How Is Collective Identity Possible in Democracies? Political Integration and the Leitkultur Debate in Germany

The quest for a common collective identity has become a challenge for modern democracy: Liberal demands for greater inclusion and individual freedom, aspirations for a strong and solidaric political community, as well as nationalist or right-wing populist calls for exclusion and a preservation of hegemonic national identities are creating tensions that cannot be overlooked. This article therefore formulates the central question of how collective identity can be possible in a liberal democracy. Based on a case study on Germany, it will therefore be examined whether Leitkultur as a model of political integration can serve in generating a functional democratic collective identity. The necessary benchmarks guiding the analysis will be defined beforehand from a systems-theoretical perspective, balancing inclusion and exclusion within three crucial dimensions: normative basics, historic continuity, and affirmative bindings. The results show that a static definition of a German Leitkultur would in the long run neither achieve functional inclusion nor be able to generate the necessary cohesion of a political community, especially regarding the second and third identity dimensions.

Engaging Young Voters in the Political Process

The aim of this chapter is to analyse young voter engagement in modern Western democracies. Why young voters? Young voters are disengaged from the political process. In order to complete the analysis, the author adapts an engagement model from social media marketing. The adapted model consists of three parts: consumption, contribution, and (co) creation of brand related materials. The author hypothesises that each aspect of the model is related to the other and that all three aspects of the model are positively related to loyalty to the political party brand. The aim of this conceptual adaptation is to investigate a new way to re-engage young voters with the political party brand, thereby strengthening one pillar of modern democracy.

The theory of a just state in the philosophical concept of the institutional person

The antagonisms in the development of modern social relations make working out the idea of creating comfortable life conditions for a person in society topical again. This circumstance suggests reconsidering the theory of a just state within the context of the philosophical conception of the institutional person with a substantial comprehension of the institutional organization of society comparing it with the variability of the tasks of modern democracy. The philosophical concept of the institutional person concerning a just state as a rational concept-construct for a human life and the organization of society continues a series of scientific articles on the concept of the institutional person: the ontological and value foundations which reveal its new possibilities for the analysis of social being. When considering the problem of the formation of a social state as a rational concept-construct for a human life and the organization of society through the prism of the philosophical concept of the institutional person, the principles and mechanisms of its solution are revealed. The paper draws attention to the natural processes of the formation of the middle class and the development of value consciousness which, while maintaining functional differentiation in society, form its social and class homogeneity defining the common tasks of modern democracy aimed at aligning the private interests of the domestic bourgeoisie with the national and regional interests of the country’s development and the personal interests of a human being, and to the painless transformation of domestic oligarchs into aristocrats, into allies of the middle class.

Social Exchange between Candidate Head of Village with Voters in Tuban Regency, East Java, Indonesia

This article is a summary of research on social exchange between Candidate Village Heads and voters in Tuban Regency, East Java. Village democracy is considered a "genuine" democracy that can be used as an orientation in the development of modern democracy at the national level, with characteristics such as deliberation, village meetings and village head elections by the people in the village, from the candidates they propose themselves. Thus, the village has been officially recognized as a democratic entity that has autonomous power in administering its government independently in accordance with the wishes and needs formulated by its own citizens. Based on the description of the research background above, the problems that become the focus of this research are formulated as follows: (1) What is the type of social exchange that occurs between candidates and voters in the 2019 Sumberarum Village Head Election? (2) What elements form the social exchange between candidates and voters in the 2019 Sumberarum Village Head Election? (3) How did the candidate take advantage of the social exchange arena to win the 2019 Sumberaum Village Head Election? (4) What are the patterns of social exchange that occur between candidates and voters in the 2019 Sumberarum Village Head Election?

Measuring Political Trust in a Modern Democracy

Systematic review of articles on the problem of measuring political trust published in such authoritative scientific journals as “European Political Science Review”, “British Journal of Politics and International Relations”, “Parliamentary Affairs”, “Journal of Public Policy”, “Political Science Quarterly”, “Perspectives on Politics” and “International Journal of Public Opinion Research”, demonstrates considerable attention of scientists to the problem of political trust in a modern democracy and pursues as its goal the development of a methodological basis for political trust research. The methodology of the review on the problem of measuring political trust involves a comparative analysis of the results of studies in the field of assessing political trust. Among the main tasks of the article are: generalization of scientific approaches to political trust, development of methods for political trust measurements and its result interpretation, characterization of the crisis of trust in a modern democracy. The objectives of the study include identifying conceptual scientific works of Western scientists for the period 2011–2021, which allow tracing the modernization of ideas about the object of political trust, characterize the methods of measuring the level of political trust used in modern socio-political science, and reveal differences in the formation of moral and strategic trust. The differences in moral political trust, where trusting relationships are formed on the basis of the experience and personal interaction of subjects, and strategic trust, where political culture is formed and certain expectations that political leaders will make correct, rational decisions are based on fundamental ideas about the political an order where constant change forms personal and institutional ties. Measuring political trust, which is the basis of interaction between citizens and the state, is an issue of fundamental importance for characterizing the quality of democracy, and the rule of law is impossible without a high level of political trust.

REPRESENTING THE DEMOS: ADAPTING INSIGHTS FROM THE CONSTRUCTIVIST TURN IN POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

One of the commonest clichés in the study of ancient and modern democracy is the claim that the former is ‘direct’, the latter ‘representative’. A few scholars have recently explored areas in which the Classical Athenian democracy had representative features, particularly the magistracies. These studies continue, however, to understand ‘political representation’ according to the definition proposed by the political scientist Hanna Pitkin, that is, as ‘acting [on the part of the political representative] in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them’. In this paper I introduce the insights of the recent ‘constructivist turn’ in studies of political representation to the analysis of Athenian politics in the hope of suggesting, in what will necessarily be a brief and incomplete exercise, how productive this exciting new paradigm can be for understanding the dynamics of ancient democracy. I first lay out the basic tenets of constructivist representation, particularly the notion of the ‘representative claim’ as developed by the political theorist Michael Saward, and argue for their suitability for studying ancient Greek history and political thought. Next, I adapt the model of the representative claim to two episodes of Athenian democratic deliberation, showing how it illuminates processes of demotic will- and identity-formation. I conclude by briefly underscoring how approaching Athenian politics in terms of constructivist notions of representation restores an aesthetic dimension to ancient democratic debate, one that allows us to compare more productively the ‘demos’ of symbouleutic oratory with its counterparts in poetry, sculpture, and other media, namely as a represented object fashioned for creative and rhetorical purposes.

Representative Democracy and Colonial Inspirations: The Case of John Stuart Mill

Focusing on John Stuart Mill, a particularly illuminating contributor to modern democratic theory, this article examines the connections between modern democracy and the European colonial experience. It argues that Mill drew on the exclusionary logic and discourse available through the colonial experience to present significant portions of the English working classes as domestic barbarians, whose potential rise to power posed a danger to civilization itself: a line of argument that helped him legitimate representative government as a democratic, rather than an antidemocratic form of government, as it had been traditionally perceived. The article contributes to our understanding of the development of modern democratic theory and practice by drawing attention to the ways the colonial experience shaped core Western institutions and ways of thinking, and it makes the case that this experience remains an essential, if often unacknowledged, part of our collective “self.”