The function of the ideal in liberal democratic contexts

Author(s):  
Kaveh Pourvand
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098689
Author(s):  
Pedro A. Teixeira

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy.


1987 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Pettit

The paper attempts two tasks. The first is to provide a characterization of the social democratic approach which sets it in contrast to liberal democratic theories. This is pursued by contrasting the different interpretations of the ideal of equal respect which are associated with the two approaches. The second task is to establish that the social democratic approach is, if not clearly superior, at least worth considering further. This task is pursued by the attempt to vindicate three assumptions which the social democratic approach must make about the state.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Beattie ◽  
Danielle Snider

Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens’ rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing “knowledge constraints” on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, suggesting that knowledge constraints on motivated reasoning may not fully allay normative concerns of bias in the domain of international relations.


Author(s):  
Kevin M. Graham

If political dialogue is to identify and redress existing forms of injustice, participants in the dialogue must be able to appeal to the concept of objectivity in order to exchange claims, attitudes, and background beliefs which distort or conceal various forms of injustice. The conceptions of objectivity traditionally employed in liberal democratic political philosophy are not well-suited to play this role because they are insufficiently sensitive to the social and ideological pluralism of modern societies. Some liberal political philosophers have recently offered more context-sensitive and pluralistic conceptions of objectivity, requiring participants in political dialogue to frame their demands for justice in terms of a conception of justice acceptable to all participants in the dialogue. I argue that this conception of objectivity constitutes an improvement over traditional liberal conceptions. However, it is ultimately unacceptable because it does not take adequate account of the limited and distorted knowledge that members of dominant social groups tend to possess about the oppression experienced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups. As a result, this conception of objectivity wrongly deems the demands for justice voiced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups to be subjective simply because they seem unreasonable from the limited and distorting standpoint of dominant social groups.


Author(s):  
Joseph Chan

This introductory chapter discusses how Confucian political philosophy can be modernized and enrich liberal democratic theories and political practices. It examines Confucian political thought from a perspective that explores the intricate interplay between political ideal and reality. Political philosophy has a dual character: viewed as a philosophical field of study, it searches for an ideal social and political order that expresses the best aspects of humanity; viewed as a political field of study, it aims to present an understanding of the real world and give principled guidance as to how people should act. The challenge of such two-track theorizing is twofold: to demonstrate the attractiveness of the ideal even though it is unlikely to work in the real world, and to show that a feasible nonideal conception of order still tallies with the ideal conception.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-818
Author(s):  
George Duke

Abstract This article argues that recent attempts to domesticate the concept of constituent power by appeal to inherent liberal-democratic constraints on its exercise are untenable. The article first outlines the conceptual background and some of the underlying motivations for the inherent constraints thesis. It then critically examines two attempts to defend the inherent constraints thesis, by reference to liberal and democratic principles respectively. These attempts, I contend, rest on a conflation of strong and weak popular sovereignty and assumptions about political legitimacy that should be kept conceptually distinct from the theory of constituent power. Finally, the article argues that the inherent constraints thesis ultimately derives from a failure to attend to the ‘ideal’ or ‘central’ concept of the constitution. The conclusion to draw from these arguments is that while there may be some minimal constraints on constituent power, these will not be inherently liberal-democratic in nature.


Author(s):  
M.S. Shahrabadi ◽  
T. Yamamoto

The technique of labeling of macromolecules with ferritin conjugated antibody has been successfully used for extracellular antigen by means of staining the specimen with conjugate prior to fixation and embedding. However, the ideal method to determine the location of intracellular antigen would be to do the antigen-antibody reaction in thin sections. This technique contains inherent problems such as the destruction of antigenic determinants during fixation or embedding and the non-specific attachment of conjugate to the embedding media. Certain embedding media such as polyampholytes (2) or cross-linked bovine serum albumin (3) have been introduced to overcome some of these problems.


Author(s):  
R. A. Crowther

The reconstruction of a three-dimensional image of a specimen from a set of electron micrographs reduces, under certain assumptions about the imaging process in the microscope, to the mathematical problem of reconstructing a density distribution from a set of its plane projections.In the absence of noise we can formulate a purely geometrical criterion, which, for a general object, fixes the resolution attainable from a given finite number of views in terms of the size of the object. For simplicity we take the ideal case of projections collected by a series of m equally spaced tilts about a single axis.


Author(s):  
R. Beeuwkes ◽  
A. Saubermann ◽  
P. Echlin ◽  
S. Churchill

Fifteen years ago, Hall described clearly the advantages of the thin section approach to biological x-ray microanalysis, and described clearly the ratio method for quantitive analysis in such preparations. In this now classic paper, he also made it clear that the ideal method of sample preparation would involve only freezing and sectioning at low temperature. Subsequently, Hall and his coworkers, as well as others, have applied themselves to the task of direct x-ray microanalysis of frozen sections. To achieve this goal, different methodological approachs have been developed as different groups sought solutions to a common group of technical problems. This report describes some of these problems and indicates the specific approaches and procedures developed by our group in order to overcome them. We acknowledge that the techniques evolved by our group are quite different from earlier approaches to cryomicrotomy and sample handling, hence the title of our paper. However, such departures from tradition have been based upon our attempt to apply basic physical principles to the processes involved. We feel we have demonstrated that such a break with tradition has valuable consequences.


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