democratic practices
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2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-301
Author(s):  
Luis Cabrera

Abstract This article engages contributions from Cricket Keating, Natasha Behl, Fred Lee and Jaby Mathew, and Brooke Ackerly’s introduction, in a symposium on The Humble Cosmopolitan. It first notes insights taken for the development of a democratic cosmopolitanism oriented to political humility from the work of Indian Dalit-rights champion and constitutional architect B.R. Ambedkar, and from interviews conducted with globally oriented Dalit activists. It then considers Mathew’s concerns about accommodation of the moral importance of local democratic practices, and Keating’s about the book’s emphasis on advancing institutional over attitudinal changes. It addresses issues Behl raises around attention to alternate conceptions of citizenship, e.g., ones which would center Dalit women’s voices; and Lee’s concerns about whether the model can recognize the importance of subaltern nationalisms. Responses focus on ways in which the model seeks to enable individuals to challenge political arrogance from a position of co-equal citizenship in regional and global institutions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 103-132
Author(s):  
Jie Lu

This chapter examines the attitudinal consequences of popular understandings of democracy. In particular, we focus on the influence of this critical mass opinion on how citizens assess democratic practices in both foreign countries and their own societies. Mixed-effect regressions confirm that, ceteris paribus, people who have embraced the procedural understanding of democracy by prioritizing its institutions and procedures in protecting basic rights and liberty are more critical of China’s democratic practice but more favorable to that in the United States. Similar mixed-effect regressions reveal that, again, people’s different understandings of democracy significantly shape how they assess their own societies’ democratic practices. On average, people who prioritize the intrinsic values of democracy are less satisfied with their regime’s democratic practices and more critical in assessing their regimes’ democratic nature. Furthermore, even a full democracy still needs to deliver to win over people’s hearts and minds, thereby fostering its popular support.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-506
Author(s):  
Krishnan Vasudevan ◽  
Sohana Nasrin

In this fictional essay, two ethnographers visit Wëlakamike, a community started by a group of citizens who became disillusioned by the failure of nation states to reign in capitalism and manmade climate change. The researchers learn that the technologies and practices designed by community members are used to minimize harm to the environment by human activity while encouraging citizens to engage in spirited democratic practices and artistic interventions. As we articulate in our research statement, this futuristic utopian community is developed upon a critique of contemporary surveillance capitalism and its capacity to disenfranchise people, weaken democracy, and harm the environment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Gabriela Tureta

The research aimed on the Murillo La Greca Museum and the 2019 Occupation Call, to analyze in the light of Social Museology how educational actions tension traditional museums to more collaborative and democratic practices. It was used authors as Mario Chagas, Glauber Guedes Ferreira Lima, Bruno Brulon, Marcele Pereira, Stránský, Tereza Scheiner e Hugues de Varine-Bohan, to stablish the theoretical references between the tensions and ruptures of the Museology through the museum space. Furthermore, other authors whose approach the museum education, sociology and anthropology composed the necessary outline to analyze the data and contextualize the object in a vast discussion about the museums in the contemporary era. Through by a participative research of an exploratory characteristic and data survey about the 2019 Occupation Summon (until March 2020) in the Murillo La Greca Museum, it was able to analyze the educational activities developed during this period and reflect on the relevance of these practices, in a context of a traditional museum, for the decolonization of the museology process and the democratization of the museum space access. Thereby, it was looking for an increase of experimentations possibilities, privileging the educational sector as the engine of new practices for the museum transformations.Key words: Social Museology, Museum Education, Traditional Museums, Democratization, Decoloniality


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-138

Anthropology meets democratic theory in this conversation that explores indigeneity, diversity, and the potentialities of democratic practices as exist in the non-Western world. Wade Davis draws readers into the ethnosphere—the sum total of human knowledge and experience—to highlight the extinction events that are wiping out some half of human ethnic diversity. Gagnon worries over what is lost to how we can understand and practice democracy in this unprecedented, globally occurring, ethnocide.


2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-438
Author(s):  
Staci Zavattaro ◽  
Jasper Eshuis

While public administration scholars have studied reputation management for a while, the concept of reputation is coming front and center in governance practices – for better or worse. In this paper, we introduce the Reputation Era, building upon other schemas of understanding administrative development. While reputation management has always been part of public administration, we argue the Reputation Era emerges in a postmodern condition focusing on images and slogans as creators of knowledge, coupled with a digital space that creates instantaneous opportunities to bolster or ruin a reputation. Reputation in this era becomes an input, throughout, output, and outcome rather than only an afterthought. Public values, then, shift in a Reputation Era as cornerstones such as transparency, performance management, and citizen participation, get subsumed into constructing a positive reputation and could lose their mooring to democratic practices if not carefully managed. We offer testable propositions based on our Reputation Era argument.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lester Brian Shawa

<p><b>This thesis draws on Critical Theory as advanced by Critical Theorists in the tradition of the Frankfurt School to explore the nature of anti-democratic practices within policy-steerage, management and governance of university education in Malawi. The thesis critiques instrumental use of reason and neopatrimonial aspects that permeate policy-steerage, management and governance of the university sector in Malawi, and suggests ways of emancipation or social change.</b></p> <p>Two philosophical ideas inform analysis of this emancipatory project: dialectical reasoning as advanced by the first generation Critical Theorists such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse and communicative rationality, which is complemented by the theory of the lifeworld as advanced by the second generation Critical Theorist, Habermas. Dialectical reasoning entails understanding things as they are now and what they might be in future, as such, it is a useful idea for emancipation in that it fosters constant questioning (reflexivity) on the part of actors to make things better. Communicative rationality entails that actors seek to reach common understanding and coordinate actions by reasoned arguments, consensus and cooperation rather than instrumental reasoning and is useful for attaining social change (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Data sources comprise global policy debates, policy documents and interviews with selected government policymakers, Malawian civil society, university administrators and leaders of university staff and student unions.</p> <p>The thesis reveals that at international policy-steerage level, university policy-making in Malawi is chiefly orchestrated by the World Bank using its economic power and the global-neoliberal logic. In this logic, Malawi follows the dictates of the powerful World Bank. Thus, the argument presented is that the World Bank’s university policy-steerage in Malawi follows instrumental rationality and is anti-democratic. Instrumental reasoning refers to the deliberate use of the power of reason for social control or manipulation. At university level, the thesis reveals a rivalry relationship among stakeholders which leads to constrained collegial governance. The thesis shows that the neopatrimonial attitude of presidentialism or the big-man syndrome, which permeates the management and governance of universities in Malawi, perpetuates instrumental use of reason and renders the system anti-democratic. At Malawi Government university policy-steerage level, the thesis shows problems associated with the usage of power by state presidents who are also chancellors of public universities. At this level, policy-steerage is interventionist and characterised by both neopatrimonial aspects of the big-man syndrome and patron-client relationships that lead to instrumental use of reason.</p> <p>Based on this Critical Theory analysis, a theory of university management and governance for Malawian universities is presented aimed at achieving emancipation. To achieve social change there is a need to challenge instrumental ways of reasoning and neopatrimonial aspects by employing dialectical reasoning and communicative rationality.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lester Brian Shawa

<p><b>This thesis draws on Critical Theory as advanced by Critical Theorists in the tradition of the Frankfurt School to explore the nature of anti-democratic practices within policy-steerage, management and governance of university education in Malawi. The thesis critiques instrumental use of reason and neopatrimonial aspects that permeate policy-steerage, management and governance of the university sector in Malawi, and suggests ways of emancipation or social change.</b></p> <p>Two philosophical ideas inform analysis of this emancipatory project: dialectical reasoning as advanced by the first generation Critical Theorists such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse and communicative rationality, which is complemented by the theory of the lifeworld as advanced by the second generation Critical Theorist, Habermas. Dialectical reasoning entails understanding things as they are now and what they might be in future, as such, it is a useful idea for emancipation in that it fosters constant questioning (reflexivity) on the part of actors to make things better. Communicative rationality entails that actors seek to reach common understanding and coordinate actions by reasoned arguments, consensus and cooperation rather than instrumental reasoning and is useful for attaining social change (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Data sources comprise global policy debates, policy documents and interviews with selected government policymakers, Malawian civil society, university administrators and leaders of university staff and student unions.</p> <p>The thesis reveals that at international policy-steerage level, university policy-making in Malawi is chiefly orchestrated by the World Bank using its economic power and the global-neoliberal logic. In this logic, Malawi follows the dictates of the powerful World Bank. Thus, the argument presented is that the World Bank’s university policy-steerage in Malawi follows instrumental rationality and is anti-democratic. Instrumental reasoning refers to the deliberate use of the power of reason for social control or manipulation. At university level, the thesis reveals a rivalry relationship among stakeholders which leads to constrained collegial governance. The thesis shows that the neopatrimonial attitude of presidentialism or the big-man syndrome, which permeates the management and governance of universities in Malawi, perpetuates instrumental use of reason and renders the system anti-democratic. At Malawi Government university policy-steerage level, the thesis shows problems associated with the usage of power by state presidents who are also chancellors of public universities. At this level, policy-steerage is interventionist and characterised by both neopatrimonial aspects of the big-man syndrome and patron-client relationships that lead to instrumental use of reason.</p> <p>Based on this Critical Theory analysis, a theory of university management and governance for Malawian universities is presented aimed at achieving emancipation. To achieve social change there is a need to challenge instrumental ways of reasoning and neopatrimonial aspects by employing dialectical reasoning and communicative rationality.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Pasek ◽  
Lee-Or Ankori Karlinsky ◽  
Alex Levy-Vene ◽  
Samantha Moore-Berg

Two studies (one preregistered) of Americans (N = 2,200) drawn from a nationally representative panel show that both Democrats and Republicans personally value core democratic characteristics but severely underestimate opposing party members’ support for those same characteristics. In turn, the tendency to believe that political ingroup members value democratic characteristics more than political outgroup members is associated with support for anti-democratic practices. Results suggest biased and inaccurate intergroup “meta-perceptions”—beliefs about what others believe—may contribute to democratic erosion in the United States.


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