Democratic Purpose Research Articles

The democratic drama of whistleblowing

While major cases of whistleblowing may not be an everyday occurrence, their effects are often wide-ranging, celebrated, and controversial. Given this potent cocktail, the whistleblower is conspicuously undertheorized within sociology and social theory. Research today takes place mainly within management, business, psychology, law, and public administration studies. While some of this work does draw on sociological theory, we lack a general theory that combines attention to the historical context of whistleblowing, the nature of its critique and intervention, and the democratic meanings with which it is associated. This article offers such a framework. The argument consists of three components. First, whistleblowing is historically tied to the decline of authority in the 1960s and the 1970s. Second, building on field and systems theory, the whistleblower is seen as a field transgressor who, with a democratic intent, exposes information ‘belonging’ to a specific field in the public sphere. Third, in doing so, he/she is cast as both a hero and a villain in a democratic drama about the moral-political foundations of society.

The Long Shadow of Constituent Power: An Historical Critique

According to the theory of constituent power, only the people can legitimately create constitutional orders. Emmanuel Sieyes and Carl Schmitt’s conception of the theory hold that this power is unmediated: its democratic purpose and procedure mean that legal devices cannot constrain its exercise. However, responding to concerns about the power’s use by authoritarian regimes to legitimate anti-democratic constitutional amendments, constitutional theorists have recently sought to devise ways to legally limit the power’s potential. This paper maintains that the theory and the critiques thereof are incomplete because they do not consider social and political factors – distinct from procedural concerns – relevant to how people perceive the legitimacy of constitutional regimes. This paper advances three arguments. First, that Sieyes and Schmitt’s conception confers legitimacy and unlimited potential on procedurally correct exercises of the constituent power. Secondly, that this connection between procedure and legitimacy is not demonstrated by historical instances of revolutionary constitution-making. Finally, that revolutionary exercises of the power tend to destroy the democratic basis on which it is premised. The paper concludes by urging constitutional theorists to carefully examine contextual factors during instances of constitution-making and to distance the theory of constituent power from revolutionary instances of constitution-making.

The perception of community radio as public sphere and its potential impact on political action: lessons from Tanzania

This study takes initial look at the promise of community radio as a public sphere. Given the interest that community radio has generated in the communication for development (C4d) arena, particularly its portrayal as a tool for democracy and good governance, the study attempts to ascertain whether the model through its flagship genre – political talk-back program can enact political participation or engender political efficacy within the African context. Data for the study came from a field research conducted in the United Republic of Tanzania. The study combines a survey with focus group and in-depth interviews. Relationships between engagement with community radio, political participation and interest, and political efficacy were examined, as well as its association with individual’s level of interpersonal discussion of local issues. A key finding shows that involvement with political talk programs on community radio can promote political participation and interest. Similarly, the result reveals an association between participation on talk program and political efficacy. These results are encouraging in that they point to community radio as serving useful democratic purpose in empowering citizens by giving voice to those considered “marginalized”, and at the same time fulfilling a major role of providing valued information at the local levels. As the foundation of public sphere, the stations seem to encourage active citizen participation and a healthy diversity of opinion. Certainly, this form of communication is needed for the occurrence of sustainable democratic development.Keywords: community radio, public sphere, political efficacy, political awareness, Tanzania

Confucius as a Critical Educator:Towards Educational Thoughts of Confucius

This paper is a cross-cultural comparative study in education philosophy. A comparative and philosophical approach is used to interpret texts from the Analects of Confucius and to find connections with ideas of critical educators. In comparing Confucius’ educational thought with that of Paulo Freire, John Dewey and other theorists in critical pedagogy, this paper finds four common threads between Confucian concepts of education and critical pedagogy: mutual learning, integration of theory and practice, importance of reflection in teaching and learning, and democratic purpose of education. By presenting these interwoven themes, this paper contributes to a cross-cultural dialogue on global understanding in education.

Post-industrial fog: Reconsidering innovation in visions of journalism’s future

As US news organizations have faced twin crises in funding and authority in recent years, innovation has become a key concept and ideal driving many interventions aimed at saving journalism. Often, ahistorically and uncritically deployed notions of innovation elide questions of digital journalism’s democratic aspirations in favor of market-oriented solutions. To critically examine the discourse around innovation, this article interrogates documents produced by think tanks and non-profit institutes researching the future of journalism: the Knight Foundation, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, among others. A post-industrial vision for journalism emerges with an overriding and celebratory focus on innovation. We argue that this discourse marginalizes normative concerns about journalism’s democratic purpose and rests on an entrepreneurial logic that seeks to dictate digital journalism’s broader public virtues.

Polls and Elections: Conventional Wisdom: Political Learning During Presidential Nominating Conventions

Debates about whether presidential nominating conventions are useful institutions in American politics have emerged in recent presidential elections. Are they needless events or do they serve an important democratic purpose? Do potential voters gain anything from the conventions? In this article, I use panel data collected around presidential conventions to examine how exposure to convention speeches impacts postconvention knowledge about the candidates, controlling for preconvention knowledge levels. I find evidence that campaign information generated during the presidential conventions increases knowledge about candidate positions, although the convention that occurs first in a presidential election appears to have a larger effect on knowledge gains than the convention that occurs second. I conclude that conventions have not outlived their usefulness but are instead important institutions that facilitate political learning and therefore enhance the democratic process.

The V in VGI: Citizens or Civic Data Sources

Volunteered geographic information (VGI), delivered via mobile and web apps, offers new potentials for civic engagement. If framed in the context of open, transparent and accountable governance then presumably VGI should advance dialogue and consultation between citizen and government. If governments perceive citizens as consumers of services then arguably such democratic intent elide when municipalities use VGI. Our empirical research shows how assumptions embedded in VGI drive the interaction between citizens and government. We created a typology that operationalises VGI as a potential act of citizenship and an instance of consumption. We then selected civic apps from Canadian cities that appeared to invoke these VGI types. We conducted interviews with developers of the apps; they were from government, private sector, and civil society. Results from qualitative semi-structured interviews indicate a blurring of consumer and citizen-centric orientations among respondents, which depended on motivations for data use, engagement and communication objectives, and sector of the respondent. Citizen engagement, an analogue for citizenship, was interpreted multiple ways. Overall, we found that government and developers may increase choice by creating consumer-friendly apps but this does not ensure VGI offers an act of civic participation. The burden is placed on the contributor to make it so. Apps and VGI could potentially further a data-driven and neoliberal government. Planners should be mindful of the dominance of a consumer-centric view even as they assume VGI invariably improves democratic participation.

Origens do pensamento radical na América Latina: um estudo comparativo entre José Martí, Juan B. Justo e Ricardo Flores Magón

Resumo Este artigo condensa os resultados, no plano ideológico, de uma pesquisa que analisa, em uma perspectiva comparada, como nascem, evoluem e são frustrados três projetos de democratização radical na América Latina nos primórdios do Imperialismo. José Martí (1853-1895) em Cuba, Juan B. Justo (1865-1928) na Argentina e Ricardo Flores Magón (1874-1922) no México lideraram esforços intelectuais e políticos visando superar os constrangimentos à integração nacional legados pela origem colonial, expressando-se em um pensamento que fundamentou a atuação dos partidos por eles dirigidos. Nossa hipótese é que esses autores, partindo de premissas ideológicas e políticas distintas mas orientados por um desígnio democrático comum, sugeriram balizas que referenciavam a máxima consciência possível da militância radical no continente, naquele contexto.

The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great by Harvey J. Kaye (review)

Reviewed by: The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great by Harvey J. Kaye Dean J. Kotlowski, Professor of History (bio) Harvey J. Kaye, The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 292 Pages, ISBN. What did the United States fight for during World War II? In an episode of the television sitcom All in the Family, Mike Stivic poses the question to Archie Bunker, who replies that he fought because he was drafted. The characters were fictional, but Archie’s response contained a grain of truth for many veterans, as Norman Lear, the show’s creator, knew. Now, Lear has provided a back-cover endorsement of Harvey J. Kaye’s new book on the origins and the fate of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (Freedom of Speech and Religion, Freedom from Want and Fear) for which Americans purportedly fought in World War II—and then forgot about in the decades that followed. Kaye argues that FDR and the country were on the same page during the 1930s and 1940s. “Americans did not simply suffer and endure the Great Depression. They confronted it,” he asserts. “They did so by electing a man to the presidency who believed in America’s democratic purpose.”1 That was just the beginning. Roosevelt set out to “restore America to its own people” by getting government to work on behalf of average folks rather than corporate elites.2 His New Deal embarked on “a grand democratic experiment of renewal and transformation” by providing price supports for farmers, collective bargaining for workers, pensions for the aged, and public works jobs for the unemployed.3 Most Americans responded to their president’s words and deeds: “They would organize themselves—as workers, as consumers, as citizens—to demand their rights. And they would make America freer, more equal, and more democratic.”4 That impulse continued during World War II, especially after FDR enunciated the concept of the Four Freedoms in his 1941 State-of-the-Union Address. The president’s speech, according to Kaye, “gave voice to the widely held presumption, the boon to the lived experience of the New Deal, that the American experiment was unfinished.”5 Kaye has much to say, and he says it well. The Fight for the Four Freedoms makes a persuasive case that the New [End Page 808] Deal did not end with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the subsequent attack of congressional conservatives on Roosevelt’s domestic agenda. Rather, during World War II, Roosevelt told Americans that Dr. New-Deal had merely shared his practice with Dr. Win-the-War. To prove the point, FDR pushed an “economic bill of rights,” albeit without success, as well as the G.I. Bill of Rights, which Congress enacted.6 Meanwhile, average Americans continued to join labor unions; civil rights organizations boosted their membership and clout; women entered the workforce; and the US government celebrated the country’s ethnic and racial diversity. Moreover, democracy in general and the Four Freedoms in particular became chic in mass culture. The words and imagery of the Four Freedoms figured in a Treasury Department war-bond drive, the title of a symphony by Robert Russell Bennett, a graphic-design contest organized by “the ten-thousand-member-strong Artists for Victory,” and, of course, Norman’s Rockwell’s famous drawings for the Saturday Evening Post.7 Yet, as Kaye deftly illustrates, corporate interests appropriated the concept of the Four Freedoms to advance their own ends. The United States Junior Chamber of Commerce added a fifth freedom—freedom of enterprise—to those voiced earlier by FDR. After the war, business leaders and their conservative backers sought to co-opt what had been a plea to end poverty and fear as well as to defend First-Amendment freedoms. For example, the president of the American Medical Association cited the Four Freedoms in attacking President Harry S. Truman’s proposal for national health insurance, arguing that if passed the measure would “subjugate American medicine.”8 Kaye notes how conservative organizers of the postwar Freedom Train...

Empowering students: Pedagogy that benefits educators and learners

This article argues that one of the main goals of social or civic studies is to empower students. However, traditional teaching practices often have the opposite effect of disempowering students. Traditional teaching practices are understood to emerge from the history and context of public schooling, from early practices, which have been reified. After describing this context, the article reviews the meaning of and literature around empowerment, which relate to the democratic purpose of schooling. The conception of empowerment that is presented is developed from Foucault’s work on power and knowledge. After this discussion, the article provides recommendations that aim to improve teaching practice in this area. These recommendations emerged from the teaching of an integrated teacher education course and include strategies such as inquiry, relationship - and community-building, problem or issue scenarios, and discussions. Comments from the student teachers who took the education course are included. The article demonstrates how empowering students does not disempower teachers, as teachers may fear.

‘All in Favour, Say Aye!’ Voting in Pupils’ Collaborative Talk

This paper draws on the findings of an Economic and Social Research Council and British Telecom-funded project which explored the teaching of collaborative talk in the secondary English classroom. During the analysis of the video data collected, voting was observed as a strategy in pupils’ collaborative decision-making. Converse to its democratic purpose, the vote was often initiated as a means of dominating or controlling the outcome of a collaborative task. Yet, some pupils challenged the use of the vote as their awareness of collaborative talk processes developed. In one group, the vote appeared to ‘scaffold’ the participation of a reluctant collaborator. Through the presentation of transcripts, this paper explores the nature and implications of the vote as used by pupils in collaborative talk. It contributes to understanding of pupils’ independent talk in the classroom and prompts consideration of the vote as a productive tool in pupils’ decision-making.

Cold War Reconnaissance Flights along the Berlin Corridors and in the Berlin Control Zone 1960–90: Risk, Coordination and Sharing

During the Cold War, Soviet and East German military units, equipment and activities around Berlin were high priority targets for Western military intelligence agencies. This article examines the imagery gathering undertaken by British, French and US reconnaissance flights along the Berlin Air Corridors and inside the Berlin Control Zone. The quantity of information was effectively multiplied because of the close cooperation between the Western allies and coordination with Allied Military Liaison Mission ‘ground tours’. This cooperation generally went further than has been publicly acknowledged by individual governments. This paper contends that the collaboration provided the most comprehensive and regular collection of imagery on Soviet and East German military units for the duration of the Cold War. It contributed to a multi-dimensional picture of Soviet and German Democratic Republic capabilities and intentions. Soviet motives for generally not interfering with those missions on a regular basis are considered.

Action research for democracy – a Scandinavian approach

Abstract Many proponents of action research for democracy seem to presuppose that to anchor action research in democratic ideals is a sufficient base for action researchers to legitimate their democratic purposes and intentions. This article starts out from the presupposition that anchoring action research in democratic ideals is in fact idealism, and argues the case that action research for democracy has to be anchored in some democratic institution of society to have a real legitimacy base for engaging in cooperation with others on democratic development. From this point of departure, a Scandinavian approach for democracy that aims at impact on society as well as social science is presented. The article presents just selected aspects of this tradition. The presentation is based on the presumption that some of the aspects, that seem to be relevant only within a Scandinavian context, may in fact have general relevance for any other approach of action research for democracy. Keywords: democratic procedures, discourse democracy, democratic dialogue, dialogue conference, development organization, linguistic simulation, scientific publication, Scandinavia

Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens by Julia L. Shear (review)

Reviewed by: Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens by Julia L. Shear Harvey Yunis Julia L. Shear . Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xv, 368. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76044-7. This book concerns the aftermath of the two brief, violent periods of oligarchical rule and democratic restoration in Athens towards the end of the fifth century B.C.E. Unlike most books and articles on the subject, it is not primarily concerned with the political processes and legal adjustments that restored and to some extent reformed Athens' democratic government. For example, Shear adds little to existing scholarship on the practical, judicial import of the injunction "not to recall past wrongs" (if that is what μὴ μνησικακεῖν indeed means) that was included in the reconciliation agreement of 403. Rather, when the Athenian demos returned to power, how did they attempt to restore civic unity in the face of deep, violent divisions? How did they restore public belief in the inviolability of democracy and the unacceptability of all forms of oligarchy? To answer these questions, Shear focuses mostly on two kinds of evidence. First, there are events—such as the oath of loyalty to the democracy included in Demophantus' decree of 410, and the assembly that immediately followed the sacrifice to Athena on 12 Boedromion 403 (marking the returning democrats' victory)—that would have fostered democratic unity and in addition created enduring public memories thereof. Shear emphasizes the solemnity of the mass oath-taking ceremony prescribed by Demophantus' decree, in which the entire citizen body, arrayed by tribe and deme, were to swear the oath in close proximity to sacrificial victims. She contends that the emotive effects on average citizens created by the original ceremony and its public memorialization in the erected decree, available to any citizen who saw and read the inscription, would have helped to stabilize the restored democratic regime. Second, Shear examines the democracy's newly erected public monuments and buildings for symbols and ideology that would defuse enmity and foster unity on the basis of loyalty to democracy. Shear marshals an impressive level of detail in her examination of the new monuments and buildings of the Agora, especially the design of the new Bouleuterion and the manner in which the revised law code was erected and displayed in the Stoa Basileios. These objects were notable not only for their content (in the case of the law code) or their function (in the case of the Bouleuterion) but also for the public presentation of their content or function, which engaged citizen viewers with a striking, if idealized, presentation of democratic purpose, unity, and history. By means of their display the "new" laws, incorporating those attributed to Solon and Drakon, tied the current democracy to the ideologically important ancestral constitution (patrios politeia). The Bouleuterion offered citizens a clear sense of the civic duty of democratic citizens. Shear thus further substantiates the process, already discussed by historians and archaeologists, by which the Agora became a [End Page 528] crucial location for democratic activity and ideology in fourth-century Athens. Shear displays unusually deep and extensive knowledge of the preserved physical material. Although the highly imperfect state of preservation also means that Shear's arguments on these and other objects entail considerable speculation, her arguments are nonetheless intelligent and clearly worthy of serious consideration. Yet ideology is often in the eye of the beholder. Occasionally Shear's argument suffers from the vagueness or special pleading that arises when one infers ideology from mute stones or building foundations, or from events whose original purpose is now obscure. It must be said that Shear attempts to demonstrate patterns of democratic response, especially between the two periods of democratic restoration, which mitigates the looseness of the ideological claims. Shear's prose is admirably clear, but it is also marred by excessive repetition of her main points, which is tedious for the reader. Towards the end of the book it emerges that Shear's work also contributes to a question that is peripheral to her main concerns, but important in itself and intriguing for students of virtually any aspect of fourth-century Athens...

The Crowdfund Act's Strange Bedfellows: Democracy and Start-Up Company Investing

This article argues that the Crowdfund Act’s democratic intent should be protected and nurtured so that crowdfunding’s democratic characteristics have the opportunity to develop and evolve.

Los gabinetes de prensa institucionales de los ayuntamientos españoles en internet

The influence and importance of institutional press office have grown on the media agenda making increasingly. On local governments this growth is so weighty that net tools or new ways such as communities or external consultants are been engaged in order to expand their message. Nevertheless, are local government press offices genuinely institutional or just a replication of specific political party interests? Some traces on the conformation and dynamics of these departments, as well as on the transmitted message, lead us to suspect that the reason of these offices is not the democratic purpose of the information but political propaganda. Present research proposes a insightful approach to the local government on line press office performance.

Pedagogies of Student Voice

For many years, the concept of ‘student voice’ was seen as a marginal issue for educators, the preserve of a passionate, dedicated minority. The literature on voice had to persuade and convince as much as to analyze, whilst the ‘emancipatory’, democratic intentions and outcomes of practitioners were often taken for granted. Now, however, ‘student voice’ is being endorsed and elaborated across a remarkably broad spectrum of contemporary educational thinking, policymaking and provision. It therefore risks being caught up in generalized denunciations of ‘neoliberal’ trends in education. Yet both excessive optimism and undue suspicion represent inadequate responses. ‘Student voice’ is enacted, brought into being, rather than immanent or pre-existing: the term designates a diverse range of practices that require careful, situated interpretation if we are to understand their meanings and effects, and this paper attempts to provide an example of such an analytical approach. It draws on research into how one organization, the flagship English ‘creative learning’ programme Creative Partnerships, attempted to ‘put young people at the heart’ of its work. The paper takes a broader frame than is often the case in student voice literature, locating Creative Partnerships within national government policy and regional and local contexts, and attending to the multiple, sometimes conflicting, practices, processes and sites through which ‘youth voice’ was produced. It analyses the subjectivities, self-imaginings, capacities and narratives that ‘voice’ practices offered to teachers, students, artists and others involved. Through such interpretive frames, the paper hopes to produce more complex ‘ways of seeing’ student voice projects, better able to acknowledge their ambivalent effects in reconfiguring educational power relations and processes, but also more attuned to moments of creativity, surprise and difference of the kind that might make a difference to schooling.

Access to information: An asset for democracy or ammunition for political conflict, or both?

AbstractMore than twenty‐five years after its adoption, the Access to Information Act has become increasingly a cause for concern among public servants, experts, scientists and the media. This article reviews the evolution of the access‐to‐information regime since the 1980s, the issues that have arisen, the political significance of information in democracy, and the enduring tension between its democratic purpose and strategic value. The article also examines the issues of centralization, control and secrecy within the state apparatus despite continuing calls for transparency. Under Conservative governments since 2006, there has been increased control and conflict over disclosure of information, which have spread to a larger part of the state apparatus. Among those involved in conflicts over information with the Prime Minister's Office are members and officers of Parliament and parliamentary committees.

Invidious Competition Or Benevolence: Does Not-For-Profit Status Constrain The Behavior Of Credit Unions?

If one assumes that individuals who work in nonprofit institutions are no better or worse than others and hence operate in their own interest, an organization can be kept on track and be effective only if the incentives given to individuals in the ordinary performance of their duties reflect the original intent of the organization. Sponsors of not-for-profit institutions must take the time and make an effort to hold administrators to an objective function incorporating such goals.A model is presented describing two conflicts facing the managers of credit unions. Providing higher rates to large savers could lower cost and expand deposits but does not particularly conform with the democratic intent of credit union founders. Excluding the less creditworthy in favor of higher returns elsewhere will generate more revenue but also seems inconsistent with the original normative goals of credit unions.A data set for approximately 15,000 credit unions in 1985 is used to measure credit union behavior by size and type. It is argued here that the common bond under which a particular credit union operates acts as a constraint but not a brake on bureaucratic expansionary behavior.

Clans, Electoral Procedures and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Villagers' Committee Elections in Transitional China

Villagers' committee elections in Chinese rural areas highlight the promise as well as the challenge of democratization in a one-party state. Why are there huge regional variations in terms of voter turnout rate? Based on a large survey conducted in 2005, we argue that electoral procedures have played a crucial role in signaling the democratic intent of local governments. Villagers were more responsive to more meaningful elections with higher-quality electoral procedures. In addition, competitive politics has reactivated traditional social ties and networks in village lives, which have mobilized villagers to voting stations. The results are robust to endogeneity tests and other model specifications. These empirical findings highlight electoral dynamics that are common in many transitional democracies. They also imply some major challenges facing China's rural democracy.