Between Decision and Deliberation: Political Paradox in Democratic Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
BONNIE HONIG
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Vicious Circle ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Good People ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
The People ◽  
Material Conditions

Deliberative democratic theorists (in this essay, Seyla Benhabib and Jurgen Habermas) seek to resolve, manage, or transcend paradoxes of democratic legitimation or constitutional democracy. Other democratic theorists, such as Chantal Mouffe, embrace such paradoxes and affirm their irreducibility. Deliberativists call that position “decisionism.” This essay examines the promise and limits of these various efforts by way of a third paradox: Rousseau's paradox of politics, whose many workings are traced through Book II, Chapter 7 of theSocial Contract. This last paradox cannot be resolved, transcended, managed, or even affirmed as an irreducible binary conflict. The paradox of politics names not a clash between two logics or norms but a vicious circle of chicken-and-egg (which comes first—good people or good law?). It has the happy effect of reorienting democratic theory: toward the material conditions of political practice, the unavoidable will of the people who are also always a multitude, and the not only regulative but also productive powers of law.

Reforming Democracy: Constitutional Crisis and Rousseau's Advice to Geneva

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-438
Author(s):  
Dorina Verli
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
The People ◽  
Historical Accident ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

AbstractPolitical theorists have relegated Rousseau's writings on Geneva to the category of historical accident, assuming that whatever he had to say about politics was said fully in works like the Social Contract. This has created a widespread impression that Rousseau had little to say about ordinary political practice. In this paper, I take up his dissection of the Genevan constitution in the Letters from the Mountain. A work which has attracted little attention even from historians, the Letters are in fact essential for understanding Rousseau's thoughts on the people's role in democratic government. His proposals for reform give clear content to the abstract arguments about popular sovereignty presented in the Social Contract. Against readings that emphasize Rousseau's distrust of the people, the Letters reveal that Rousseau expected popular sovereignty to take the form of active and routine participation in both legislation and government on the part of ordinary citizens.

scholarly journals Political Theory of Populism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Urbinati
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Democratic Principles

Populism is the name of a global phenomenon whose definitional precariousness is proverbial. It resists generalizations and makes scholars of politics comparativist by necessity, as its language and content are imbued with the political culture of the society in which it arises. A rich body of socio-historical analyses allows us to situate populism within the global phenomenon called democracy, as its ideological core is nourished by the two main entities—the nation and the people—that have fleshed out popular sovereignty in the age of democratization. Populism consists in a transmutation of the democratic principles of the majority and the people in a way that is meant to celebrate one subset of the people as opposed to another, through a leader embodying it and an audience legitimizing it. This may make populism collide with constitutional democracy, even if its main tenets are embedded in the democratic universe of meanings and language. In this article, I illustrate the context-based character of populism and how its cyclical appearances reflect the forms of representative government. I review the main contemporary interpretations of the concept and argue that some basic agreement now exists on populism's rhetorical character and its strategy for achieving power in democratic societies. Finally, I sketch the main characteristics of populism in power and explain how it tends to transform the fundamentals of democracy: the people and the majority, elections, and representation.

scholarly journals REFLEKSI DALAM MEMAKNAI EKSISTENSI RAKYAT; ANTARA PEMILIHAN PRESIDEN DAN PEMILIHAN MPR

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (01) ◽  
pp. 310
Author(s):  
Efriza Efriza
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
The People

This paper attempts to re-unravel the results of the 1945 amendment in analyzing the development and division in Indonesia, highlighting democracy and the people between the President's choice directly with the President's choice through the MPR, and addressing the 1945 Constitution amendment as the basis of the spirit of constitutional democracy in Indonesia. The results of this study clearly explain that democracy in Indonesia is more favorable based on the results of the 1945 Amendment and the Presidential Election directly and better and as part of the implementation of constitutional democracy in a more comprehensive manner.Keywords: Voters, Political Parties, Presidential Election, MPR and Constitutional Democracy 

scholarly journals Algunas aproximaciones temáticas a la literatura comparada: el impacto de la filosofía y las ciencias sociales

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Cristina Elgue–Martini
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
Chantal Mouffe

El artículo pasa revista a novelas estadounidenses del siglo XXI desde una aproximación filosófica, específicamente desde el concepto de giro lingüístico. Centrado en la temática de la justicia, e inspirado en las ideas desarrolladas por Jürgen Habermas (1929–) y Richard Rorty (1931–2007), parte de la hipótesis que el concepto de justicia resulta de una construcción dialógica que daría cuenta del pluralismo inherente a la interpretación del mundo. Complementa esta postura inicial con la noción de pluralismo agonístico de Chantal Mouffe (1943–).

Populism and the Principle of Majority

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Urbinati
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
Electoral Representation

What puts populism and democracy in tension although they rest on the same principle of majority and claim to be government by the people? The answer is that when it seeks to implement its agenda through state power, populism enters a direct competition with constitutional democracy over the meaning and expression of the people and puts into question a party-democracy’s conception of representation because it is impatient with the tension between pluralism of social interests and unity of the polity that electoral representation triggers and channels. Hence although ingrained in the ideology of the people and the language of democracy, populism as a ruling power tends to give life to governments that stretch the democratic rules toward an extreme majoritarianism.

Jürgen Habermas and Public Reason

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-240
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Ernst Bloch ◽  
Karl Jaspers ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
Political Form

This chapter explores Jürgen Habermas’s conception of a post-metaphysical idea of public reason as basis of democratic legitimacy in postsecular societies. It discusses Habermas’s interpretation of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophies of religion in terms of their efforts to ‘translate’ theological substance into ethico-political form, thus giving a secular meaning to the idea of God’s Kingdom. The chapter shows the roots of Habermas’s adoption of ‘methodological atheism’ in the writings of Karl Jaspers and Ernst Bloch on the relation between philosophy and faith in revelation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the similarities between Habermas’s and Jacques Derrida’s defences of an essential messianic component in contemporary democratic theory.

scholarly journals Ustav, populizam i kraj liberalne demokracije - "referendumanija" ugrožava temelje ustavnog poretka

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 761-784
Author(s):  
Branko Smerdel
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
The People ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Parliamentary Supremacy ◽  
Political Groups

Democracies are at risk to be strangled by the populist demagogues, posturing as the only and true leaders of 'the people', while disregarding constitutional "structure of liberty", meaning that, the parliamentary supremacy, judicial review and, above all, the constitutional limits to the very direct decision making by the voters' constituencies. Referenda are being used ever more, often to push certain decision, which could not pass the parliament. The claim is that there must not be any limits to the power of the people. That phenomenon the most esteemed liberal magazine "The Economist" nicknamed coining the word "referendumania", apparently combining 'a mania' with 'referenda'. It has been received with a lot of sympathy by the general public, in circumstances when the television and the Internet shows all the misery of the numerous assemblies, not only in a new but also in the mature democracies. After the referendum on the Brexit has been used as an instrument of the political struggle in the mother of parliaments, Great Britain, which lead to the ongoing "melting down" of the highly valued British political system, it seems that the worst of prophecies are realized by advancing populist forces in a number of Euroepan states. Republic of Croatia has been for a long time exposed to such treats, by the political groups extremely opposed to governmental policies, first by the Catholic conservatives and most recently by the trade unionists. Due to the very inadequate regulation of the referenda on civil initiatives, whereas the decision is to be made by a majority of those who vote, without any quorum being provided, the posibilites of manipulation are enormous. In the lasting confusion, a number of politicians has already proclaimed their intention, if elected the president of the Republic, to use such a referendum in order to remove all the checks and balances between the chief of state and "the people". Taking such treats very seriously in the existing crisis of democracy, the author emphasizes hi plead for an interparty agreement which would enable the referendum to be properly regulated and thus incorporated into the system of a democratic constitutional democracy.

Walter Bagehot and Liberal Realism

1949 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Easton
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism

In the decline of his life, a disappointed man might well ask himself what destiny would have held in store for him if at some crucial juncture of his maturity he had accepted the earnest advice of a solicitous friend or even of a keen-sighted foe. Today liberalism is confronted with a similar question. It is on the defensive in all parts of the Western world except in the United States. Even there its position is deceptive. Perhaps it survives tenuously under the artificial protective canvas of postwar inflation. Today one can hardly question this threatened eclipse of liberalism. Because of this foreboding, disturbing questions haunt the liberal. What deficiency in liberalism is leading to the abandonment of its tenets throughout Europe? Was there counsel offered and ignored in the past which might have retarded the infirmities of age?The answer to the first question has long been apparent. Yet in practice contemporary liberalism, both of the progressive and nineteenth-century varieties, has never assimilated its essential meaning. Following the French Revolution and the English Reform Act, liberalism began its long history of divorcing theory from practice. In the splendor of Victorian industrial success, this separation was not driven into the consciousness either of the intellectual leaders or of the people. But with the tension, domestic and international, of the eighties, liberals themselves, like T. H. Green and then Hobhouse, undertook the task of correcting some of the glaring discrepancies between the doctrine and the reality. In the light of the basically abstract character of liberalism, these collectivist renovations now appear like amateurish tinkering with a vastly complex apparatus.Liberal doctrine had indeed long been suffering from a negative attitude toward the state. But this was simply a diagnostic symptom of an even deeper defect: liberalism's unconscionable indifference to the material conditions of society, and its ensuing failure to put its theories to the test of the social reality.

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