The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 543-562
Author(s):  
Pippa Norris
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
Democratic Regime ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
The People ◽  
Considerable Concern

The rise of authoritarian populism has aroused considerable concern for the potential consequences. To understand the consequences of these developments for political representation in liberal democracies, Section I outlines the core concept of populism, understood minimally as a rhetorical appeal to ‘the people’ against established sources of power, and the key differences between authoritarian and libertarian versions. Section II considers the challenge of populism for liberal-democratic regime institutions. Section III turns to the influence of populist parties on their signature issues on the public policy agenda, notably immigration and Europe. The conclusion in Section IV summarizes the main findings and considers their broader implications for political representation.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
International Level ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Mass Publics

How can democracies effectively represent citizens? The goal of this Handbook is to evaluate comprehensively how well the interests and preferences of mass publics become represented by institutions in liberal democracies. It first explores how the idea and institutions of liberal democracies were formed over centuries and became enshrined in Western political systems. The contributors to this Handbook, made up of the world’s leading scholars on the various aspects of political representation, examine how well the political elites and parties who are charged with the representation of the public interest meet their duties. Clearly, institutions often fail to live up to their own representation goals. With this in mind, the contributors explore several challenges to the way that the system of representation is organized in modern democracies. For example, actors such as parties and established elites face rising distrust among electorates. Also, the rise of international problems such as migration and environmentalism suggests that the focus of democracies on nation states may have to shift to a more international level. All told, this Handbook illuminates the normative and functional challenges faced by representative institutions in liberal democracies.

scholarly journals The limits of inclusion: Representation of minority and non-dominant communities in consociational and liberal democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timofey Agarin
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Majority Group ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
The Impact

Consociationalism starts with the assumption that in divided societies there are multiple groups with reasonable claims which leads to the development of group sensitive mechanisms for political representation. While consociations are put in place to ensure the participation of groups whose past disenfranchisement from (equal) political representation resulted in violence, their disregard for individuals and identities of other, non-dominant groups is comparable to the impact of liberal democratic governments on minority groups. Both the approach observed in consociational practice and the liberal democratic approach of accommodating members of minority groups result from a preference for the political accommodation of majority group identities. Both approaches, I argue, result in the neglect of the input of minority and non-dominant groups. This effect is, principally, a result of the lack of guaranteed representation afforded to their group identities and is exacerbated by the representation of majority interests which is aggregated from individual-level participation.

Tolerating Decent Societies

John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 371-382
Author(s):  
Jon Mandle
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Liberal Democratic Society ◽  
Political Decisions

Rawls argues that the public reason of a liberal democratic society should aim to include—and therefore tolerate—all reasonable persons. But the public reason that he defends for the Society of Peoples (globally) is considerably more inclusive. Rawls argues for the toleration of “decent” societies that are not liberal democracies. Critics have charged that such toleration, while perhaps pragmatic, is unprincipled. But a careful examination of Rawls’s criteria for “decency” reveals a defense of Rawls’s position that is grounded in the institutional requirements for a society to be able to make its own legitimate political decisions.

Max Weber's Liberalism for a Nietzschean World

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Warren
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Elite Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Positive Concept

Weber's commentators often accuse him of lacking a coherent political philosophy because his pluralist-elite theory of democracy seems indifferent to liberal-democratic values. I argue, however, that the core of Weber's political philosophy is a politicized neo-Kantian liberalism, one that produces an ethically significant and positive concept of politics. The problem is rather that Weber's pessimism about institutionalizing positive politics in bureaucratized societies left the ethical core of his political philosophy inexplicit. This introduced a conflict into his thought between his ethical commitments and his assessments of political possibilities. The conflict is compelling because it reflects the contemporary gap between the promise and performance of liberal democracies. At the same time, formulating Weber's problems in these terms helps identify democratic solutions that remain obscure in his assessment of conflicts between bureaucratization and democracy.

scholarly journals Anti-Corruption Movement: A Story of the Making of the Aam Admi Party and the Interplay of Political Representation in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aheli Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rising Incidence ◽  
Democratic Principles

The Aam Admi Party (AAP; Party of the Common Man) was founded as the political outcome of an anti-corruption movement in India that lasted for 18 months between 2010–2012. The anti-corruption movement, better known as the India Against Corruption Movement (IAC), demanded the passage of the <em>Janlokpal </em>Act<em>, </em>an Ombudsman body. The movement mobilized public opinion against corruption and the need for the passage of a law to address its rising incidence. The claim to eradicate corruption captured the imagination of the middle class, and threw up several questions of representation. The movement prompted public and media debates over who represented civil society, who could claim to represent the ‘people’, and asked whether parliamentary democracy was a more authentic representative of the people’s wishes vis-à-vis a people’s democracy where people expressed their opinion through direct action. This article traces various ideas of political representation within the IAC that preceded the formation of the AAP to reveal the emergence of populist representative democracy in India. It reveals the dynamic relationship forged by the movement with the media, which created a political field that challenged liberal democratic principles and legitimized popular public perception and opinion over laws and institutions.

scholarly journals KAWIN BEDA AGAMA DAN PERLINDUNGAN HAM : STUDI KRITIS ATAS UNDANG-UNDANG PERNIKAHAN NOMOR 1 TAHUN 1974 DAN UNDANG-UNDANG DASAR 1945

Asy-Syari ah ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yedi Purwanto
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
Interfaith Marriage ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The People ◽  
Core Problem

The polemic of Marriage Law Number 1 of 1974 is back into hot issue to be discussed. It reminds to the public discussion in a long history and the dynamics of the appearance of this laws. This time, the spotlight is article 2, paragraph 1 of the Marriage Law Number 1 of 1974 which contains "Marriage is legitimate, if it is done according to the laws of each religion and the belief it". Against with the decision, any parties asked a judicial review to the Constitutional Court (MK) for the article. This paper wants to give exposure of reactions of the people who are doing legal efforts with the proposal, as well as how to find the best solution for its completion. The core problem in this paper is to be appointed about whether or not may interfaith marriage. Referring to the Marriage Law Number 1 of 1974 and the 1945 Constitution, this paper will describe how the views of classical scholars, ulama (Muslim jurists), community leaders, officials and legal experts in the country explain about marriage in different religion.

Uncertainty: At the core of general practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (27) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guri Rortveit
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
General Practice ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Core Concept ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
Clinical Encounters

Uncertainty is a core concept of medical activity, especially in general practice, where illness is evaluated at an early stage and available diagnostic tools are limited. In this paper, theoretical aspects of the concept of uncertainty are used to analyze the handling of uncertainty in two areas of the health care system: clinical encounters in primary care and at the public health level. Wynne’s categorizations of risk, strict uncertainty, and ignorance represent one approach that may be useful in acknowledging when a situation is not suitable for an evidence-based approach. Similarly, the concept of post-normal science is valuable in describing situations where uncertainty prevails together with high stakes, values in dispute, and an urgent need for decision making. Accepting that science cannot always reduce uncertainty but it can, rather, be a tool for analyzing an uncertain situation as a prerequisite for attending to uncertainty in a productive way—even when the end results are unfavorable. This paper provides examples of uncertainty in both clinical and public health situations.  

What’s in a Name? Questions for a New Monument

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margrethe Troensegaard
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Sculpture ◽  
The Social ◽  
We The People

What is the contemporary condition of the monument? In relation to the current issue’s discussion of immersive and discursive exhibition practices, this essay places itself at a slight remove; rather than to analyse and evaluate specific curatorial strategies it seeks to raise questions of relevance to such practices and begins by moving the discourse out of the museum and into the public space. The point of interrogation here is the monument, a form with a particular capacity to tease and expose the triad we find at the core of any curatorial discourse: the relation between institution, artwork and audience. Following an introductory reflection on how to describe and define a ‘monument’, a term so broadly used it all but loses its value, the text proceeds to examine three cases, Monument de la Renaissance Africaine, Dakar (2010), Danh Vo’s WE THE PEOPLE (DETAIL), various locations (2010-13), and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, New York (2013). The sequencing of these geographically and culturally diverse works makes way for an interrogatory piece of writing that addresses the question of permanence versus temporariness of the artwork as exhibition (and the exhibition as artwork), and that of the political agency of the artistic form. Probing the social agency of the monument, the text draws lines between the symbolising capacity once held by modern sculpture and the oscillation between immersion and discursiveness as two complimentary modes of communication. The discursive content or function of the monument (i.e. what it commemorates) is activated through the viewer’s personal, immersive encounter with its form, a form that potentially places its viewer as a participant to the construction of its message rather than as a mere receiver.

scholarly journals Democratic Decision Making and the Psychology of Risk

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-83
Author(s):  
Andreas Christiansen ◽  
Bjørn Gunnar Hallsson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Risk Beliefs ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
The People ◽  
Scientific Experts

In many cases, the public (or large parts of it) want to restrict an activity or technology that they believe to be dangerous, but that scientific experts believe to be safe. There is thus a tension between respecting the preferences of the people and making policy based on our best scientific knowledge. Deciding how to make policy in the light of this tension requires an understanding of why citizens sometimes disagree with the experts on what is risky and what is safe. In this paper, we examine two highly influential theories of how people form beliefs about risks: the theory that risk beliefs are errors caused by bounded rationality and the theory that such beliefs are part and parcel of people’s core value systems. We then discuss the implications of the psychological theories for questions regarding liberal-democratic decision making: (1) Should policy be responsive to the preferences of citizens in the domain of risk regulation? (2) What risk-regulation policies are legitimate? (3) How should liberal-democratic deliberation be structured?

scholarly journals Populists and planners: ‘We are the people. Who are you?’*

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-103
Author(s):  
Tore Sager
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Contact Points ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Growth Restrictions ◽  
New Challenges

The purpose of this article is to offer planning scholars a basis for criticizing authoritarian populism and not limiting ideological critique to neoliberalism. Authoritarian populism is anti-elitist, anti-pluralist and excluding in that the authentic people includes only part of the population. Authoritarian populists imagine a homogeneous people whose will determines policy. The article deals with confrontations and contact points between communicative planning theory and populist currents. It distils several core themes from five authoritative collections of works on planning theory and examines their relations with populist ideas. Authoritarian populism is an incomplete ideology that can fuse with various other ideologies. Amalgamations of populism and neoliberalism pose new challenges to participatory planning. Authoritarian populism criticizes planning institutions for blocking the immediate realization of the will of the people and being sympathetic to social diversity and cultural influence threatening heartland values. Neoliberalism is opposed to the welfare policies, equity goals, growth restrictions and other public interventions associated with spatial planning. Joint pressure from the two ideologies may alter the planning of liberal democracies in an autocratic direction.

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