Connecting Democracy

Connecting Democracy PDF Author: Stephen Coleman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262016567
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
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.

Connecting Democracy

Connecting Democracy PDF Author: Stephen Coleman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262016567
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 435

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Design as Democracy

Design as Democracy PDF Author: David de la Pena
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610918479
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
How can we design places that fulfill urgent needs of the community, achieve environmental justice, and inspire long-term stewardship? By bringing community members to the table with designers to collectively create vibrant, important places in cities and neighborhoods. For decades, participatory design practices have helped enliven neighborhoods and promote cultural understanding. Yet, many designers still rely on the same techniques that were developed in the 1950s and 60s. These approaches offer predictability, but hold waning promise for addressing current and future design challenges. Design as Democracy is written to reinvigorate democratic design, providing inspiration, techniques, and case stories for a wide range of contexts. Edited by six leading practitioners and academics in the field of participatory design, with nearly 50 contributors from around the world, it offers fresh insights for creating meaningful dialogue between designers and communities and for transforming places with justice and democracy in mind.

Democracy, Accountability, and Representation

Democracy, Accountability, and Representation PDF Author: Adam Przeworski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521646161
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
6 Party Government and Responsiveness: James A. Stimson

Democracy in Motion

Democracy in Motion PDF Author: Tina Nabatchi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019999613X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Although the field of deliberative civic engagement is growing rapidly around the world, our knowledge and understanding of its practice and impacts remain highly fragmented. Democracy in Motion represents the first comprehensive attempt to assess the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement. Organized in a series of chapters that address the big questions of deliberative civic engagement, it uses theory, research, and practice from around the world to explore what we know about, how we know it, and what remains to be understood. More than a simple summary of research, the book is designed to be accessible and useful to a wide variety of audiences, from scholars and practitioners working in numerous disciplines and fields, to public officials, activists, and average citizens who are seeking to utilize deliberative civic engagement in their communities. The book significantly enhances current scholarship, serving as a guide to existing research and identifying useful future research. It also has promise for enhancing practice, for example by helping practitioners, public officials, and others better think through and articulate issues of design and outcomes, thus enabling them to garner more support for public deliberation activities. In addition, by identifying what remains to be learned about public deliberation, practitioners and public officials may be inspired to connect with scholars to conduct research and evaluations of their efforts.

The Changing Nature of Democracy

The Changing Nature of Democracy PDF Author: Takashi Inoguchi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This volume brings together preeminent scholars from around the world in a collection of essays that point to a changing and broadening agenda of democracy.

Slow Democracy

Slow Democracy PDF Author: Susan Clark
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603584137
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Reconnecting with the sources of decisions that affect us, and with the processes of democracy itself, is at the heart of 21st-century sustainable communities. Slow Democracy chronicles the ways in which ordinary people have mobilized to find local solutions to local problems. It invites us to bring the advantages of "slow" to our community decision making. Just as slow food encourages chefs and eaters to become more intimately involved with the production of local food, slow democracy encourages us to govern ourselves locally with processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and citizen powered. Susan Clark and Woden Teachout outline the qualities of real, local decision making and show us the range of ways that communities are breathing new life into participatory democracy around the country. We meet residents who seize back control of their municipal water systems from global corporations, parents who find unique solutions to seemingly divisive school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizens across the nation who have designed local decision-making systems to solve the problems unique to their area in ways that work best for their communities. Though rooted in the direct participation that defined our nation's early days, slow democracy is not a romantic vision for reigniting the ways of old. Rather, the strategies outlined here are uniquely suited to 21st-century technologies and culture.If our future holds an increased focus on local food, local energy, and local economy, then surely we will need to improve our skills at local governance as well.

Democracy and Education

Democracy and Education PDF Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

The Peculiar Democracy

The Peculiar Democracy PDF Author: Wallace Hettle
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820322827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Too often, Wallace Hettle points out, studies of politics in the nineteenth-century South reinforce a view of the Democratic Party that is frozen in time on the eve of Fort Sumter--a deceptively high point of white racial solidarity. Avoiding such a "Civil War synthesis," The Peculiar Democracy illuminates the link between the Jacksonian political culture that dominated antebellum debate and the notorious infighting of the Confederacy. Hettle shows that war was the greatest test of populist Democratic Party rhetoric that emphasized the shared interests of white men, slaveholder and nonslaveholder alike. The Peculiar Democracy analyzes antebellum politics in terms of the connections between slavery, manhood, and the legacies of Jefferson and Jackson. It then looks at the secession crisis through the anxieties felt by Democratic politicians who claimed concern for the interests of both slaveholders and nonslaveholders. At the heart of the book is a collective biography of five individuals whose stories highlight the limitations of democratic political culture in a society dominated by the "peculiar institution." Through narratives informed by recent scholarship on gender, honor, class, and the law, Hettle profiles South Carolina's Francis W. Pickens, Georgia's Joseph Brown, Alabama's Jeremiah Clemens, Virginia's John Rutherfoord, and Mississippi's Jefferson Davis. The Civil War stories presented in The Peculiar Democracy illuminate the political and sometimes personal tragedy of men torn between a political culture based on egalitarian rhetoric and the wartime imperatives to defend slavery.

Designing for Democracy

Designing for Democracy PDF Author: Jennifer Forestal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197568750
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
"How should we 'fix' digital technologies to support democracy instead of undermining it? In Designing for democracy, Jennifer Forestal argues that accurately evaluating the democratic potential of digital spaces means studying how the built environment-a primary component of our 'modern public square'-structures our activity, shapes our attitudes, and supports the kinds of relationships and behaviors democracy requires. Through extended analyses of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, Forestal shows precisely how well these digital platforms meet the criteria for democratic spaces, or whether they do so at all. The result is a more nuanced analysis of the democratic communities that form-or fail to emerge-in these spaces, as well as more concrete suggestions for how to improve them."--Page 4 of cover

Mending Democracy

Mending Democracy PDF Author: Carolyn M. Hendriks
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198843054
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The fabric of contemporary democracy in many liberal Western societies is in tatters. Citizens are disconnected from their elected representatives, they are fractured and polarised in the public sphere, and alienated from increasingly complex systems of public policy. These disconnects - in the representative relationship, in the public sphere, and in the policy-making process - are weakening the very fabric of our democracies. This book develops the idea of democratic mending as a way of advancing a more connective and systemic approach to democratic repair. It is informed by three rich empirical cases of connectivity in practice, as well as cutting-edge debates in deliberative democracy.The empirical cases uncover empowering and transformative modes of citizen participation and civic engagement that are vital for democratic renewal. The actors in this book are not withdrawing, resisting or seeking autonomy from conventional institutions of representative democracy but actively experimenting with ways to improve and engage with them. Through their everyday practices of democratic mending they undertake crucial systemic repair work and strengthen the integrity of our democratic fabric in ways that are yet to be fully acknowledged by scholars and practitioners of democratic reform.