Reflexive Democracy

Reflexive Democracy PDF Author: Kevin Olson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262151162
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
An argument for justifying the welfare state politically rather than economically, based on an ideal of democratic equality.

Reflexive Democracy

Reflexive Democracy PDF Author: Kevin Olson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262151162
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
An argument for justifying the welfare state politically rather than economically, based on an ideal of democratic equality.

Reflexive Democracy

Reflexive Democracy PDF Author: Kevin Olson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262264013
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
An argument for justifying the welfare state politically rather than economically, based on an ideal of democratic equality. Since the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s, there has been little consensus on what welfare ought to do or how it ought to function. At the same time, post-Wall continental Europe searches for a "third way" between state-planned socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. In Reflexive Democracy, Kevin Olson takes on this contemporary conceptual crisis. He calls for a "political turn" in considerations of the welfare state, arguing that it should no longer be understood in primarily economic terms—as a redistributive and regulatory mechanism—but in political terms, as a means of living up to deep-seated values of political equality. Drawing on arguments by T. H. Marshall and Jürgen Habermas, Olson proposes a conception of political equality as the normative basis of the welfare state. He argues that there are inextricable connections between democracy and welfare: the welfare state both promotes political equality and depends on it for its own political legitimacy. The paradox of political equality as a precondition for political equality is best solved, Olson argues, by guaranteeing citizens the means for equal participation. This is a reflexive conception of democracy, in which democratic politics circles back to sustain the conditions of equality that make it possible. This view, Olson writes, is meant not to replace traditional economic concerns but to reveal deep interconnections between democratic equality and economic justice. It counters paternalistic ideas of welfare reform by focusing on citizen participation. This conception moves beyond simple equality in the possession of goods and resources to propose a rich, materially grounded conception of democratic equality.

Reflective Democracy

Reflective Democracy PDF Author: Robert E. Goodin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199256179
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Political disputes invariably mix facts with values, making it important to listen to what people are saying rather than merely note how they are voting. The great challenge is how to implement that deliberative ideal among millions of people at once. This book proposes a solution to this problem.

Reflective Democracy

Reflective Democracy PDF Author: Robert E. Goodin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191531294
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Democracy used to be seen as a relatively mechanical matter of merely adding up everyone's votes in free and fair elections. That mechanistic model has many virtues, among them allowing democracy to 'track the truth', where purely factual issues are all that is at stake. Political disputes invariably mix facts with values, however, and then it is essential to listen to what people are saying rather than merely note how they are voting. The great challenge is how to implement that deliberative ideal among millions of people at once. In this strikingly original book, Goodin offers a solution: 'democratic deliberation within'. Building on models of ordinary conversational dynamics, he suggests that people simply imagine themselves in the position of various other people they have heard or read about and ask, 'What would they say about this proposal?' Informing the democratic imaginary then becomes the key to making deliberations more reflective - more empathetic, more considered, more expansive across time and distance. Oxford Political Theory presents the best new work in contemporary political theory. It is intended to be broad in scope, including original contributions to political philosophy, and also work in applied political theory. The series contains works of outstanding quality with no restriction as to approach or subject matter.

Democratic Legitimacy

Democratic Legitimacy PDF Author: Pierre Rosanvallon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400838746
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
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.

Freedom's Right

Freedom's Right PDF Author: Axel Honneth
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745680062
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
The theory of justice is one of the most intensely debated areas of contemporary philosophy. Most theories of justice, however, have only attained their high level of justification at great cost. By focusing on purely normative, abstract principles, they become detached from the sphere that constitutes their “field of application” - namely, social reality. Axel Honneth proposes a different approach. He seeks to derive the currently definitive criteria of social justice directly from the normative claims that have developed within Western liberal democratic societies. These criteria and these claims together make up what he terms “democratic ethical life”: a system of morally legitimate norms that are not only legally anchored, but also institutionally established. Honneth justifies this far-reaching endeavour by demonstrating that all essential spheres of action in Western societies share a single feature, as they all claim to realize a specific aspect of individual freedom. In the spirit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and guided by the theory of recognition, Honneth shows how principles of individual freedom are generated which constitute the standard of justice in various concrete social spheres: personal relationships, economic activity in the market, and the political public sphere. Honneth seeks thereby to realize a very ambitious aim: to renew the theory of justice as an analysis of society.

New Waves In Political Philosophy

New Waves In Political Philosophy PDF Author: Boudewijn de Bruin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230234992
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Comprising essays by eleven up-and-coming scholars from across the globe, this collection of essays provides an unparalleled snapshot of new work in political philosophy using such diverse methodologies as critical theory and social choice theory, historical analysis and conceptual analysis.

Comparative International Politics of Democracy Promotion

Comparative International Politics of Democracy Promotion PDF Author: Jonas Wolff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134509553
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Though scholarly attention to democracy promotion is increasing, there is still little comparative and theoretically-based work on the protagonists of democracy promotion. This book investigates the motives that drive democracy promotion in a comparative and theoretically oriented manner, exploring how democracy promoters deal with conflicting objectives and the factors that shape their behaviour. It also addresses the more policy-oriented debate on the contemporary challenges to democracy promotion, focusing on US and German policies towards three kinds of challenges: the emergence of ‘radical’ leftist governments in Bolivia and Ecuador, the political rise of Islamist movements in Turkey and Pakistan, and the consolidation of (semi-)authoritarian rule in Belarus and Russia. In each case, North-Western democracy promoters have been confronted with serious conflicts of objectives between security, economic interests and democracy promotion. The analysis and comparison of such situations in which democracy promoters have to deal with competing objectives and make tough decisions provides powerful evidence as to the factors that shape democracy promotion. The Comparative International Politics of Democracy Promotion will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, comparative politics, democratization studies and foreign policy.

Democracy on Trial

Democracy on Trial PDF Author: Ya-Chung Chuang
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 9629965461
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Democracy on Trial is an attempt to begin to negotiate the problem of writing about and understanding democracy and social movements in Taiwan, and what they can tell us about a place and country that for me is both home and the field, an object of study and yet also an area of hope and engagement. "Democracy on Trial is as impressive for its conceptual sophistication as it is for its ethnographic depth. Chuang’s personal experiences and engagement with the movements he describes and analyzes bring to life the wealth of documentary and ethnographic data. The study should be of interest not just to Taiwan scholars and readers, but also those interested in issues of democracy in China and East Asia, the politics of TaiwanPRC relations, and social movement scholars and activists."y Arif Dirlik, Author of Culture and History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity.

Law and Reflexive Politics

Law and Reflexive Politics PDF Author: E.A. Christodoulidis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401139679
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Law is the great concealer; and law is everywhere. Or so claimed Marxists once upon a time. [Law] was imbricated within the mode of production and productive relations themselves . . . it intruded brusquely within alien categories, re-appearing bewigged and gowned in the form of ideology; . . . it was an arm of politics and politics was one of its arms; it was an academic discipline, subjected to the rigour of its own autonomous logic, it contributed to the definition of the self-identity of both the rulers 1 and the ruled. Does the old critique of domination still hold any sway? Apparently not. Or so even scholars of the far Left keep reminding us in their eagerness to embrace law and proclaim their allegiance to the new constitutional politics of civil society. Old Marxists now describe popular sovereignty as 'co-original' with, and democracy 'internally linked' to 2 constitutional rights and find it hard to remember what it was they once disagreed with liberals about. No tension left between emancipatory politics and oppressive law; instead we have reciprocal constitution, simultaneous realisation. In the Left's embracing of the new constitutionalisms its old critique of law - the critique of the law's concealment of class inequality, class conflict and class action - is left behind.