part of the value. Friendship is a prime example of a relational good. Various pieces of empirical evidence support the view that relational goods account for much political participation. Moreover, understanding relational goods helps to clarify how and why group identity plays its substantial role in political behavior. Political participation is a form of collective action. The typical outcome is a public good. At the same time, each individual’s actions has a small to negligible probability of changing that outcome, even if collectively the actions are powerful. Why, then, would people take these actions? Many of the answers to this quandary, both those within a rational actor paradigm and those proceeding from sociology or psychology, end up assuming that people do so for reasons beyond making an actual difference in achieving the collective outcome. They may act from a sense of duty, or from the sheer enjoyment of the action, or out of habit. Empirical research has established some factors associated with higher participation. Notably, elites increase participation via a process labeled recruitment or mobilization, but exactly what this means for the individual citizen is under-specified. It is very difficult to argue plausibly that the public good of the outcome provides the reason for action. And the various private goods proposed as reasons end up generating ad hoc explanations. (shrink)

This study investigates the role of religion in shaping the norms of citizenship from a cultural perspective for an East Asian country that exhibits fundamental differences in social contexts from Western advanced democracies. Using data drawn from the Taiwan Social Change Survey, we find that the Eastern religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Folk Religions are important for explaining the formation of the concept of being a good citizen. This study further examines the relationships between citizenship norms and various conventional (...) and unconventional types of political participation. The empirical results herein suggest that duty-based citizenship and engaged citizenship have significant differences in their effects on political participation. (shrink)

This article examines and exposes substantial fragments of the crucial for the Russian autocracy discursive formation that hegemonically produces disempowered identities and relationships, inactive social practice and representations for ordinary Russian people. Employing a multi-sited critical discourse analysis of a school textbook, TV coverage of protests, and an annual press-conference with Vladimir Putin, this study looks at the contexts, representations and identities constructed via interrelated means of power, participation and change. The analysis shows how the state perpetually and diversely propagates (...) via the discourse of non-participation a necessity to leave the matter of the social change to those in power. As a result, non-participation represents both the politically intentional absence of participatory practices among citizens, and forms of ‘participation’ suggested and mediated by the state. Overall, the study illustrates the suppressive ideological work that the Russian state performs exploiting various communication channels, institutions, and social domains to sustain the hegemonic domination over its citizens. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I derive a set of systematic principles and a conception of the political subject from Spinoza’s metaphysics and political writings and then bring these tools to bear on contemporary questions in democratic theory. I argue that Spinoza’s conception of the political subject answers feminist critiques of the liberal subject, while retaining an understanding of the need for empowered citizens in strong democracies. Spinoza’s normative political theory shows how political communities become stronger through (...) the empowerment and participation of their citizens. I argue that Spinoza’s naturalistic method provides a promising path for both ethics and political theory. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I sketch the history of the development and critiques of the ‘liberal’ conception of human nature. I argue that rather than a substantial conception of human nature, the liberal subject is a skeptical compromise developed for a very specific purpose following the post-Reformation Wars of Religion in Europe in the 16th century. I then take on a variety of critiques of the notion of human nature in general and of the liberal conception of human nature in particular. I argue that political theory requires a positive conception of human beings. Spinoza’s conception of the human individual, created in order to replace what Spinoza thought were problematic aspects of the theories of individuals proposed by Hobbes and Descartes, does not suffer from the problems of the liberal subject and is a good candidate for a positive conception of human nature. In Chapter Two, I set out the main components of Spinoza’s naturalistic conception of the human individual. Spinoza understands human beings as primarily affective, or emotional creatures, whose feelings mediate their conceptions of the world. For Spinoza, each individual can be understood to have an index of power, which can increase or decrease depending on the degree to which individuals understand and are able to control the forces that affect them. In Chapter Three, I show that Spinoza’s theory of the political state is parallel to his theory of the individual. For Spinoza, just as individual humans have an index of power that can increase or decrease depending on how their emotions are organized, so too states have different degrees of power depending on how the emotions and power of the human beings within them are organized. The challenge for a Spinozan state is to understand how to create social and political institutions to organize the emotions of the ‘multitude’ of individuals in the state in the best way to yield the strongest state. For Spinoza, the strongest, or most absolute state, is a democracy, which is also the freest kind of state. I set out Spinoza’s theory of democracy and show how it builds upon his notion of individual and collective power. In Chapter Four, I take up the potential objections of Iris Marion Young to Spinoza’s conception of democratic agreement. I say these objections are ‘potential’ because, although Young critiques Rousseau’s conception of the general will, she does not directly object to Spinoza’s view of ‘agreement’ as a necessary element in democratic deliberation. However, many of Young’s writings touch on this worry, particularly in her critiques of Rousseau, civic republicanism and contemporary deliberative democracy theory. I argue that Spinoza’s notion of agreement employs a different conception of reason than that found in Rousseau, or in the tradition of deliberative democratic theory. Reason, for Spinoza, is a collective achievement rather than a precondition for deliberation. Spinoza argues that agreements reached through large-scale discussion in a democracy are likely to be more ‘reasonable’ than those reached by few or by one. Spinoza and Young share, I argue, a similar conception of the role of affect in deliberation, and both recognize the importance of affects and imagination in social and political life. In Chapter Five, I contrast a Spinozan theory of empowerment to Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. Nussbaum’s approach and that of Spinoza are consonant in many of their major aspects; however, I argue that in practice, Spinoza’s theory is better able to account for the contextual nature of empowerment and of the necessity to reform harmful social, moral and cultural norms through affective mechanisms. In the conclusion, I consider the larger implications for a Spinozan naturalist approach to political philosophy, and for the role that theories of human nature and metaphysics can play in political theory. I argue that by avoiding metaphysics and by avoiding conceptions of human nature, those interested in projects of emancipation can have no criteria for determining whether or not individuals have become emancipated or whether their power has in fact increased. The model I derive from Spinoza’s conception of individual power and his view of the power of political states as a function of the power of the coordination of individuals provides a promising alternative to liberal theories of the subject and to extant feminist theories of the human individual, which ignore the psychological and metaphysical aspects of human individual and collective power. (shrink)

Representational democracy has been the main form of government in the West since the English, American, and French revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries. However, there are indications that its ability to frame the relationship between citizen and state has begun to weaken. This weakening can be traced to many factors. One of these is the emergence of new collective actors, such as social movements, and the (re)recognition of the arena of "civil society" just as the articulating power (...) of political parties began to erode. Although these emerged initially under the umbrella of the nation state, toward the end of the 20th century a qualitatively new dynamic of networked social activism illustrated that the nation-state was no longer the only location for political action and the exercise of citizenship. These trends point to a new participatory dynamic, which could not yet be said to offer a serious challenge to representative forms of politics, but that arguably marks the beginning of the decline of that form. However, we are far from understanding how a participatory democracy might replace representational government. This article argues that we should begin now to discuss the uncomfortable gaps in our understanding of what "qualifies" participation, in order to develop a new theory of new practice and strengthen the content and potential of this new political imaginary. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Radical Democracy:John Dewey and Angela Y. Davis on Pluralism and PrisonsAmanda Dubrulein 2013, the multiculturalism act marked its 25th anniversary; at the same time, the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) was celebrating its 40th anniversary (Elizabeth qtd. in Eng 2–3) The OCI was created in response to the prison riot in Kingston Penitentiary that occurred in 1971. Yet, 40 years after, prisons in Canada still face "overcrowding, the (...) shortage of professional staff, programming cuts, the confinement in the institution of a number of people who did not require maximum security confinement, too much time spent in cells, a lack of adequate channels to deal with complaints" (Elizabeth qtd. in Eng 3). The "Annual Report on the Operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act 2019–20" (subtitled "Building a Better Canada Through Diversity") lists four principal objectives of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act: "the retaining and fostering of identity …, overcoming barriers to participation …, promoting exchanges, and language acquisition" (Canadian Heritage 10; emphasis added). One can then see that there is a marked disconnect between the ideals of plurality and participation that Canada supposedly rests on and the practices of the systems it maintains.Drawing on John Dewey's conception of democracy and Angela Davis's critique of the prison industrial complex, I aim to show that a state cannot truly be pluralistic or participatory while continuing to engage in carceral practices. To do so, I will first explicate Dewey's conception of democracy,1 then I will lay out the contemporary problems surrounding incarceration in Canada, and, finally, I will end with a discussion of abolition as a constructive practice.Discussions of democracy often center on the mechanisms of voting. We have formed the habit of believing that democracies will carry on as long as citizens perform rote political duties (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 225). Yet, as Dewey saw and as we continue to see, a healthy democracy cannot [End Page 40] be maintained through rote action alone. Instead, it requires "conscious and resolute effort" because democracy is not a mere political system ("Creative Democracy" 224). Instead, as Dewey phrases it, it is a "way of life" and therefore has moral implications. A democracy cannot flourish where there is no community (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 225). This is accomplished through dialogue and debate with others and the recognition of the transactional nature of associated living. The purpose of a state is to supply the "right conditions" so that every person can lead their life and flourish in their own capacity (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 227).The public is composed of individuals who act and associate with each other; every individual is "subject to all kinds of social influences which determine what they can think of, plan and choose" (Dewey, The Public 115). Yet when people come together and discuss their wants and needs, new ideas are tested, and new beliefs are formed. This creates an unsettling of current modes and processes of political action (Dewey, The Public 103).2 Thus, Dewey argues that one of the main tasks required for maintaining (and reclaiming) democracy is the constant "discovering [of] means by which a scattered, mobile, and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests" (The Public 174). For this to occur, the creation and recognition of community is central. For Dewey, community is not merely "physical and organic" (though it often is this), it is also "moral … emotional, [and] intellectual" (The Public 177–78). For the individual, who becomes a part of this association, democracy involves the responsibility of sharing with others the "capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to the need in the values which the group sustains" (Dewey, The Public 175). For the group, democracy "demands liberation of the potentialities of [its] members" to flourish "in harmony with the interests and goods which are common" (Dewey, The Public 175). The flourishing of the group can only come about when we, as individuals, recognize the worth and potential of those around us and our capacity, when combined to direct the community, as a community.Thus, critique plays an important role in democracies: we... (shrink)

Besides being the title of an EP by The (International) Noise Conspiracy, “Bigger cages, longer chains!” is an anarchist rallying cry. It’s meant to ridicule those political activists who compromise their ideals, make demands and then settle for partial concessions or, to put it bluntly, bargain with the Man. In the T.V. series Mr. Robot, Christian Slater plays the anarchist leader of a hacktivist group known as fsociety. Mr. Robot won’t negotiate with the FBI and E(vil) Corp for bigger (...) cages and longer chains. He tells Elliot Anderson, the young cybersecurity expert and hacker, “We live in a kingdom of bullshit!” Victory over the tyranny of corporations and states requires radical means to achieve radical ends. Mr. Robot wants freedom without limits, total liberation from corporate and statist control, and the opportunity to live in a world without bullshit. Mr. Robot’s objective is to free citizens of first-world nations from the cages of consumer debt and citizens of third-world nations from the shackles of extreme poverty. Meeting half-way will not do. So what are the inspirations for Mr. Robot’s hacktivist philosophy? The most proximate sources are David Graeber’s anarchism, which also influenced the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the hacktivist group Anonymous’s moralfaggery, that is, the policy of some of its members to use collective computer hacking to serve the greater good. Candidates for more remote sources are Marxism and pragmatism; the former, a blueprint for freeing the working class from their bourgeois oppressors; the latter, a philosophy of action, intelligent inquiry and democratic reform. Some might object that pragmatism is too conventional to be compatible with the radical ideas that motivate Mr. Robot’s worldview. Hacktivism demands action, not mere thinking! But any organized social-political movement requires a well-thought-out plan as well as a vision of what its participants hope to achieve. Since pragmatism is a philosophy of action and reform, it’s possible that Mr. Robot is a closet pragmatist! (shrink)

This paper examines what can be learnt from analysing attempts to give lay people more involvement in the administration of state schools. Although devolving more responsibility to schools and lay governors has been an important feature of school reform in several countries, it is not immediately apparent if this shift is the product of globally similar social and political forces or nationally specific cultural, ideological and economic factors. In considering this issue, the paper describes recent changes in school governance (...) in England, New Zealand, USA, Scotland and Catalunya, Spain. It is argued that some of these changes can best be characterised as attempts to increase the democratic participation of citizens in the running of schools. Other changes, however, seem rather to represent on attempt to bring the culture of business to schools and reduce the power of professional educators over education. (shrink)

This article presents two interlocking arguments for epistemic political egalitarianism. I argue, first, that coping with multidimensional social complexity requires the integration of expertise. This is the task of political parties as collective epistemic agents who transform abstract value judgments into sufficiently coherent and specific conceptions of justice for their society. Because parties thus severely lower the relevant threshold of comparison of political competence, citizens have reason to regard each other as epistemic equals. Drawing on the virulent (...) “peer disagreement debate,” I then analyze the epistemic significance of political disagreement. I contend that citizens ought to pursue epistemic conciliation, an idea I contrast to the ideals of compromise and of consensus. Subsequently, I introduce insights from public choice theory and empirical findings which show that and why multi-party electoral competition coupled with equal rights to participation tends to produce conciliatory outcomes. We thus have reason to endorse political egalitarianism on epistemic grounds. (shrink)