Download or read book Discourse and Democracy written by Michael Farrelly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new study, Farrelly gives a critical examination of democracy as it is conceived and practiced in contemporary advanced liberal nations. The received wisdom on democracy is probelmatized through a close analysis of discourse in combination with critical theories of democracy and of the State. The central theme of the book is the paradox of pervasive reference to democracy as a legitimation of political action by liberal governments versus the converse weakening of actual democratic practice within the liberal world. Farrelly builds on the work of Fairclough and others to examine this paradox, developing a new critical concept of "democratism" as an ideology that undermines the possibility of a more genuine democracy through political actors who oversimplify the idea of democracy. The book includes critical analyses of key political texts taken from presidential and prime ministerial speeches from the US and UK that attach democracy to non-democratic practices.
Download or read book Digital Democracy written by Barry N. Hague and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-06-27 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers how technological developments might combine with underlying social, economic and political issues to produce new vehicles for democratic practice.
Download or read book Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship written by Sam Popowich and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking a broadly Marxist approach, Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship traces the connections between library history and the larger history of capitalist development.
Download or read book Discourse and Democracy written by Rene von Schomberg and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2002-10-10 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines issues in legal and democratic theory found in the work of Jürgen Habermas.
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 Democracy in Contemporary Egyptian Political Discourse written by Michele Durocher Dunne and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When politicians and pundits in the Middle East discuss democracy, do they mean it? Looking at public discourse about democracy in contemporary Egypt, Dunne proposes a fresh way of reading Arabic political discourse. She charts a method combining ethnographic research into communities of people producing political discourse with investigation of the texts themselves, using tools from anthropology, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics — a method with broad applicability to political discourse generally. Taking off from the premise that all discourse is based in social interaction, this book demonstrates that looking at the ways individuals and groups use public discourse to perform critical social and political functions yields entirely new perspectives on the significance of the discourse. Democracy in Contemporary Egyptian Political Discourse is a valuable resource for students of linguistics, political science, democracy studies, Arabic language, and Middle East area studies.
Download or read book The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of Democracy in Russian Political Discourse Vol I written by David Cratis Williams and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this book examine the arguments and rhetoric used by the United States and the USSR following two catastrophes that impacted both countries, as blame is cast and consequences are debated. In this environment, it was perhaps inevitable that conspiracy theories would arise, especially about the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan. Those theories are examined, resulting in at least one method for addressing conspiracy arguments. In the case of Chernobyl, the disaster ruptured the “social compact” between the Soviet government and the people; efforts to overcome the resulting disillusionment quickly became the focus of state efforts.
Download or read book Human Rights and Democracy written by Eva Erman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the relationship between human rights and democracy within both the theoretical and empirical field. It is a book within the tradition of deliberative democracy, although it focuses on global institutions and human rights rather than nation-state or federalist democracy. Eva Erman problematizes the absence of political rights in the global human rights discourse from a deliberative standpoint. Starting out from and at the same time criticizing Habermas' discourse theory of law and democracy, she makes a significant contribution to a discourse theory of human rights and applies it to a global rights institution, the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights. This is an innovative study that offers tools for democratizing existing global political institutions, and is therefore suitable for philosophers, political theorists, scholars of human rights and those interested in democracy.
Download or read book Connecting Democracy written by Stephen Coleman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global explosion of online activity is steadily transforming the relationship between government and the public. The first wave of change, e-government, enlisted the Internet to improve management and the delivery of services. More recently, e-democracy has aimed to enhance democracy itself using digital information and communication technology. One notable example of e-democratic practice is the government-sponsored (or government-authorized) online forum for public input on policymaking. This book investigates these online consultations and their effect on democratic practice in the United States and Europe, examining the potential of Internet-enabled policy forums to enrich democratic citizenship. The book first situates the online consultation phenomenon in a conceptual framework that takes into account the contemporary media environment and the flow of political communication; then offers a multifaceted look at the experience of online consultation participants in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; and finally explores the legal architecture of U.S. and E. U. online consultation. As the contributors make clear, online consultations are not simply dialogues between citizens and government but constitute networked communications involving citizens, government, technicians, civil society organizations, and the media. The topics examined are especially relevant today, in light of the Obama administration's innovations in online citizen involvement.
Download or read book Reasonable Democracy written by Simone Chambers and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reasonable Democracy, Simone Chambers describes, explains, and defends a discursive politics inspired by the work of Jürgen Habermas. In addition to comparing Habermas's ideas with other non-Kantian liberal theories in clear and accessible prose, Chambers develops her own views regarding the role of discourse and its importance within liberal democracies.Beginning with a deceptively simple question—"Why is talking better than fighting?"—Chambers explains how the idea of talking provides a rich and compelling view of morality, rationality, and political stability. She considers talking as a way for people to respect each other as moral agents, as a way to reach reasonable and legitimate solutions to disputes, and as a way to reproduce and strengthen shared understandings. In the course of this argument, she defends modern universalist ethics, communicative rationality, and what she calls a "discursive political culture," a concept that locates the political power of discourse and deliberation not so much in institutions of democratic decision-making as in the type of conversations that go on around these institutions. While discourse and deliberation cannot replace voting, bargaining, or compromise, Chambers argues, it is important to maintain a background moral conversation in which to anchor other activities.As an extended case study, Chambers examines the conversation about language rights that has been taking place for more than twenty years in Quebec. A culture of dialogue, she shows, has proved a positive and powerful force in resolving some of the disagreements between the two linguistic communities there.
Download or read book Discourse Before Democracy written by Richard D. Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Between Facts and Norms written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 636 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 Public Discourse in America written by Judith Rodin and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished group of scholars and prominent figures here offers thoughtful new perspectives on the tenor and conduct of public life in contemporary America. Originating in a shared concern that our civic culture was becoming coarser and more polarized, Public Discourse in America provides a critical corrective to this widespread misperception about declining civility in public culture and the ways we as citizens negotiate our differences. Together these essays explore the current condition and centrality of public discourse in our democracy, investigating how it has changed through our history and whether it fails to approach our widely held, but often unarticulated, ideal of "reasoned and reasonable" public deliberation. Contributors consider whether rationality is really the best standard for public discussion and argument, and isolate the features and principles that would characterize a truly exemplary, more productive public discourse at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They investigate why public conversations work when they work well, and why they often fail when we need them the most, as in our nation's so often aborted "national conversation" on race. Taking a comprehensive look at institutional and leadership practices in recent public debates over a variety of "hot button" public policy issues, Public Discourse in America outlines how such conversations can be used to reintegrate our fragmented communities and bridge barriers of difference and hostility among communities and individuals. These essays speak to urgent and perennial questions about the nature of American society, the responsibilities of leaders, the rules of democracy, and the role of public culture in times of crisis, conflict, and rapid change. Public Discourse in America originated in the work of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture, and Community, convened in 1996 by Judith Rodin, President of the University of Pennsylvania. Distinguished members of the Commission, leading experts, commissioned researchers, and leaders in America's nascent public discourse movement offer unexpected insights and an optimistic vision of the health of our politics and culture. Readers—of all political persuasions—from the halls of political power to the streets of urban neighborhoods, from newsrooms and studios to think tanks and universities, will find these essays opening up new paths to robust public discussion, more engaged citizenship, and stronger communities. Contributors include: Joyce Appleby, Thomas Bender, Derek Bok, Alex Boraine, Graham G. Dodds, Christopher Edley, Jr., Drew Gilpin Faust, Neal Gabler, Richard Lapchick, Don M. Randel, Richard Rodriguez, Jay Rosen, David M. Ryfe, Michael Schudson, Neil Smelser, and Robert H. Wiebe.
Download or read book Democracy and the Discourse on Relevance Within the Academic Profession at Makerere University written by Kronstad Felde and published by African Minds. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and the Discourse on Relevance Within the Academic Profession at Makerere University is set against the backdrop of the spread of neoliberal ideas and reforms since the 1980s. While accepting that these ideas are rooted in a longer history, the authors reveal how neoliberalism has transformed the university sector and the academic profession. In particular, they focus on how understandings of what knowledge is relevant, and how this is decided, have changed. Taken as a whole, reforms have sought to reorient universities and academics towards economic development in various ways. Shifts in how institutions and academics achieve recognition and status, combined with the flow of public funds away from the universities and the increasing privatisation of educational services, are steadily downgrading the value of public higher education. As research universities adopt user- and market-oriented operating models, and prioritise the demands of the corporate sector in their research agendas, the sale of intellectual property is increasingly becoming a primary criterion for determining the relevance of academic knowledge. All these changes have largely succeeded in transforming the discourse around the role of the academic profession in society. In this context, Makerere University in Uganda has been lauded as having successfully achieved transformation. However, far from highlighting the allegedly positive outcomes of this reform, this book provides worrying insights into the dissolution of Uganda's academic culture. Drawing on interviews with over ninety academics at Makerere University, from deans to doctoral students, the authors provide first-hand accounts of the pressures and problems the reforms have created. Disempowered, overworked and under-resourced, many academics are forced to take on consultancy work to make ends meet. The evidence presented here stands in stark in contrast to the successes claimed by the university. However, as the authors also show, local resistance to the neoliberal model is rising, as academics begin to collaborate to regain control over what knowledge is considered relevant, and wrestle with deepening democracy. The authors' careful exposé of how neoliberalism devalues academic knowledge, and the urgency of countering this trend, makes Democracy and the Discourse on Relevance Within the Academic Profession at Makerere University highly relevant for anyone working in higher education or involved in shaping policy for this sector.
Download or read book Shaping Abortion Discourse written by Myra Marx Ferree and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-19 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compares the political process and role of the media using controversy over abortion.
Download or read book Habermas written by Hugh Baxter and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though many legal theorists are familiar with Jürgen Habermas's work addressing core legal concerns, they are not necessarily familiar with his earlier writings in philosophy and social theory. Because Habermas's later work on law invokes, without significant explanation, the whole battery of concepts developed in earlier phases of his career, even otherwise sympathetically inclined legal theorists face significant obstacles in evaluating his insights. A similar difficulty faces those outside the legal academy who are familiar with Habermas's earlier work. While they readily comprehend Habermas's basic social-theoretical concepts, without special legal training they have difficulty reliably assessing his recent engagement with contemporary legal thought. This new work bridges the gap between legal experts and those without special legal training, critically assessing the attempt of an unquestionably preeminent philosopher and social theorist to engage the world of law.
Download or read book Imagining the American Polity written by John G. Gunnell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have long prided themselves on living in a country that serves as a beacon of democracy to the world, but from the time of the founding they have also engaged in debates over what the criteria for democracy are as they seek to validate their faith in the United States as a democratic regime. In this book John Gunnell shows how the academic discipline of political science has contributed in a major way to this ongoing dialogue, thereby playing a significant role in political education and the formulation of popular conceptions of American democracy. Using the distinctive “internalist” approach he has developed for writing intellectual history, Gunnell traces the dynamics of conceptual change and continuity as American political science evolved from a focus in the nineteenth century on the idea of the state, through the emergence of a pluralist theory of democracy in the 1920s and its transfiguration into liberalism in the mid-1930s, up to the rearticulation of pluralist theory in the 1950s and its resurgence, yet again, in the 1990s. Along the way he explores how political scientists have grappled with a fundamental question about popular sovereignty: Does democracy require a people and a national democratic community, or can the requisites of democracy be achieved through fortuitous social configurations coupled with the design of certain institutional mechanisms?
