Download or read book Democratic Legitimacy written by Pierre Rosanvallon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's a commonplace that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But in Democratic Legitimacy, Pierre Rosanvallon, one of today's leading political thinkers, argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. He makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy. Drawing on examples from France and the United States, Rosanvallon notes that there has been a major expansion of independent commissions, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and watchdogs in recent decades. At the same time, constitutional courts have become more willing and able to challenge legislatures. These institutional developments, which serve the democratic values of impartiality and reflexivity, have been accompanied by a new attentiveness to what Rosanvallon calls the value of proximity, as governing structures have sought to find new spaces for minorities, the particular, and the local. To improve our democracies, we need to use these new sources of legitimacy more effectively and we need to incorporate them into our accounts of democratic government. An original contribution to the vigorous international debate about democratic authority and legitimacy, this promises to be one of Rosanvallon's most important books.
Download or read book Legitimacy written by Arthur Isak Applbaum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At an unsettled time for liberal democracy, with global eruptions of authoritarian and arbitrary rule, here is one of the first full-fledged philosophical accounts of what makes governments legitimate. What makes a government legitimate? The dominant view is that public officials have the right to rule us, even if they are unfair or unfit, as long as they gain power through procedures traceable to the consent of the governed. In this rigorous and timely study, Arthur Isak Applbaum argues that adherence to procedure is not enough: even a properly chosen government does not rule legitimately if it fails to protect basic rights, to treat its citizens as political equals, or to act coherently. How are we to reconcile every person’s entitlement to freedom with the necessity of coercive law? Applbaum’s answer is that a government legitimately governs its citizens only if the government is a free group agent constituted by free citizens. To be a such a group agent, a government must uphold three principles. The liberty principle, requiring that the basic rights of citizens be secured, is necessary to protect against inhumanity, a tyranny in practice. The equality principle, requiring that citizens have equal say in selecting who governs, is necessary to protect against despotism, a tyranny in title. The agency principle, requiring that a government’s actions reflect its decisions and its decisions reflect its reasons, is necessary to protect against wantonism, a tyranny of unreason. Today, Applbaum writes, the greatest threat to the established democracies is neither inhumanity nor despotism but wantonism, the domination of citizens by incoherent, inconstant, and incontinent rulers. A government that cannot govern itself cannot legitimately govern others.
Download or read book Democratic Legitimacy written by Fabienne Peter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a systematic treatment of democratic legitimacy, interpreted as a distinct normative concept. It defends the view that democratic legitimacy requires that decisions are made in a process that is politically and epistemically fair.
Download or read book Reasoned Administration and Democratic Legitimacy written by Jerry L. Mashaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how administrative government maintains mutual respect among citizens, legitimates administrative government under law, and supports a realistic vision of democracy.
Download or read book Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union written by Beate Kohler-Koch and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-04-18 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discussion about a constitution for the European Union and its rejection by referendum in two of the EU founding member states has once again spurred public and scholarly interest in the democratic quality and potential of the European Union. Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union brings together distinguished thinkers from law, political science, sociology, and political philosophy to explore the potential for democratically legitimate governance in the European Union. Drawing on different theoretical perspectives and strands from democratic theory, this volume is the first of its kind to overcome the present state of fragmentation in the debate about the conditions and possible remedies for what is often called the "democratic deficit" of the European Union. Among the pressing questions addressed by the contributors are: What future is there for parliamentary democracy in the European Union? Can we observe the evolution of a European public sphere and civil society? Can participatory democracy or deliberative democracy pave the road for a democratically legitimate European Union? Conversations about democracy have engaged the public in a new way since the beginning of the Iraq war, and this volume is the best resource for students and readers who are interested in democracy in the European Union. Contributions by: Rudy B. Andeweg, Katrin Auel, Arthur Benz, Lars-Erik Cederman, Damian Chalmers, Deirdre Curtin, Donatella Della Porta, Klaus Eder, Erik O. Eriksen, Ulrich Haltern, Hubert Heinelt, Doug Imig, Christian Joerges, Beate Kohler-Koch, Christopher Lord, Paul Magnette, Andreas Maurer, Jeremy Richardson, Berthold Rittberger, Rainer Schmalz-Bruns, Michael Th. Greven, Hans-Jörg Trenz, and Armin von Bogdandy
Download or read book Centripetal Democracy written by Joseph Lacey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of political identity formation. Partisan modes of political representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct democratic voting opportunities are emphasised on this model. There is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres. This view is referred to as the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT). Inadequate democratic institutions and acute demands to divide the political system (through devolution or secession), are predicted by this thesis. By combining an original normative democratic theory with a comparative analysis of how Belgium and Switzerland have variously managed to sustain themselves as multilingual democracies, this book identifies the main institutional features of a democratically legitimate European Union and the conditions required to bring it about. Part One presents a novel theory of democratic legitimacy and political identity formation on which subsequent analyses are based. Part Two defines the EU as a demoi-cracy and provides a thorough democratic assessment of this political system. Part Three explains why Belgium has largely succumbed to the centrifugal logic predicted by the LFT, while Switzerland apparently defies this logic. Part Four presents a model of centripetal democracy for the EU, one that would greatly reduce its democratic deficit and ensure that this political system does not succumb to the centrifugal forces expected by the LFT.
Download or read book The Democratic Legitimacy of International Law written by Steven Wheatley and published by Hart Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-02 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book restates the deliberative ideal developed by Habermas, and applies this to the systems of global governance.
Download or read book Legitimacy in an Age of Global Politics written by A. Hurrelmann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of the lack of plausible alternatives to liberal democracy, the age of globalization has ushered in serious challenges to the democratic legitimacy of the nation state. The contributors in this collection explore the frontiers of normative and empirical legitimacy research, drawing upon a range of key conceptual and methodological issues.
Download or read book The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy written by Pedro T. Magalhães and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By re-examining the political thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, this book offers a reflection on the nature of modern democracy and the question of its legitimacy. Pedro T. Magalhães shows that present-day elitist, populist and pluralist accounts of democracy owe, in diverse and often complicated ways, an intellectual debt to the interwar era, German-speaking, scholarly and political controversies on the problem(s) of modern democracy. A discussion of Weber’s ambivalent diagnosis of modernity and his elitist views on democracy, as they were elaborated especially in the 1910s, sets the groundwork for the study. Against that backdrop, Schmitt’s interwar political thought is interpreted as a form of neo-authoritarian populism, whereas Kelsen evinces robust, though not entirely unproblematic, pluralist consequences. In the conclusion, the author draws on Claude Lefort’s concept of indeterminacy to sketch a potentially more fruitful way than can be gleaned from the interwar German discussions of conceiving the nexus between the elitist, populist and pluralist faces of modern democracy. The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy will be of interest to political theorists, political philosophers, intellectual historians, theoretically oriented political scientists, and legal scholars working in the subfields of constitutional law and legal theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315157566, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
Download or read book Losers Consent written by Christopher Anderson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005-01-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic elections are designed to create unequal outcomes: for some to win, others have to lose. This book examines the consequences of this inequality for the legitimacy of democratic political institutions and systems. Using survey data collected in democracies around the globe, the authors argue that losing generates ambivalent attitudes towards political authorities. Because the efficacy and ultimately the survival of democratic regimes can be seriously threatened if thelosers do not consent to their loss, the central themes of this book focus on losing: how losers respond to their loss and how institutions shape losing. While there tends to be a gap in support for the political system between winners and losers, it is not ubiquitous. The book paints a picture oflosers' consent that portrays losers as political actors whose experience and whose incentives to accept defeat are shaped both by who they are as individuals as well as the political environment in which loss is given meaning.Given that the winner-loser gap in legitimacy is a persistent feature of democratic politics, the findings presented in this book contain crucial implications for our understanding of the functioning and stability of democracies.
Download or read book The Concept of Constituency written by Andrew Rehfeld and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-27 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In virtually every democratic nation in the world, political representation is defined by where citizens live. In the United States, for example, Congressional Districts are drawn every 10 years as lines on a map. Why do democratic governments define political representation this way? Are territorial electoral constituencies commensurate with basic principles of democratic legitimacy? And why might our commitments to these principles lead us to endorse a radical alternative: randomly assigning citizens to permanent, single-member electoral constituencies that each looks like the nation they collectively represent? Using the case of the founding period of the United States as an illustration, and drawing from classic sources in Western political theory, this book describes the conceptual, historical, and normative features of the electoral constituency. As an institution conceptually separate from the casting of votes, the electoral constituency is little studied. Its historical origins are often incorrectly described. And as a normative matter, the constituency is almost completely ignored. Raising these conceptual, historical and normative issues, the argument culminates with a novel thought experiment of imagining how politics might change under randomized, permanent, national electoral constituencies. By focusing on how citizens are formally defined for the purpose of political representation, The Concept of Constituency thus offers a novel approach to the central problems of political representation, democratic legitimacy, and institutional design.
Download or read book The Legitimacy of Citizen led Deliberative Democracy written by Didier Caluwaerts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For deliberative democrats, the strength of any democracy is public deliberation, the frequent and reasoned discussion between citizens on political issues. Despite all the theoretical claims made about deliberative systems, the question remains how to empirically assess both the legitimacy and function of deliberative systems in the real world and how individual sites of deliberation interact within the larger political system. In other words, what is the legitimacy of each individual component and under which conditions can these components improve the legitimacy of the wider system? These are the central research questions for this book looking particularly through the prism of the citizen-led mini-public G1000 in Belgium, which grew out of a feeling of deep democratic crisis. Offering empirically measurable translations of philosophical concepts, the book enhances our understanding of how political systems function, and of the viability of a deliberative democracy at a larger scale. Finally, it provokes fundamental normative questions on how we want to shape our society, especially divided ones. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of deliberative democracy, and to those interested in democratic theory and more broadly political science, communication, sociology, and philosophy.
Download or read book Deliberative Democracy written by James Bohman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions in this anthology address tensions that arise between reason and politics in a democracy inspired by the ideal of achieving reasoned agreement among free and equal citizens.
Download or read book Governance and the Democratic Deficit written by Victor Bekkers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely acknowledged that we are witnessing a major transformation of public policy making, a transformation which has been labelled as a change from 'government' to 'governance'. Governance is used to describe policy making and implementation without a central authority in a non-hierarchical, network-like structure through negotiation and cooperation between public and private actors at one or across different political levels. This comprehensive volume combines empirical analysis and normative assessment of governance practices, providing a systematic approach based on a framework for assessing democratic legitimacy. It addresses different modes of governance at the local/regional, national, European and international levels. The volume assesses the alleged 'democratic deficit' of these new governance practices and as such is ideally suited to courses on public administration.
Download or read book Populism and Passions written by Paolo Cossarini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-29 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a consensus that right, and left-wing populism is on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic, from Donald Trump in the United States, to Spain’s leftist Podemos. These may utilize different kinds of populist mobilizations but the fact remains that elite and mass opinion is fuelling a populist backlash. In Populism and Passions, twelve scholars engage with discourse analysis, democratic theory, and post structural political thought to study the political logic of passion for contemporary populism. Together these interdisciplinary essays demonstrate what emotional engagement implies for the spheres of politics and the social, and how it governs and mobilizes individuals. The volume presents: Theoretical and empirical implications for political analysis; Chapters on the current rise of populism, both right and left-wing trends, their different ideological features, and their relationship with the logic of passion; Theoretical implications for the future study of populism and democratic legitimacy. A timely analysis of this political phenomena in contemporary Western democracies, Populism and Passions is ideal for students and scholars in political theory, comparative politics, social theory, critical theory, cultural studies, and global studies.
Download or read book Weak Constitutionalism written by Joel I. Colon-Rios and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been argued that democracy is protected and realized under traditional liberal constitutional forms through constitutional rights such as free speech, freedom of association and the right to vote. This book looks at the relationship between democracy and constitutions.
Download or read book The Legitimacy of International Human Rights Regimes written by Andreas Føllesdal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past sixty years have seen an expansion of international human rights conventions and supervisory organs, not least in Europe. While these international legal instruments have enlarged their mandate, they have also faced opposition and criticism from political actors at the state level, even in well-functioning democracies. Against the backdrop of such contestations, this book brings together prominent scholars in law, political philosophy and international relations in order to address the legitimacy of international human rights regimes as a theoretically challenging and politically salient case of international authority. It provides a unique and thorough overview of the legitimacy problems involved in the global governance of human rights.
