The Office of Communications, established by an Act of Parliament in 2003, is a new sector wide regulator in the UK, required to further the interests of what has been termed the ‘citizen-consumer’. Using a critical discursive approach, this article charts the unfolding debate among stakeholders in the new regulatory environment as they attempt to define the interests of citizens, consumers and the citizen-consumer. Ofcom has preferred to align the terms ‘citizen’ and ‘consumer’ so that the interests of both may (...) be met, as far as possible, through an economic agenda of market regulation. Among civil society groups, there is growing concern that the citizen interest is becoming marginalized as the consumer discourse becomes more widespread. We conclude by advocating the development of a positive definition of the citizen interests, distinct from the consumer interests, for the media and communications environment. (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy (in particular towards popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy) that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core (populist ideology) turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism (properly specified) can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal (purely electoral) as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious (liberal) conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding the dangers and risks of authoritarian populism in consolidated constitutional democracies requires analysis of the forms of pluralism and status anxieties that emerge in civil and economic society, in a context of profound political, socioeconomic, and cultural change. This paper has two basic theses. The first is that when societies become deeply divided, and segmental pluralism maps onto affective party political polarization, generalized social solidarity is imperiled, as is commitment to democratic norms, social justice, and (...) liberal democratic constitutionalism. The second, is that populist political entrepreneurs excel in fomenting social antagonisms by framing shifts in the forms of social pluralism in ways that foster deep political polarization, generalized distrust and a politics of resentment against “elites,” “the establishment,” “the oligarchy,” and “outsiders.” Why populist offers resonate requires a social theoretical analysis of status/solidarity and class issues and a direct response to them. I draw on Polanyi and Habermas to develop an explanatory approach to the current crisis and the populist responses it triggers. I navigate between two inadequate approaches: that of the Hofstadter consensus school which construes status concerns and populism as retrograde, anti-modern, paranoid and meriting no direct response; and that of the neo-Marxist tradition that acknowledges the mobilizing power of “cultural factors” and status anxieties but deems them to be epiphenomena of the deeper story of economic distributive injustice. I reject this assessment and seek to take up the status/solidarity issues in ways that take them seriously, challenge populist framing and provide alternative direct responses to them. I reject the narrative frames of left populists who foment polarization and I try to present an alternative narrative framing for a future democratic politics that draws on the best in politically liberal, constitutionalist, democratic, and socialist traditions. (shrink)

Beyond the reaches of scholarly debates about how to define and value civility properly, social actors across various institutional domains routinely demarcate civil from uncivil behavior. Yet this everyday classification process remains understudied and undertheorized, despite being widespread and having significant stakes for the individuals and groups involved. This article begins to fill this gap by developing the concept of civility contests—practical efforts to draw symbolic boundaries between civil and uncivil individuals, groups, or behaviors. Through a focus on the realm (...) of political protest in the United States, this article demonstrates that civility contests involve a wide range of political actors (including institutionalized power holders, opposing movements, and the media) who engage in this boundary-work in order to justify the control or (de)legitimation of protest. It then highlights patterned disparities in the outcomes of these contests, demonstrating that the likelihood of being marked as uncivil and the extent to which this prompts negative social sanction is shaped by one’s social position. Overall, the article seeks to stimulate and guide future empirical research on civility contests and to deepen theoretical understandings of the relationship between symbolic and social boundaries and the role of symbolic boundary-work in the reproduction of political inequality. (shrink)

Recent disclosures suggest that many governments apply indiscriminate mass surveillance technologies that allow them to capture and store a massive amount of communications data belonging to citizens and non-citizens alike. This article argues that traditional liberal critiques of government surveillance that center on an individual right to privacy cannot completely capture the harm that is caused by such surveillance because they ignore its distinctive political dimension. As a complement to standard liberal approaches to privacy, the article develops a critique of (...) surveillance that focuses on the question of political power in the public sphere. (shrink)

Different theories on public sphere complete each other or collide in examining the intersubjective relationships involved in organizing and administering the responses of society to the political and economical power repertory. Habermas’s default theory, who invokes the critical participation of every citizen in the public communication, is rather extended in the counter-theories represented by Fraser’s “subaltern counterpublics”, Mouffe’s “agonistic politics” or Hardt and Negri’s “shared commons”. These observations are undertaken by artists in their public art practices and inform the contemporary (...) art theories on audience participation. (shrink)

O artigo procura mostrar em que sentido a democracia deliberativa proposta pela teoria discursiva de Jürgen Habermas dá conta do problema dos reducionismos econômicos e juridificantes da mundialização ou globalização, entendida como uma colonização técnico-sistêmica do mundo da vida. Recorrendo a sua concepção de um ethos democrático transnacional embasado na soberania popular, a teoria habermasiana logra resgatar o caráter normativo da mundialização através da irredutibilidade de valores humanos como a liberdade, a dignidade e os direitos humanos, inerentes às mais diferentes (...) e incompatíveis autocompreensões de mundos da vida. (shrink)

According to Maria Markus, the development of a particularly open and interested moral-psychological disposition towards the other is critical to the endeavour of subjects to realize the decent society. Drawing on the work of George Herbert Mead, it will be argued that such a sense of decency involves not just a normative commitment to reciprocity but a reflexive appreciation of the significance of the other to the formation of the self. Meads sketches of intersubjective freedoms are shown to provide a (...) critical perspective on unjust social relations from the standpoint of the utopian horizon of a decent society. Meads conception converges, as well as contrasts, with Markuss perspective on civil society and the regulative ideal of the decent society. Significantly, Markuss account of the problem of the potential divergence between the decency of institutions and the decency of human relationships highlights the difficulties of interconnecting democratic justice and intersubjective freedoms. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is a noble project: an attempt to make citizens philosophize. Critics of deliberative democracy usually claim either that the proposed deliberation threatens an existing moral consensus or, instead, that deliberation is impossible amid power imbalances that oppress the weak. But another problem is that combining democracy and deliberation is inherently an attempt to engage publicly in a private activity—where sensitivity to each interlocutor may require a special form of address. Can this be done? Yes, in some contexts. The (...) tradition of esoteric writing has demonstrated that it is possible to layer one's discourse in such a way that all citizens can partake at a level that suits them. But writing for a public is not really deliberation among equals; it is leadership by the writer of the readers. Genuine dialogue among equals that takes account of their differences is, in contrast, inherently a private affair. (shrink)

This paper argues that political civility is actually an illusionistic ideal and that, as such, realism counsels that we acknowledge both its promise and peril. Political civility is, I will argue, a tension-filled ideal. We have good normative reasons to strive for and encourage more civil political interactions, as they model our acknowledgement of others as equal citizens and facilitate high-quality democratic problem-solving. But we must simultaneously be attuned to civility’s limitations, its possible pernicious side-effects, and its potential for strategic (...) manipulation and oppressive abuse, particularly in contemporary, pluralistic and heterogeneous societies. (shrink)

Although Merleau-Ponty’s early phenomenology of perception and his essays on art, politics, and language already showed an affinity between the aesthetic phenomena of expression and style and the political and cultural dynamics of society at large, this paper specifically focuses on his late theorizing of the notion of flesh and its relevance to his late understanding of politics and democracy. The emergence of flesh as a concept was contemporary to Merleau-Ponty’s break with Marxism as a philosophical model and with revolutionary (...) dialectics as a political project. It is by showing that such a break was consistently grounded on his theorizing of the being flesh of both the body and of society that this paper shows Merleau-Ponty’s unique contribution to democratic theory and to contemporary political philosophy. In the course of this analysis, it will become clear that in philosophically breaking with the position of a “no that is a yes”—i.e. the model of the revolution, which implies a total negation of the given that becomes a total affirmation of the new order (dictatorship) once in power—he would politically embrace the Weberian “heroic liberalism”—or his “non-communist left”—of parliamentary democracy. (shrink)

Awareness of, and respect for differences of gender, race, religion, language, and culture have liberated many oppressed groups from the hegemony of white, Western males. However, respect for previously denigrated collective identities should not be allowed to confine individuals to identities constructed around one main component used for political mobilisation, or to identities that depend on a priority of properties that are not optional, like race, gender, and language. In this article I want to sketch an approach for accommodating different (...) kinds of identity within a multicultural constitutional democracy. From a vantage point provided by a definition and explanation of personal identity, I want to show how people define, construct and change their personal identities to make themselves into unique individuals. Next I show how democratic political institutions and the personal identities of individuals reciprocally influence one another. In the final section I sketch ways in which diverse personal identities ought to be accommodated in multicultural constitutional democracies. The conclusion is that a society which gives its members the liberty, space, and opportunity to freely construct their own identities might avoid the formation of closed groups committed exclusively to their own sectional interests. (shrink)

The internet could be an efficient political instrument if it were seen as part of a democracy where free and open discourse within a vital public sphere plays a decisive role. The model of deliberative democracy, as developed by Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib, serves this concept of democracy best. The paper explores first the model of deliberative democracy as a ‘two-track model’ in which representative democracy is backed by the public sphere and a developing civil society. Secondly, it outlines (...) the normative concept of the public sphere and its basic ideas, namely the uncoerced communication of equal participants with equal access and equal rights to intervene or propose themes. The third part for discussion shows how the internet could fit into this concept of public sphere and influence the quality of political debates, and emphasizes the important role it can play in the political process. (shrink)

While theorists of cultural pluralism have generally supported tribal sovereignty to protect threatened Native cultures, they fail to address adequately cultural conflicts between Native and non-Native communities, especially when tribal sovereignty facilitates illiberal or undemocratic practices. In response, I draw on Jürgen Habermas' conceptions of dis-course and the public sphere to develop a universalist approach to cultural pluralism, called the 'intercultural public sphere', which analyzes how cultures can engage in mutual learning and mutual criticism under fair conditions. This framework accommodates (...) cultural diversity within formally universalistic parameters while avoiding four common criticisms of universalist approaches to cultural pluralism. But this framework differs from that of Habermas in two ways. First, it includes 'subaltern' publics, open only to members of cultural subgroups, in order to counter relations of 'cultural power'. Second, it admits 'strong' publics, democratic institutions with decision-making powers. Finally, I show how the subaltern, strong institutions of tribal sovereignty contribute to the fair discursive conditions required for mutual learning and mutual critique in an intercultural public sphere. Key Words: Habermas • Kymlicka • Native peoples • sovereignty • tribal. (shrink)

Weber's piece on the development of the north-European Western city has not commanded attention in the recent theoretical literature. This article argues that it can however provide fresh insights into some key problems of Weber's diagnosis of modernity and into his general sociological theory, especially as to his theory of action and creativity. A more open-ended conception of modernity can be gained from its analysis, which is more compatible with Weber's own methodological assumptions. A different relationship between freedom and rationality (...) may be derived as a theoretical and political consequence from the discussion of The City. Key Words: collective subjectivity • creativity • freedom • modernity • rationalization • Weber • Western city. (shrink)

What does social justice require in contemporary societies? What are the requirements of social democracy? Who and where are the individuals and groups that can carry forward agendas for progressive social transformation? What are we to make of the so-called new social movements of the last thirty years? Is identity politics compatible with egalitarianism? Can cultural misrecognition and economic maldistribution be fought simultaneously? What of the heritage of Western Marxism is alive and dead? And how is current critical social theory (...) to approach these and other questions? Much of the most productive work done in recent social theory has revolved around such issues, in particular, around those concerning the relationship between the politics of recognition and the politics of distribution. After the intense theoretical focus over the last fifteen years or so on the issues of recognition politics—multiculturalism, multi-nationalism, identity politics, group-differentiated rights, the accommodation of difference, and so on—some social theorists have worried that attention has been diverted from important issues of distributive equality—systematic impoverishment, increasing material inequality, ‘structural’ unemployment, the growth of oligarchic power, global economic segmentation, and so on. While some critics seem to have adopted a blunt ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line of criticism,1 others have attempted to develop an overarching, integrative theoretical framework adequate to the diverse issues concerning both economic and cultural justice. For example, Axel Honneth proposes that a suitably developed and normatively robust theory of intersubjective recognition can adequately integrate an analysis of apparently diverse contemporary struggles: those for a just division of labor and hence, a fair distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as those for a culture free of identity-deforming disrespect and denigration. (shrink)

A concept of civil society that stresses civil society's role in working with the state to achieve more inclusive, democratic polities provides the context for examining the implications for transnational civil society. In particular, the author examines how this perspective emphasizes the importance of the paradox that civil society cannot be understood independently of a relationship to a state. After explaining the nature of this paradox, the author discusses the various ways this paradox affects the potential for transnational civil society (...) to contribute to more inclusionary democracies that reflect new processes in the social construction of citizenship. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses a debate about the proper relationship between democratic theory and institutions. The debate has been waged between two rival approaches: on the one side is an aggregative and economic theory of democracy, known as constitutional economics, and on the other side is deliberative democracy. The two sides endorse starkly different positions on the issue of what makes a democracy legitimate and stable within an institutional setting. Constitutional economists model political agents in the same way that neoclassical economists (...) model economic agents, that is, as self-regarding, rational maximizers; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and stability depend on the extent to which the design of institutional rules and practices maximize individual utility by promoting efficient schemes of collective choice. Deliberative democrats, on the other hand, understand political agents as communicative reason-giving subjects who justify their preferences and positions on issues that jointly affect them in a process of consensus-directed discourse, or deliberation; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and order depend on the degree to which institutional norms and practices promote deliberation and draw upon deliberated public judgment. I argue that despite the numerous incompatibilities between constitutional economics and deliberative democracy—which amount to a 'deep divide'—an opportunity to produce a genuine synthesis of the two approaches arises inasmuch as it is possible to overcome several points of opposition in their separate research programmes. The central thesis of the dissertation is that it is possible to construct a bridge spanning the divide between constitutional economists and deliberative democrats, and that Dewey and Bentley's transactional view can facilitate this bridge-building project. Pursuant to this end, the points of opposition between the v research programmes are mediated by way of five concepts which, on balance, favor deliberative democracy and its feasible institutionalization. (shrink)

: There has been an intensive scholarly debate about the developmentof Indonesia’s post-New Order democracy. Some scholars have laudedIndonesia’s surprisingly successful transition to democratic consolidation,while others have disputed such a notion, arguing that Indonesia’s democraticprocess tends to be stagnant and even regressive. However, the absence ofa progressive civil society as a result of the increasingly dominant positionof oligarchic political elites in the structure of state power and democraticinstitutions, are a number of important factors that encourage the declineof democracy. This article (...) investigates the conditions that drive the role ofmoderate Islamic organizations weredeclining rather than increasing in fighting for a democratic agenda. Referringto the research data obtained through interviews, documentation and casestudies on Nahdlatul Ulama activism - the largest moderate Islamicorganization in a predominantly Muslim country, this article arguesthat the decline of civil Islamic organizations is closely related to socio-politicalfragmentation and the strengthening of the conservative wing within moderateIslamic organizations. At the same time, the decline of the organization whichhad a glorious reputation as a champion of tolerance, pluralism, and democracyin the 1980-1990s had implications for the regression of Indonesian democracymarked by, among other things, the exclusion of religious minority groups suchas Shi’a from the public sphere. (shrink)

Universalism and particularism have become poles of modern social thought and lead to distinct definitions of democracy, citizenship, and social policy. Challenging Habermas and the Habermasians, this article argues that democracy can never be identified with domination. Meanwhile, contesting Chatterjee and Foucault, the author reaffirms citizenship and law in their various forms in relation to both bounded and unbounded serialities as the basis for democracy, beyond and despite governmentality. Latin America, and especially Brazil, with processes that check state domination and (...) have implied democratizing changes, provide the empirical focus for the discussion, albeit mediated by other countries, particularly India. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas assigns civil society groups ‘to bear a good portion of the normative expectations, especially the burden of a normatively expected democratic genesis of law’. This article looks at concrete attempts in the Philippine constitution to provide structures so that these groups can carry out the role Habermas envisages for them, and examines whether such attempts are sufficient to enable said groups to intervene in the political process as effectively as he expects of them.

The Islamist movement in Turkey bases its mobilization strategy on transforming everyday practices. Public challenges against the state do not form a central part of its repertoire. New Social Movement theory provides some tools for analyzing such an unconventional strategic choice. However, as Islamist mobilization also seeks to reshape the state in the long run, New Social Movement theory (with its focus on culture and society and its relative neglect of the state) needs to be complemented by more institutional analyses. (...) A hegemonic account of mobilization, which incorporates tools from theories of everyday life and identity-formation, as well as from state-centered approaches, is offered as a way to grasp the complexity of Islamism. (shrink)

Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical (...) resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms. (shrink)

This article explains how the issue of inclusion is central to Habermas’s theory of democracy and how it is deeply rooted in his conception of a political public sphere. After recalling Habermas’s views on the public sphere, I present and discuss various objections raised by other critical theorists: Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Iris Marion Young. These criticisms insist on the paradoxically excluding effects of a conception of democracy that promotes civic participation in the public (...) debate. Negt, Kluge and Fraser develop a Marxist line of analysis that question who can participate in the public sphere. Honneth and Young criticize in various ways the excluding effect of argumentation: are unargumentative speeches excluded from the public debate? I show how Habermas’s model can provide some responses to these various objections by drawing inspiration from his treatment of the gap between religious and post-metaphysical world views. (shrink)

The authors suggest that social movements research should recognize more the potential of the protesting body as an agent of social and political change. This contention is based on studying the relations among the body, gender, and knowledge in social protest by comparing two Israeli-Jewish leftist protest movements, a woman-only movement and a mixed-gender one, which protested against the Israeli Occupation in the early 1990s. The comparison reveals reversed patterns of body/knowledge relations, each connoting a different meaning and outcome of (...) the social protest. In the mixed movement, the body served as an instrument in carrying out the political knowledge and thus was left unmarked. In Women in Black, on the other hand, the body was the message, as it produced and articulated political ideology, simultaneously challenging the national security legacy and the gender order in Israel. (shrink)

Kimberley Brownlee’s Conscience and Conviction offers a powerful defence of civil disobedience as a conscientious and communicative mode of protest. The overall argument of the book is important and compelling, but this critical commentary explores certain aspects of Brownlee’s view that warrant further consideration and clarification. Those aspects relate to her suggestion that civil disobedience is a dialogic mode of communication, her attempt to ground a moral right of civil disobedience in a principle of humanism, and her belief that the (...) right establishes a defeasible moral claim against all forms of interference. (shrink)

Critics of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action argue that he has failed to recognize the extent to which moral argumentation is grounded in particular historical contexts, cultural traditions, collective identities, or social lifeworlds. Although he has engaged in a series of strategies aimed at acknowledging the role of particularistic considerations without abandoning his primary commitment to ethical universalism, Habermas has not succeeded in meeting all of the objections of his critics. This paper treats the contradiction between formal and substantive (...) rationality, which lies at the heart of the debate, as an empirical phenomenon within the social world. It argues that the antinomy of formal and substantive rationality plays a central role in historical processes of social change. Through critical argumentation, social actors deliberate on contradictions among strategic, moral, and ethical standards of validity, and they struggle to resolve these contradictions through collective action and the reform of laws, policies, and institutions. Examples are drawn from US political history to substantiate the argument, and some questions are raised for further research. (shrink)

We aim to show how collective emotions can be incorporated into the study of episodes of political contention. In a critical vein, we systematically explore the weaknesses in extant models of collective action, showing what has been lost through a neglect or faulty conceptualization of collective emotional configurations. We structure this discussion in terms of a review of several “pernicious postulates” in the literature, assumptions that have been held, we argue, by classical social-movement theorists and by social-structural and cultural critics (...) alike. In a reconstructive vein, however, we also lay out the foundations of a more satisfactory theoretical framework. We take each succeeding critique of a pernicious postulate as the occasion for more positive theory-building. Drawing upon the work of the classical American pragmatists–especially Peirce, Dewey, and Mead–as well as aspects of Bourdieu's sociology, we construct, step by step, the foundations of a more adequate theorization of social movements and collective action. Accordingly, the negative and positive threads of our discussion are woven closely together: the dismantling of pernicious postulates and the development of a more useful analytical strategy. (shrink)

In the wake of the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008, the Chinese state, for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic, held a nationwide mourning rite for ordinary disaster victims. Why did this “mourning for the ordinary” emerge in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake but not previous massive disasters? Moreover, the Chinese state tried to demonstrate through the mourning that the state respected ordinary people’s lives and dignity. But this moral-political message contradicted the state’s normal repressive (...) practice. The contradiction was salient when the state forbade the parents of child victims, who died of school collapse, to mourn their children at anniversaries of the earthquake. What can account for this contradiction? Drawing on the state-society relations perspective, I argue that the emergence of “mourning for the ordinary” can be explained by some important changes in structural state-society relations in China in the 2000s, such as the rapidly developing civil society with moral consciousness and the more adaptive authoritarian Chinese state with concern about its moral legitimacy. These changes were strengthened in the situational dynamics in 2008, which led to the state’s acceptance of a mourning proposal from the public sphere. The mourning did not occur in previous disasters because those structural factors were absent or weak and the situational dynamics were different. The state suppressed parents’ mourning and outside activists’ alternative mourning because the state’s concern with stability overrode its moral legitimation, particularly in the changing political context after the Beijing Olympics, and, meanwhile, the civil society was unable to resist the state’s repression. This study theorizes an important but understudied mourning genre, “mourning for the ordinary,” and introduces the state-society perspective into public ritual study. (shrink)

This article argues that democratic deepening is shaped by shifting civil society-state relations that can only be understood by disaggregating democratic deepening into its component parts of participation, representation, and stateness. This frame is used to explore the divergent democratic trajectories of Brazil, India, and South Africa. Through the examples of local government transformation and social movement mobilization, I argue that a “project” civil society in Brazil has deepened democracy and transformed the state. In contrast, in South Africa and India (...) civil society is increasingly being subordinated to political society. In South Africa, an active civil society has largely been sidelined as a politically consequential actor (containerization) and in India much of civil society has been fragmented and instrumentalized (involution). (shrink)

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, (...) modes of political illegality. The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of... (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)

The main goal of this paper is to offer a reading of Reinhart Koselleck’s work as an ally of critical theory. My contention is that, despite customary accusations of Koselleck being an anti-Enlightenment historian detrimental to social criticism and emancipatory politics, his investigations on the semantic fabric of modern society may actually expand our resources for the critique of domination. In order to make this argument plausible, I reconstruct some antinomies that are at the basis of Koselleck’s work (state/society, language/reality, (...) experience/expectation) and discuss their critical potential. This analysis shows that, rather than a rejection of the spirit of critique, Koselleck contributes to the temporalization of the practice of critique as such: namely, a clarification of the contradictions and potentials of a reflexive practice imbued in the struggle between the need to comprehend the world as it is and the right to experiment with other forms of life. (shrink)

This article explores some aspects of what has been termed ‘new contractualism’ in social policy, using the Norwegian policy on poverty and social exclusion as an empirical example. An important purpose is to identify how the move to new contractualism implies new modes of controlling behaviour and to explore the ethical legitimacy of this approach. Firstly, contractualism is seen in relation to some dominating discourses in Norwegian and European social policy over the last 20–30 years, emphasizing the importance of economic (...) considerations concerning the financial sustainability of the welfare state. Secondly, the article explores some implications of contractual modes of thought for balancing rights and duties in the welfare state, concluding that the principle of a welfare contract is a euphemism for a polity that basically imposes more obligations on the recipients of welfare services. Thirdly, it elaborates on the tension field between the possible democratic benefits of contractualism and more paternalistic consequences. Although relational contracts may enhance client-influenced service provision, paternal outcomes are likely, owing to the fact that such contracts are often used as instruments for behaviour-changing efforts (e.g. to create an economically active citizen). (shrink)

Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individuals or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular (...) desires towards that which societies as a whole should consider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in tension with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflections on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’. (shrink)

Can critical research on religion offer both an ideology critique and a critical retrieval of religious import? This article suggests that it can, offering a programmatic sketch for a full-fledged critique of religion—a critique both aimed at religion and inspired by religion in a self-critical fashion. The sketch weds elements of a robustly normative critique of Western society with insights derived from the Frankfurt School. First the article maps three societal macrostructures that organize much of contemporary social life—civil society, proprietary (...) economy, and administrative state. Then it discusses solidarity, resourcefulness, and justice as societal principles that can sustain a critique of societal macrostructures. Next it identifies normative deficiencies within and between these macrostructures. On the basis of this architectonic critique, the article then provides an account of religion in its critical and utopian roles. It concludes by envisioning a normative and emancipatory transformation of society as a whole. (shrink)

The author argues that in democracies a strong state and strong civil society are not mutually exclusive. Only a democratic, legitimate, and strong state can provide the environment for civil society activities to flourish; in return, only a strong and a participatory civil society can outline the reach of state strength vis-à-vis the society. The author discusses the need for civil society organizations to collaborate with policy-making institutions, in which they can negotiate policy concerns with ministers and officials while retaining (...) an independent distance from the state and the political parties. Further, the author argues that an environment as such would provide for the transformative capacity of human agency to manifest itself in full in a globalizing world. The author discusses how participatory state and civil society structures will enhance the role of the human agency in order to dissolve elite rule, especially in new democracies. (shrink)

What I consider in this paper are various forms of government, various technologies and discursive regimes of government that are in common use today. What interests me are the categories and tools, practical dispositifs and languages that developed over the last decades ‘to constitute, define, organize, and instrumentalize the strategies that individuals, acting freely, may use to deal with one another’ (Foucault). The paper considers first the neo-liberal wish to reassert the individual as alone in responsibility for his/her own life (...) after the unfortunate digression into Welfare Statism and Keynesian economics, source of all ills. It then focuses on some material and social technologies that encourage people to accept full and complete ‘self-sovereignty’. This section leads to a discussion on the new demands (and resistance) society imposed on this liberal normative ideal. It notably considers the growing demands to ‘participate’ in decision processes and to be environmentally friendly. In section Les Mots et Les Choses: A New Discursive Regime , it considers the discursive regime that progressively took shape and which currently permeates international governance bodies of all stripes—from the World Bank to the Conference of Parties for Climate Change. In the final section, it comes back to the initial question and considers what these changes actually mean for the democratic order as constituted over the past 250 years. (shrink)

Relying on Niklas Luhmann's systems theoretical redescription of modern society, this article aims at questioning the basic theoretical notions of the ongoing inclusion/exclusion debate. The most remarkable aspect of Luhmann's reassessment of the inclusion/exclusion relationship within functionally differentiated societies is that individuals are basically situated within the exclusion domain of society, and thus cannot but partially be included within society's function systems and organizations. This reassessment not only allows Luhmann to raise fundamental questions with respect to the implicit norm of (...) full inclusion which still dominates the debate on inclusion and exclusion, but it also directs his attention to the different inclusion/exclusion conditions within function systems, organizations and interaction systems. Eventually Luhmann's position comes down to the idea that exclusion rather than inclusion is the rule, and, moreover, that inclusions differ from one another. The article closes off with a critical evaluation of Luhmann's redescription of the inclusion/exclusion debate. It is argued that systems theory might suffer from empirical deficiency, as it seems to have difficulties to detect and to depict the actual mechanisms of social exclusion without resorting to theories that are more geared to empirical reality and that are of help in observing it. Key Words: evolution • function systems • inclusion/exclusion • Niklas Luhmann • networks • organizations. (shrink)

The challenge of realizing the democratic power of publics through public sphere remains acute but not hopeless. While claiming that Habermas communicative social theory offers a way forward in spite of a productive but constraining turn towards a modified social liberal frame, nonetheless three limitations of the theory are identified. The first bears on the insufficiency of the sociological evolutionist description of society relevant to the public sphere drawn from classical sociological accounts of differentiation and integration. The second identifies learning (...) theoretical limitations of the normative interactionist, proceduralist account of democracy and democratization potentials. And the third observes on the disconnection between the theory of communicative reasoning from, on the one hand, the critique of pathologies of reasoning, and, on the other, from its implications for lifeworld rationalization. These identified limitations are intended to provide new impetus to radically rethink the public sphere as intrinsic to solving contemporary problems of democracy that Habermas’s more recent account of deliberative theory, with the public sphere merely supplementary, cannot fully do. Yet, with Habermas, this should be on the basis of advancing the communication theory of democracy. (shrink)

From the beginning of his career Alain Touraine tried to develop a heterodox sociological terminology which promised to open up new ways of thinking about the dynamics of modern societies. This article tries to bring to light some of the Sartrean roots of Touraine's early theoretical tools and to reconstruct his intellectual development through the 1970s and 1980s when he formulated his ideas on the emergence of social movements within post-industrial society. It will be argued that Touraine's major works of (...) the 1990s - though not without some theoretical problems - offer fresh insights into the conditions of modernity and are able to correct and modify interpretations of modernity of major theorists such as Habermas and Taylor. (shrink)

Problem setting. Latin America and the Caribbean traditionally referred to as a large and ambiguous region in an out-side territorial scientific environment. A whole stratum of problems of identities, peculiarities of self-awareness, civilization affiliations of messianic ’appointments ’ in the history of the region and the world, the development of ways of cultural and historical development corresponding to them, the affirmation of the tendencies of state formation is in a scientific researcher focus. Among the many aspects that conceptualize the demandfor (...) research in the region and its implementation, we would like to highlight the following: 1) Latin America and the Caribbean are, to some extent, «a territory of historically significant validation of modern trends» in their speculative lengthening, the field ofdeveloping new ones political and economic novations, including regarding various projections of the correlation of socio-political practices, institutional design and legal technologies, derived from the understanding of nature and the purpose of law. 2) The region ’provides ’ a wide range of heterogeneous materials for analytical work, both concatenate-linear in nature, and combining poly-meaningful multidimensionality, multifaceted coexistence of values generated by contemporary media, the glare of meanings, signs, intentions of conscious transformations, random «breakthroughs» of network travel followers. In the discovery literature thatfollows only the analysis of statistical indicators, it is often noted that Latin America and the Caribbean is a region of polarization. 3) Considering the full amount of opportunities and perspectives available, Latin America in general, in some associative formulation, is clearly «boxing at levels below its weight and its impact on international canvases», that is, there are some reasons for internal and external character that significantly reduce the region’s role in the world, affecting accents of processes of political, legal and economic worsen the work «for the common good», underestimate «the bar of tasks and results» do not meet the expectations of the significance of the region. Recent research and publications analysis. The paper uses an interdisciplinary approach involving the research of representatives of various sciences. Concerning the approach to certain aspects of the constitutional process in the countries of Latin America and the Carribien was used the researches of Ukrainian authors Yu. M. Todyka, V. P. Kolisnyk, Yu. G. Barabash, M. P. Orzikh, T. M. Slinko, A. G. Kushnirenko, pertaining to in relation to consideration ofpeculiarities ofdevelopment andfunctioning of the model of the presidential state was launched analytical andfunctionality materials I. V. Protsiuk. On the conceptualization within the political science tradition in connection with the problems of the political regimes, their development in the conditions of conflict of the present, in the face of threats and challenges of a multifaceted nature are included the materials of methodological and theoretical importance M. P. Trebin, I. O. Polishchuk, D. Denisenko, G. M. Kutz, O. A. Fisun, M. A. Polovyi and, in the context of regional- geopolitical dimensions, V. Yu. Karasev. Among the foreign authors on the subject area of the study, we note the conceptual vision of the combination ofeconomic cycles and political and legal processes of the present Daniela Campello, the development of the author of the theory of «path dependence effect» by J. Mahoney and researchers of modifications of the development of neo-patrimonialism in Latin America and Karsten Bachle. Focused on the trends and innovations of the constitutional process in the countries of the region are the scientific orientations of Rogelio Nu'nez and P. I. Kostogryzov. A broad analytical and research base on the transformation of political regimes in Latina America and the Caribbean and the peculiarities ofpolitical processes in individual countries are provided by the works of B. Geddes, G. O’Donnell, L. Diamond, D. Ziblatta, S. Levitsky, Z. V. Ivanovsky, T. A. Vorotnikova, P. P. Yakovlev, D. V. Morozov, and others. Paper objective. The purpose of this work is to find out the broad contexts of the relationship between economic and political and legal processes in Latin America and the Carribien countries with attention to the peculiarities of the rule of law formation. The tasks are to analyze a set of approaches to finding the causes of the difficulties of socio-political and institutional-legal development in the region with the involvement of interdisciplinary scientific experience and to identify some essential features of meaning- forming and socio-constructing phenomena in the contextual contours. Paper main body. One of the options for designating the specificity of the current state of affairs is framed in the concept of the so-called «curse of volatility» - the dependence of local, mainly commodity and export-oriented with low internal economy savings from cycles, fluctuations of the world economy. This dependence is a definite structural factor and has been forming for a long time. Also, macroeconomic indicators within the framework of a certain political economy methodology in the projection for the sum ofpolitical and legal events allow us to see the spread of ideology, whether left or right, the rise of populism, the tendency for further democratization of the way of life or vice versa from democracy, the relative calm of the political process or the turbulence ofpolitical events are, after all, tied to basic economic indicators, and often more or less relevant to us and corresponding to figures about the level of safety of life. The trajectory of development was laid down by some decisions at a time of critical juncture when privatization created the basis of the local economy as a structural part of the world capitalist system with its dynamics of development that facilitated the formatting and reproduction of the reactive sequences caused by different types of liberal reforms. Conclusions of the research. The particular attention in Latin America and the Caribbean countries on the expectations and responsibilities of building the future is focused on the development of Constitutional law as a leading sphere in the system of national law. Hence the numerous constitutional changes in the countries of the region, the constitutional reforms of different grades, which are intensively continued today. The lifestyle liberalization, resolving key property issues, attempts at democratization in Latin America and the Carribien countries took place in different ways, but after the foundations ofpublic law that were borrowed in outline in the USA. Between enshrined key provisions in the Constitutions and the coexistence of essentially diverse mass consciousnesses and aspirations on different ’floors’ of the society, has raised multi-dimensional discord, that is emerging from the institutionalization of the liberal-democratic model of the state, generated in the context of understanding freedom as a key concept. Therefore the aspect ofan all-public agreement on coexistence rules does not appear to be fully realized, which gives rise to a search for a constitutional character. The focus remains on the relationship between multiple interests and ideas about the common good, by means of the formation of the general will in the structure and practice of constitutional-democratic regimes. It is inextricably linked to the transformation of the concepts of representation and citizenship. Democratic legitimation is correlated with ideas about the rule of the masses, the will of the majority in the living creation of the norms of life, and with the accompanying active and continuous participation in the political process of large groups, sectors of the population. The constitutional creativity of the countries of the region shows the element of an assertion of messianism, the designation of the special role of the country, its leader, ideology, the Constitution in the processes of historical implementation at the level of regional or the world. This moment of national pride for the country and its contribution to the cultural and civilizational space of history is realized in experimental projects of various expressions. (shrink)

In the following article, we propose an analytical framework for the analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Standards based on the paradigmatic nexus of voice and entitlement. We follow the theory of decentration and present the concept of Transnational Norm-Building Networks (TNNs), which — as we argue — comprise a new nexus of voice and entitlement beyond the nation—state level. Furthermore, we apply the analytical framework to the ISO 26000 initiative and the Global Compact. We conclude the article with remarks (...) on the legitimacy and the effectiveness of norms generated by TNNs. Through this, we aim to contribute a new theoretical foundation to the analysis of CSR standards, which enables us to undertake a more differentiated description of TNN structures which have hitherto been ignored in academic literature. Secondly, we will contribute to the practical debate on ISO 26000 and the Global Compact by proposing new perspectives on the conditions of their legitimacy and effectiveness based on the voice-entitlement nexus. (shrink)

The author revisits H. L. A. Hart's theory of positive law and argues for a major qualification to the thesis of the separation of law and morality based on a concept of systemic legitimacy derived from the social theory of Jurgen Habermas. He argues that standards for assessing the degree of systemic legitimacy in modern legal systems can develop through reflective exercise of “critical legality,” a concept coined to parallel Hart's “critical morality,” and an expanded understanding of the “external” and (...) “internal” perspectives on legal systems. Following Habermas, he argues that modern positive law must retain systemic legitimacy. After suggesting criteria for measuring systemic legitimacy, the author concludes that the concept provides a useful approach to contemporary problems of “lawless” regimes and “law's imperialism.”. (shrink)