In group discussions of any kind there tends to be an up and down in the level of deliberation. To capture this dynamic we coined the concept of Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM). In deeply divided societies deliberation is particularly important in order to arrive at peace and stability, but deliberation is also very difficult to be attained. Therefore, we wanted to learn about the conditions that in group discussions across the deep divisions of such societies help deliberation. We organized such (...) group discussions between ex-guerrillas and ex-paramilitaries in Colombia, Serbs and Bosnjaks in Srebrenica, and poor residents and local police officers in the favelas (slums) of Brazil. We could identify factors that help to transform discussions from low to high deliberation and risk transformations in the opposite direction. We could also identify factors that help to keep a discussion at a high level of deliberation, and, in a next step, we could determine to what extent long sequences of deliberation had a positive impact on the outcomes of the discussions. Finally, we show how our research results can have a long term effect if it is used in schools of such deeply divided societies. (shrink)

Abstract If voters do not understand the programs of rival candidates or their likely consequences, they cannot rationally exercise control over government. An ignorant electorate cannot achieve true democratic control over public policy. The immense size and scope of modern government makes it virtually impossible for voters to acquire sufficient knowledge to exercise such control. The problem is exacerbated by voters? strong incentive to be ?rationally ignorant? of politics. This danger to democracy cannot readily be circumvented through ?shortcut? methods of (...) economizing on voter knowledge costs. A truly democratic government must, therefore, be strictly limited in scope. (shrink)

This article considers the qualitative concept of place – what it means, how it feels, how it is expressed, and how it is managed across time and space as the appropriate context within which to study and promote local agriculture and the locus of relationships, both cultural and political, that prefigure a local civic culture. It argues that civic as a description of local food and farming is conceptually and practically shallow in the absence of our ability to understand and (...) to practice “being” in place. Using three vignettes from field research in northern Michigan, the article illustrates this interdependence by focusing on the ways in which place provides opportunities for learning, for play, for engagement, for identity formation, and for explicit political and policy initiatives – as prerequisites for civic awareness and action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers the first comprehensive reconstruction of Hannah Arendt's contribution to the venerable chapter of modern intellectual history known as ‘the Idea of the university.’ Arendt first jotted down her thoughts on this topic in a 1946 letter to Karl Jaspers, in response to the manuscript of his then forthcoming book Die Idee der Universität. She later revisited the topic in three different moments. We trace these three sequels back to three contemporary political crises to which she bore (...) witness: (i) the problem of Arab-Jewish relations following the founding of Israel, (ii) the suppression of freedom of speech during the McCarthy era, and (iii) the American student protest movement of the 1960s. At the heart of Arendt's idea of the university is a tension that she never managed to resolve: namely, that between the image of the university as a nonconformist community ethically committed to the transformation of the social world, on the one hand, and the image of the university as a secluded sanctuary of contemplative freedom dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of truth, on the other. Whereas the first puts her at odds with Jaspers and is predominant in the early reflections, the second pulls her closer to him and becomes prominent in the later ones. More broadly, the article contends that the history of Arendt's reflections on the university bears on our understanding of the evolution of her political thought. (shrink)

In the educational sphere, the concept of democracy is used in many and varied ways, though the hegemonic school culture often starts from a concept of democracy that is taken for granted, and it is understood that the entire educational community shares a similar concept. As a result of the research project “Democracy, participation and inclusive education in schools” we realized that the above-mentioned concept is used without being accurately defined in the school setting. This observation is what has prompted (...) us to write this article, basically structured in two parts. In the first part, based on the theoretical debate occurring in the field of social sciences, we delimit the concept of democracy and structure it in four basic dimensions: governance, inhabitance, otherness and ethos. In the second part, we specify and examine in depth these four dimensions in the school setting in order to construct a broad and transversal, yet specific, definition, with which to be able to develop ambitious democratic projects and, in turn, contribute to scientific debate. (shrink)

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

Introducing Deliberative Democracy: A Goal, a Tool, or Just a Context?1 The concept of deliberative democracy is presented within a wide spectrum of variety of its operationalizations. Since the applicability of the principle of deliberation to the functioning of human society is of the author's primary interest, dilemmas of deliberative democracy related to different problems associated with deliberation in practice are described in some detail. The key questions raised aiming at elucidating the "ontology" of deliberativeness are as follows: is it (...) only a tool for solving the problems of society and politics? Is it a context within which other processes decide on the running of society? Or does it embody a goal of democracy? (shrink)

Advocates of ?deliberative democracy? want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels of (...) knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present. (shrink)

In the light of a renewed interest today in forms of direct political participation, this paper explores the contributions of Sartre and Arendt to defending direct political action as an intrinsically valuable form of human freedom. Both thinkers note, however, that such forms of action and the 'spaces of freedom' in which they become possible are always fleeting and transitory. The paper argues that Sartre's account of the ways in which human action is always mediated and alienated by materiality is (...) important in accounting for this phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the nature and contents of 'civil ethics' and the source of the binding force of its obligations. This ethics should provide the criteria for evaluating the moral validity of social, legal and morally valid law. The article starts with observing that in morally pluralist Western societies civil ethics already exists, and has gradually started to play the role of guiding the law. It is argued that civil ethics should not be conceived as 'civic morals' which (...) is in fact rather 'state ethics', nor as 'public ethics' which is said to reach its perfection when it becomes law, nor as ethics applicable primarily to the basic structure of a society (political liberalism), but instead as a citizens' ethics. Subsequently the paper attempts to show what the contents of this ethics are, and which ethical theory would be able to ground its obligations. (shrink)

: My project aims to develop a relational, pluralistic political theory that moves us beyond liberal democracy, and to consider how such a theory translates into our public school settings. In this essay I argue that Dewey offers us possibilities for moving beyond one key assumption of classical liberalism, individualism, with his theory of social transaction. I focus my discussion for this paper on Dewey's renascent liberal democracy. I move from a discussion of Dewey's liberal democratic theory to what a (...) relational, pluralistic democratic theory might look like, with Dewey's help. (shrink)

Participation in deliberation in stable democracies produces effects which are beneficial for democracy, while the results of deliberative innovations in non-democracies are more ambiguous. This article contributes to the debate about the effects of participatory democratic innovations on attitudes, related to democratic commitments, political capacities and political participation, in the increasingly ubiquitous hybrid regimes. We present the evidence collected from the participants before and after deliberative mini publics (DMPs), held in Serbia in 2020. Serbia is an exemplary case of a (...) recent wave of autocratization, which had led to it becoming a hybrid regime, and it had no track record of deliberative innovations. When conducting the mini publics, we introduced an innovation in the standard design, by including active citizens - representatives of local initiatives or social movements particularly interested in the issue of DMPs. We could not find evidence that the democratic innovation affected attitudes of participants regarding democratic commitments, political capacities and political participation. However, we did find that participants of the DMPs became less satisfied with the functioning of the democracy on the local level. We argue that the anti-democratic wider context of hybrid regimes can produce adverse effects when introducing participatory democratic innovations, at least when it comes to this specific dimension of political participation. We conclude with the suggestions for further research, and a call for consideration of the wider political context when designing democratic interventions in hybrid regimes. (shrink)

This study addresses the deliberative democracy from a critical perspective, highlighting the benefits of the deliberative turn. Among the deliberative democracy’s benefits the study includes: community-generating power, improving the accuracy of decisions, democratic legitimation of political power, democratic accountability, shaping policy by market-testing, informing public policy process. But beyond deliberative democracy advantages which are recognized by most scholars, it still remains the issue of the possibility of real-world deliberative democracy. The study presents a number of possibility conditions for deliberative democracy (...) and several models of deliberation that can be extended. We particularly discuss the deliberative democracy’s scale problem. The most important research questions in the present study are: How do we go from micro to macro-deliberation? Who is entitled to a say? What counts as good discourse and deliberation? How citizen deliberation can have consequences in democratic practice? The main idea is that deliberative democracy in practice implies a rethinking of politics and its feasibility is part of its desirability. (shrink)

In this thesis, I use a close reading of the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to examine a question of listening posed by Jean-Luc Nancy, “Is listening something of which philosophy is capable” (Nancy 2007:1)? Drawing on the work of Nancy, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak, I consider a claim that philosophy has failed to address the topic of listening because a logocentric tradition claims speech as primary. In response to Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism, Nancy complicates the problem of listening (...) by distinguishing between l’écoute and l’entente. L’écoute is an attending to and answering the demand of the other and l’entente is an understanding directed inward toward a subject. Nancy could deconstruct an undervalued position of l’écoute, making listening essential to speech. I argue, Nancy rather asks what kind of listening philosophy is capable of. To examine this question, I focus on the peculiarly dialogical figure derived from Chaplin that communicates meaning without using speech. This discussion illustrates how Chaplin, in the role of a silent figure, listens to himself (il s’écoute) as other. Chaplin’s listening is Nancean resonance, a movement in which a subject refers back to itself as another subject, in constant motion of spatial and temporal non-presence. For Nancy, listening is a self’s relationship to itself, but without immediate self-presence. Moving in resonance, Chaplin makes the subject as other as he refers back to himself as other. I argue that Chaplin, through silent dialogue with himself by way of the other, makes his listening listened to. Chaplin refused to make his character speak because he believed speech would change the way in which his work would be listened to. In this way, Chaplin makes people laugh by making himself understood (se fait entendre) as he makes himself listened to (se fait écouter). In answer to Nancy’s question, I conclude philosophy is capable of meeting the demand of listening as both l’entente and l’écoute when it listens as Chaplin listens. (shrink)

If deliberative democracy is to be more than a critique of current practice and achieve the normative goals ascribed to it, its norms must be approximated in practice and combine its two elements, popular deliberation with democratic decision-making. In combining these, we come across a Weberian dilemma between legitimacy and effectiveness. One of the most popular methods for institutionalizing deliberative democracy, which has been suggested, is citizen associations in civil society. However, there has been a lack of precise and detailed (...) discussion about how such a system could link macro deliberations in public spheres with micro and formal decision-making arenas. This paper aims to amend this and offers a dualist model, which ensures that deliberation and decision-making are linked, and an effective balance between the Weberian dilemma is achieved, through the same secondary associations fulfilling both roles. The first part of this strategy focuses on the informal public sphere and its networks and their potential to foster deliberative communication between secondary associations and between these associations and the state that helps transform preferences and set the agenda for decision-making. The second part is mediating forums, organized by quangos, with devolved powers, where representatives from secondary associations assemble to make decisions based upon the norms of deliberative democracy. If deliberative democracy can be approximated in practice then it becomes a more persuasive theory as it means the normative goals attributed to it could actually be achieved, which is why the dualist method is significant. (shrink)

No reverberatory effect of the great war has caused American public opinion more solicitude than the failure of the “melting-pot.” The tendency... has been for the national clusters of immigrants, as they became more and more firmly established and more and more prosperous to cultivate more and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions of their homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more and more intensely real. Just as these clusters became (...) more and more objectively American, did they become more and more German or Scandinavian or Bohemian or Polish.... [This] is not, however, to admit the failure of Americanization. It is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to urge us to an investigation of what Americanism may rightly mean. It is to ask ourselves whether our ideal has been broad or narrow—whether perhaps the time has not come to assert a higher ideal than the “melting pot.”... We act as if we wanted Americanization to take place only on our own terms, and not by the consent of the governed. All our elaborate machinery of settlement and school and union, of social and political naturalization, however, will move with friction just in so far as it neglects to take into account this strong and virile insistence that American shall be what the immigrant will have a hand in making it, and not what a ruling class, descendent of those British stocks which were the first permanent immigrants, decide that America shall be made. Randolph Bourne (1916/1977, 248ff). (shrink)

Después de más de 200 años de vida del constitucionalismo, en América Latina, una mayoría de los países de la región sigue viéndose afectada por sistemas políticamente inestables y económicamente muy desiguales; en donde las violaciones de derechos humanos son un hecho habitual; las ramas políticas del gobierno tienden a funcionar con independencia de cualquier reclamo ciudadano, mientras se encargan de moldear normas a medida de intereses privados; los tribunales aparecen como órganos de difícil acceso público, que tienden a decidir (...) en favor de los poderosos, criminalizando a quienes protestan; y en donde el debate público destaca por las pobreza de su contenido. En este trabajo, se exploran algunas de las causas de dicha situación, relacionadas con el propio diseño del sistema constitucional dominante en la región. (shrink)

Abstract: The emergence of cross-border communities and transnational associations requires new ways of thinking about the norms involved in democracy in a globalized world. Given the significance of human rights fulfillment, including social and economic rights, I argue here for giving weight to the claims of political communities while also recognizing the need for input by distant others into the decisions of global governance institutions that affect them. I develop two criteria for addressing the scope of democratization in transnational contexts— (...) common activities and impact on basic human rights —and argue for their compatibility. I then consider some practical implications for institutional transformation and design, including new forms of transnational representation. (shrink)

In 1971, Chicano activist Armando Réndon began to chart new directions for Chicana/o politics that move away from a narrow emphasis on cultural and ethnic nationalism. He argues that urban Chicana/o neighborhoods ought develop community-based organizations to provide support services for residents and to advocate local concerns to elected officials. In the first part of this essay, I reconstruct Réndon's concept of a 'barrio union' as an example of participatory democracy. I situate his concept of neighborhood democracy within Mexican American (...) and Progressive movement history, and then highlight contemporary experiments with this model that are particularly successful in transforming traditionally marginalized individuals into active democratic participants. I then suggest that the barrio union is a repository of cultural, ethical, and political ideals that might be used by progressive Chicana/o activists to challenge the meaning of dominant institutions and political traditions within the United States, particularly the ways in which we conceive of race and American citizenship. (shrink)

This article argues that new (and sometimes invisible) forms of civic protest are finding a voice in the age of the Internet. It poses the questions whether these voices of protest are (a) part of a long, militant and sometimes violent tradition of street politics based on class struggle or (b) new, peaceful and creative political (and anti-political) platforms (a metaphysical revolt) offering critical and innovative insights into the possibilities of democratic renewal - as part of a process of deepening (...) democracy into more ethical and participatory forms.En este artículo se argumenta que las nuevas (y a veces invisibles) formas de protesta cívica están encontrando voz en la era de internet. Se plantea la cuestión de si estas voces de protesta son (a) parte de una larga, militante y, en ocasiones, violenta tradición de política de la calle basada en la lucha de clases o bien (b) nuevas, pacíficas y creativas plataformas (una revuelta metafísica) políticas (y antipolítica), que ofrece una perspectiva innovadora y crítica respecto a las posibilidades de renovación democrática, como parte de un proceso de profundización de la democracia en formas más éticas y participativas. (shrink)

Die Frage nach der Gerechtigkeit im Gesundheitswesen wird aus der Perspektive einer allgemeinen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit betrachtet. Diese Theorie ist ein Befähigungsansatz, der zwischen 1) der Grundversorgung aller Bürger mit Grundbefähigungen, 2) einem gerechten Anteil an den Früchten gesellschaftlicher Kooperation und 3) individuell erstrebten Gütern und Leistungen differenziert. Die Anwendung dieser Theorie reagiert auf charakteristische Probleme der Allokation im Gesundheitssektor: den prinzipiell ungedeckten Bedarf, die mangelnde Zurechenbarkeit des Bedarfes und die asymmetrische Informationsstruktur zwischen Patienten und Leistungserbringern.

This paper explores how the designed world could be better supportive of better communal ways of relating. In pursuit of this end, I put the philosophy of technology dealing with the role that technologies play in shaping, directing, mediating, and legislating human action in better communication with a diverse literature concerning community. I argue that community ought to viewed as composed of three interrelated dimensions: experience, structure, and practice. Specifically, it is a psychological sense evoked via a particular arrangement of (...) ties and constellation of social practices guided, at its best, by phronetic reasoning. It is a mode of social being that I set in opposition to networked individualism. I examine the existent and potential communitarian ergonomics of the design of contemporary urban spaces and network devices. However, I conclude that artifacts remain only one part of the picture. A communally ergonomic mode of being requires not only compatible artifacts and built spaces but also an institutional context supportive of community as an economic and political entity. (shrink)

This paper examines the political philosophy of Liberalism with particular focus on the principles of liberal neutrality and value pluralism. These principles, which are advocated by the most prominent contemporary liberal theorists mark a significant departure from classical liberalism and its monistic approach to seeking truth and the good. I argue that the shift to neutrality and pluralism have done a disservice to liberalism and that the cultivation of discrimination skills is needed to deal with the complex tasks of making (...) decisions intelligently and effectively. (shrink)

With the creation of the European Higher Education Area, universities are undergoing a significant transformation that is leading towards a new teaching and learning paradigm. The competencies approach has a key role in this process. But we believe that the competence approach has a number of limitations and weaknesses that can be overcome and supplanted by the capabilities approach. In this article our objective is twofold: first, make a critical analysis of the concept of competence as it is being used (...) in higher education, identifying its limitations and weaknesses; and second, present the potential of the capabilities approach for higher education and review its complementarity to the competence approach.We begin with a brief characterisation of the capabilities approach and its implications for education. Then we examine some implications of the competencies approach in higher education and the reasons that led us to choose the DeSeCo proposal for comparison with the capability approach. We then go on to compare the two approaches, addressing 1) the aims of education and 2) the concept of competence and capability. Finally, we address the implications of incorporating the capabilities approach in learning and teaching in higher education. (shrink)

In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of (...) political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position. (shrink)

Reviso tres maneras diferentes como los ideales de la democracia deliberativa han cambiado a la luz de las preocupaciones prácticas sobre su viabilidad, es decir, haciendo cada vez más importante el problema de cómo este ideal puede acercarse a sociedades caracterizadas por profundos desacuerdos, problemas sociales de enorme complejidad e instrumentos inoperantes en sus instituciones existentes. En primer lugar, las teorías de la democracia deliberativa enfatizan el proceso mismo de la deliberación, y no sus condiciones y procedimientos ideales y contrafácticos. (...) En segundo lugar, los demócratas deliberativos se interesan cada vez más en los problemas de la institucionalización, en hacer del voto, la regla de mayorías, la representación, los tribunales y el derecho constitucional, instituciones más deliberativas, en pro de una mayor democracia directa. En tercer lugar, los deliberativistas se ocupan de examinar y comparar los diferentes escenarios y procedimientos de la deliberación, señalando problemas empíricos y obstáculos que no siempre pueden anticiparse al recurrir únicamente a argumentos conceptuales. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA close reading of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy underscores Schumpeter's critique of elite political capacities. Given the neglect of this critique in contemporary scholarship, it might warrant a revision of our understanding of “Schumpeterianism.” To notice the critique of elites, we need to read Part IV in the context of the work as a whole, and with greater sensitivity to the sarcasm, irony, and humor that permeate the book. Such a reading produces a fundamentally altered understanding of Schumpeter's contribution to (...) democratic theory. (shrink)

El regreso del sorteo a la política desde hace cuarenta años debe mucho a su apropiación por parte de las teorías de la democracia deliberativa, que han hecho de los dispositivos sorteados los espacios centrales de la deliberación democrática. Esta apropiación, sin embargo, no era en absoluto evidente. Tiene que ver con la trayectoria científica de algunos de sus promotores y con evoluciones paralelas en el seno del campo político. A pesar del aire fresco que ha insuflado al gobierno representativo, (...) la promoción científica del sorteo no se ha traducido necesariamente en una democratización de la democracia. Estos experimentos contribuyen a demostrar las capacidades deliberativas de los ciudadanos ordinarios, pero tan solo en casos excepcionales han contribuido a incrementar su poder en la toma de decisiones. La focalización de las investigaciones sobre el análisis de las dinámicas deliberativas en el interior de dispositivos sorteados ha sido, por tanto, muy criticado por estudiosos que reivindican un retorno a la inspiración inicial habermasiana de una deliberación más amplia en el espacio público, no restringida al interior de los mini-públicos. Este giro sistémico ha marginado el sorteo en la teoría deliberativa más reciente. Después de reconstruir este recorrido intelectual, me gustaría esbozar algunos elementos para reflexionar sobre la manera en que el sorteo podría contribuir a reanimar la llama crítica de la teoría deliberativa, mediante su uso como herramienta de oposición por parte de los movimientos sociales. (shrink)

In the light of a renewed interest today in forms of direct political participation, this paper explores the contributions of Sartre and Arendt to defending direct political action as an intrinsically valuable form of human freedom. Both thinkers note, however, that such forms of action and the ‘spaces of freedom’ in which they become possible are always fleeting and transitory. The paper argues that Sartre's account of the ways in which human action is always mediated and alienated by materiality is (...) important in accounting for this phenomenon. (shrink)

Ever since Immanuel Kant suggested that ‘the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils’ so long as citizens’ selfish tendencies worked to counterbalance one another, critics have complained that liberalism is indifferent to individual character and, worse still, is predicated on the notion that citizens ought to be concerned primarily with their private interests and little, if at all, with the public weal. Lately, this line of criticism has been pressed with renewed (...) force by theorists who argue that liberal states can flourish only if citizens develop the distinctive virtues that, ‘taken together … constitute a disposition to foster, support, and participate in liberal political institutions,’ but that liberal states committed to neutrality with respect to the good cannot realistically expect their citizens to develop these virtues. (shrink)

In this paper I want to show that consumer concerns can be implemented in food chains by organizing ethical discussions of conflicting values that include them as participators. First, it is argued that there are several types of consumer concerns about food and agriculture that are multi-interpretable and often contradict each other or are at least difficult to reconcile without considerable loss. Second, these consumer concerns are inherently dynamic because they respond to difficult and complex societal and technological situations and (...) developments. For example, because of the rising concern with global warming, carbon dioxide absorption of crops is now attracting public attention, which means that new requirements are being proposed for the environmentally friendly production of crops. Third, there are different types of consumers, and their choices between conflicting values differ accordingly. Consumers use different weighing models and various types of information in making their food choices. Changing food chains more in accordance with consumer concerns should at least take into account the multi-interpretable, dynamic, and pluralist features of consumer concerns, for example, in traceability schemes. In discussing usual approaches such as codes, stakeholder analysis, and assurance schemes, I conclude that these traditional approaches can be helpful. However, in cases of dynamic, pluralistic, and uncertain developments, maintaining some pre-existing evaluating scheme or some clear cut normative hierarchy, such as codes or assurance schemes, can be disastrous in undermining new ethical desirable initiatives. Instead of considering ethical standards and targets as fixed, which is done with codes and schemes, it is more fruitful to emphasize the structure of the processes in which ethical weighing of relevant consumer concerns get shaped. The concept of “Ethical Room for Maneuver” (ERM) is constructed to specify the ethical desirable conditions under which identification and weighing of paramount values and their dilemmas can be processed. The main aims of the ERM are making room in all the links of the food chain for regulating and implementing the relevant consumer concerns by (1) balancing and negotiating, (2) supporting information systems that are relevant and communicative for various consumer groups and (3) organizing consumer involvement in the links of the food chain. The social and political context of agriculture and food production, particularly in Europe, gives ample opportunity for implementing several types of Ethical Rooms for Maneuver. Finally, I discuss several types of Ethical Rooms for Manoeuvre in the food chains that can be communicated by means of specific traceability schemes to less involved stakeholders with the potential consequence that the stakeholders will be motivated to be more involved. (shrink)

En este artículo analizo el concepto de la democracia como un sistema de justicia procedimental en contraste con la democracia como mecanismo de toma de decisión y ejercicio del poder político de Schumpeter. La idea de la democracia como un sistema de justicia procedimental que expongo está vinculada al pensamiento de John Rawls. Al final del artículo muestro cómo esta conceptualización, en el contexto de las sociedades plurales, garantiza en mejor medida las libertades y la igualdad generando condiciones de estabilidad (...) institucional. (shrink)

Classic pragmatism laid the foundations for a practice-based notion of citizenship that views democracy as a fragile accomplishment in need of constant self-actualisation. This article revisits this heritage to explore different notions of pluralism and democratic participation developed over the last century. Drawing on James and Dewey, the article interrogates how different understandings of democracy deal with pluralism and the meaning of democratic life. The focus is on three prominent models in contemporary democratic theory and practice, namely: representative, participatory and (...) deliberative. The purpose is to review different ways of thinking and enacting citizen participation and explore key distinctions, overlaps and productive tensions. The conclusion argues that a vibrant democratic ecology requires combining the practices that underpin these models in order to develop deeper, and more sustainable, forms of citizenship and democratic life. (shrink)

The resuscitation of deliberative democracy in the Information Age requires the construction of transparent public spaces ‐ public arenas where power relationships between speakers are discernible and debate ensues according to the rules of civility and reason (conversational transparency). The metaphor of transparency, in the sense of legal accountability, also connects the role of communications regulation to the development of democratic political culture (legal transparency). Finally, transparency suggests the power of technology to obscure and hinder as well as help the (...) progress of deliberative democracy (technological transparency). (shrink)

Ever since Immanuel Kant suggested that ‘the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils’ so long as citizens’ selfish tendencies worked to counterbalance one another, critics have complained that liberalism is indifferent to individual character and, worse still, is predicated on the notion that citizens ought to be concerned primarily with their private interests and little, if at all, with the public weal. Lately, this line of criticism has been pressed with renewed (...) force by theorists who argue that liberal states can flourish only if citizens develop the distinctive virtues that, ‘taken together … constitute a disposition to foster, support, and participate in liberal political institutions,’ but that liberal states committed to neutrality with respect to the good cannot realistically expect their citizens to develop these virtues. (shrink)