scholarly journals Anonymity and Democracy: Absence as Presence in the Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
HANS ASENBAUM

Although anonymity is a central feature of liberal democracies—not only in the secret ballot, but also in campaign funding, publishing political texts, masked protests, and graffiti—it has so far not been conceptually grounded in democratic theory. Rather, it is treated as a self-explanatory concept related to privacy. To overcome this omission, this article develops a complex understanding of anonymity in the context of democratic theory. Drawing upon the diverse literature on anonymity in political participation, it explains anonymity as a highly context-dependent identity performance expressing private sentiments in the public sphere. The contradictory character of its core elements—identity negation and identity creation—results in three sets of contradictory freedoms. Anonymity affords (a) inclusion and exclusion, (b) subversion and submission, and (c) honesty and deception. This contradictory character of anonymity's affordances illustrates the ambiguous role of anonymity in democracy.

Author(s):  
Nicole Curato

As the attention of spectacular publics wanes, disaster-affected communities begin to feel a sense of abandonment. This causes injuries to their esteem and poses limits on the scope of political action. This chapter narrates how ‘patient publics’ are constructed through the micro-politics of waiting. It argues that patient publics create a vocabulary for both acquiescence and negotiation to a political order that reproduces their subordination. Despite these limitations, however, the chapter argues that deliberative democratic theory can learn from how political claims are made amidst despair. It draws attention to modest achievements of communities that struggle but nevertheless strive to make an appearance in the public sphere.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-288
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Johansson

In this article Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s critical reception of the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms is related to the discussion about religion and politics in liberal democracies. Bonhoeffer experienced not only how the church isolated itself from the political sphere—by a ‘pseudo-Lutheran’ doctrine of the two kingdoms—but also how the church was politicized and abused by Deutsche Christen. His theological thinking is therefore a helpful starting point to formulate a theology which is politically relevant without being transformed into politics. Against the background of Bonhoeffer’s theology an argument is advanced that a renewed understanding of the two kingdoms assists the church in being focused on the Gospel, at the same time as it can also give the church instruments to be present in the public sphere with well-defined pretensions, which clarifies whether the assertions of the church are based on revelation or on public reason.


2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Engelstad

AbstractClassical elite theory stressed tensions between elites and democracy, whereas modern studies of elites take democracy as a point of departure – to a large extent under the heading of democratic elitism. This article discusses two strands of elite studies in a democracy perspective, one stressing elite conflict, the other focusing on elite consensus. As points of departure for empirical analysis both strands are valuable, but when linked to democratic theory they are insufficient. It is necessary to view elites in light of constitutional features that regulate their relationship with the state. Moreover, the public sphere must be taken into account as a constitutive element of democracy and as an arena for communication between elite groups and between them and citizenries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. e41617
Author(s):  
Bernhard Grümme

Religion has become a highly ambivalent phenomenon in late modernity. For some, it is a lasting resource for meaning, even in a highly ideologically plural society. For others, it belongs in the private sphere, not in the public sphere. What both would probably share, however, is the assumption that a state religion would be in contradiction to the promises of freedom and autonomy of modernity. But where is the place of religion in a democratic society? The text discusses this highly complex question in an examination of two theories that have shaped debates in the field like few others. From this discussion, further perspectives for a theologically founded position that is responsible in terms of democratic theory are given in conclusion.


Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brennan ◽  
Diana Stypinska

Religion in the public sphere (hereafter RPS) refers to the intermingling of religion with issues of politics, governance, the state, and institutions of civil society. That it is a topic of interest to academics across the humanities and social sciences is itself a reflection of the gradual separation—over many centuries—of religion from public affairs in modern, largely secular, societies of the West. The readmission of religion to the public sphere raises several key issues, not least around secularization (and the extent to which religion has been disassociated from public life and policymaking), but also about the resurgence of religious conservatism as an attempt to close the gap opened up in modernity between religion and politics. The renewal of interest in religion as a social, cultural, and political force—a feature of what some are now calling the “post-secular”—has proved especially contentious in diverse, multifaith liberal democracies, where attempts to divorce religion from public life can be seen to undermine the inclusion of religious minorities and the expression of religious identities. Academic interest in the intersection between religion and public life has been concentrated largely among sociologists (of religion) and political scientists. The revival of religion in the public sphere confounds a widely held assumption among modern social and political theorists; namely, that religion would wither as a feature of public life as societies underwent a process of modernization—and where religion continued to exist at all, it would be confined to the private, domestic sphere and that of individual belief. Particular interest has been generated by controversies that expose the vexed nature of attempts to limit or bar the admission of religion in public life; such as the 1962 ruling by the US Supreme Court removing prayer from public schools (in the spirit of the First Amendment of the US Constitution), or, more recently, the banning of religious headscarves (and other “ostentatious” symbols of religion) from public schools in 2004 by the French authorities (in the spirit of secularism—or laïcité) enshrined in Article 1 of the French Constitution). Attempts to undo the “wall of separation” between religion and state first envisioned by Thomas Jefferson can be seen in attempts by American religious conservatives to overturn “progressive” legislation on abortion, gay rights, and same-sex marriage. Recent opposition in the United Kingdom by Muslim conservatives to LGBT education in public schools illustrates the sensitivities and tensions surrounding expressions of RPS in contemporary Western societies.


Author(s):  
Leopoldo A Moscoso

Following Neal Tate and Vallinder’s hypothesis on the global expansion of judicial power, this chapter draws on Alessandro Pizzorno’s seminal contribution in the late 1990s to provide a historical account of the aforementioned process. The provided account links the ‘due process revolution’ with the growing social demand for norms, as well as the building of the Sozialstaat with the transformation of parliamentary regimes. The historical method is used to identify different trajectories while emphasis is given to the emergence of political parties and their relations with the consolidation of the public sphere in fin de siècle Western, liberal democracies. A final reflection is proposed which claims that current trends towards the politicization of justice cannot be properly understood without reference to the process of judicialization of politics.


1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 712-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana R. Villa

The idea of the public sphere, of an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction, is central to democratic theory and practice. The modern age has, however, witnessed the erosion of a public realm distinct from the state and the market. In response to this erosion, public realm theory, notably the work of Arendt and Habermas, attempts to theorize the minimal conditions necessary for a discursive realm free of structural coercion or manipulation. The resulting normative conception of the public sphere has come under sharp attack by postmodern theorists, including Foucault, Lyotard, and Baudrillard, who question the basic presuppositions of public realm theory. I examine their objections and show how the public realm theory of Arendt can be viewed as motivated by concerns similar to the postmoderns'. Against Habermas, I argue that Arendt's public realm theory is less concerned with the question of legitimation than with the theorization of an agonistic political subjectivity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110191
Author(s):  
Maurilio Pirone

What are the impacts this pandemic is leaving on politics? In this essay, I will argue that Covid-19 – beyond the rhetoric of exceptionalism or denialism – is unveiling some ‘structural’ features of Western capitalist-societies – on one side, the pervasiveness of digital technologies shaping more and more the public sphere; on the other side, social reproduction as contested terrain between divergent forces. The erosion of spaces for decision-making in liberal democracies seems to be questioned by the emergence of practices of mutualism and claims for common goods.


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