Representative Democracy and Religious Thought in South Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 114-136
Author(s):  
Humeira Iqtidar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Polity

What role did popular enthusiasm about democratic participation in the early twentieth century play in the ideas of two key religious revivalists in South Asia: Abul A‘la Maududi and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar? This chapter lays out the differently inflected visions of the two thinkers to argue that they were both working through new conceptions of religion and society, which crystallized around the mythical entity “the people.” How to recognize and organize the people who form the constituency as well as the legislators of a democratic polity was the challenge they tackled. They differed sharply in their analysis of nationalism as the glue that held “the people” together, and in their resistance to prevailing European theories of nationalism and representative government. Despite many differences, the two thinkers were united in an enthusiasm for democratic politics. Understanding the political manifestations of their ideas today requires a reckoning with their respective visions of democracy.

Freedom of Political Communication in Australia

1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-401
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
High Court ◽  
Australian Capital ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The People

In three important decisions,1 handed down on the same day in October 1994, the Australian High Court continued its exploration of the implied constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication. Two years previously, in the judgments in Nationwide News Pty Ltd v. Wills2 and Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v. The Commonwealth,3 a majority of the High Court had distilled an implication of freedom of political communication from the provisions and structure of the Australian Constitution.4 This was not an implication of freedom of expression generally, since it was derived from the concept of representative government which the majority considered to be enshrined in the Constitution: “not all speech can claim the protection of the constitutional implication of freedom … identified in order to ensure the efficacious working of representative democracy and government”.5 The extent of this implied constitutional guarantee was left rather unclear, since a number of different views were expressed. As Justice Toohey has now explained,6 there were two possibilities. The first was a more limited “implied freedom on the part of the people of the Commonwealth to communicate information, opinions and ideas relating to the system of representative government”. The second was a rather more expansive “freedom to communicate in relation to public affairs and political matters generally”. In the recent trilogy of cases a majority of the High Court was prepared to endorse the second of these alternatives.7 In Cunliffe v. The Commonwealth Chief Justice Mason concluded that it would be too restrictive to limit the implied freedom to “communications for the purposes of the political processes in a representative democracy”.8

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 Algorithms, Manipulation, and Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Thomas Christiano
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Society ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Political Inequality

Abstract Algorithmic communications pose several challenges to democracy. The three phenomena of filtering, hypernudging, and microtargeting can have the effect of polarizing an electorate and thus undermine the deliberative potential of a democratic society. Algorithms can spread fake news throughout the society, undermining the epistemic potential that broad participation in democracy is meant to offer. They can pose a threat to political equality in that some people may have the means to make use of algorithmic communications and the sophistication to be immune from attempts at manipulation, while other people are vulnerable to manipulation by those who use these means. My concern here is with the danger that algorithmic communications can pose to political equality, which arises because most citizens must make decisions about what and who to support in democratic politics with only a sparse budget of time, money, and energy. Algorithmic communications such as hypernudging and microtargeting can be a threat to democratic participation when persons are operating in environments that do not conduce to political sophistication. This constitutes a deepening of political inequality. The political sophistication necessary to counter this vulnerability is rooted for many in economic life and it can and ought to be enhanced by changing the terms of economic life.

“You Will Not Replace Us”: The Melancholic Nationalism of Whiteness

2020 ◽  
pp. 009059172097274
Author(s):  
Michael Feola
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
White Nationalism ◽  
Racial Supremacy

This article addresses recent strains of white nationalism rooted within anxieties over demographic replacement (e.g., “the Great Replacement”). More broadly, the article argues that the contemporary politics of white grievance cannot be reduced to an ahistorical desire for racial supremacy. Rather, these anxieties represent the political reflex to perceptions of loss on the part of historical white majorities—a loss that takes a distinctly melancholic form in both discourse and practice. To understand white nationalism as a melancholic politics is to recognize the pathologies that stem from its underlying psychodynamics. At the affectual level, for instance, the subject of white grievance is constituted as the subject of politicized rage through its organizing narratives. And ultimately, the politics of melancholic whiteness raises significant challenges for a democratic polity. Most fundamentally, the melancholic fixation upon loss forecloses the futurity required by a democratic politics. Upon diagnosing these destructive pathologies, the article goes on to propose alternatives to approach civic change in less destructive, more democratically generative fashion.

More Government with the People: The Crisis of Representative Democracy and Options for Reform in Germany

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 713-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Pünder
Keyword(s):  
Political Stability ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The People ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Elected Representatives

Throughout the world, there is debate about how democratic systems should adapt to the demands of their increasingly emancipated citizenries. More than ever, people desire to take part in the creation of their life circumstances. The demand for participation is paired with a growing discontent with the political elites. This article looks at the challenges in the context of Germany's system of government, discussing the leading debates of democratic reform in the EU's largest member state with some incidental remarks on other countries. Specifically, the study analyzes two core components of representative democracy—the electoral process and the parliamentary decision-making procedure—and shows how they should be reformed to ensure political stability in the long run. As a measure for the analysis, the author develops a system of four preconditions, on which successful democratic government depends: Responsiveness and political leadership on the side of the elected representatives; preparedness for participation and acceptance on the part of the represented. The article shows that optimizing democracy on the basis of these pillars is not just advisable as a matter of political prudence. In fact, Germany's constitution, the Basic Law, contains a normative expectation towards the political elites that they continuously improve democracy and ensure its appropriate functioning.

Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Knopff
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
New Science ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
The Cost

AbstractIn Canada as elsewhere, representative democracy is under attack by both populists and rights advocates. The populist challenge comes mainly from Preston Manning's wing of the Reform party. The rights-based challenge is grounded on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These two challenges are different in obvious ways, but from the point of view of representative government—and ultimately of liberal democratic constitutionalism—what they have in common outweighs their differences. What they have in common is the appeal to a mystical being or icon beyond ordinary politics. In effect, the People or Rights become what God was to pre-liberal theocratic politics: a transpolitical trump on ordinary political division, a way of placing opponents “beyond the pale,” a demand for unattainable purity in public life and policy. While bills of rights and populism appear to flow, respectively, from the liberalism and the democracy of liberal democracy, they are, in fact, vehicles for precisely the kind of politics liberal democracy was designed to overcome. Representative government, not populism or entrenched rights, was at the heart of the “new science of politics” designed to make liberal democracy possible. Representative institutions, properly arranged in a system of checks and balances, were a way of blending liberalism with democracy, giving each its due, but indirectly, so that neither would be taken to self-destructive extremes. Populism and the judicialized politics of rights threaten to dissolve this salutary blend, at the cost of liberal democratic constitutionalism.

scholarly journals The theoretical basis of the scientific and methodological heritage of Akhmet Baitursynov

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-45
Author(s):  
Karlygash SHARIPOVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Spiritual Leader ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The People ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
National Science ◽  
History Of

The author of the article shares information about the methodology of Akhmet Baitursynov – the largest person who occupies a special place in the political and cultural life of the Kazakh society in the first decades of the twentieth century. Ahmet Baitursynuly is the spiritual leader of his people, a wise son who "sows the seeds of honesty". He is a co-owner who has worked for one institute or a dozen authors to date. In particular, Akhmet Baitursynuly is a reformer who created a national script for six million Kazakhs of that period, a public figure who made efforts to teach Kazakh children in their native languages, the author of "alphabets", textbooks for teaching children the Kazakh language in national schools, a linguist who laid the foundation of the national science-Kazakh linguistics; the first scientist-philologist, representing the theory of Kazakh literary studies, the first scientist-culturologist, researcher of the history of the culture of the people, teacher-innovator, presenting the methodology of teaching the native language in a new way, one of the organizers of Kazakh science, one of the first professors of the Kazakh language and literature, who laid the foundation of our national Academy today. The main of these names is the art critic of the Kazakh word, the art critic of the Kazakh language.

scholarly journals Mass Mobilization in Indian Politics: A Case Study of Non-Cooperation Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Farooq Ahmad Dar ◽  
Muhammad Sajid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Abrar Zahoor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Masses

Mass-Mobilization is one of the key ingredients for not only launching a movement but also for spreading any political agenda. The involvement of the masses always plays an important role in a process of bringing change anywhere and at any time. The history of South Asia, however, witnessed that in the struggle against the colonial rulers, to begin with, started by the elite alone. Politics was considered as the domain of a selected few and the common men were considered as ignorant and perhaps irrelevant and thus were kept at a distance. It was only after the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after the entrance of Gandhi on the political screen that the masses gained importance and were directly involved in political affairs. They not only became part of the Non-Cooperation Movement but also played an important role in spreading the movement all across India. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight Gandhi’s efforts to mobilize Indian masses during the Non-Cooperation Movement and its impact on the future politics of the region. The paper also discusses in detail different groups of society that actively participated in the process of mass-mobilization.

Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 327-338
Author(s):  
Jesudas Athyal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
People Of God ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The People ◽  
The Church

The arrival in South Asia of the Western missionaries marked a turning point in the Babylonian connection of the church. While Christians in South India initially welcomed the missionaries, their reforms turned traditional Christians against the missionaries. Dalit theology emerged, rejecting the notion that a caste-ridden society and Christianity are compatible. The retreat of communism led to the rise of secularism and religious fundamentalism, while in South Asia, this tension led to renewal of religion. ‘Little Traditions’ are the narratives subsumed by mainline religions; they play a role in interreligious encounters. Pentecostalism in India at the beginning of the twentieth century appealed to Dalits as an alternative to the traditional churches. In South Asia, Western ethnocentrism often identified Christianity almost exclusively with European culture. Religiosity and poverty are two realities in Asia and theologising in the region needs to take seriously the struggles for full humanity; double-baptism refers to Christian collaboration with believers of other religions and secular ideologies while engaging with Asian poverty. The role of theology in repressive contexts is to urge the people of God to keep in dialectical tension the vision of the Kingdom of God and the struggles for freedom, justice and equality.

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