Democratic Tradition Research Articles

Unveiling Disputes in Representation’s Constructivist Turn(s): Lisa Disch and Deliberative Democracy

ABSTRACT The field of representation theory has reached a moment in which a wide variety of democratic theorists are now constructivists. But what does it mean for these theorists to be a constructivist? In answering this question, I sharpen the differences between two democratic traditions by way of an interrogation of Lisa Disch’s critique of deliberative democracy. First, I defend deliberative democracy against Disch’s attempts to exclude it from the constructivist turn. In response to Disch’s critique that deliberative democrats remove indeterminacy from processes of representation, I argue that deliberative democrats are more specifically interested in the more and less acceptable ways in which speech might influence the minds of constituents. It is true that deliberative democrats incorporate a normative commitment to autonomous judgment formation, but they do not thereby determine what the specific outcomes of judgment should be. Second, I directly critique Disch’s theory of radical democracy, arguing that Disch’s democratic system fails to deliver on important promises of the constructivist turn precisely because it cannot separate between the more and less legitimate ways of influencing minds. It fails to conceive of democratic representation as an activity that is meaningfully co-constitutive, and it cannot provide for the reasonable conditions of judgment.

The Tools of Autocracy Worldwide: Authoritarian Networks, the Façade of Democracy, and Neo-Repression

This special double issue identifies the tools and conditions that allow (re)emerging autocrats to undermine democratic traditions and constrain civil rights across the world. In our introduction, we posit that identifying the tools of the established, emerging, and aspiring authoritarians in today’s world is vital, theoretically and practically. It allows us to identify common denominators across specific contexts to advance knowledge about the features and risks that authoritarian regimes pose today. It also permits us to reveal the inter-state and transnational expert networks through which autocrats share strategies, information, and resources to remain in power. Through a global and comparative lens, we thematically organize the articles’ key findings. The articles reveal a set of tools of authoritarianism that (re)emerging autocrats use to control media to manipulate public perceptions and delegitimize opponents and critics, seek to maintain the legitimacy of a democratic rule by aligning with “grassroots” social movements composed of extremists and hate organized groups, redefine the meaning of democracy, and use a range of repressive methods domestically and abroad, all while maintaining a façade of democracy. This special issue also captures variation in the successful deployment of autocratic tools as authors caution against equating conditions across different autocratic regimes. We bookend the special issue with a brief reflection on populism on the left and right and what it means for the main themes of the special issue.

Fifty Years After

Abstract Chile experienced an unprecedented crisis in the early 1970s and some civilian groups started supporting a “military solution” which occurred on September 11, 1973. Parallels between 1970s Chile and 2020s United States can be drawn in terms of democratic tradition, polarization, private armed groups, and middle-class support of democracy. While the South American country experienced a democratic breakdown in South America, the process is ongoing in the North. This article discusses analogies between both countries and explains which lessons can be learned to protect the U.S. democracy.

Divided we fall: Constructive dialoguing about our political differences within family therapy training.

Widespread political polarization throughout the United States is a threat to the time-honored democratic tradition of utilizing civil discussion and respectful debate to express divergent views and strive for common ground. The political differences that divide us now are so deep and rife with toxic emotion that they threaten to undermine our social well-being at both the micro and macro levels. While family therapists are trained to work with relational tensions and to help family members to constructively negotiate their differences, the severity of the hostility and resentment tied to divergent political orientations has made this work increasingly difficult to achieve. This article explores how family therapy training programs can help trainees deepen their capacity for constructive political dialoguing that includes learning how to effectively manage their reactivity to those whose values and views may be dramatically different from their own so that they can support clients in doing the same.

Constitution Making and Enduring Challenges To Democracy in Turkey

AbstractSome observers expected that the 2023 general elections in Turkey would end the long rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while others anticipated his narrow victory. But it takes more than results at the ballot box for Turkish democracy to flourish in the medium term. Instead, we must focus on the underlying political structure, especially the constitution and its making. This study examines the social and political forces that have shaped Turkey's constitutions, from the Ottoman Empire through today. The analysis shows that top‐down constitutional processes only create advantages for the incumbent power, and they are symptomatic of weak democratic traditions. The most common use of constitutional revisions has been to serve the needs of the political elite at the time, without any long‐term objectives or broadly based political discourse among governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Therefore, Turkey has not been able to break the cycle of authoritarianism, even through seemingly democratic constitutional revisions. The study concludes that the future of the constitution is not bright. Given Erdoğan's narrow victory in the 2023 elections and setbacks in the recent municipal voting, revisions in the near term will seek to shore up the power of the ruling Justice and Development Party.

Input legitimacy of bottom‐up fishery governance: Lessons from community‐led local development in two Nordic EU countries

AbstractIn European Union member states, the community‐led local development (CLLD) approach implemented through Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs) represents different social organisational and democratic traditions. Hence, FLAGs operate and apply local development strategies and strengthen the role of fishing communities and the fishing industry under the influence of nationally contingent factors. Based on document analysis and mixed methods data, this article addresses the role of input legitimacy in FLAGs in Denmark and Finland. The findings show that Danish FLAGs demonstrate input legitimacy, while the fishery sector's interests are relatively weakly represented on FLAG boards. In Finland, the FLAG institutional system is perceived to be more flexible, demonstrating a lower level of input legitimacy, while the fishery sector's interests are substantially represented on FLAG boards. The comparison provides an analytical basis for member states financing CLLD through EMFAF and paves the way for reflexion on the FLAG governance system based on different programming periods and institutional contexts.

Europe at a Crossroads and the Political Relevance of Intellectual Dialogue

ABSTRACT Europe is in the midst of a double crisis: the rise of illiberal democracies and the reshaping of the so-called “world order.” Illiberal and autocratic regimes are on the rise and the “illiberal temptation” is present even in countries with strong democratic traditions, such as in Europe. The conflict between constitutional democracies and autocratic regimes is at the heart of the current struggle for a new international order. In this context, the confidence we have in our shared democratic and humanist values is in crisis. Not only is there a debate about how these values should be interpreted—which is normal—it also seems that these values are no longer widely shared. Significant segments of the public no longer take democratic principles and the rule of law for granted. As a result, the use of violence is no longer taboo, not only in international relations but also within our own societies. This crisis is unfolding on a global scale, but it has implications for the European narrative, which is about both Europe’s post-nationalist, democratic identity, and Europe’s role in the world. In this article, I begin with some comments on this narrative, with an emphasis on the specificity of European cultural diversity. I then try to situate the role of intellectuals in this context. I examine (1) the task of interpreting the current historical situation, of raising collective awareness with regard to problems that require collective action (e.g. climate change, the reduction of gender and cultural discrimination, the prevention of armed conflicts, etc.); (2) the “universalization of tradition”, that is, the hermeneutic process by which a tradition (ethical, religious, political, etc.) reinterprets itself in such a way as to make it understandable and meaningful to other traditions; (3) the impact that the practice of dialogue, as understood in the human and social sciences, should have on actual political discussion; and (4) the role that the human and social sciences have in articulating, within a meaningful discourse, the demands for greater justice and for a meaningful existence that arise in the form of collective feelings, emotions, etc.

Memory Fusion, Diplomatic Agency, and Armenian Genocide Recognition in the Czech Republic

Abstract Scholars often emphasize how right-wing political actors in Europe use memory laws to undermine democratic traditions and revise historical accounts. But a broad range of political actors (with diverse motivations) support memory laws. Synthesizing research in international political sociology and memory politics, this analysis examines the relational and social practices of diplomats from small states and the creative strategies of center-left political insiders in the creation and passage of memory laws. Based on data collected in the Czech Republic, the article investigates how relational and social dynamics, in part, inspired members of parliament (from the Czech Social Democratic Party) to insert Armenian Genocide recognition into memory laws about the Holocaust and Second World War in the Chamber of Deputies (2017) and the Senate (2020) – a strategy I refer to as memory fusion. In developing the framework of memory fusion, however, the findings also explore how Turkish diplomats use a similar strategy to pursue their own goals.

Poetry and Well-Patterned Language (in Philosophy)

ABSTRACT Toni Morrison suggests that storytelling is a highly effective way of structuring knowledge, and that the harnessing of a clever allegory, the search for well-patterned language is a constant, provocative engagement with the contemporary world. This article considers the ways poetry, imagination, and well-patterned language are utilized in the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Rorty, and Leonard Harris. The author notes that there are apparent similarities between Rorty and Harris, but one should also notice that there are significant differences in these two philosophical positions. The author ultimately argues that Harris’s move toward poetry and well-patterned language is extremely powerful and needed if people wish to move beyond a well-established set of values and norms. Harris prods us to tell thought-provoking, engaging stories—to intricately tuck knowledge into allegory and well-patterned language—but do it without being an apologist for the prevailing bourgeois liberal democratic tradition. In this manner, the harnessing of metaphor and clever allegory, the creative engagement with poetry and well-patterned language (in philosophy) is a provocative means of engaging the oppression, dispossession, and immiseration of the contemporary world.

Analysis of the institutional capabilities of the Guatemalan Ministry of Health: democratic constraint, defunding, reforms, and model of care

Guatemala is one of the Latin American countries with the greatest inequalities in access to health services, especially in primary health care. Multiple reforms have been proposed to solve accessibility problems but did not achieve the expected success, either for being isolated experiments or due to their interrupted implementation. Other associated factors are yet unknown, given the absence of a consolidated evaluation over time. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the gaps that affect the institutional environment of the Guatemalan Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS, acronym in Spanish). The theoretical framework of analysis of Institutional Capabilities was used to point out the main challenges to be faced by the institution in its macro- and micro-institutional environment. It is argued that the low institutional capability caused by the structural adequacy processes weakens the response capacity of the MSPAS to guarantee the right to health, which was evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Guatemala's macro-institutional environment limits the development of institutional capabilities due to the lack of a consolidated democratic tradition. Moreover, the State holds a poor capacity given the lack of a clear direction regarding its objectives, the lack of funding, and the biomedical-hegemonic approach of the care model that limits action from a health promotion approach. This article demonstrated the existence of limitations to the development of institutional capabilities and the importance of strengthening the field of health policies, planning, and management.

THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS BY NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

The authors present the concept of modern political science proposed by Nicolo Machiavelli. In the authors' opinion, it was around the kingdom and the king, the sovereign state and one ruler that a new political doctrine was born, which took from tradition what could serve it, but was also built on new values, or at least on a new hierarchy of values. Niccolo Machiavelli was the thinker who best combined new, or rather renewed, political values into a coherent modern doctrine of the state and power, which would secularize it and liberate it from the tutelage of religion and morality. The authors point out that the personal experience of life on the divided Athenian Peninsula was crucial for the political thought of the famous thinker from Florence. The authors share the view of Albert Asor Rosa, who tries to find the reasons for this almost paradoxical concentration on the Italian experience of the founder of modern political science, a realistic, calculating, amoral and secularized study of the engines of action of leaders and crowds.This is why the central categories of Machiavelli's political thought are "state interest", "national identity", "raison d'état". The experience of the lack of statehood, on the one hand, and the democratic traditions of the Florentine Republic on the other, created a special amalgam of ideas and views on which a modern understanding of the science of politics was created, which is invariably associated with the name of Machiavelli.

Memory Entrepreneurship: Armenian Genocide Recognition in Europe

Abstract Scholars have analyzed how political actors appropriate Holocaust-related memory laws to whitewash the past and undermine democratic traditions in various European countries. However, political actors in Europe have debated several other memory laws, which far-right MPs appropriate to serve their own purposes. The recognition of the Armenian Genocide is an understudied example of this phenomenon. Drawing from data collected in four countries—Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Sweden—this analysis introduces the rhetorical strategies of memory justification and memory extrapolation to examine how far-right MPs, in very distinct geopolitical contexts, appropriate and instrumentalize Armenian Genocide memory to attack pluralism and promote their own versions of Europe. Through an analysis of the instrumentalization of the Armenian Genocide, this article examines a growing crisis at the center of contemporary European politics. This crisis, which involves actors promoting very different goals and values, increasingly threatens the socio-political cohesion of Europe.

Peculiarities of the formation and development of Ukrainian political and legal thought in Galicia after March 14, 1923

The development of Ukrainian political and legal thought in the western Ukrainian lands after March 14, 1923 is considered. Attention is paid to the peculiarities of formation, the contribution of thinkers and politicians to its content is analyzed. It is emphasized that the activities of such scientists as K. Levytskyi, S. Dnistryanskyi, V. Starosolskyi, S. Tomashivskyi, V. Kuchabskyi, S. Rudnytskyi and others are decisive for the legal opinion of the Ukrainian people, whose scientific works were fundamental for its development from in view of the fact that they formed legal awareness and political culture in Western Ukrainian society, awakened Ukrainians to an active political life, and, therefore, influenced the national development of Galicia in its daily dimension.
 It is noted that after the fall of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic and the introduction of Polish administration in Galicia, significant changes took place in Ukrainian political and legal thought, which on the one hand led to the formation of new right-wing organizations, and on the other - to the spread of communist ideology. It is argued that the most massive and organized was the national- democratic direction, whose representatives in their scientific works formulated the concepts of the Ukrainian national state based on the idea of unconditional recognition of the right of state self-determination of Ukrainians on their ethnic territory on the basis of national democratic traditions and the theory of the right of peoples to self-determination .
 It is emphasized that the theoretical works of Ukrainian thinkers were the methodological base on which Ukrainian political and legal thought developed in Galicia during the period under study. According to Academician S. Dnistryanskyi, the dominant factor in the process of national creation should be the formation of the national consciousness of the Ukrainian people in the way of creating effective public institutions, and only then - the logical and natural acquisition of state independence. It was a legal and most realistic plan of the struggle for the restoration of Ukrainian statehood, because the legislation of the Second Commonwealth did not prohibit the activities of public structures.
 In view of this, the article highlights the role of scientific, cultural and educational, pedagogical, sports, cooperative societies and unions, the clergy and socio-political organizations as leaders of the national state and law-making in Galicia, which de facto replaced the functions of national state bodies and helped Ukrainians to feel like nationally conscious citizens and to choose the right to their own statehood.

Süreklilik ve Değişim Arasında Post-Otoriter Şili Parti Sistemi

This article aims to examine to what extent the post-authoritarian Chilean party system changed in comparison to the period prior to the 1973 coup. Based on an analysis of the period from 1990 until 2010 against the background of the pre-1973 period and the military dictatorship (1973-1990), the main argument of this article is that the post-authoritarian Chilean party system oscillated between continuity and change. Whilst continuity found its roots in the pre-authoritarian period and Chile’s long-running democratic tradition, change was particularly enforced by the anti-democratic practices of the military government. As such, this study has pinpointed three interrelated tensions between continuity and change that characterised the post-authoritarian party system: the centrality of parties vs. the growing public disillusionment with politics; the pro-/anti-authoritarian cleavage vs. the consensus-based relations between parties; and the tripartite party system vs. the bipolar coalition politics. This tension profoundly influenced all the political parties and inter-party coalitions that functioned during this period, not least the ruling Concertación bloc.

Sounding Affective Consensus

This paper explores how New Orleans Black dockworkers created affective communities by utilizing brass bands, as evidenced by newspapers, union records, and testimonies from jazz musicians. In an attempt to weave together congruences between ‘history from below’, the affective turn, and theorists of the Black radical tradition, I argue that the nation’s largest Black Union in the late nineteenth century, the Longshoremen’s Protective Union Benevolent Association of New Orleans, successfully intervened in this port city’s economy by building a mass movement. They did so not only because of their strategic location in relation to capital and a modernizing logistics industry, but also because these dockworkers successfully struggled to control the affective modalities and temporalities of daily life. It was in this latter strategy that polyphonic brass bands and collective singing traditions played important roles in struggling for bodily autonomy and new social relations formulated in opposition to the profit motive. I coin this felt solidarity ‘affective consensus,’ which was a consensus-based decision-making process activated by agreed-upon musical conventions. Its power lies in its historical connections between democratic traditions of assembly, workplace struggles, and forms of participatory music making--all emblematic of late nineteenth-century Black New Orleans.

Election Dispute Resolution and Justice as Fairness: A Study of Regional Head Elections in Indonesia

Abstract: The concept of justice is still relevant for debate, involving two political and legal perspectives. However, the two met in the context of resolving election disputes. Namely the election justice mechanism to resolve all forms of election disputes. This study will focus on resolving election result disputes, the 2020 Regional Head Election Results Dispute. John Rawls is a philosopher and political theorist who strongly influenced the tradition of justice theory. The concept of justice is offered from criticism of utilitarianism and intuitionism. Justice as fairness is a concept of justice that is procedurally fair but also justice that benefits as well as opportunities that are just (equal). Purpose: This article aims to elaborate Regional Head Election Results Dispute from Rawls’ justice as fairness approach to resolve election disputes. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research method used is qualitative research. Using a descriptive approach and literature study as data collection techniques. Findings: There is still a serious debate about achieving the concept of justice between substantive and procedural justice in electoral studies regarding the equitable settlement of election result disputes. A just Regional Head Election Results Dispute indicates the degree of democracy in implementing direct, general, free, confidential, and honest, fair elections (LUBER JURDIL). Constitutional democracy is a meeting point between Rawls' democratic tradition and Plato's nomocracy. Originality/value: Many articles on Regional Head Election Results Dispute philosophically explain Rawls’ justice as a fairness concept. However, this article explores the relationship between Regional Head Election Results Dispute phenomenon through Rawls’ philosophical concepts.

The Sermon as Discursive Frame for the Nazi Past: Preaching about the German History Exhibition Neue Anfänge nach 1945?

Abstract When the history exhibition Neue Anfänge nach 1945? about the transition from National Socialism to democracy toured Lutheran churches in northern Germany in the 2010s, preachers were invited to address it in their Sunday sermons. Like the speeches regularly given by civic dignitaries at German history museums, the sermons drew on democratic traditions of speaking about National Socialism. They also drew on Lutheran discursive traditions: Bible exegesis, homiletics, theology. This article considers how preachers combine a professional knowledge of what should be said about National Socialism with their pastoral role. The German family emerges as a key—but limiting—trope in discussion of the Nazi past in the church setting.

THE RIGHT TO DIGNITY - BETWEEN ASPIRATION AND LEGISLATION

The study aims to analyse one of the essential rights of the human being, the right to dignity, with particular implications for the evolution of communities, societies and humanity as a whole. Dignity is also an ethical and legal value, which runs like a guiding thread through the evolution of individuals, whether viewed in isolation or in a larger or smaller group. Dignity is the cornerstone of the architecture of fundamental rights and freedoms, a conclusion drawn from its inclusion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in the sequence of its component parts, as its first title. Article 1(3) of the revised and republished Romanian Constitution regulates the values declared supreme in the Romanian State and guaranteed in the spirit of the democratic traditions of the Romanian people and the ideals of the December 1989 Revolution. The first of these values is human dignity. Then follow, in succession, the rights and freedoms of citizens, the free development of the human personality, justice and political pluralism. Hence the conclusion that, in the view of the Romanian constitutional legislator, human dignity is also the pedestal of the values which are the essential elements of the Romanian state's identity. We say this because we are referring to the first article of the Fundamental Law, whose name is “the Romanian state.”

1876 and All That: the ‘Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus’ as a case study in crowd-sourced international public science

Some historians of the ‘Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus’ exhibited in 1876 interpret its principal significance as catalysing the eventual transformation of science collections in the (South) Kensington Museum into London’s present-day Science Museum. Debates about that nexus have not, however, noted that this exhibition was an international crowd-sourced venture in public science. Far from being collection-founding donations, most artefacts displayed were discretionary loans contributed by private citizens, learned societies, instrument makers, universities, engineering companies and state departments from across both the UK and Europe, with most displayed items later returned to their exhibitors. Our paper draws upon the art historiography literature of ‘loan exhibitions’ to consider the 1876 exhibit in (mostly) physical science as part of a growing democratic tradition of resource sharing. This exhibitor-focused approach is illustrated via case studies of two kinds of contributors that did not predominantly have their loans converted to donations: (male) instrument makers and women, especially widows. In that context, we can interpret apparatus lending in 1876 as forms of advertising, memorialising, and just occasionally offloading disused but historically important equipment. It is in such terms that we can better understand why only a small fraction of loaned 1876 apparatus become permanent parts of the South Kensington science collections via such means as state departments discarding obsolete technical equipment.

TOTALITARYZM TECHNOKRATYCZNY JAKO ODPOWIEDŹ NA KRYZYS DEMOKRACJI

The article addresses the context of the transition and evolution of post-industrial societies, in which technocracy is emerging as an alternative to traditional democracy, better able to cope with the challenges of the present day. The purpose of this article is to explore how the level of meta-analysis contributes to assessing the effectiveness of technocracy compared to democracy by analyzing the nature of the crisis of democracy, the relationship between democracy and technocracy, the advantages of technocracy over democracy, the changes required by technocracy, and the impact of technocracy on the quality of social life and political power. The research problem, therefore, is to evaluate the effectiveness of democracy versus technocracy as a political system. This study conducts a holistic and comparative analysis of technocracy, democracy and their interrelationship in the context of contemporary political systems. Technocracy, based on the optimisation of processes and data, offers long-term strategies and instant responses to social and economic change. Despite this, critics point to its lack of moral and ideological underpinnings, leading to risks such as bureaucratisation and specialisation, limiting pluralism and individual freedom. An analysis of technocracy in the context of Neil Postman's concept shows the potential risk of losing social values, authority and individual freedom due to bureaucratisation. Technocracy, as a cult of science and technology, deifies science and reifies religion, leading to totalitarianism and dehumanisation, transforming individuals into means of production and consumption. This study emphasises that technocracy is not clearly positive or negative, but a complex phenomenon. On the one hand, it can bring efficiency and social development and, on the other, lead to a loss of fundamental values and freedom. The analysis of this issue takes into account different perspectives and contexts, allowing for a fuller understanding of its implications for contemporary societies. The study presented here is an in-depth analysis of technocracy, revealing its advantages, disadvantages and the risks it poses to society. It offers a comprehensive perspective on technocracy and its relationship with democracy, shedding light on the controversial debate on the future of governance in the post-industrial era.