Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Open System ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Common Features ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

This introductory chapter provides an overview of open democracy. Openness is an umbrella concept for general accessibility of power to ordinary citizens. Whereas representation, especially of the electoral kind, always creates the risk of robbing the people of the right to participate in law-making, an open system guarantees that citizens can make their voices generally heard at any point in time and initiate laws when they are not satisfied with the agenda set by representative authorities. Openness prevents the closure and entrenchment of the divide between the represented and representatives that inevitably accompany representation. It means that power flows through the body politic, as opposed to stagnates with a few people. Indeed, open democracy shares common features with what is commonly known as “participatory democracy” and can be considered a variety of it.

scholarly journals Amendment of State Constitutions

1907 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wilford Garner
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
The Right

The right of the people, acting within the bounds of the law and through organs constituted in conformity with the prescriptions of the existing constitution, to alter, amend, or abolish their form of government whenever they deem it necessary to their safety and happiness is, in effect, declared by practically every American bill of rights to be not only fundamental but inalienable and indefeasible. The phraseology differs in some of them but the substance is the same in all. Without such a right the mistakes and errors of the past could not be eliminated from the body politic nor the accumulated wisdom and experience of other States utilized. Without it, the fundamental maxim that constitutions grow instead of being made would be meaningless and political development impossible. An acute thinker has well observed that no constitution can expect to be permanent unless it guarantees progress as well as order. Political conservatism is a virtue too often trampled upon by statesmen, but it has its limits, and, in its exaggerated form, becomes a source of revolution. The amending power has been aptly compared to a safety valve which ought to be so adjusted as not to discharge its peculiar function with too great facility lest it become an escape pipe for party passion and political prejudice, nor with such difficulty that the force needed to induce action will explode the machine.

Open Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The People ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The Right ◽  
Turn Over ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people — with the right suit, accent, wealth, and connections — are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost openness of ancient democracies, this book presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. This book favors the ideal of “representing and being represented in turn” over direct-democracy approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, the book recommends centering political institutions around the “open mini-public” — a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. It also defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency. The book demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed.

A Sermon on the National Fast-Day

2012 ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Sabato Morais
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Book Of Isaiah ◽  
Introductory Section ◽  
The People ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Made In

This chapter takes a look at a sermon by Sabato Morais. Its structure is fairly straightforward. An introductory section focuses on what may appear to be a relatively minor issue but was apparently one that Morais considered to be of symbolic significance: the wording of the presidential proclamation of the national fast-day (made in response to a request by the Senate, possibly in response to the Southern day of prayer on 27 March). The body of the sermon presents two major themes. The first is introduced by the celebrated verses from the fifty-eighth chapter of the Book of Isaiah in which the prophet, speaking in God's behalf, castigates the people for the insincerity of their observance of a day of fasting and prayer. The chapter then turns to the second major theme: the repudiation of a dishonourable, ignominious peace that would come at the cost of dissolution of the American body politic.

George Washington vs. The Phantom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Sizemore
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
George Washington ◽  
The People ◽  
Whiskey Rebellion

This chapter examines two competing forms of sovereign representation against the backdrop of the Whiskey Rebellion. In the new federal republic, George Washington served as a unifying symbol of the people in the centuries-long tradition of the monarch, but the very rituals of Washington’s office and also those of the rebels, such as tar-and-feathering, call attention to the first president’s limitations as symbol of the body politic. Rather than a static substance, the people are a protean force, a circumstance that prompts new forms of representation in Mason Locke Weems’s Life of Washington (1800), Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry (1797), and other works.

The Glorious Excess of Peace in Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis

Theoria ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (159) ◽  
pp. 23-51
Author(s):  
Richard A. Lee Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The Right

In Defensor Pacis Marsilius of Padua grounds the legitimacy of the kingdom, or the state (civitas), on the peace that rule provides the citizens. Looking at Aristotle’s claim that the civitas strives to be like an animal in which all parts in the right proportion for the sake of health, Marsilius argues that ‘the parts of the kingdom or state will be well disposed for the sake of peace [tranquilitas].’ Marsilius goes on to define peace as the agreeable ‘belonging together’ of all members of the kingdom or the state. In this way, Marsilius moves away from a theological ground of the legitimacy of the state towards one that is entirely secular. However, the ground is an unstable one in that it acknowledges the fact that the ‘members’ of the body politic are characterised by difference. As such, the ground of legitimate authority will be characterised as much by force as by peace or by the relation of force to peace.

scholarly journals Immigration, Civil Rights & the Evolution of the People

Daedalus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina M. Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
The Body ◽  
Immigrant Incorporation ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Full Membership ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The People

In considering what it means to treat immigration as a “civil rights” matter, I identify two frameworks for analysis. The first, universalistic in nature, emanates from personhood and promises non-citizens the protection of generally applicable laws and an important set of constitutional rights. The second seeks full incorporation for non-citizens into “the people,” a composite that evolves over time through social contestation – a process that can entail enforcement of legal norms but that revolves primarily around political argument. This pursuit of full membership for non-citizens implicates a reciprocal relationship between them and the body politic, and the interests of the polity help determine the contours of non-citizens' membership. Each of these frameworks has been shaped by the legal and political legacies of the civil rights movement itself, but the second formulation reveals how the pursuit of immigrant incorporation cannot be fully explained as a modern-day version of the civil rights struggle.

Occupying the Marketplace

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
Katie Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Body ◽  
Public Utility ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Private Company ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Right ◽  
National Domain

This chapter analyzes the economically crucial and conceptually volatile debates over public space in the marketplace. It traces how the king’s public domain became national domain and how this transformation affected the ways that citizens pursued particular interests in les Halles. During the Old Regime, the king had issued an edict that permitted some especially indigent Dames to secure market spots before other retailers. He had also granted one company the privilege of renting shelters to these qualified Dames before others. However, when the private company attempted to renew its royal contract during the Revolution, clashes arose over the right to and regulation of public domain. During the disputes, the Dames who were not advantaged by the king’s edict seized new practices of citizenship to claim shelters and trading places. They harnessed revolutionary discourses to mark the earth as national property, attack monopoly-holders as privileged leeches, and secure economic exemptions based on their work’s public utility. As they justified their personal profits on public space, the Dames staked out their place in the body politic.

scholarly journals Cells in the Body Politic: Social identity and hospital construction in Peronist Argentina

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-131
Author(s):  
J Hagood
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The People ◽  
Hospital Construction ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
Modern Hospital

This article examines the critical role played by social identity in the construction of hospitals in the Argentine health care sector during the 1940s and 1950s by uncovering the way in which the “jungle” of hospitals withstood attempts by the state to apply some sense of order, purpose, and centralized organization. The first section examines how physicians envisioned the “modern” hospital they hoped to construct. The second section reveals the important antecedents of nationalized hospitalization schemes found in the collaboration between physicians’ unions and the state. In the third section, an analysis of political speeches illuminates how Juan and Evita Perón packaged new hospitals as gifts to the people from their leader. The fourth section outlines specific plans to increase the number of hospital beds. The final section surveys examples of hospital construction to demonstrate how sub-national identities were instrumental to fragmenting both Argentine society and its hospital infrastructure.

scholarly journals WHAT SHOULD BE THE FORM OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE LAWMAKING PROCESS? AN ANALYSIS OF SOUTH AFRICAN CASES

Obiter ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses Retselisitsoe Phooko
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Involvement ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Making

South Africa’s new constitutional democracy places a duty on various legislators to facilitate public participation in the law-making process as mandated by the principles of participatory democracy provided for in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. This has resulted in a series of court cases wherein the electorate, inter alia, challenged the legislation on the basis that the results did not reflect the views of the people. The courts’ earlier jurisprudence seemed to be placing more emphasis on participatory democracy as opposed to representative democracy. However, recent court decisions indicate a shift towards representative democracy. The central question presented in this paper is whether the consideration of the views of the public by the provincial and national legislatures is merely a matter of procedure, or that those views are indeed considered in the law-making process. In an attempt to answer this question, the paper will evaluate and critique some of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal decisions on public involvement in either the legislative or law-making process. The argument presented in this discourse is that, if the public’s wishes are considered by the legislature, then the outcome would be influenced by the people’s demands. An otherwise negative outcome shows that public participation in the law-making process is a procedural matter and has no substantive value.

The Australian Labor Party

1949 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Overacker
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Labor Party ◽  
Security And Protection ◽  
The Right

In The Politics of Equality, Leslie Lipson points out that modern party organization has “exorcised some of the old devils from the body politic but has invoked others that are new and, as yet, untamed.” Applying to parties John Dewey's statement that“Individuals can find the security and protection that are prerequisites for freedom only in association with others—and then the organization these associations take on, as a measure of securing their efficiency, limits the freedom of those who have entered into them…. We have now a kind of molluscan organization, soft individuals within and a hard constrictive shell without.…,”Lipson adds: “How to harden the individuals and to soften the shell, both to the right degree, remains one of the outstanding political problems of our century.”American parties are extremely soft-shelled mollusks—if, indeed, they have any shell at all. In contrast, the Australian Labor party has as hard a shell as any mollusk in the political zoo.

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