Download or read book Individual Liberty and Democratic Decision making written by Peter Koslowski and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 1987 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Democratic Reason written by Hélène Landemore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases. Collective decision making, on the other hand, can be surprisingly accurate. In Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that the very factors behind the superiority of collective decision making add up to a strong case for democracy. She shows that the processes and procedures of democratic decision making form a cognitive system that ensures that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Democracy as a form of government is therefore valuable not only because it is legitimate and just, but also because it is smart. Landemore considers how the argument plays out with respect to two main mechanisms of democratic politics: inclusive deliberation and majority rule. In deliberative settings, the truth-tracking properties of deliberation are enhanced more by inclusiveness than by individual competence. Landemore explores this idea in the contexts of representative democracy and the selection of representatives. She also discusses several models for the "wisdom of crowds" channeled by majority rule, examining the trade-offs between inclusiveness and individual competence in voting. When inclusive deliberation and majority rule are combined, they beat less inclusive methods, in which one person or a small group decide. Democratic Reason thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good.
Download or read book Democratic Decision making written by David Lewis Schaefer and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic Decision-Making: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives contains eight essays by political scientists addressing various aspects of the democratic decision-making process. The book is divided into four parts: democratic statesmanship, the extent to which limitations of the democratic principle of majority rule are desirable, the contemporary doctrine of "deliberative democracy," and informal modes of democratic decision-making. Under these four headings, the contributors discuss a wide variety of issues, including the practice of "political opportunism" by such statesmen as Hamilton and Madison; the historical development of legal restraints on democracy in America ranging from judicial review (during the colonial period) to the filibuster; the operation of classical Athenian democracy, the defects of which may have been exaggerated by the American Founders; the significance of the reflections of Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt for the development of the American party system; the relation of deliberative-democracy theory to the thought of Rousseau; and the means by which cooperative land-use agreements have been arrived at in California, eliciting the voluntary consent of the affected parties instead of relying on judicial or bureaucratic dictates. The book is well-suited for use in courses on American political thought, democratic theory, American political development, and related subjects.
Download or read book Reconceiving Decision Making in Democratic Politics written by Bryan D. Jones and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are there often sudden abrupt changes in public opinion on political issues? Or total reversals in congressional support for specific legislation? Jones aims to answer these questions by connecting insights from cognitive science and rational-choice theory to political life.
Download or read book Liberty in Peril written by Randall G. Holcombe and published by Independent Institute. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the United States was born in the revolutionary acts of 1776, Americans viewed the role of government as the protector of their individual rights. Thus, the fundamental principle underlying the new American government was liberty. Over time, the ideology of political "democracy"—the idea that the role of government is to carry out the "will of the people," as revealed through majority rule—has displaced the ethics of liberty. This displacement has eroded individual rights systematically and that history is examined in Liberty in Peril by Randall Holcombe in language accessible to anyone. The Founders intended to design a government that would preclude tyranny and protect those individual rights, and the Bill of Rights was a clear statement of those rights. They well understood that the most serious threat to human rights and liberty is government. So, the Constitution clearly outlined a limited scope for government and set forth a form of governance that would preserve individual rights. The federal government's activities during two world wars and the Great Depression greatly increased government's involvement in people's lives. By the time of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," the depletion of rights and the growth of the activities of political democracy was complete. By the end of the 20th Century the fundamental principle underlying the U.S. government was now political power and not liberty. Public policy was oriented toward fulfilling the majority rule with the subsequent increase in government power and scope. Holcombe argues that economic and political systems are not separate entities but are intimately intertwined. The result is a set of tensions between democracy, liberty, a market economy, and the institutions of a free society. All those interested in the evolution of American government, including historians, political scientists, economists, and legal experts, will find this book compelling and informative.
Download or read book The Democratic Legacy Basis for Freedom written by Virginia. Division of Secondary Education. History, Government, and Geography Service and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Freedom in the World 2018 written by Freedom House and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 1265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.
Download or read book Active Liberty written by Stephen Breyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new approach to the Constitution and courts of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.For Justice Breyer, the Constitution’s primary role is to preserve and encourage what he calls “active liberty”: citizen participation in shaping government and its laws. As this book argues, promoting active liberty requires judicial modesty and deference to Congress; it also means recognizing the changing needs and demands of the populace. Indeed, the Constitution’s lasting brilliance is that its principles may be adapted to cope with unanticipated situations, and Breyer makes a powerful case against treating it as a static guide intended for a world that is dead and gone. Using contemporary examples from federalism to privacy to affirmative action, this is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the role and power of our courts.
Download or read book Ideas That Matter written by Debra Satz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume take off from themes in the work of eminent philosopher and political scientist Joshua Cohen. Cohen is a deeply influential thinker who has written on deliberative democracy, freedom of expression, Rawlsian theory, global justice, and human rights. The essays gathered here both engage with Cohen's work and expand upon it, embodying his commitment to the idea that analytical work by philosophers and social scientists matters to our shared public life and to democracy itself. The contributors offer novel perspectives on pressing issues of public policy from accountability for sexual violence to exploitation in international trade. The volume is organized around three central ideas. The first concerns democracy, specifically how we can improve collective decision-making both by elucidating our normative principles and enacting institutional changes. The second idea centers on how we confront injustice, investigating the role of emotions, social norms, and culture in democratic politics and public discussion. The final section explores how we develop political principles and values in an interdependent world, one in which theories of justice and forms of cooperation are increasingly extending beyond the state. The principle uniting this collection is that ideas matter-they can guide us in understanding how to confront difficult global problems such as the fragility of democratic institutions, the place of sovereignty in a globalizing world, and the persistence of racial injustice.
Download or read book The Calculus of Consent written by James M. Buchanan and published by Liberty Fund. This book was released on 2004 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Calculus of Consent, the second volume of Liberty Fund's The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, is a reprint edition of the ground-breaking economic classic written by two of the world's preeminent economists--Gordon Tullock and Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan. This book is a unique blend of economics and political science that helped create significant new subfields in each discipline respectively, namely, the public choice school and constitutional political economy. Charles K. Rowley, Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University, points out in his introduction, "The Calculus of Consent is, by a wide margin, the most widely cited publication of each coauthor and, by general agreement, their most important scientific contribution." The Calculus of Consent is divided into four parts, each consisting of several chapters. The introduction by Professor Rowley provides a short overview of the book and identifies key insights that permeated the bounds of economics and political science and created an enduring nexus between the two sciences. Part I of The Calculus of Consent establishes the conceptual framework of the book's subject; part II defines the realm of social choice; part III applies the logic developed in part II to describe a range of decision-making rules, most notably, the rule of simple majority; and part IV explores the economics and ethics of democracy. Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990. James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty of the twentieth century. He is also Professor Emeritus at George Mason and Virginia Tech Universities. Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.
Download or read book The Democratic Constitution written by Neal Devins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constitutional law is clearly shaped by judicial actors. But who else contributes? Scholars in the past have recognized that the legislative branch plays a significant role in determining structural issues, such as separation of powers and federalism, but stopped there--claiming that only courts had the independence and expertise to safeguard individual and minority rights. In this readable and engaging narrative, the authors identify the nuts and bolts of the national dialogue and relate succinct examples of how elected officials and the general public often dominate the Supreme Court in defining the Constitution's meaning. Making use of case studies on race, privacy, federalism, war powers, speech, and religion, Devins and Fisher demonstrate how elected officials uphold individual rights in such areas as religious liberty and free speech as well as, and often better than, the courts. This fascinating debunking of judicial supremacy argues that nonjudicial contributions to constitutional interpretation make the Constitution more stable, more consistent with constitutional principles, and more protective of individual and minority rights.
Download or read book Freedom written by Annelien De Dijn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invention of modern freedom—the equating of liberty with restraints on state power—was not the natural outcome of such secular Western trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the Atlantic Revolutions. We tend to think of freedom as something that is best protected by carefully circumscribing the boundaries of legitimate state activity. But who came up with this understanding of freedom, and for what purposes? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of thinking about freedom in the West, Annelien de Dijn argues that we owe our view of freedom not to the liberty lovers of the Age of Revolution but to the enemies of democracy. The conception of freedom most prevalent today—that it depends on the limitation of state power—is a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking about liberty. For centuries people in the West identified freedom not with being left alone by the state but with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. They had what might best be described as a democratic conception of liberty. Understanding the long history of freedom underscores how recently it has come to be identified with limited government. It also reveals something crucial about the genealogy of current ways of thinking about freedom. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who created our modern democracies—it was invented by their critics and opponents. Rather than following in the path of the American founders, today’s “big government” antagonists more closely resemble the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.
Download or read book Freedom of Speech Volume 21 Part 2 written by Ellen Frankel Paul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-05 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether free speech is defended as a fundamental right that inheres in each individual, or as a guarantee that all of society's members will have a voice in democratic decision-making, the central role of expressive freedom in liberating the human spirit is undeniable. Freedom of expression will, as the essays in this volume illuminate, encounter new and continuing controversies in the twenty-first century. Advances in digital technology raise pressing questions regarding freedom of speech and, with it, intellectual property and privacy rights. Campaign finance reform limits the formerly sacrosanct category of 'political speech'. Expressive liberties may face their greatest challenge from government efforts to thwart terrorism. The twelve legal scholars and philosophers whose work appears in this volume examine the history of free speech doctrine, its relevance to other social and personal values, and the radical critiques it has withstood in recent years.
Download or read book Democracy written by Inter-parliamentary Union and published by Inter-Parliamentary Union. This book was released on 1998 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Principles to realization - Cherif Bassiouni
Download or read book Our Republican Constitution written by Randy E. Barnett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise history of the long struggle between two fundamentally opposing constitutional traditions, from one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars—a manifesto for renewing our constitutional republic. The Constitution of the United States begins with the words: “We the People.” But from the earliest days of the American republic, there have been two competing notions of “the People,” which lead to two very different visions of the Constitution. Those who view “We the People” collectively think popular sovereignty resides in the people as a group, which leads them to favor a “democratic” constitution that allows the “will of the people” to be expressed by majority rule. In contrast, those who think popular sovereignty resides in the people as individuals contend that a “republican” constitution is needed to secure the pre-existing inalienable rights of “We the People,” each and every one, against abuses by the majority. In Our Republican Constitution, renowned legal scholar Randy E. Barnett tells the fascinating story of how this debate arose shortly after the Revolution, leading to the adoption of a new and innovative “republican” constitution; and how the struggle over slavery led to its completion by a newly formed Republican Party. Yet soon thereafter, progressive academics and activists urged the courts to remake our Republican Constitution into a democratic one by ignoring key passes of its text. Eventually, the courts complied. Drawing from his deep knowledge of constitutional law and history, as well as his experience litigating on behalf of medical marijuana and against Obamacare, Barnett explains why “We the People” would greatly benefit from the renewal of our Republican Constitution, and how this can be accomplished in the courts and the political arena.
Download or read book Empathy and Democracy written by Michael E. Morrell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empathy and Democracy argues that empathy plays a crucial role in enabling democratic deliberation to function the way it should.
Download or read book Liberty and Democracy in the Metropolis written by John Alfred Young and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2018, 55% of the world's 7.5 billion people lived in cities. By 2050, The United Nations projects an urban population of 6.8 billion people, out of a total of 9.8 billion. These large agglomerations of people require systems of territoriality that determine which people have access to which areas and who is excluded, along with what people are permitted to do in the areas to which they do have access. However, territoriality is coercive. Private property law and public space regulations are legislated and enforced through the exercise of state authority. Trespassing on private property and violations of public space laws are punishable with fines and confinement. According to the liberal-democratic tradition, liberty is of the utmost importance and to respect freedom, coercion be justified to whoever is coerced. Thus, the central question of my dissertation is: What conditions must a territorial system meet in order to be justifiable to those who are subject to that system? A liberal-democratic state purports to justify coercive authority two ways: First, decisions are made democratically, by the people. The free and equal participation of all citizens in collective decision-making helps justify the results of those decisions to those who are bound by them. Second, lawmaking is constrained by the liberty of the individual. Coercive laws that are important for ensuring the liberty of citizens are justifiable because the ideal of liberty creates the necessity of justification in the first place. Corresponding to the division between collective self-determination and respect for the freedom of the individual, this dissertation is divided into two parts. Part one develops a spatial theory of freedom—to understand how territorial systems help secure human freedom and to understand when the limits that territorial systems place on human movement and activity are compatible with freedom. Part two investigates how local and metropolitan governments can facilitate free and equal citizen participation in the government of the territorial systems to which citizens are subject. Chapter One develops the principle of sufficient spatial discretion, which sets a minimum threshold for how people ought to be able to use space. I assume that people have a variety of goals or purposes, and that people are frequently in the position of not having quite everything they need to fulfill them, in the way of space, materials, and relationships. To be free, people must realistically be able to alter and enlarge their means, in order to pursue their purposes. Sufficient spatial discretion requires that people can use areas in their spatial network—which includes all the areas to which a person has easy access on a day-to-day basis—to develop social relations according to prevailing social norms, work in ways compatible with their aptitudes and market realities, learn and practice skills related to their purposes, safely store materials acquired through work and exchange, and care for their bodily needs and hygiene. Additionally, sufficient spatial discretion requires that people be able to alter their spatial network either by relocating to a spatial network more suitable to their purposes or by purchasing property that can then be modified to suit their purposes. Sufficient spatial discretion does not guarantee that anyone will succeed at any particular purpose, but instead requires that people be able to try without being blocked by territoriality from enlarging their means or altering their spatial network. Although sufficient spatial discretion helps to justify rights of private property, sufficient spatial discretion also justifies a variety of qualifications to property rights. However, some views of private property in the liberal tradition are resistant to qualifications of property rights, such as historical entitlement theory. If historical entitlement theory is the correct view of property, then any qualifications to property rights used to ensure sufficient spatial discretion, such as zoning, tenancy, and anti-discrimination laws, or eminent domain to provide new public spaces, may be blocked by property rights claims. My argument in Chapter Two thus proceeds by examining whether the main objection to historical entitlement theory, called the unilateral duty-creation objection, is successful. According to the objection, when someone appropriates unowned land, that person impermissibly imposes duties on other people to respect the new property claim. I find that unilateral duty-creation objection is not successful because original appropriation is grounded in a natural right to use the materials of the earth to begin endeavors and maintain those endeavors against interference. Original appropriation does not create new duties, but simply applies a corollary duty we all share to respect the endeavors of other people. However, in the context of densely settled, sprawling agglomerations of people in which all the land is already accounted for by public and private ownership, rights of property alone are inadequate for protecting the capacity of individuals to embark upon endeavors. The principle of sufficient spatial discretion ensures that residents of the city can embark on endeavors, even if they begin with no wealth or property of their own. Rather than challenging the principle of sufficient spatial discretion, the historical entitlement theory of property supports sufficient spatial discretion and justifies qualified property rights as part of a system of territoriality that facilitates sufficient spatial discretion. Chapter Three turns to the relationship between territoriality and democracy. After reviewing mainstream democratic theories, the chapter develops four arguments for local government. First, local governments are the most capable of intelligibly aggregating citizen preferences and judgements about territorial issues, and of producing public justifications for territorial policy. Second, citizens can most effectively participate in democratic self-governance when governments are local. Third, local government enables different municipalities to have different legal and territorial systems, which in turn allows citizens to choose the set of laws by which they will be governed. That choice helps manufacture consent and, fourth, respects autonomy and equality, by making it more likely that each people can find spatial networks compatible with their conceptions of the good. The argument for local government, however, only goes so far. Chapter Four demonstrates that in policy areas with strong regional dynamics, especially housing and transportation, commitment problems and coordination problems among municipalities make it difficult for municipalities to respond effectively to citizen preferences, enact policies supported by public reasons, or ensure resident mobility by making housing widely available or building efficient transit networks. Metropolitan governments can overcome collective action problems by internalizing all the strategic actors into one legislative body. In these cases, a metropolitan government would enhance democratic legitimacy by enabling more responsive government. Likewise, metropolitan governments can better ensure resident mobility between municipalities, which in turn is important for discerning consent and providing sufficient spatial discretion. Chapters Three and Four support a democratic principle of subsidiarity. According to this principle, political authority should by presumption be located with local governments. This presumption is to be set aside when larger units of government are required for solving collective action problems among local governments. Additionally, superior levels of government manage the system of local government, administer unincorporated land, and ensure citizen mobility throughout the state. Building on the previous chapters, the fifth and final chapter illustrates that, together, the principle of subsidiarity and the principle of sufficient spatial discretion are general principles for a liberal-democratic system of territoriality. After showing how these principles incorporate the liberal-democratic values of liberty, equality, and democracy, I examine their relationship to private property, spatial inequality in cities, education, and individual political activity. Subsequently, I consider whether, and how, my view can accommodate the special territorial claims of illiberal, nomadic, and indigenous groups. I conclude the dissertation with examples of how a few different cities have facilitated the spatial discretion of their citizens.
