Saving Democracy from Ourselves

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archon Fung
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Governance ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Media Professionals ◽  
Social Coherence ◽  
Output Legitimacy ◽  
Three Components

Though we all depend upon democracy, each of us in our public and civic roles is motivated to act in ways that deplete its sustaining conditions. In this chapter, Archon Fung proposes that one part of the solution to this problem is a thicker professional and civic ethics. The argument has three components. The first is a basic account of democratic governance that advances procedural and output legitimacy. In order to produce legitimacy, however, democracy has five sociopolitical “underwriting” conditions: commitment to process over outcome, social coherence, a spirit of compromise, responsive government, and epistemic integrity. Finally, different kinds of actors—politicians, media professionals, and citizens—have powerful self-interested motives to pollute “the commons” of democracy. Each of these role-specific discussions develops a set of ethical commitments that actors should adopt to sustain democracy instead of undermining it.

The foundational economy and the civil sphere

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Filippo Barbera ◽  
Ian Rees Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter focuses on the relationship between FE, citizenship, democracy and social justice. We outline the scope of the Foundational Economy and proceed to focus on the importance of Foundational thinking for critiques of capitalist formations that involve financialization and extraction. We then discuss the relationship between the Foundational Economy and human needs and capabilities before developing an argument for a moral basis to the Foundational Economy and how this links to civil society, citizenship and the commons focusing in particular on the potential for developing democratic governance and public action. We conclude by arguing that Foundational thinking provides a means of linking citizenship to attempts to manage the commons and, if social relations and institutional arrangements vary contextually across space and time, this requires innovative solutions based on experimentation at different scales.

scholarly journals Public goods in Michael Oakeshott’s ‘world of pragmata’

2019 ◽  
pp. 147488511989045
Author(s):  
Maurits de Jongh
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The Commons ◽  
By Products

Michael Oakeshott’s account of political economy is claimed to have found its ‘apotheosis under Thatcherism’. Against critics who align him with a preference for small government, this article points to Oakeshott’s stress on the indispensability of an infrastructure of government-provided public goods, in which individual agency and associative freedom can flourish. I argue that Oakeshott’s account of political economy invites a contestatory politics over three types of public goods, which epitomize the unresolvable tension he diagnosed between nomocratic and teleocratic conceptions of the modern state. These three types are the system of civil law, the by-products of the operation of civil law and public goods which result from policies. The article concludes that Oakeshott offers an important corrective to political theories which favour either market mediation or radical democratic governance of the commons as self-sustaining modes of providing and enjoying goods.

scholarly journals Peaceful Use of Lasers in Space: Context-Based Legitimacy in Global Governance of Large Technical Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
Petr Boháček ◽  
Pavel Dufek ◽  
Nikola Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
High Power Lasers ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Governance Challenges ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
Input Legitimacy ◽  
Output Legitimacy

Technology offers unique sets of opportunities, from human flourishing to civilization survival, but also challenges, from partial misuse to global apocalypse. Yet technology is shaped by the social environment in which it is developed and used, prompting questions about its desirable governance format. In this context, we look at governance challenges of large technical systems, specifically the peaceful use of high-power lasers in space, in order to propose a conceptual framework for legitimate global governance. Specifically, we adopt a context-based approach to legitimacy to address the trade-offs between effectiveness (output legitimacy) and inclusivity (input legitimacy) in the governance of large technical systems. We show that distinguishing two basic phases of space laser policy which call for different legitimacy criteria helps balance out the trade-offs without sacrificing either effectiveness or inclusivity. Finally, we construe LTSs’ governance as a tool for creating globally networked spaces which may enable coordinated global democratic governance.

The illusion of the digital commons: ‘False consciousness’ in online alternative economies

Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 609-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinus Ossewaarde ◽  
Wessel Reijers
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
False Consciousness ◽  
Alternative Economies ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Exchange Relations

Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alternative economies. In this article, however, we argue that the digital commons cannot by themselves constitute genuine forms of resistance for they are vulnerable to what we call ‘the illusion of the digital commons’, which leads to a form of ‘false consciousness’ that Sloterdijk designates as deep-rooted cynicism. This cynicism, we argue, ties in with the contemporary discontent with practices in the ‘sharing economy’, in which we pay particular attention to the practice of hospitality exchange on platforms such as BeWelcome, Couchsurfing, and Airbnb. We utilize Georg Simmel’s theory of money to explicate how exchange relations are mediated by technologically enabled explicit and implicit price mechanisms. Accordingly, we argue that the technologically mediated practice of digital commoning can constitute the ‘illusion of the commons’, an apparent form of commoning through digital exchanges that is inherently vulnerable to foster non-emancipatory practices. We argue that this results in a form of cynicism: of commoners that are disillusioned by ‘the power of things’. Only a ‘politics of the digital commons’, a democratic governance that keeps a check on the vulnerability of digital exchanges, and a free relation to technologies can help in avoiding the illusion of the digital commons.

The Jovian ring

1984 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 203-209
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Equatorial Plane ◽  
Charged Particles ◽  
Dynamical Evolution ◽  
Main Band ◽  
Small Grains ◽  
Three Components

ABSTRACTLying in Jupiter's equatorial plane is a diaphanous ring having little substructure within its three components (main band, faint disk, and halo). Micron-sized grains account for much of the visible ring, but particles of centimeter sizes and larger must also be present to absorb charged particles. Since dynamical evolution times and survival life times are quite short (≲102-3yr) for small grains, the Jovian ring is being continually replenished; probably most of the visible ring is generated by micrometeoroids colliding into unseen parent bodies that reside in the main band.

"Once? No. Twenty times? Sure!" Repeated decisions and uncertainty in the tragedy of the commons

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Hardisty ◽  
Howard Kunreuther ◽  
David H. Krantz ◽  
Poonam Arora
Keyword(s):  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
The Commons

Caring for the Commons

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Fisher ◽  
Jennifer Wies ◽  
Stacie King
Keyword(s):  
The Commons
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