Download or read book Complex Democracy written by Volker Schneider and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a state-of-the art collection of original contributions on democracy, addressing three related themes: the complexity of modern democracies and their structural diversity; coping strategies of democracies in times of crises; and current and potential trajectories and transformations of democracy. The first part of the book maps the democratic landscape by revealing the diversity of democratic political systems, through either comparative analysis or case studies on the specific nature of political and administrative systems in interest intermediation and identity construction. The second part presents articles that investigate the response of democracies to times of crisis, with an emphasis on political economies and policy processes within the European Union. The third part offers studies on democracies that explore their adaptive potential in the context of globalization and in that of broader technical, institutional or cultural changes.
Download or read book Democracy and Complexity written by Danilo Zolo and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a highly original and provocative contribution to democratic theory. Zolo argues that the increasing complexity of modern societies represents a fundamental challenge to the basic assumptions of the Western democratic tradition and calls for a reformulation of some of the key questions of political theory. Zolo maintains that, as modern societies become more complex and more involved in the `information revolution', they are subjected to new and unprecedented forms of evolutionary stress - as manifested, for instance, in the growing autonomy and power of political parties, and in new kinds of political communication which create and sustain the fiction of consensus. These forms of stress have become so serious that they threaten to undermine some of the values traditionally associated with democracy, such as the rationality and autonomy of the individual, and the visibility and accountability of power.
Download or read book A Theory of Complex Democracy written by Daniel Innerarity and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2024-12-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do our political systems and democracies really reflect the complex reality of the 21st century? Or does politics seem to be legislating about yesterday's world? In his latest book, Daniel Innerarity warns of the gap between the political concepts that serve as our guide and our overly complex reality that has long ceased to respond to them. Arguing that this theoretical deficit leads to a political practice that simplifies and impoverishes our democracies, nourishing the demagogues and sustaining reassuring old narratives, Innerarity proposes a modern update of key political concepts, from power and sovereignty to territory and representation. The theory of democracy originates from a time of relative social and political simplicity. There was less pluralism, less interdependence, political entities were autarkic, and the technological tools they had to handle had nothing to do with the sophistication of our artificial intelligence, our financial system, or the technological advances in medicine. And yet, Innerarity argues, there is no need to despair. If democracy has made the transition from the polis to the nation-state, from direct democracy to representative democracy, there is no reason to suppose that it cannot face new challenges, as long as it is provided with an adequate political architecture. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including classical and contemporary theorists, A Theory of Complex Democracy presents a new theory of democracy and government for the 21st century, a theory that starts from the premise that the most promising rejuvenation of our democracies is to make them more complex.
Download or read book Democracy s Place written by Ian Shapiro and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our nation's most prolific and widely discussed political theorists, Ian Shapiro speaks with a distinctive voice. His work is Deweyan in its inspiration, cosmopolitan in its concerns, and practical in its referents. In this book, he provides his first extended statement on contemporary democratic politics.Democracy's Place includes seven essays in which Shapiro carefully integrates the theoretical and the applied. Four deal principally with democratic theory and its link to problems of social justice; the other three detail applications in the United States, the postcommunist world, and the author's native South Africa. All advance a view of democratic politics which rests on principled, yet nuanced, suspicion of hierarchical social arrangements and of political blueprints. Shapiro's writing is unified as well by a pervasive concern with the relations between the requirements of democracy and those of social justice. These themes, substantiated by complex yet accessible arguments, offer a constructive democratic perspective on contemporary debates about liberalism, communitarianism, and distributive justice.
Download or read book Democratic Theory written by James L. Hyland and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this philosophically sophisticated textbook analysis of democracy, J. L. Hyland explores in depth the concept which has come to reign supreme in the pantheon of political ideas. He examines systematically the major topics and problems of democratic theory: the nature of democracy, majoritarianism, democracy and individual freedom, power and the relationship between socioeconomic factors and political equality. In assessing the work of the major democratic theorists, whose accounts frequently conflict, the author seeks to answer the central questions surrounding the subject: What is democracy? What values does it provide? Can democracy fulfil its promise, or is it an unachievable goal to which we merely pay lip-service? Is democracy always justified? What are the counter-democratic features of modern society?
Download or read book Democratization written by Laurence Whitehead and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-07-04 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratization has swept the globe over the past generation, and analysts and policy makers have been struggling to keep up. Bookshelves have been filled with case studies and assessments of this kaleidoscope of experiences, and a related scholarly community has developed seeking to systematize all this material in accordance with well-defined schemas and causal models. But experience keeps wrong-footing the country analysts, so in this fresh interpretation the author goes back to foundational issues. He argues that democratization is best understood as a complex, long-term, dynamic, and open-ended process extending over generations. Standard models of causal explanation need to be supplemented by more interpretative approaches. Basic questions of citizen security, the nature of public accountability and the role of money as a source of political power need reconsideration. The delicate balance between monetary authority and democratic consent is also examined in the light of the financial crises that have afflicted so many new democracies. This book proposes a range of new perspectives on the complex linkages between democratization and state formation, on the logic of paired comparisons and comparisons between large regions of the world and on the relationship between democratic ideals and 'really existing' democratic outcomes. It aims to equip those caught up in democratization and democracy promotion with a more realistic understanding of the tensions and turbulence involved.
Download or read book The Quality of Democracy written by Guillermo O'Donnell and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996, Guillermo O’Donnell taught a seminar at the University of Notre Dame on democratic theory. One of the questions explored in this class was whether it is possible to define and determine the “quality” of democracy. Jorge Vargas Cullell, a student in this course, returned to his native country of Costa Rica, formed a small research team, and secured funding for undertaking a “citizen audit” of the quality of democracy in Costa Rica. This pathbreaking volume contains O’Donnell’s qualitative theoretical study of the quality of democracy and Vargas Cullell’s description and analysis of the empirical data he gathered on the quality of democracy in Costa Rica. It also includes twelve short, scholarly reflections on the O’Donnell and Cullell essays. The primary goal of this collection is to present the rationale and methodology for implementing a citizen audit of democracy. This book is an expression of a growing concern among policy experts and academics that the recent emergence of numerous democratic regimes, particularly in Latin America, cannot conceal the sobering fact that the efficacy and impact of these new governments vary widely. These variations, which range from acceptable to dismal, have serious consequences for the people of Latin America, many of whom have received few if any benefits from democratization. Attempts to gauge the quality of particular democracies are therefore not only fascinating intellectual exercises but may also be useful practical guides for improving both old and new democracies. This book will make important strides in addressing the increasing practical and academic concerns about the quality of democracy. It will be required reading for political scientists, policy analysts, and Latin Americanists.
Download or read book Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation written by Guido Pincione and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-24 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive and sustained critique of theories of deliberative democracy.
Download or read book Persuasion Power and Polity written by Gus DiZerega and published by Hampton Press (NJ). This book was released on 2000 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interpretation of classical sources of democratic theory describes routes to self-government. It meshes interpretations of Aristotle's political and ethical writings and the republican ideals of Jefferson and Madison with insights derived from modern sciences of complexity.
Download or read book Complexity and Public Policy written by Robert Geyer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a clear, concise and readable introduction to complexity thinking, its application to the social sciences and public policy, and the relevance of its tools to politics, health, the international realm, development, planning and terrorism.
Download or read book Evolution and Progress in Democracies written by Johann Götschl and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a ground-breaking series of articles, one of them written by a Nobel Laureate, this volume demonstrates the evolutionary dynamic and the transformation of today's democratic societies into scientific-democratic societies. It highlights the progress of modeling individual and societal evaluation by neo-Bayesian utility theory. It shows how social learning and collective opinion formation work, and how democracies cope with randomness caused by randomizers. Nonlinear `evolution equations' and serial stochastic matrices of evolutionary game theory allow us to optimally compute possible serial evolutionary solutions of societal conflicts. But in democracies progress can be defined as any positive, gradual, innovative and creative change of culturally used, transmitted and stored mentifacts (models, theories), sociofacts (customs, opinions), artifacts and technifacts, within and across generations. The most important changes are caused, besides randomness, by conflict solutions and their realizations by citizens who follow democratic laws. These laws correspond to the extended Pareto principle, a supreme, socioethical democratic rule. According to this principle, progress is any increase in the individual and collective welfare which is achieved during any evolutionary progress. Central to evolutionary modeling is the criterion of the empirical realization of computed solutions. Applied to serial conflict solutions (decisions), evolutionary trajectories are formed; they become the most influential causal attractors of the channeling of societal evolution. Democratic constitutions, legal systems etc., store all advantageous, present and past, adaptive, competitive, cooperative and collective solutions and their rules; they have been accepted by majority votes. Societal laws are codes of statutes (default or statistical rules), and they serve to optimally solve societal conflicts, in analogy to game theoretical models or to statistical decision theory. Such solutions become necessary when we face harmful or advantageous random events always lurking at the edge of societal and external chaos. The evolutionary theory of societal evolution in democracies presents a new type of stochastic theory; it is based on default rules and stresses realization. The rules represent the change of our democracies into information, science and technology-based societies; they will revolutionize social sciences, especially economics. Their methods have already found their way into neural brain physiology and research into intelligence. In this book, neural activity and the creativity of human thinking are no longer regarded as linear-deductive. Only evolutive nonlinear thinking can include multiple causal choices by many individuals and the risks of internal and external randomness; this serves the increasing welfare of all individuals and society as a whole. Evolution and Progress in Democracies is relevant for social scientists, economists, evolution theorists, statisticians, philosophers, philosophers of science, and interdisciplinary researchers.
Download or read book Democracy and the History of Political Thought written by Patrick N. Cain and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each author addresses a single thinker’s reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes. Together, these essays explore the tensions within the democratic way of life that arise from an attachment to equality, liberty, citizenship, law, and the divine. Above all, this work aims at recovering a more complex understanding of democracy, connecting the perennial questions of political philosophy to the perplexities and crises of modern democracy.
Download or read book Does Truth Matter written by Ronald Tinnevelt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-11-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The claim once made by philosophers of unique knowledge of the essence of humanity and society has fallen into disrepute. Neither Platonic forms, divine revelation nor metaphysical truth can serve as the ground for legitimating social and political norms. On the political level many seem to agree that democracy doesn’t need foundations. Nor are its citizens expected to discuss the worth of their comprehensive conceptions of the good life. According to Rawls, for example, we have to accept that “politics in a democratic society can never be guided by what we see as the whole truth (...)”. (1993: 243) And yet we still call upon truth when we participate in defining the basic structure our society and argue why our opinions, beliefs and preferences need to be taken seriously. We do not think that our views need to be taken into account by others because they are our views, but because we think they are true. If in a democratic society citizens have to deal with the challenge of affirming their claims as true, we need to analyse the precise relationship between truth and democracy. Does truth matter to democracy and if so, what is the place of truth in democratic politics? How can citizens affirm the truth of their claims and accept - at the same time - that their truth is just one amongst many? Our book centers on the role of the public sphere in these pressing questions. It tries to give a comprehensive answer to these questions from the perspective of the main approaches of contemporary democratic theory: deliberative democracy, political pragmatism and liberalism. A confrontation of these approaches, will result in a more encompassing philosophical understanding of our plural democracy, which – in this era of globalization – is more complex than ever before. Because a good understanding of the function, meaning and shortcomings of the public sphere is essential to answering these questions, a good deal of the book addresses these issues. Historically, after all, the idea that citizens have to engage each other in discussion in order to determine the structure and goals of society, is connected to the rational ideal of a public sphere where conflicting views can be expressed, formed, and transformed. But hasn’t the collective decision making in which everyone participates on an equal footing turned out to be a deceptive ideal or a simple illusion? Not every individual in society has equal access to the podium. Furthermore, power, being an inevitable feature of the public sphere, seems to permanently endanger its democratic value. Moreover, the existence of this sphere depends on a specific ethos and particular public spaces where citizens are called upon to present themselves as citizens, as people taking responsibility for their society. It is not clear whether this ethos and these spaces exist at all, and if so, if they preserved their ascribed capacity for constituting ‘democratic’ truth? By answering these questions we expect to deepen our understanding of the relation between truth and democracy.
Download or read book Between Theory and Practice Essays on Criticism and Crises of Democracy written by Eerik Lagerspetz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible, in the complex modern world, to have a government ‘by the people’? Does, for example, digital technology help us to bring the reality closer to the ideal? Or does it actually make the ideal unattainable? The volume brings together conceptual historians, philosophers, political theorists and sociologists to discuss the criticisms and crises of democracy with fresh approaches to the idea of democracy, democratic theory, democratic institutions, trust and distrust, populism, and advancement of technologies in Western societies.
Download or read book Political Equality written by Charles R. Beitz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised edition of his 1979 classic Political Theory and International Relations, Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies.
Download or read book Between Facts and Norms written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Habermas's long awaited work on law, democracy and the modern constitutional state in which he develops his own account of the nature of law and democracy.
Download or read book Economic and Political Democracy in Complex Times written by Andrés Solimano and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-29 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of economic democracy is traditionally identi?ed with workplace democracy and participation at the enterprise level. This is a very important dimension, but the concept of new economic democracy also recognizes that, in a world of increasing complexity, the principles of democratic deliberation and social participation have to be applied to other areas as well. This book takes a fresh look at economic democracy from various perspectives. It provides rich historical narratives of episodes of social participation in the economy and society, more broadly, from the 19th to the 21st century. It dissects the various analytical underpinnings informing the theory of economic democracy connecting it with collective choice, social contract theory, Marxian analysis and libertarian critiques. The book identi?es new areas of application of the principles of democratic deliberation and oversight such as the adoption of austerity policies, the signing of free trade agreements, the conduct of central bank policies, international investment treaties and natural resource management. It takes a guided tour through the evolution of economic, social and cultural rights and their impact on the design and implementation of social policy and the welfare/ developmental state. The book expands the notion of economic democracy from factory level to the macro-economy and then to global economic governance. It also discusses the critical links between political democracy and economic democracy and the need for a more democratic and socially equitable economy in the 21st century. This volume will ?nd an audience among economists, political scientists, social activists, philosophers and sociologists.