Deliberative Democracy and Punishment

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo de Greiff
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Theories Of Punishment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
As If

Abstract This paper contests the traditional division of labor that confines theories of punishment to the domain of moral, or at the most, legal, theories, as if punishment did not pose a challenge to political theories as well. It is thus also an attempt to clarify the relationship between moral and political theory. After pointing out that despite the recent surge in interest in different aspects of deliberative democracy, its theorists have been silent on the question of punishment, the paper argues, concretely, that this is a silence that does not serve them well, and that can be made up by establishing links between a deliberative theory of democracy and a modified expressionist theory of punishment.

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Muirhead
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Positive Theory ◽  
Median Voter Theorem ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Models Of Democracy

Anthony Downs’s Economic Theory of Democracy has been marginalized in normative democratic theory, notwithstanding its prominence in positive political theory. For normative theorists, the “paradox of voting” testifies to the reality of moral motivation in politics, a species of motivation foreign to Downs’s theory and central to the ideals of deliberative democracy that normative theorists developed in the 1980s and 1990s. The deliberative ideal displaced aggregative conceptions of democracy such as Downs’s model. The ensuing segmentation of normative democratic theories that assume moral motives (like deliberative democracy) and positive models of democracy that assume selfish motives (like Downs’s theory) leaves both without the resources to diagnose the persistence of ideological partisanship and polarization that beset modern democracies. Engaging Downs’s theoretical contributions, especially the median voter theorem, would constitute a salutary step toward a democratic theory that integrates normative and positive theory.

scholarly journals From public reason to deliberative democracy

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-256
Author(s):  
Ivan Mladenovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper I shall investigate the relationship between public reason and deliberative democracy, mainly as it is presented in Rawls?s later political theory. Against the critics who claim that Rawls has no deliberative democratic theory, I shall argue that he presented a complex view of public deliberation that contains a set of formal and substantive requirements derived from the idea of public reason. My main aim in this paper is to defend and further elaborate the thesis that Rawls?s later political theory is crucially important for deliberative democracy. Furthermore, in light of the recent literature on deliberative democracy, I examine the relevance of Rawls?s view for addressing some current problems, but also look at some limits of the public reason perspective.

Deus Per Naturam, Deus Per Gratiam: A Note on Mediaeval Political Theology

1952 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 253-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst H. Kantorowicz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Relationship

Dr. George H. Williams' recent study on The Norman Anonymous of 1100 A.D., published as an extra number of this Review, may be taken as an excuse for delving once more into the highly suggestive pamphlets of this anti-Gregorian royalist. In a paragraph headed Christus per naturam, Christus per gratiam Dr. Williams, able and stimulating, discusses the Christology — perhaps we should say: political Christology — of that courageous mediaeval publicist, thereby commendably calling attention to a hitherto somewhat neglected topic: the bearing of Christology on the relationship between Church and State. It is, however, not the christological aspect of the natura-gratia problem which will be dealt with in the following pages, but the historical and doxographic sides of it. Dr. Williams, it is true, has indicated the immediate, or possibly immediate, sources of his author's political theories, but it would have exceeded by far the proper tasks of his analysis to trace every theorem back to its origins. Although the building up of an unbroken catena philologica is not intended here either, it may yet prove not quite useless to spread out in the present paper some material, casually collected and perforce incomplete, which might elucidate the adaptation to Christian thought of an axiom of Hellenistic political theory.

Political Science on the Cusp: Recovering a Discipline's Past

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN G. GUNNELL
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

As Thomas Kuhn noted, it is almost inevitable that scientific practitioners read the history of their field backward and perceive earlier stages as, at best, prototypical of the present. This is the manner in which political scientists, and even historians, have imaged the relationship between the debates about science and democracy that took place during the 1920s and 1950s. Despite the importance of Charles Merriam's role in the history of American political science, his work was not the discursive axis of the paradigmatic disciplinary shift that took place in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was the arguments of G. E. G. Catlin and W. Y. Elliott that most distinctly represented the transformation in both the theory of democracy and the image of science, and that, for the next two generations, set the terms of the debate about these issues as well as about the relationship between the mainstream discipline and the subfield of political theory. And, despite the theoretical and ideological differences between Catlin and Elliott, their exchange points to the intensely practical concerns that originally informed the controversy about the scientific study of politics.

From Container to Claustrum: Projective Identification in Couples

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Projective Identification ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intimate Partners ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

This paper is a contribution to the growing literature on the role of projective identification in understanding couples' dynamics. Projective identification as a defence is well suited to couples, as intimate partners provide an ideal location to deposit unwanted parts of the self. This paper illustrates how projective identification functions differently depending on the psychological health of the couple. It elucidates how healthier couples use projective identification more as a form of communication, whereas disturbed couples are inclined to employ it to invade and control the other, as captured by Meltzer's concept of "intrusive identification". These different uses of projective identification affect couples' capacities to provide what Bion called "containment". In disturbed couples, partners serve as what Meltzer termed "claustrums" whereby projections are not contained, but imprisoned or entombed in the other. Applying the concept of claustrum helps illuminate common feelings these couples express, such as feeling suffocated, stifled, trapped, held hostage, or feeling as if the relationship is killing them. Finally, this paper presents treatment challenges in working with more disturbed couples.

Getting Real?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Goodhart
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Norms

Chapter 3 engages with realist political theory throughcritical dialogues with leading realist theorists. It argues that realist political theories are much more susceptible to conservatism, distortion, and idealization than their proponents typically acknowledge. Realism is often not very realistic either in its descriptions of the world or in its political analysis. While realism enables the critical analysis of political norms (the analysis of power and unmasking of ideology), it cannot support substantive normative critique of existing social relations or enable prescriptive theorizing. These two types of critique must be integrated into a single theoretical framework to facilitate emancipatory social transformation.

Private Education

1986 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Private Education ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Relationship

This book focuses on the relationship between private and public education in a comparative context. The contributors emphasize the relationship between private choices and public policy as they affect the division of labor between public and private non-profit schools, colleges, and universities. Their essays examine the kinds of choices offered by each sector, as well as the effects of present and proposed public policies on the intersectoral division of labor. Written from neither a pro-private nor a pro-public point of view, the contributors point to the ways in which they believe one sector or the other may be preferable for certain goals or groups.

The possibility of democratic socialism in Habermas

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098689
Author(s):  
Pedro A. Teixeira
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Economic Regime ◽  
The Ideal

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.

Social inclusion, a challenge for deliberative democracy? Some reflections on Habermas’s political theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 136843102098378
Author(s):  
Isabelle Aubert
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Iris Marion Young ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

This article explains how the issue of inclusion is central to Habermas’s theory of democracy and how it is deeply rooted in his conception of a political public sphere. After recalling Habermas’s views on the public sphere, I present and discuss various objections raised by other critical theorists: Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Iris Marion Young. These criticisms insist on the paradoxically excluding effects of a conception of democracy that promotes civic participation in the public debate. Negt, Kluge and Fraser develop a Marxist line of analysis that question who can participate in the public sphere. Honneth and Young criticize in various ways the excluding effect of argumentation: are unargumentative speeches excluded from the public debate? I show how Habermas’s model can provide some responses to these various objections by drawing inspiration from his treatment of the gap between religious and post-metaphysical world views.

Measuring Democratic Listening: A Listening Quality Index

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292198944
Author(s):  
Mary F. Scudder
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Quality Index ◽  
Democratic Deliberation

Recent political theory in the area of deliberative democracy has placed listening at the normative core of meaningfully democratic deliberation. Empirical research in this area, however, has struggled to capture democratic listening in a normatively relevant way. This paper presents a new, theoretically informed instrument for measuring and assessing listening in deliberation. Here, I tackle the observational challenge of measuring the act of listening itself, as opposed to either the preconditions or outcomes of listening. Reviewing existing measures, I show that each, in isolation, fails to capture the most democratically meaningful aspects of listening. The paper argues, however, that existing and novel measures can be usefully combined to allow researchers to capture different degrees of democratic listening. Using Rawls’s concept of “lexical priority,” I aggregate relevant components of listening into a normatively significant lexical scale. The paper describes this novel measurement and highlights how it can be used in empirical research on democratic deliberation.

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