Abstract: In this article we introduce an input-oriented democratic innovation – that we term ‘TaxTrack’ – which offers individual taxpayers the means to engage with their political economies in three ways. After joining the TaxTrack program, an individual can: (1) see and understand how much, and what types, of taxes they have contributed, (2) see and understand how their tax contributions are, or have been, used, and (3) control what their tax contributions can, or cannot, be spent on. (...) We explain this democratic innovation in two ways. The first is through evocation to prefigure what the innovation could look like in future practise which raises the prospects for both good and problematic outcomes. The second is through formal theory to produce a detailed model of the innovation to assist theory building. We conclude by discussing three interactive outcomes of ‘TaxTrack’ through the democratic innovations literature to establish the beginnings of a theory for the model. This theory tells us that ‘TaxTrack’ can return benefits to its users and the democratic regimes in which they are located but it may also place restrictions on output-oriented innovations like Participatory Budgeting. (shrink)

In response to its current crisis, scholars call for the revitalisation of democracy through democratic innovations. While they make ample use of life metaphors describing democracy as a living organism, no comprehensive understanding of ‘life’ has been established within democratic theory. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement articulates the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice. This article employs a grounded theory approach, enriched with participatory methods, to develop a radical democratic (...) concept of life in conversation with BLM. It conceptualises life as the existence of a perspective that constantly transforms through its fundamental interconnectedness. Building on this concept, the article outlines four principles of a living democracy that go beyond the revitalisation discourse. A living democracy (1) safeguards the existence of all humans and nonhumans, (2) nurtures a diversity of perspectives, (3) fosters social and planetary connectivity, and (4) enables self- and collective transformation. (shrink)

Despite Jon Elster’s caveat that the market potentially endangers the forum, Goodin insists that commercial innovations, such as the focus group and the market test, would actually strengthen democracy and citizen engagement. His thesis in this book is that governments should task members of smallscale deliberative bodies — or what he calls, in the singular, a ‘micro-public’, and what Robert Dahl before him termed a ‘mini-populus’ — to experiment with alternative solutions to public problems. While the book is a collection (...) of previously published essays, many are extensively altered and rewritten to support this thesis and to round out a literature that has recently become increasingly oriented toward deliberative practice. Indeed, Goodin is more circumspect than some of the less praxis-focused deliberative theorists — for instance, Jürgen Habermas — concerning the capacity of deliberative forums to displace traditional democratic institutions: ‘Inevitably . . . deliberative democracy can only supplement rather than supplant the institutional apparatus of representative democracy as we know it’ (7-8). The book is organized into two sections, one concerning the design and function of small-scale deliberative bodies or micro-publics, and the other devoted to deliberative activities in macro-political institutions, including the translation of micro-public recommendations into sound public policy (what is often called ‘uptake’). (shrink)

It is hard to disagree with the idea of responsible innovation (henceforth, RI), as it enables policy-makers, scientists, technology developers, and the public to better understand and respond to the social, ethical, and policy challenges raised by new and emerging technologies. RI has gained prominence in policy agenda in Europe and the United States over the last few years. And, along with its rising importance in policy-making, there is also a burgeoning research literature on the topic. Given the historical (...) context of which RI emerges, it should not be surprising that the current discourse on RI is predominantly based on liberal democratic values. Yet, the bias towards liberal democratic values will inevitably limit the discussion of RI, especially in the cases where liberal democratic values are not taken for granted. As such, there is an urgent need to return to the normative foundation of RI, and to explore the notion of ‘responsible innovation’ from nonliberal democratic perspectives. Against this background, this paper seeks to demonstrate the problematic consequences of RI solely grounded on or justified by liberal democratic values. This paper will cast the argument in the form of a dilemma to be labelled as The Decent Nonliberal Peoples’ Dilemma and use it to illustrate the problems of the Western bias. (shrink)

This paper argues that instituting Citizen Boards of Governance (CBGs) is the optimal strategy to democratically contain Big Tech’s algorithmic powers in the digital public sphere. CBGs are bodies of randomly selected citizens that are authorized to govern the algorithmic infrastructure of Big Tech platforms. The main advantage of CBGs is to tackle the concentrated powers of private tech corporations without giving too much power to governments. I show why this is a better approach than ordinary state regulation or relying (...) on market mechanisms. My proposal follows from the critique of Big Tech’s concentrated powers, and explains how this justifies democratizing algorithms in the digital public sphere. My approach thus speaks to a core commitment in democratic theory: enhancing the autonomy of the public sphere from the centers of powers in modern societies, be it corporations or governments. (shrink)

This paper develops a normative framework for both conceptualizing and assessing various institutional possibilities for democratic modes of constitutional change, with special attention to the recent ferment of constitutional experimentation. The paper’s basic methodological orientation is interdisciplinary, combining research in comparative constitutionalism, political science and normative political philosophy. In particular, it employs a form of normative reconstruction: attempting to glean out of recent institutional innovations the deep political ideals such institutions embody or attempt to realize. Starting from the assumption (...) that contemporary constitutional democracies are attempting to realize the broader ideals of deliberative democratic constitution (ideals outlined briefly in the first section), the paper proposes an evaluative framework, comprised of six criteria, for assessing various mechanisms of constitutional change. It argues that democratic forms of constitutional change embody six distinct ideals—operationalizability, structural independence, democratic co-authorship, political equality, inclusive sensitivity, and reasons-responsiveness—and that these ideals can be used to gauge the normative worth of different mechanisms for carrying out such change. The framework is developed with reference to recent constitutional developments (e.g., in Venezuela, South Africa, Columbia, Bolivia, and Iceland) highlighting distinct criteria and showing how they appear to capture the general direction of institutional innovation. The paper conjectures that the set of six criteria yield the best normative reconstruction of the crucial ideals embodied in the constitutional change mechanisms of contemporary constitutional democracies, and so, ought to be used for purposes of evaluating institutional design proposals. (shrink)

Memory Detection Tests (MDTs) are a general class of psychophysiological tests that can be used to determine whether someone remembers a particular fact or datum. The P300 MDT is a type of MDT that relies on a presumed correlation between the presence of a detectable neural signal (the P300 “brainwave”) in a test subject, and the recognition of those facts in the subject’s mind. As such, the P300 MDT belongs to a class of brain-based forensic technologies which have proved popular (...) and controversial in recent years. With such tests increasingly being proffered for use in the courtroom — to either support or call into question testimony — it would behoove the legal system to have some systematic framework for ensuring that they are used responsibly. In this paper, I defend one such framework for ensuring that this is the case: the legitimacy enhancing test. According to this test, it is appropriate to make use of technologies such as the P300 MDT whenever doing so would (probably) enhance the legitimacy of the trial. I argue that this test addresses tensions between scientific and legal norms of evidence, and exhibits a number of additional virtues including unification, simplicity and flexibility. Although the test is defended by considering the example of the P300 MDT, its significance is much broader than that. If it has the virtues I claim for it, it should provide a general framework for the responsible use of technologies, and the responsible innovation of social epistemic systems. (shrink)

This article reviews the political thought of one of the most important figures during the Islamic resurgence in the 20th century, Abul A’la Maududi. The thought of Maududi is often read superficially by either those desiring to portray him as politically ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ as well as ‘backwards’ and ‘conservative’. The core of debates surrounding Maududi’s support for liberal democratic principles such as equality, freedom, democratic elections, and the like are pinpointed and reviewed individually, according to two main (...) primary texts, Islamic Way of Life, and Islamic Law and Constitution. The themes that are covered by the article concern (a) the meaning of his term ‘theodemocracy’; (b) Maududi’s understanding of the ‘shurah council’ (advisory council to the Caliph) and its meaning in terms of popular sovereignty; and (c) the people’s role in maintaining rule of law and the office of the Caliph. It is argued that after a review of these concepts within their respective contexts, the argument attempting to show Maududi as an ‘innovator’ or ‘progressive’ in terms of his application of Islamic law in his modern-day ideal for an Islamic state collapses. Rather, it is shown that Maududi clearly envisioned the ideal Caliphate as one established by the prophet Muhammad and his companions (the ‘Rashidūn Caliphate’) and affirmed Divine sovereignty over the general concept of ‘popular sovereignty’ as conceived by western political thought. (shrink)

The paper reviewed financial resources which is a critical factor and component of Business Process Re-engineering in achieving academic performance of higher education institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The objective of the study is to examine whether financial resources can contribute to improving and achieving academic performance of higher education institutions in general and students in particular. The study used a systematic literature review and content analysis was to establish the relationship between financial resources and academic performance. (...) The key findings are grouped in three dimensions: 1) financial resources; 2) budget and funding/financial model; 3) tuitions fees, scholarship and loans provision. The study found consistent evidence to show that there is a significant and positive relationship between financial resources and performance of higher education institutions. The study concluded that higher education sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo needs a radical change and fundamental rethinking in improving educational budget processes to meet the needs of the institutions, provision of scholarship and loans processes to students mainly those from poor background and designing innovative financial/funding model to sustain educational institutions. The study is based on academic capitalism theory. The recommendations were made based on the findings of the study. -/- . (shrink)

The paper focuses on the “spillover thesis” which constitutes a pillar of much of contemporary participatory democratic theory; specifically, we assess the claim that workplace democratization leads to a higher degree of political participation amongst labourers. The paper analyses the thesis as formulated by Carole Pateman, including its later revisions triggered by ambiguous results of empirical studies aiming to (dis)prove it. The spillover thesis is then confronted with important methodological and theoretical critiques, the upshot being that in order to (...) be able to arrive at determinate conclusions, more carefully designed empirical studies are needed. Normatively speaking, however, blame can always be laid on the wider environment of market economy and/or representative democracy, to the effect that the spillover thesis is both difficult to disprove and radically subversive. Given the recent dominance of deliberative democratic theory which incorporates a strong participatory element, we finally discuss whether a recent innovation – namely, the concept of deliberative systems – could be fruitfully employed as a flexible umbrella-type framework for the spillover thesis and the participatory ideals related to it. (shrink)

This Open Access book explains the philosophy, design principles, and community organization of Decidim and provides essential insights into how the platform works. Decidim is the world leading digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, built entirely and collaboratively as free software, and used by more than 500 institutions with over three million users worldwide. -/- The platform allows any organization (government, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood, or cooperative) to support multitudinous processes of participatory democracy. In a context dominated by corporate-owned digital platforms, (...) in the era of increasing social structuring via Artificial Intelligence, Decidim stands as a public or community owned platform for collective human intelligence. Yet, the project is much more than its technological features. Decidim is in itself a crossroad of the various dimensions of the networked society, a detailed practical map of its complexities and conflicts. Theauthors distinguish three general dimensions of the project: (1) the political - shedding light on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations, (2) the technopolitical - explaining how this technology is democratically designed and managed to produce and protect certain political effects, and (3) the technical - presenting the conditions of production, operation, and success of the project. This book systematically covers those three levels in an academically sound, technologically consistent, and politically innovative manner. Serving as a useful resource and handbook for the use of Decidim, it will not only appeal to students and scholars interested in participatory and digital democracy but also to professionals, policy-makers, and a wider audience interested in learning more about the Decidim platform. (shrink)

Historically, scientific and engineering expertise has been key in shaping research and innovation policies, with benefits presumed to accrue to society more broadly over time. But there is persistent and growing concern about whether and how ethical and societal values are integrated into R&I policies and governance, as we confront public disbelief in science and political suspicion toward evidence-based policy-making. Erosion of such a social contract with science limits the ability of democratic societies to deal with challenges presented (...) by new, disruptive technologies, such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, automation and robotics, and artificial intelligence. Many policy efforts have emerged in response to such concerns, one prominent example being Europe's Eighth Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, whose focus on “Responsible Research and Innovation” provides a case study for the translation of such normative perspectives into concrete policy action and implementation. Our analysis of this H2020 RRI approach suggests a lack of consistent integration of elements such as ethics, open access, open innovation, and public engagement. On the basis of our evaluation, we suggest possible pathways for strengthening efforts to deliver R&I policies that deepen mutually beneficial science and society relationships. (shrink)

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic values? This question has become particularly pressing after the recent successes of right-wing populist leaders and parties across Europe, in the US, and beyond. This book develops a normative account of liberal democratic self-defence that denounces the failures of real-world societies without excusing those supporting illiberal and antidemocratic political actors. This account is innovative in focusing not only on the (...) role of the state but also on the duties of nonstate actors including citizens, partisans, and municipalities. Consequently, it also addresses cases where the central government has at least been partly captured by illiberal and antidemocratic agents. Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti's approach builds on John Rawls's treatment of political liberalism and his awareness of the need to 'contain' unreasonable views, that is, views denying that society should treat every person as free and equal through a mutually acceptable system of social cooperation where pluralism is to be expected. The authors offer original solutions to vexed problems within political liberalism by putting forward a new account of the relation between ideal and non-ideal theory, explaining why it is justifiable to exclude unreasonable persons from the constituency of public reason, and showing that the strictures of public reason do not apply to those suffering from severe injustice. In doing so, the book further politicizes political liberalism and turns it into a framework that can insightfully respond to the challenges of real politics. (shrink)

Democracy in its currently dominant liberal form has proven supportive of unprecedented human flourishing. However, it also appears increasingly plagued by political polarization, strained to cope with the digitalization of the political discourse, and threatened by authoritarian backlash. A growing sense of the anthropic risks—with runaway climate change as the leading example—thus often elicits concern regarding democracy’s capability of mitigating them. Apparently, lacking a sufficient degree of the citizens’ consensus on the priority issues of the day, it can find itself (...) unable to muster the resolve and resources necessary to alter its “business as usual” path even where disasters loom ever larger in its track. Against these concerns, I argue that democracy’s potential remains far from depleted. While political irrationality needs to be considered a major obstacle to successfully managing the anthropic risks, many existing reform proposals appear capable of reining it in. My main suggestion is to seek ways to facilitate a speedier and more effective exploration of the landscape of the possible democratic mechanisms of collective choice. A virtual platform to support such an exploration—which I call ‘democracy’s digital playground’—may allow us to find innovative ways of managing anthropic risks without compromising our commitment to democratic values. (shrink)

Democratic societies expect their armed forces to act in a morally responsible way, which seems a fair expectation given the fact that they entrust their armed forces with the monopoly of violence. However, this is not as straightforward and unambiguous as it sounds. Present-day military practices show that political assignments, social and cultural contexts, innovative technologies and organisational structures, present military personnel with questions and dilemma’s that can have far-reaching consequences for all involved – not in the last place (...) for the soldiers themselves. A thorough training and education, in which critical thinking is developed and stimulated, seems therefore a necessary condition for morally responsible behaviour. This book aims to contribute to this form of ‘reflective practitioning’ in military practice. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is thought to face an ‘implementation challenge’: the challenge of securing uptake of engineered concepts. But is the fact that implementation is challenging really a defect to be overcome? What kind of picture of political life would be implied by making engineering easy to implement? We contend that the ambition to obviate the implementation challenge goes against the very idea of liberal democratic politics. On the picture we draw, the implementation challenge can be overcome by institutionalizing control (...) over conceptual uptake, and there are contexts—such as professions that depend on coordinated conceptual innovation—in which there are good reasons to institutionalize control in this fashion. But the liberal fear of this power to control conceptual uptake ending up in the wrong hands, combined with the democratic demand for freedom of thought as a precondition of genuine consent, yields a liberal democratic rationale for keeping implementation challenging. (shrink)

The deliberative systems approach is a recent innovation within the tradition of deliberative democratic theory. It signals an important shift in focus from the political legitimacy produced within isolated and formal sites of deliberation (e.g., Parliament or deliberative mini-publics), to the legitimacy produced by a number of diverse interconnected sites. In this respect, the deliberative systems (DS) approach is better equipped to identify and address defects arising from the systemic influences of power and coercion. In this article, I (...) examine one of the least explored and least understood defects: the exclusion of non-speaking political actors generated by the uniform privileging of speech in all sites within a system. Using the examples of prefigurative protest, Indigenous refusal to deliberate, and the non-deliberative agency of disabled citizens, I argue that the DS approach allows theorists to better understand forms of domination related to the imposition of speech on those who are either unwilling or unable to speak. (shrink)

Digital sovereignty, and the question of who ultimately controls AI seems, at first glance, to be an issue that concerns only specialists, politicians and corporate entities. And yet the fight for who will win digital sovereignty has far-reaching societal implications. Drawing on five case studies, the paper argues that digital sovereignty affects everyone, whether digital users or not, and makes the case for a hybrid system of control which has the potential to offer full democratic legitimacy as well as (...) innovative flexibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that the plethora of experiments with decentralized social technologies (DSTs)—clusters of which are sometimes called “the Web 3.0 ecosystem” or “the Fediverse”—have brought us to a constitutional moment. These technologies enable radical innovations in social, economic, and political institutions and practices, with the potential to support transformative approaches to political economy. They demand governance innovation. The paper develops a framework of prudent vigilance for making ethical choices in this space that help to both grasp positive opportunities (...) for transformation and avoid the potentially problematic consequences. Most of our specific examples and concerns come from the blockchain/Web3 universe, as this has received the greatest investment, attention, and adoption to date. However, we aim to offer a framework for governance decision-making in conditions of uncertainty that applies more broadly to other DSTs. Specifically, under the framework of prudent vigilance, we propose a pragmatic, democratic, and pluralist approach to navigating bold experimentation with social practices and political economy enabled by these technologies. Our overarching goal is to provide a framework open to transformative improvement and constrained by guardrails and guiding values supportive of democracy, freedom, and pluralism. We take a relatively strong position, rather than simply laying out ethical issues and potential approaches. We seek to be provocative in order to spur further work and hope this paper will serve as a first bridge between academic philosophy and the DST community, which have hardly interacted to date. (shrink)

The ethics of technology has primarily focused on what values are and how they can be embedded in technologies through design. In this context, some work has been done to show the efficacy of a number of design approaches. However, existing studies have not clearly pointed out the ways in which design-for-values approaches can be used by design team managers to properly organize and use technologies in practice. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by discussing the value sensitive design (...) (VSD) approach as a useful means of co-designing technologies as a toolkit for existing workflow management, in this case, Agile. It will be demonstrated that VSD shows promise as a way of democratically designing technologies as well as fostering democratic technology policy innovation. (shrink)

Surveillance programs supporting the management of One Health issues such as antibiotic resistance are complex systems in themselves. Designing ethical surveillance systems is thus a complex task (retroactive and iterative), yet one that is also complicated to implement and evaluate (e.g., sharing, collaboration, and governance). The governance of health surveillance requires attention to ethical concerns about data and knowledge (e.g., performance, trust, accountability, and transparency) and empowerment ethics, also referred to as a form of responsible self-governance. Ethics in reflexive governance (...) operates as a systematic critical-thinking procedure that aims to define its value: What are the “right” criteria to justify how to govern “good” actions for a “better” future? The objective is to lay the foundations for a methodological framework in empirical bioethics, the rudiments of which have been applied to a case study to building reflexive governance in One Health. This ongoing critical thinking process involves “mapping, framing, and shaping” the dynamics of interests and perspectives that could jeopardize a “better” future. This paper proposes to hybridize methods to combine insights from collective deliberation and expert evaluation through a reflexive governance functioning as a community-based action-ethics methodology. The intention is to empower individuals and associations in a dialogue with society, which operation is carried out using a case study approach on data sharing systems. We based our reasoning on a feasibility study conducted in Québec, Canada (2018–2021), envisioning an antibiotic use surveillance program in animal health for 2023. Using the adaptive cycle and governance techniques and perspectives, we synthesize an alternative governance model rooted in the value of empowerment. The framework, depicted as a new “research and design (R&D)” practice, is linking operation and innovation by bridging the gap between Reflexive, Evaluative, and Deliberative reasonings and by intellectualizing the management of democratizing critical thinking locally (collective ethics) by recognizing its context (social ethics). Drawing on the literature in One Health and sustainable development studies, this article describes how a communitarian and pragmatic approach can broaden the vision of feasibility studies to ease collaboration through public-private-academic partnerships. The result is a process that “reassembles” the One Health paradigm under the perspective of global bioethics to create bridges between the person and the ecosystem through pragmatic ethics. (shrink)

East Asia’s economy is leading the world into the new Asian century. While meritocratic practices in the educational and private sectors are often considered pivotal conditions for East Asia’s economic success, experts have pointed out that the path ahead requires new approaches to ensure social cohesion and stability, which depend on the quality of relations across social divides. These considerations raise multiple questions for philosophers: What forms of social meritocracy are necessary to sustain social cohesion? Moreover, how can the detrimental (...) effects of meritocratic practices be contained? Is it possible to utilise some of the intellectual resources indigenous to East Asia to generate innovative solutions? This paper argues that the answers to these questions lie in the indigenous Confucian conceptual resources. Confucian ideas can inspire a more desirable societal ideal for the future of East Asia. In particular, the Confucian emphasis on cultivating reciprocal harmonious human relationships and others’ morality can guide new approaches to fostering social cohesion. As Confucian personal cultivation through harmonious relations is a process of social cohesion, these ideas inspire a) a multiple approach to policymaking that is not only grounded in economic redistribution, b) a richer understanding of societal progress, and c) a democratic approach to fostering social cohesion. Unlike Confucian meritocrats and scholars who defend the Confucian roots of East Asian forms of political and social meritocracy, this paper proves that Confucian conceptual resources can help formulate a societal vision that strengthens cohesion and mitigates the adverse effects of meritocratic practices. (shrink)

This essay offers a Duboisian defense of democracy’s expressive and experimental values. It argues that the expressive value of democracy supports an ideal of inclusion, whereas the experimental value of democracy supports that of innovation. One appeals to the ideal of inclusion to extend to excluded groups codified constitutional protections and to condemn white hypocrisy. The ideal of innovation, in contrast, helps one reimagine what constitutional protections should be in the first place. Drawing on Du Bois’s writings, this (...) essay argues that the civic activities of black American counter-publics exhibited both experimental and expressive democratic values. In particular, it highlights the innovations of black women civic leaders who reimagined care work under a public conception of the common good. It concludes that counter-publics shape the asymmetric moral insight of its participants, namely, the oppressed. (shrink)

This essay from 1999, republished in Notre Dame Magazine online in July 2023, explores how the 1950s were a time of fundamental transformations in American society, a time when the United States went fully megatechnic. The hugely increased power of military, corporate-industrial and “big science” institutions developed during the 1950s signaled the transformation to megatechnic America, with atomic bombs and nuclear testing, automobiles and televisions as key symbols of that transformation. Figures such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller illustrated (...) the battle between national security dictates controlling nuclear bomb testing and responsible science. -/- Since the Second World War the United States has been problematically guided by a power-oriented culture, which, in the names of national security and convenience, has tended to reshape America toward an increasingly hierarchical model of society based on the system requirements of a machine. This same era gave birth to a generalized economic prosperity in the United States, to the civil rights movement, to feminism, literary and artistic innovations, and to other openings of public equality and freedom. Yet the magnification of bureaucratic-corporate structures in that postwar, cold war prosperity has ultimately tended to restructure America against the basic requirements of democratic community. (shrink)

Are we witnessing progress or regress in the recent increasing popularity and electoral success of populist politicians and parties in consolidated democratic nations? ... Is the innovative use of popular referendum in Great Britain to settle fundamental constitutional questions a progressive or regressive innovation? ... Similarly, is the increasing use of constituent assemblies to change constitutions across the world evidence of progress in democratic constitutionalism, or, a worryingly regressive change back toward unmediated popular majoritarianism? ... This paper (...) reflects on some of the perils and promise of framing such questions with the conceptual couplet of progress and regress. It considers four compelling critiques of the use of ‘progress’ and its cognates in sociopolitical theory, as well as arguing that such concepts are nevertheless ineliminable for our normative theories. The paper concludes by suggesting that we can avoid the most serious problems by employing only conceptions of political progress and regress that are piecemeal, pragmatic, and processual. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment, there have been advocates for the rationalizing efficiency of enlightened sovereigns, bureaucrats, and technocrats. Today these enthusiasms are joined by calls for replacing or augmenting government with algorithms and artificial intelligence, a process already substantially under way. Bureaucracies are in effect algorithms created by technocrats that systematize governance, and their automation simply removes bureaucrats and paper. The growth of algorithmic governance can already be seen in the automation of social services, regulatory oversight, policing, the justice system, and (...) the military. However, there have also always been justified democratic and economic criticisms of autocracy, bureaucracy, technocracy, and algorithmic governance. Bureaucrats, technocrats, and algorithms embody biases that tend to serve the interests of elites, and all require transparency and democratic accountability, oversight individual citizens are ill equipped to exercise. As state apparatuses are increasingly automated, mechanisms for collective action and democratic oversight also need to be automated. Algorithms and cyborg citizenry will enable a posthuman democracy. Democratically accountable algorithmic governance, enabled by artificial intelligence and human enhancement, can automate bottom-up citizen surveillance, inform debate, aggregate decision making, and ensure the efficient working of the gradually withering state. As paid work disappears and we transition to a postcapitalist economy with a universal basic income, market mechanisms can be replaced with democratic planning. Indeed, only algorithmic governance can secure our future against accelerating threats from technological innovation. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the (...) full set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

Recent political theory has attempted to unbundle demos and ethnos, and thus citizenship from national identity. There are two possible ways to meet this challenge: by taming the relationship between citizenship and the nation, for example, by defending a form of liberal multicultural nationalism, or by transcending it with a postnational, cosmopolitan conception of citizenship. Both strategies run up against the boundedness of democratic authority. In this paper, I argue that Shachar adresses this issue in an innovative way, but (...) remains ultimately trapped by it. My argument has two parts. In the first one, I look at the analogy between property and citizenship on which Shachar rely to justify the obligations of wealthy states towards the global poor. I suggest that it does not work well to explain the rarity of citizenship and that the idea of taxing its value at the global level, however intuitive in liberal theory on property, could yield unexpected and non-liberal consequences. Nevertheless I also assess its merits. In the second part, I suggest that Shachar’s claim that her argument generates a legal obligation toward the global poor is not binding. It could only be so with the kind of cosmopolitan political institutions that she eschews. Thus we return where we begin. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with contestation. (...) We illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen and those of green hydrogen. We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

Klaming and Vedder (2010) have argued that enhancement technologies that improve the epistemic efficiency of the legal system (“epistemic enhancements”) would benefit the common good. But there are two flaws to Klaming and Vedder’s argument. First, they rely on an under-theorised and under-specified conception of the common good. When theory and specification are supplied, their CGJ for enhancing eyewitness memory and recall becomes significantly less persuasive. And second, although aware of such problems, they fail to give due weight and consideration (...) to the tensions between the individual and common good. Taking these criticisms onboard, this article proposes an alternative, and stronger, CGJ for epistemic enhancements. The argument has two prongs. Drawing from the literature on social epistemology and democratic legitimacy, it is first argued that there are strong grounds for thinking that epistemic enhancements are a desirable way to improve the democratic legitimacy of the legal system. This gives prima facie but not decisive weight to the CGJ. It is then argued that due to the ongoing desire to improve the way in which scientific evidence is managed by the legal system, epistemic enhancement is not merely desirable but perhaps morally necessary. Although this may seem to sustain tensions between individual and common interests, I argue that in reality it reveals a deep constitutive harmony between the individual good and the common good, one that is both significant in its own right and one that should be exploited by proponents of enhancement. (shrink)

To demonstrate their appreciation for the inevitability of choice on the educational landscape, the authors acknowledge: the moral and legal right of parents to choose an education they think ‘best’ for their own child; the necessity of plural educational provision in a liberal democratic society; the legitimate concerns many parents have about the quality of education on offer; and even the (not occasional) success of copious educational alternatives, which may or may not foster innovation. So far so good. (...) But a number of difficulties quickly come into view. (shrink)

This work stresses the importance of AI accountability to citizens and explores how a fourth independent government branch/institutions could be endowed to ensure that algorithms in today´s democracies convene to the principles of Constitutions. The purpose of this fourth branch of government in modern democracies could be to enshrine accountability of artificial intelligence development, including software-enabled technologies, and the implementation of policies based on big data within a wider democratic regime context. The work draws on Philosophy of Science, Political (...) Theory (Ethics and Ideas), as well as concepts derived from the study of democracy (responsibility and accountability) to make a theoretical analysis of what artificial intelligence (AI) means for the governance of society and what are the limitations of such type of AI governance. The discussion shows that human ideas, as cement of societies, make it problematic to enshrine governance of artificial intelligence into the world of devices. In ethical grounds, the work stresses an existing trade off between greater and faster advancement of technology, or innovation on the one hand, and human well being on the oher, where the later is not automatically guaranteed by default. This trade off is yet unresolved. The work contends that features of AI offer an opportunity to revise government priorities from a multilevel perspective, from the local to the upper levels. artificial intelligence, accountability, democracy, regulation, philosophy of science, ethics, political theory . (shrink)

All societies have to balance privacy claims with other moral concerns. However, while some concern for privacy appears to be a common feature of social life, the definition, extent and moral justifications for privacy differ widely. Are there better and worse ways of conceptualising, justifying, and managing privacy? These are the questions that lie in the background of this thesis. -/- My particular concern is with the ethical issues around privacy that are tied to the rise of new information and (...) communication technologies (henceforth “ICT”). The focus here is on technologies involved in processing personal data in its broadest sense, including “any operation or set of operations which is performed on personal data or on sets of personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.” The issue of moral concern is commonly designated as that of 'data privacy'. -/- The first step is to consider why privacy matters, or ought to matter, in the first place. And here we run into our first difficulty, since both the conceptualisation of privacy and the justification for the right to privacy are matters for contention. On the one hand, we are animated by a moral concern for privacy in some sense; on the other, we lack the conceptual and moral resources for making sense of this concern or for promoting particular social policies and criticising others. This often-cited dichotomy and its ensuing confusion have been the central motivation for most of the philosophical literature on privacy – including this thesis. -/- In what follows, I will suggest a way out of the confusion that pervades the current debate on data privacy. I will essentially argue two claims: one, that the concept of (data) privacy is uniquely characterised by a particular context within which we exchange information; two, that because (data) privacy constitutes an intrinsic value, its moral concerns and justifications ought to be deliberated as such. -/- The first chapter sketches the current data privacy landscape by introducing a number of concepts and arguing the unique nature of the landscape. I argue that the traditional distinction between four kinds of privacy (physical, mental, decisional and informational) is no longer accurate, given the technological context that reduces, unifies and processes all aspects of people’s lives by means of digital data. In fact, to hold on to the distinction leads to a fundamental misconception of data privacy. I further argue that today’s distinction between data protection and data privacy runs the risk of ignoring the fact that the former is an inherent aspect of the latter. These arguments allow me to settle on a (provisional) definition of data privacy: controlling how data about identifiable people is processed by ICT. -/- Next, I draw a line between descriptive and normative accounts of data privacy, and explain why this book belongs to the latter category. After a brief discussion of the coherence and distinctiveness theses, and of the difference between instrumental and intrinsic theories of privacy, I introduce the problem of data privacy as a distinct, coherent, and intrinsic moral concern. Three arguments support this position: one, data privacy is a coherent moral concern because it is motivated by a singular moral concept; two, data privacy is a distinct moral concern because the privacy challenges we face today are of a fundamentally new nature – distinct from any moral concerns we’ve faced in the past; and three, data privacy is an intrinsic moral concern that is predominantly justified, not by what it instrumentally protects us from, but by what it intrinsically constitutes. -/- Chapter Two makes the case against a harm-based, consequentialist approach to data privacy. After a brief introduction to the basic tenets of consequentialism I discuss harm-based arguments in favour as well as against privacy. I explain how privacy may protect us against psychological distress, but at the same time constitute the source of that distress; how privacy may be necessary for the proper functioning of democratic societies, but at the same time provide a cloak for anti-social and immoral behaviour; and how privacy protects us against the improper use of our personal data by others, but at the same enables us to conceal information or spread false information about ourselves in ways that are harmful to others. Next, I argue that consequentialism essentially relies on two flawed presumptions – that we know what harm is, and that we know how to predict it – and discuss the controversies surrounding definitions and predictions of harm. This argument becomes especially pertinent in today’s rapidly changing technological context: we may guess, and make assumptions, perhaps even find correlations, but don’t really know or understand (yet) with any degree of certainty the harmful consequences today’s data privacy violations are causing or will eventually cause – if any. -/- I illustrate this with examples of recent data privacy violations, and with a brief overview of consequentialist arguments for and against data privacy. Those who invoke consequentialist arguments against data privacy claim that personal data is nothing more than a raw material that can be turned into something useful and valuable without harming anyone. Choosing to move fast and break things – a popular mantra that promotes the benefits of technological “permissionless innovation” over and above its risks and costs – they draw our attention to the many benefits free data flows generate. Those who rely on consequentialist arguments in favour of data privacy, on the other hand, insist on actual and potential misuse of personal data. Rather careful than sorry, they draw our attention to the urgent need to take back control and protect ourselves against data privacy violations – precisely because we don’t know which harm they may cause in the future. Others go one step further and argue that these violations are part of a broader ideology of power. -/- What Chapter Two demonstrates is that vague definitions, unreliable predictions and inconclusive allegations of harm from both sides of the debate perpetuate a stalemate that fails to produce morally defensible answers to our growing data privacy concerns. Deliberating about data privacy from a consequentialist perspective is a dead end. -/- Chapter Three proposes an alternative to the harm-based approach, namely that privacy is an intrinsic value that deserves moral protection for its own sake. After a brief account of what I take values to be, and why we have a need to protect them, I introduce the foundational value of respect for persons, and lay out my main argument in two steps. The conceptual component of my argument returns to the definition of data privacy I had temporarily settled on in Chapter One, but now with the added consideration of the particular context, and particular circumstances and attitudes, within which information is exchanged. This addition is crucial, as it reveals the fundamental value that is at stake in our data privacy concerns, namely the inherent value of each and every person, which we protect by upholding an ethical principle commonly known as the principle of respect for persons. It is for this reason that the violation of privacy cannot (only) be expressed in terms of harm. I further argue that the principle of respect for persons is consistent with, and in fact unthinkable without, some degree of privacy. -/- I reply to potential challenges to a value-based approach to data privacy by showing that (i) values and value trade-offs are fundamentally different from consequential benefits and cost-benefit analyses; (ii) the suspension of one value in favour of another is not inherently contradictory; what matters is morally defensible deliberation about values and valid individual consent; (iii) data privacy concerns cannot be reduced to other moral concerns and therefore deserve a specific, distinct protection. -/- Finally, because this is a thesis in applied ethics, I attempt an answer to the question as to how we ought to apply a value-based approach to practical data privacy concerns. I argue that a revised, three-pronged version of John Rawls’ reflective equilibrium, founded on the non-negotiable principle of respect for persons, is the best possible procedure to deliberate data privacy concerns in relation to other moral values. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce an innovative approach to the theoretical debate of the last two centuries on how to appropriately conceptualize modern democracy. The main argument that is being put forward by the analysis is that the common reliance on the assumption of pre-modern political philosophy, that democracy is a certain type of political regime or at least a form of rule, has become insufficient to cover the influence and scope of its modern meaning and practical (...) use. Political theory faces the risk of becoming misguided and prejudiced, if the problem of re-conceptualizing democracy is not taken seriously into account. The article tends to offer new insights on the ongoing democratic debate by focusing on one simple question: can modern democracy be understood in terms of a political regime or should it be viewed as a distinct entity? The field of study relevant to our analysis of democracy ranges from Enlightenment thinkers, such as J. J. Rousseau and Voltaire, to XIX–XX century political philosophers (like A. de Tocqueville and C. Schmitt) and some contemporary theorists, like P. Manent. The article starts with explanations, why it is important to look deeper into the conceptual difficulties of modern democracy and why political philosophy and its theories on political regimes are crucial for such a task. Parts 3–5 of the analysis tend to prove that the only way to appropriately understand modern democracy is to identify and question its basic assumptions: the sovereignty of the people and social equality. The final part of the article – part 6 – offers a critique of understanding modern democracy as a political regime. The critique identifies three main theoretical problems, inherent to the discussion on modern democracy, which make it difficult to avoid contradictions when applying the name “democratic” to various political regimes. The article concludes that: First, democracy is not a political regime in a pre-modern sense of the term, which is an assumption still widely taken for granted in political theory. Democracy should be seen as a universal principle of legitimization of power, which can be applied by various regimes. Second, political philosophy faces the danger of adopting an oversimplified understanding of democracy as merely an institutional form of rule (a view perpetuated by social sciences); as well as the danger of conceptualizing democracy as a substance-free and abstract ideal, applicable to all forms of government. Both of these concepts fail to acknowledge the scope of democracy and thus should not be seen as satisfactory. Third, theoretical discussions on democracy suffer from three conceptual shortcomings, which make it impossible to speak about democracy as a political regime. The three problems are: 1. a tendency to see democracy as an ideal concept with no need of practical grounding; 2. making democracy a formal concept with no need of references to its normative nor positive substance; 3. making democracy a pseudo-religious entity by imitating structural elements of Christian religion: faith in a universal nature of humans, an all-powerful sovereign (the people), messianic mission. Lastly, the article generalizes that political philosophy has an obligation to demystify the concept of democracy in order to re-emerge discussions about the substance of different political regimes. For this purpose the concept of loyalty should be taken into account. If we want to prove that a certain state corresponds to a certain political regime, we must try to understand why its subjects maintain loyalty to a specific form of rule. Only unprejudiced political philosophy is capable of such a task, that’s why it should avoid taking the concept of democracy for granted. (shrink)

The object of the study is to introduce an innovative approach to the long-lasting theoretical discussion about the meaning and extent of political liberty in a modern democratic society. The suggested way to explain why the democratic political order as such might give rise to considerable challenges for political liberty introduces the classical virtue of courage as a possible key explanatory factor underlying the major tensions that emerge between democracy and liberty. Such approach provides some new insights into (...) the debate about the origins, limits, and political perspectives of modern democracies. The analysis starts by conceptualizing modern democracy as a political form which expresses a specific ethical idea about the natural equality of people. Generally, it means that egalitarianism is the founding idea and moral purpose of a democratic political system, which tends to develop into a modern type of representative government and civil society. The second part of our analysis emphasizes the fact that liberty is by nature a political fact achieved only by practical participation of an individual in public life, and which cannot be reduced to formal, legal, economic or moral categories. Liberty, being a principle of public action, requires the capacity of a person to risk his personal wealth and safety for the sake of the common good. The third part of the analysis explains the crucial importance of the virtue of courage to the whole political life, as it is an ethical idea which aims at building such a character of a person that is capable and motivated to live an active public life. It is the virtue of courage that makes an individual morally fit and eager to practice liberty, as well as ready to defend it against any acts of despotism. Finally, the analysis assesses the diminishing role of courage due to the egalitarian public order of a democracy, resulting in adverse effects on liberty. The conclusions of the article highlight several points which are noted below. In a democratic society, courage loses its status as a virtue; thus, individuals become less capable and less motivated to live an active public life. Democracy rests on the principle that implies establishing and protecting the equality of its citizens, while the virtue of courage expresses an implicit distaste for egalitarianism and encourages people to strive for an ethically superior status than that of all the rest, i.e. it makes a clear hierarchical distinction between cowards, conformists, and heroes. That’s why democracy banishes courage from its equality favoring public life, depriving it of its ethical status. The decline of this virtue makes the practice of liberty more complicated as individuals lose interest in risking their private wealth and safety for the sake of the common good. The diminishing capacity and interest of citizens in democracy to live an active public life, while giving preference to social equality which requires no personal effort, is a major problem for political liberty. As people become indifferent to the pursuit of the common good, liberty becomes inactive, and the political community becomes less immune to various manifestations of despotism. (shrink)

In this study, press freedom in Nigeria is investigated, together with its recent developments and historical background. It looks at the state of press freedom, highlighting obstacles, worldwide forces that contribute to its restriction and the benefits it provides. Despite legislative restrictions, government control over Nigeria's media has persisted since the Newspaper Ordinance of 1903. The study places press freedom within several theoretical frameworks, such as authoritarian, libertarian, and democratic participant theories, using McQuail's theories of mass communication. Using Google (...) Forms and the River sampling method, the study obtained data from 60 Nigerian journalists with a 100% response rate. The study underscores the critical function of press freedom in democratic nations, calls for its protection, and emphasizes its ability to influence open government, the defense of human rights, and socioeconomic progress. (shrink)

This paper questions the use of new technologies as tools of modern surveillance in order to: (a) advance the research done by Michel Foucault on panoptic techniques of surveillance and dominance; and (b) give new insights on the way we use these new surveillance technologies in violation of democratic principles and legal norms. Furthermore, it questions Foucault’s statements on the expansion of Bentham’s Panopticon scheme as a universal model of modern-day democratic institutions. Therefore the purpose of this paper (...) is to (c) shed new light on the various ways the deployment of new technologies reinforces the Panopticon model, and (d) conduct an analysis of the effects produced by the emerging modes of surveillance that empower various new mechanisms of domination and control of individuals. This research paper seeks to (e) examine to what extent technology influences the course of our social, political and behavioral changes; and to propose devices for (f) evaluation and transformation of democratic institutions and practices that rely on the use of modern communication tools and technologies. Our cities have become a new kind of technologically driven Panopticon and this model has achieved perfection as increasingly fragmented, disseminated and ubiquitous device of power and dominance. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a roadmap to AI governance. In contrast to the reigning paradigms, we argue that AI governance should not be merely a reactive, punitive, status-quo-defending enterprise, but rather the expression of an expansive, proactive vision for technology—to advance human flourishing. Advancing human flourishing in turn requires democratic/political stability and economic empowerment. Our overarching point is that answering questions of how we should govern this emerging technology is a chance not merely to categorize and manage narrow (...) risk but also to construe the risks and opportunities much more broadly, and to make correspondingly large investments in public goods, personnel, and democracy itself. To lay out this vision, we take four steps. First, we define some central concepts in the field, disambiguating between forms of technological harms and risks. Second, we review normative frameworks governing emerging technology that are currently in use around the globe. Third, we outline an alternative normative framework based in power-sharing liberalism. Fourth, we walk through a series of governance tasks that ought to be accomplished by any policy framework guided by our model of power-sharing liberalism. We follow these with proposals for implementation vehicles. (shrink)

In this study, press freedom in Nigeria is investigated, together with its recent developments and historical background. It looks at the state of press freedom, highlighting obstacles, worldwide forces that contribute to its restriction and the benefits it provides. Despite legislative restrictions, government control over Nigeria's media has persisted since the Newspaper Ordinance of 1903. The study places press freedom within several theoretical frameworks, such as authoritarian, libertarian, and democratic participant theories, using McQuail's theories of mass communication. Using Google (...) Forms and the River sampling method, the study obtained data from 60 Nigerian journalists with a 100% response rate. The study underscores the critical function of press freedom in democratic nations, calls for its protection, and emphasizes its ability to influence open government, the defense of human rights, and socioeconomic progress. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker, moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the harm account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the qualified harm account, there is no (...) harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

Algorithms can now identify patterns and correlations in the (big) datasets, and predict outcomes based on those identified patterns and correlations with the use of machine learning techniques and big data, decisions can then be made by algorithms themselves in accordance with the predicted outcomes. Yet, algorithms can inherit questionable values from the datasets and acquire biases in the course of (machine) learning, and automated algorithmic decision-making makes it more difficult for people to see algorithms as biased. While researchers have (...) taken the problem of algorithmic bias seriously, but the current discussion on algorithmic fairness tends to conceptualize ‘fairness’ in algorithmic fairness primarily as a technical issue and attempts to implement pre-existing ideas of ‘fairness’ into algorithms. In this paper, I show that such a view of algorithmic fairness as technical issue is unsatisfactory for the type of problem algorithmic fairness presents. Since decisions on fairness measure and the related techniques for algorithms essentially involve choices between competing values, ‘fairness’ in algorithmic fairness should be conceptualized first and foremost as a political issue, and it should be (re)solved by democratic communication. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explicitly reconceptualize algorithmic fairness as a political question and suggest the current discussion of algorithmic fairness can be strengthened by adopting the accountability for reasonableness framework. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus among philosophers of science that core parts of the scientific process involve non-epistemic values. This undermines the traditional foundation for public trust in science. In this article I consider two proposals for justifying public trust in value-laden science. According to the first, scientists can promote trust by being transparent about their value choices. On the second, trust requires that the values of a scientist align with the values of an individual member of the public. I (...) argue that neither of these proposals work and suggest an alternative that does better. When scientists must appeal to values in the course of their research, they should appeal to democratic values: the values of the public or its representatives. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker (2013), moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the Harm Account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the Qualified Harm Account, there is (...) no harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective, or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

In this article, we critically reflect on the concept of biomimicry. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of biomimicry in the literature and its philosophical origin, we distinguish between a strong and a weaker concept of biomimicry. The strength of the strong concept of biomimicry is that nature is seen as a measure by which to judge the ethical rightness of our technological innovations, but its weakness is found in questionable presuppositions. These presuppositions are addressed by the (...) weaker concept of biomimicry, but at the price that it is no longer possible to distinguish between exploitative and ecological types of technological innovations. We compare both concepts of biomimicry by critically reflecting on four dimensions of the concept of biomimicry: mimesis, technology, nature, and ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to (...) exercise power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)

Although the concept of Responsible Innovation (RI) has been applied to different types of innovations, three common assumptions have remained the same. First, emerging technologies require assessment because of their radical novelty and unpredictability. Second, early assessment is necessary to impact the innovation trajectory. Third, anticipation of unknowns is needed to prepare for the unpredictable. I argue that these assumptions do not hold for liminal innovation practices in clinical settings, which are defined by continuous transition on both (...) sides of the threshold between experiment and implementation, and between research and care. First of all, technologies at the center of liminal innovation practices have different characteristics than those typically attributed to emerging technologies. Additionally, the innovation trajectory is significantly different allowing continuous assessment and shaping long after implementation. Finally, these differences demand a reorientation in RI approaches for these cases, away from anticipation of the unknown and uncertain, and returning to observation of the known and predictable. (shrink)

In this special issue we will investigate, from the perspective of agricultural ethics the potential to develop a Responsible Research and Innovation approach to agriculture, and the limitations to such an enterprise. RRI is an emerging field in the European research and innovation policy context that aims to balance economic, socio-cultural and environmental aspects in innovation processes. Because technological innovations can contribute significantly to the solution of societal challenges like climate change or food security, but can also (...) have negative societal consequences, it is assumed that social and ethical aspects should be considered during the R&I process. For this reason, the emerging concept of RRI calls for ethical reflection on the nature, scope and applicability of responsibility and innovation in innovation practices in general, and the way social–ethical issues can be applied and addressed in agriculture. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider the question of whether democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality with regard to political speech – including extremist political speech, such as hate speech. The starting point of my discussion is Jeremy Waldron’s negative answer to this question. He argues that it is permissible for liberal democracies to ban certain extremist viewpoints – such as vituperative hate speech – because such viewpoint-based restrictions protect the dignity of persons and a social and moral (...) environment of mutual respect. According to Waldron, well-drafted narrow hate speech bans are not democratically illegitimate, and they do not undermine systemic democratic legitimacy – that is, the legitimacy of a democratic political system. In contrast to Waldron, I will argue that democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality to respect persons as thinking agents. I will defend a civil libertarian doctrine of viewpoint neutrality, and this doctrine requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any political viewpoint or idea, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. It will be argued that any viewpoint-based restriction on public discourse is democratically illegitimate, and that such restrictions undermine systemic democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

A widely held picture in political science emphasizes the cognitive shortcomings of us citizens. We’re ignorant. We don’t know much about politics. We’re irrational. We bend the evidence to show our side in the best possible light. And we’re malleable. We let political elites determine our political opinions. This paper is about why these shortcomings matter to democratic values. Some think that democracy’s value consists entirely in its connection to equality. But the import of these shortcomings, I argue, cannot (...) be explained in purely egalitarian terms. To explain it, we must instead think of democracy’s value partly in terms of collective autonomy. Our ignorance and irrationality undermine the epistemic conditions for realizing this kind of autonomy. They stop us knowing the outcomes of our political choices. Our irrationality and malleability undermine the independence conditions for realizing such autonomy. They mean our political choices are subject to problematic kinds of interpersonal influence. Thus, at root, the import of the widely held picture is that, if accurate, it closes off this critical aspect of democracy’s value. (shrink)

In this article, we critically reflect on the concept of biomimicry. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of biomimicry in the literature and its philosophical origin, we distinguish between a strong and a weaker concept of biomimicry. The strength of the strong concept of biomimicry is that nature is seen as a measure by which to judge the ethical rightness of our technological innovations, but its weakness is found in questionable presuppositions. These presuppositions are addressed by the (...) weaker concept of biomimicry, but at the price that it is no longer possible to distinguish between exploitative and ecological types of technological innovations. We compare both concepts of biomimicry by critically reflecting on four dimensions of the concept of biomimicry: mimesis, technology, nature, and ethics. (shrink)