Contemporary Democracies Research Articles

BALANCING IDENTITY AND LIBERTY: A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF LIBERAL NATIONALISM

Nationalism studies examine political and cultural nationalism as fundamental frameworks for understanding nation-building and identity formation. Political nationalism emphasizes the importance of sovereignty, self-determination and governance structures that support these principles. In contrast, cultural nationalism focuses on preserving and promoting shared heritage, language and traditions that define a community’s distinctive identity. Liberal nationalism, on the other hand, seeks to balance collective identity with the protection of individual rights and freedoms and seeks to harmonize these elements in a democratic context. Leading thinkers such as Yael Tamir, David Miller and Will Kymlicka have engaged in rigorous debates about the merits and challenges of liberal nationalism. These thinkers address the complexities and tensions that arise in different and pluralistic contexts regarding liberal nationalism and explore its potential to promote inclusive and harmonious societies. One critical debate focuses on the applicability of liberal nationalism, particularly in societies with significant ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. This article aims to fill an important gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of liberal nationalism. It compares this ideology with other forms of nationalism, such as ethnic and civic nationalism, providing a nuanced understanding of its distinct features and potential benefits. The article also assesses the applicability of liberal nationalism through literature reviews. By examining the theoretical foundations and practical implications of liberal nationalism, this study offers a perspective on its role in contemporary democracies. It highlights how liberal nationalism can be a viable framework for nation-building that respects collective identity and individual rights and offers a balanced approach to governance in increasingly diverse societies.

Colonial Genealogies of Pluralism: Consociation as Disavowal in Contemporary Democratic Theory

This article reframes understandings of pluralism in democratic theory by showing that the management of late and post-colonial identitarian conflict was integral to its incorporation into twentieth-century political science. It does so by reconstructing the central but underexamined place of theories of consociational democracy in efforts to reform South Africa’s apartheid constitution in the 1970s and 80s. Consociational democratic theory offered such promising resources for apartheid reform, it contends, because it entwined (a) a conception of social pluralism that redescribed apartheid’s racial hierarchy as identitarian difference with (b) a conception of institutional pluralism that curtailed the most transformative possibilities of decolonization through universal suffrage. Recovering pluralism’s colonial genealogies clarifies the conditions under which the recognition of identitarian diversity can function as a disavowal of racial domination, positioning democratic theory as an adjunct to projects of neo-colonial order.

The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory: Administrative Labor in the “Other Half” of the History of Political Thought

The earliest works of political theory precede Athenian democracy—the traditional starting point of Anglophone histories of political thought—by over two millennia. More time passed between the first written accounts of government in Mesopotamia and the birth of Plato than has passed between Plato’s life and ours. And yet this “other half” of the history of political thought has barely registered in the academic field of political theory. This article seeks to “reset” the starting point of the field back to its earliest origins in ancient Sumer. Beginning then and there opens a new vista on the history of political thought by restoring questions of public administration to the foreground of the field. For while the ancient Athenians enslaved their bureaucrats and wrote almost nothing about them, the analogous actors were free and highly valued in ancient Mesopotamian political culture. It was these scribal administrators who invented the world’s first literature and written political thought. In their writings, they valorized their own administrative labor and the public goods that it alone could produce as objects of wonder and enchantment. From this vantage point, the article calls for a new research agenda that will expand political theory’s recent “rediscovery” of bureaucracy by recovering public administration as a major thematic throughline in the five-thousand-year global history of human political ideas. Understanding public administration as an integral part of large-scale human societies from the very beginning may help to counter oligarchic claims in contemporary democracies that bureaucracy is a recent alien imposition.

Hobbes and Kant: Materialism and Rhetoric

This article examines the subtle nuances of Hobbes’s and Kant’s perspectives on rhetoric and materialism, contextualising them within the broader framework of political philosophy. Despite both philosophers being critics of rhetoric, their approaches exhibit notable divergences. Hobbes, who advocated for monarchy, criticized rhetoric from the perspective of a materialist anthropology influenced by Lucretius. However, he paradoxically employed rhetorical strategies in his new scientia civilis. Despite critiquing both Lucretian materialism and rhetoric, Kant incorporated certain rhetorical elements compatible with his philosophical framework, particularly in relation to Epicureanism. This study analyses their interpretations of paradiastole and the implications for the political thought. The argument is that both thinkers, in seeking a rational foundation for the political order, anchor their notions of rationality in Epicurean materialism, by reconfiguring rhetorical elements to suit their respective philosophies. The article elucidates Kant’s republican proclivities and his aspiration to maximize the citizens’ autonomy, which contrasts with Hobbes’s monarchical orientation. This research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the early modern political thought and its relevance to the contemporary republican and democratic theory.

Review: Contemporary Democratic Theory, by Chambers, Simone

Review: <i>Contemporary Democratic Theory</i>, by Chambers, Simone

Poderes partidarios y reclutamiento ministerial. El caso argentino

Objective/context: Party recruitment is a crucial governance tool in contemporary democracies. Presidential and parliamentary heads of government distribute ministerial portfolios to party members in exchange for essential political resources, such as legislative support. This article explores the relationship between government formation and political parties, with parties that are not very institutionalized. In particular, it examines the extent to which arguments about presidential cabinet formation hold up when the hierarchical level of party ministers is considered. Methodology: This statistical study uses a generalized linear model (GLM) with a binomial distribution and a logit link function with robust standard errors. It aims to carry out causality exploration to test the original indicators of the proposed dependent variables. Conclusions: Hierarchy and partisan powers are relevant factors to complement existing explanations of ministerial recruitment strategies. Originality: Comparative research on government formation and its connection to political parties has made significant progress, focusing on the distinction between ministers affiliated and not affiliated with a party. However, this dichotomous approach neglects consideration of the hierarchical position within the party structure, a fundamental aspect of the governing party model underlying parliamentary democracies. This article presents a trichotomous measure that considers the hierarchical level of ministers.

Party polarization in digital fingerprints: Tracing politicians’ social media posts on the George Floyd protests

Under what conditions do politicians express their views on social media? How do politicians express their opinions around a given issue on social media? This paper contends that issue ownership and electoral accountability are critical factors that drive politicians’ attitudes toward a politically salient issue. It conducts a case study on the 2020 George Floyd protests in the United States, using an original, computationally-gathered dataset of posts on Twitter. The multi-level analysis results suggest that politicians’ race and party affiliation, in conjunction with their constituencies’ partisan orientation and racial composition, played significant roles in determining the frequency of Floyd-related Twitter posts they shared. Additionally, topic modeling results demonstrate a disparity in how the political movement is phrased between Democrats and Republicans. These findings shed light on the motivations behind social media posting behavior by public officials and carry significant implications for party polarization in contemporary democracies.

Polarization and Partitioning Representation: How an Overlooked Aspect of Contemporary Democracy Leads to Polarizing Societies

ABSTRACTPolarization within Western societies escalates, as citizens increasingly distrust their governments and disagree with one another in an increasingly emotional way. Departing from a literature devoid of ideas to break this destructive trend, this paper presents a novel approach: While societies have evolved—becoming more diverse, individualized, and interconnected—democratic systems have remained unchanged, hence rooted in outdated structures. This misalignment drives the rise of political polarization. Through a comprehensive review of literature and data across OECD countries, this paper states the generality of the polarization problem, with the U.S. only as severest example. It introduces the concept of ‘partitioning representation’ of representing individuals as parts of non‐overlapping subsets of society, a form that fitted a bygone era of geographically and socially partitioned communities. The paper identifies three mechanisms through which the disjunction between this traditional form of representation and contemporary individualization leads to polarization: disconnection of voters from the political process, intra‐party dynamics that favor radicalization, and perverse incentives for political and media actors. Ultimately, breaking this destructive cycle requires rethinking how representation can work in a world that no longer conforms to the partitioned societies of the Western past. This calls for new forms of doing politics, empowering citizens to engage meaningfully with the political process and restoring the capacity for collective problem‐solving that is essential for democratic resilience in a new approach usefully called a ‘civil democracy’.

DECENTRALIZED ELECTRONIC VOTING WITH ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN IN DEMOCRATIC AND POLITICAL ELECTIONS

The Ethereum blockchain-based electronic voting (e-voting) systems can emerge as a viable strategy in this era of contemporary democracies to revolutionize political elections and augment the efficacy of the electoral process. There are myriad advantages that the Ethereum blockchain has to offer, from fairness to increased voting rates. Unlike traditional voting protocols, the Ethereum blockchain can assure substantial cost savings and eliminate the necessity for electoral intermediaries. The use of the Ethereum blockchain in political contexts also ensures that elections are held with integrity while preserving the voters’ privacy. Due to its popularity, provision of smart contracts logic, and various promising advantages, this systematic review aims to examine the potential deployment of decentralized e-voting systems integrated with Ethereum blockchain technology for democratic political elections. A systematic literature review (SLR) and the PICO approach, which stands for population, intervention, control, and outcomes, were adopted in this study to systematically analyze the existing literature. Key technological approaches identified in the voting system include the hybrid blockchain and privacy-preserving score voting. Among the noteworthy findings are the following: while adoption and complexity remain challenges across numerous e-voting frameworks, scalability, end-to-end security, enhanced efficiency, and effectiveness are key benefits. An exploration into the prospective future innovations, such as the integration of artificial intelligence and big data analytics into the Ethereum blockchain, was also included to further improve the reliability of the e-voting systems. It is believed that the Ethereum blockchain has a promising transformative impact on electoral politics and democratic processes, presenting a ray of hope for future elections.

Do Celebrities Make Policy?

AbstractDo celebrities exercise power over policy making? It can seem that they do, at least in the way the media reports their political activities. We need to think only of the coverage of the footballer Marcus Rashford's seemingly successful campaign to get the Johnson administration to change its policy on free school meals. But are such accounts to be trusted? This is a question whose answer has implications for how we understand and judge contemporary democracy. Celebrities, after all, are unelected and unaccountable. This article asks, therefore, whether it is plausible to claim that stars of popular culture are to be counted amongst the politically powerful.

CONJUNCTURES OF DEMOCRACY EROSION

The paper aims to examine and understand the recent developments in Brazilian democracy in a sociological perspective. It offers an analysis of the conjunctural preconditions for the recent rise of authoritarian populism, presenting ways in which Brazil can be viewed as paradigm of democratic erosion and/or resilience. The article describes the foundational premises that made the development of contemporary democracies possible, and it proceeds from this description to explain how features common to authoritarian populist movements in Brazil and elsewhere are detrimental to these premises. It is argued that democracies are likely to thrive when welfare provisions and access to human rights are open to increasing sectors of the population, generating an inclusionary citizenship effect. The political polarization regarding the Brazilian welfare system and the discourse against international human rights, culminated in the weakening of the Brazilian welfare net and setbacks in the recognition of human rights by courts. These processes preceded, and were aggravated by, the rise of authoritarian populism in Brazil, generating an exclusionary view of citizenship that tended to intensify social conflict, with increasing militarization at both governmental and social levels. Arguably, the absence of warfare or an imminent warfare threat in the most recent democratic transition in Brazil reduced the capacity of welfare and constitutional human rights provisions to limit the influence of the military on democracy. While the efforts to build up the welfare system and protect human rights are still ongoing, the militarization element remains latent, posing a constant threat to democratic consolidation in Brazil.

Courageous Role Model or Threatening Villain: A Parallel Mediation Model of Corporate Activism and Citizen Political Engagement

Through their sociopolitical activism, business leaders increasingly call for citizens to become more politically engaged in favor of a partisan position. This research develops and tests a framework that reveals that corporate sociopolitical activism can indeed elicit such political engagement but runs the risk of simultaneously inciting backlash from citizens who oppose the company’s envisioned political ends. Whereas politically congruent citizens perceive a company’s activism to be morally courageous and are thus inspired to support the company’s stance, politically incongruent citizens feel threatened by the company’s activism and become politically engaged in protection of their political identity. Companies may, however, succeed in increasing moral courage attributions without simultaneously affecting citizens’ political identity threat by acting as first movers in their activism. A series of experiments, including a stimulus sampling approach with 30 real cases of corporate sociopolitical activism, lend support for this framework. The results provide several implications for the political responsibilities of business leaders in contemporary democracies.

How transformative can a democratic project of the urban be?

In our initial paper we presented the urban as a question of democracy. The aim was to advance thinking about democracy through thinking about the urban, to use contemporary urban theory to theorise contemporary democracy. Seeing Democracy Like a City involves looking differently at the urban world out there, but also looking a little differently at the world of urban research in journals like this one. Underpinning our work was the epistemological release arising from an urban ontology of politics, as the state shuffles stage right and urbanity moves centre stage. The forum articles suggest that seeing democracy like a city can be inspiring. But the question of how transformative this approach can actually be is posed by all the authors. In this rejoinder we highlight some of the issues we think are crucial to address this question and to unlock the transformative potential of an urban democracy.

Concept Misformation in the Age of Democratic Anxiety: Recent Temptations and Their Downsides

abstract: Despite Giovanni Sartori’s famous warning, contemporary academia has seen a new bout of conceptual stretching, as evident in the loose, expansive usage of terms such as coup and fascism . This concept creep reflects the normative progress of recent decades, which has ruled out true fascism and deterred full-scale coups. Because these normative advances have induced remaining nefarious actors to pursue their undemocratic goals through formally democratic procedures, ambiguity has blurred conceptual boundaries. The article posits that when examining this gray area, scholars may be tempted to overuse dramatic terms because concern about new threats to democracy has motivated a turn to public intellectualism and democratic engagement. Moreover, the proliferation of social media has fueled stiff competition for public attention, which may have helped to create a penchant for stark warnings. The author argues that the resulting conceptual stretching undermines the clarity and accuracy required for academic scholarship and that such imprecision can also be counterproductive for scholars’ normative concerns. The overuse of dramatic terms risks distorting problem diagnosis, exacerbating polarization, and thus reinforcing the danger facing contemporary democracy, which arises primarily from the specific challenges that illiberal populism poses.

Conspiracy Beliefs and Perceptions of Electoral Integrity: Cross-National Evidence from 29 Countries

Abstract Extant research shows that belief in conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking are negatively related to citizens’ perceptions about the fairness and integrity of elections. However, by exclusively focusing on the United States as only one important empirical case, previous studies have left unanswered crucial questions on the scope, generalizability, and context dependency of their empirical findings. In this research note, I aim to fill this void by providing first empirical evidence on the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and electoral-integrity perceptions across twenty-nine countries. Using high-quality individual-level data from the European Social Survey enriched with contextual-level data on the quality of elections taken from the Varieties of Democracy Project, the findings from linear mixed-effects regression models reveal that (1) conspiracy beliefs are negatively related to citizens’ evaluations concerning the integrity of national elections; (2) the specific strength of the observed individual-level relationship varies substantially across countries; and (3) the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and individual electoral-integrity perceptions depends on the contextual-level quality and integrity of elections across countries. Specifically, the results indicate that the negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and electoral-integrity perceptions is strongest in contexts in which the actual quality of elections is high, and in which citizens have little reason to (seriously) doubt the integrity of the electoral process. These findings provide an important and hitherto missing cross-national and multilevel perspective on the nexus between individual conspiracy beliefs and electoral-integrity perceptions, highlighting that the “conspiratorial challenge” to electoral legitimacy in contemporary democracies is real and more than an “American affliction.”

Between Virtuous Trust and Distrust: A Model of Political Ideologies in Times of Challenged Political Parties

Abstract The analytical model of political ideologies offered in this article describes the connection between rising levels of distrust towards societal institutions in modern democracies and how such developments has challenged traditional and long-standing political parties in the Western world, such as the Danish political party Radikale Venstre [the Danish Social-Liberal Party]. Through use of a tripartite model of trust developed by Arman Teymouri Niknam during his interpretation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s attitudes towards trust brought together with different aspects of Axel Honneth’s social-philosophical framework, Teymouri Niknam and Leif Hemming Pedersen show how distrust may be able to act as a progressive tool in the creation of a more just, diverse and equal future and also how a virtuous and healthy form of democracy is an ideal that can be challenging to realise in practice. Teymouri Niknam and Hemming Pedersen are thus able to point to the ways in which a healthy democracy needs a balance of virtuous trust and distrust in order to achieve a good amount of both stability and progress, thus pointing to a difficult balancing act that many traditional political parties find themselves struggling with especially at this point in time in many contemporary democracies.

The political communication of polarizing leaders. Evidence from Italy

ABSTRACT Political polarization represents one of the main worries concerning the health of contemporary democracy. In this article, we review the debate on political polarization linking its main causes to the electoral campaign process during the 2022 Italian general election. Specifically, we examine the communication strategies employed by the leaders of the victorious right-wing coalition on Facebook and Twitter, focusing on their use of partisanship, divisive issues, attacks on opponents and incivility, while also assessing the engagement of their followers. Our findings confirm the prominent role of divisive issues and partisanship, but reveal a notable decline in attack-related messages and incivility.

A historical turn in the study of media governance. A research agenda for Europe in times of democratic crisis

The liberalization of the media stands very much at the forefront in public, policy and academic concerns on how our current model of media governance affects democracy. But the discussion on the effects of media liberalization has obscured the vital question why liberalization was able to become the dominant media governance paradigm in the first place. This research note makes the case for a historical turn to answer this question. It argues that it is essential to contextualize media liberalization in the history of contemporary democracy in Europe rather than see it primarily through the perspective of technological innovation or top-down promotion of neo-liberal policies. It explores how three insights in historiography might form the core of a research agenda for media governance that takes history seriously. These include (a) the study of actors from below that pushed for reform outside the realm of government; (b) the influence of ideas on shaping institutional reform and (c) reading history forward rather than project today’s assumptions and outcomes into the past. Jointly, this historical turn will not only provide an enhanced understanding of how past reforms shaped the present, but also enlighten prospects for future changes of media governance paradigms.

Building on the EU’s unique strategy for Artificial Intelligence (AI): can an ethical foundation be successfully integrated into its design and deployment?

In this article, the Author investigates the ethical principles espoused by the European Union’s (EU) policies on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and discuss their effectiveness in providing an ethical foundation for the entire process of developing and deploying AI in Europe. To this end, the scope of the term “ethics” in the regulatory process is analysed, and the extent to which ambiguity about its meaning can contribute to inadequate policies, is considered. The Author also addresses the criticisms and suggestions that have been made regarding the use of certain concepts, such as ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘human-centric’, which are so often used in European AI guidelines. The aim of the article is to explore the ways in which ethical values have been applied and identify potential areas of improvement to further safeguard and advance the rule of law, human rights, and democracy in the EU. This quest proves to be relevant amidst the various challenges that arise from emerging technologies like AI, which are of an unknown magnitude to our contemporary democracies, constituting a complete paradigm shift. In exploring the issues set out here, the Author navigates some of the new developments that the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) introduces, as well as the pressing criticisms levelled at it in the context of the overarching theme of this article.

Mobilizing grievances in the internet age: The case of national online petitioning in South Korea, 2017-2022.

Which kinds of grievances garner support from the public on online platforms? Focusing on national online petitioning, one of the forms of direct democracy in contemporary politics, we examine the content and characteristics of petitions that succeeded in attracting public attention and support. Using our comprehensive data on online petitions that were submitted to the executive office between 2017 and 2022 in South Korea, our analysis yields three important findings. First, a mix of post-materialist topics such as human rights and gender equality and materialist topics such as safety and environment turn out to be salient among petitions that meet the signature threshold. Second, online petitions the contents of which reveal either moral emotions or Confucian attitudes are more likely to gain public support compared to others. Third, keywords that are related to moral claims asking for the apprehension of perpetrators on behalf of victims, such as 'victim,' 'perpetrator,' 'kid,' and 'punishment,' appear most frequently inside the petitions that cross the signature threshold. Such findings provide implications for understanding both the potentials and limitations of national online petitioning in contemporary democracies.