Democratic Virtues Research Articles

Engaging in a Secularized Public Sphere – a Possible Qur’anic Perspective?

Abstract For Habermas, social cohesion in liberal democratic societies is created and ensured by public discourse, which creates and regulates democratic virtues through non-hierarchical communication in which all citizens participate equally. According to the understanding of post-secularism, this public discourse must be secular. This requires religious citizens to translate religious arguments into secular ones in public discourse. However, it remains an open question to what extent religious citizens in plural societies can or want to participate in such a communication process based on their religious self-understanding. In this article, an attempt will be made to investigate this question, at least within the Islamic faith tradition. A Qur’anic narrative will be examined for possible indications of how the Qur’an conceives communication with those of different worldviews. The analyzed narrative reveals perspectives of understanding from which remarkable contributions to social cohesion can be derived.

Pedestrian Citizenship: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Democratic Landscape Architecture

Abstract Amid the massive project of national reconstruction—characterized by urbanization and social upheaval—that followed the American Civil War, Frederick Law Olmsted reenvisioned built environments across the nation. This article claims that, for Olmsted and his contemporaries, who were simultaneously curious about, skeptical of, and fearful of the new cities, his designs attempted to show the democratic potential of urban environments. Reading his speeches and essays alongside his designs, it suggests that Olmsted promised the new cities and their parks and parkways as sites of democratic inclusion and democratic virtue. These built environments, as material rhetorics shaping our everyday, pedestrian habits, cultivated a specific practice of citizenship, one that was, this article argues, characterized by a countercultural temporality, pedestrian mobility, recreation, and civic scopophilia. Today, we inherit the parks and cityscapes that Olmsted designed as well as their aspirations for democratic citizenship.

Whose Coordination? Which Democracy? On Antitrust as a Democratic Demand

The growing movement seeking to revive an aggressive, “neo-Brandeisian” approach to antitrust policy sees it partly as a way of protecting democracy against concentrated economic power. Yet on closer inspection, prevailing theories of democracy as collective decision making offer weak support, at best, for a neo-Brandeisian approach. Rather than abandoning the insight that an aggressive approach to antitrust can help protect democracy, however, this essay argues that we should adjust our theories of democracy to accommodate it. I first show why prevailing accounts are ill suited to explaining the democratic virtues of a neo-Brandeisian approach. I then outline an alternative ideal of democracy—defended in greater detail elsewhere—and draw out its implications for antitrust. While vindicating the intuition that aggressive antitrust policy serves democratic goals, my account also incorporates genuine worries about such an approach, and thus enables neo-Brandeisians to reformulate their democratic ambitions in more precise and promising terms.

Accountability as a democratic virtue

Accountability as a democratic virtue

Discourse Ethics: A Pedagogical Policy for Promoting Democratic Virtues

AbstractThe guidelines followed by many educational boards recommend behavioristic practices for dealing with student discipline; however, Lawrence Kohlberg's idea of organizing schools as “just communities” suggests a more promising approach. It translates to the school context the core principle of Habermas's discourse ethics: those norms to which all concerned agree are valid. In such democratically organized schools, students engage in less violence and take greater responsibility for safeguarding each other's welfare. Public debates about rules and handling transgressions generate knowledge regarding shared norms, promote role‐taking abilities, and foster ego‐syntonic commitment to democratic values. Such participatory experiences may contribute to constituting ego identity. Whereas identity politics relies on particularistic affiliations and emphasizes demarcations between social groups, ego identity is based on a commitment to universal moral values. This commitment allows individuals to develop and sustain a sense of coherence, continuity, and uniqueness, and it fosters democratic cooperation and social cohesion. In this article, Gertrud Nunner‐Winkler provides empirical support for these claims.

The Democratic Virtues of Randomized Trials

Abstract Democratic alternation in power involves uncontrolled policy experiments. One party is elected on one policy platform that it then implements. Things may go well or badly. When another party is elected in its place, it implements a different policy. In imposing policies on the whole community, parties in effect conduct non-randomized trials without control groups. In this paper, we endorse the general idea of policy experimentation but we also argue that it can be done better by deploying in policymaking randomized controlled trials. We focus primarily on the democratic benefits of using randomized trials in policymaking and on how they can enhance the democratic legitimacy of policy. We argue that randomized trials resonate well with three key democratic principles: non-arbitrariness, revisability and public justification. Randomized trials’ contribution to non-arbitrariness and revisability is not unique; other types of evidence can advance these democratic principles as well. But through their peculiar democratic scrutability, randomized trials are well-equipped to contribute to the public justifiability of policy.

Locally-grounded, embodied, and spiritual: exploring alternative constructions of democratic education with/in Indonesian schools

ABSTRACT Contemporary scholars have called for more diverse conceptions and practices of alternative ‘democratic’ education to contest the increasingly neoliberal and neoconservative educational systems. The current study responds to this call by exploring how the notion of ‘democratic’ education can be enriched using the contextual practices of education in Indonesia. Co-constructing qualitative data through site visits, document analysis, and interviews with leaders of five uniquely ‘democratic’ Indonesian schools, the current study seeks to expand the ‘thin’ understandings of democratic education characterised by ostensibly universal democratic virtues such as freedom, equality, social justice, and participation. Exploring what democratic education looks like when understood through the collective sensibilities of Indonesians, analysis revealed at least three alternative constructions of democratic education practiced by participating schools, namely, locally-grounded, embodied, and spiritual democratic education. By identifying and circulating these alternative constructions, it is hoped that the notions of democratic education might be continuously reimagined and diversified.

Action Research conceptualised in seven cornerstones as conditions for transforming education

This article traces the philosophical and theoretical roots of Action Research to rescript its promise for site-based educational formation, reformation and transformation. The process of historicising Action Research through an extensive review of the extant literature, enabled us to establish seven cornerstones that captured the essence of the critical conditions: the practices and practice architectures, that give coherence and comprehensibility to Action Research as necessary for sustained and sustainable change in education. Framing these practices and practice architectures as cornerstones sets down important benefits for contemporary education requiring critical inquiry, rethought purposeful action and systematic responsive development. The cornerstones: contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community, were derived from viewing Action Research from its historical principle committed to democratic way of working. It is our position that the cornerstones account for, acknowledge and extend traditional perspectives and descriptions; and assist practitioners deepen understandings about the conditions necessary for opening up generative possibilities of Action Research in ways that do not neglect or lose sight of its core historical connections and democratic virtues.

Delineating the Western Orders of Rights and Reason in Post‑Colonial Africa

Adherence to the fundamental tenets of Human Rights and advocacy of Democracy are the two traditionally entwined Western expressions of rights and reason that any state has to comply with to be treated as an egalitarian state. The degree of democratization in any state is to be gauged by its ability to give its citizens a fairly acceptable form of governance and a slew of natural rights and legal safeguards against human rights abuses, from which the idea of justice is to flow. Many of the African and Asian countries, that became sovereign states through the 1980s and 1990s and consequently came to be hailed as formal democracies, in reality, have only had a very perfunctory degree of democratization. In such circumstances, human rights, without the existence of a real democratic structure to uphold and sustain it, does not effectively translate into a charter of rights but would merely be retained as a set of flexible norms. It is in this context that the proposed paper intends to address the impact of globalization of the principles and values associated with the concepts of democracy and human rights in post-colonial African states. It also aspires to inquire into the need for an element of universality in the dialogues on human rights and democratization, so that they do not get reduced to mere synonyms for Westernization. Further, the reality and ambivalence surrounding the consolidation of democratic virtues along with the observance of human rights are best reflected in the exemplification of how the Sub-Saharan African country of Zimbabwe operated its “democracy”; both under its longest-serving President Robert Mugabe and post his unceremonious ouster following the coup d’etat on 14 November 2017. It would be interesting to study the political economy of transition in a country like Zimbabwe that, during and after its leading figure Mugabe, continues to pledge allegiance to a nationalist, post-colonial and populist anomaly of being principally antithetical to imperialism in all its forms while also being an anathema to the precepts of democracy, justice and human rights in practice.

Refining dissent: Response to Sarah M. Stitzlein’s ‘Democratic education in an era of town hall protests’ (2011)

What is dissent? And how should educators teach students the skills and dispositions of this democratic virtue? By engaging with the 2011 article by Sarah M. Stitzlein on ‘Democratic education in an era of town hall protests’, this retrospective article discusses Stitzlein’s definition of dissent, her curricular approach to teaching dissent, and the context in which she offered both. It concludes by offering a refined definition of dissent and reassessing the curricular implications for democratic educators.

Threats or Gains: The Battle over Participation in America’s Careening Democracy

Modern democracies comprise multiple institutions and diverse principles. This can make them vulnerable to “democratic careening,” as polarized actors emphasize opposing views of what democracy means and requires. I argue that America’s current bout of democratic careening is founded on differing partisan perspectives of the ultimate purpose of government, and whether widespread political participation is necessary to fulfill it. While leftists generally take a gain-oriented approach to government, conservatives are more threat oriented. A byproduct of this foundational difference is that leftists’ conception of democracy is participation heavy, while conservatives’ conception tends to be participation light. The fact that liberals and conservatives differ on the importance of participation to democracy is a potential source of democratic careening, and the fact that conservatives do not necessarily see participation as a core democratic virtue poses the more serious risk of outright democratic collapse.

The value of official equality: structuring the execution of democratic law

ABSTRACT The executive branch is often conceptualised as a hierarchy in which one official has ultimate authority to carry out the law. In American public law, this is referred to as the ‘unitary’ theory of the executive. That theory is often defended on democratic grounds. However, there are countervailing democratic reasons to give several officials equal authority to implement the law. First, such a condition of ‘official equality’ can remedy the imperfect information about citizens’ judgments any one official holds. Second, official equality respects the plurality of norms that a democratic legal system tends to generate. Third, it gives private persons reason to structure their own relationships on equal terms in ways that support the social foundations of democracy. Fourth, it exhibits the democratic virtues of legislative processes when the implementation of law requires action that is legislative in nature. These reasons together constitute the value of official equality. The value of official equality ought to impact the structures and practices of executive offices within the democratic state.

Above the law? The democratic implications of setting ground rules for dialogue

Dialogic pedagogy aims to promote deliberative democratic skills, virtues and practices within an equitable and empowering classroom environment. This article problematizes the practice of setting classroom ground rules in light of dialogic pedagogy’s democratic aspirations. Specifically, we explore the space for dissenting voices within the process of constituting ground rules and the extent to which ground rules regulate teacher (and not only student) behavior. We investigate these issues in a case study of the process of negotiating ground rules in a fourth-grade Israeli classroom. During a discussion in which the class reflected on classroom discourse norms, students resisted the teacher’s interpretation and even accused her of obstructing their participation, thereby highlighting questions regarding teacher’s role and authority in the deliberative process of constituting ground rules. We use linguistic ethnographic microanalytic methods to investigate the unfolding of events in the classroom, and discuss the problems arising from an ostensibly democratic process of constituting ground rules in which the teacher is beyond criticism and above the law. We conclude with discussion of the possibilities of developing a more profoundly democratic and inclusive process of negotiating and maintaining classroom discourse norms.

Enhancing Democracy: Can Civic Engagement Foster Political Participation?

ObjectiveThe aim of the present article is to address Tocqueville's hypothesis that voluntary associations and volunteering are breeding grounds for democratic virtues and skills and thus enhance political participation.MethodsData from the British Household Panel Survey data set spanning the years 1991–2008 are analyzed using multivariate panel data regression techniques to assess the effect of voluntary association membership/activities on political participation in the United Kingdom.ResultsIt is found that organizational activity (more than mere membership) positively impacts political participation, but these effects are smaller than usually found and depend on types of associations and degree of activity. Sensitivity analyses support the finding that the political interest more strongly predicts political party support than associational activities. Further support for causal interpretations is scant.ConclusionSome evidence for Tocqueville's hypothesis can be found for the United kingdom during the sample horizon, but the effect is sensitive to model specification and issues of reverse causation remain.

Land of Tomorrow: Postwar Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism. Benjamin Mangrum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. x+203.

<i>Land of Tomorrow: Postwar Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism</i>. Benjamin Mangrum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. x+203.

Politics Feeds Back: The Minority/Majority Turnout Gap and Citizenship in Anti-Immigrant Times

Voting is a democratic virtue and an important mechanism for citizens to let their voices be heard. However, citizens do not participate in politics at equal levels, with consequences for their political power. While turnout gaps between different socioeconomic groups are well researched, the biggest gap in many Western European countries today has been overlooked: that between the children of immigrants (minority youths) and the majority population. I argue that existing theories fall short in addressing this gap because they do not attend to the distinctly political forces that shape citizens’ relationships to politics. Building on the policy-feedback literature, and analyzing seventy-one in-depth interviews with minority and majority youths in Denmark, I show that because these groups are targeted very differently in policy and political discourse, they have substantially different conceptions of politics and their status as citizens. Many minority youths react to anti-immigrant political messages by dissociating from politics, but I warn against interpreting their quiescence as political apathy. Instead, dissociating from politics can be a strategy to reclaim power over their self-understanding and can be experienced as empowering. These findings challenge classic conceptualizations of political engagement and open discussion about how to understand political behavior in increasingly diverse societies.

Demanding Epistemic Democracy and Indirect Civics Pedagogy: The Performance-Oriented Music Ensemble

The participation of young adults in performance-oriented music ensembles can be seen to enhance democratic capacities and virtues. Much, however, turns on the particular conception of democracy at work. Although contemporary currents in music education tend towards models of liberal and participatory democracy to govern music ensembles, this essay contends that demanding epistemic democracy allows performance-oriented music ensembles the achievement of democratic virtues without sacrificing excellence as a central regulatory ideal. The inclusion of both men and women is shown to be particularly significant in this light. Central to its democratic epistemic ambition, the role of the conductor is considered in the last section of this article.

Uncivil Communication and Simplistic Argumentation: Decreasing Political Trust, Increasing Persuasive Power?

ABSTRACT Concerns are raised repeatedly about the uncivil and simplistic way in which politicians often express their ideas. This political communication style runs counter to deliberative democratic virtues such as respectful interactions and well-justified arguments. Its use is therefore problematic from a normative point of view, yet there are indications that it is an effective communication style to persuade citizens. Two survey experiments – text and audio – were developed to investigate the effects of uncivil communication and simplistic argumentation on political trust and on persuasive power in political election debates. The results show that 1) uncivil communication lowers political trust and is slightly less convincing than civil communication, 2) simplistic argumentation, i.e. political arguments presented in ill- or non-justified ways, does not affect political trust and is not more persuasive than well-justified argumentation, and 3) the strongest violation of social norms, i.e. a combined use of uncivil communication and simplistic argumentation, decreases both trust in the political candidate and persuasive power. Interestingly, politically cynical citizens and citizens who do not value inclusionary debates react differently to uncivil communication and simplistic argumentation: their level of trust does not decline and they are persuaded slightly more by simplistic arguments expressed in uncivil ways.

Moral economies of exclusion: politics of fear through antagonistic anonymity

This article examines the discourse-technical means through which illiberal political logics are legitimised in constructions of xenophobic populism by a ‘prominent’ Norwegian extreme-right organisation, Human Rights Service (HRS). I argue that recent HRS publications featuring six secretly shot photos of Muslims in the Norwegian public sphere engender a moral economy of exclusion in which Muslims consistently are produced as an anonymous yet ubiquitously present threat to liberal democratic and human rights values. Within this framework, micro-humiliating performances against the ‘Muslim other’ are constituted and encouraged as a necessary, morally justified defence of democratic virtues to ensure the existence of a vulnerable majority self. I claim that the HRS circulation of constructions of faceless, yet easily recognisable, categories of designated ‘enemy others’ as a threat to the liberal democratic ethos can ultimately be understood as a hegemonic intervention to push anti-Muslim illiberalism from the fringes towards the dominant cultural outlook. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. (Nietzsche, 1989[1886]: 157)

Beyond the two cultures: Democratic virtues and the case for a model of mutuality

Fifty years ago and still relevant today, C.P. Snow argued that the university is divided into two cultures, with humanities on the one side and the sciences on the other. This paper proposes a model of mutuality to overcome this ongoing divide as applied specifically to political philosophy and its cognate scientific disciplines of political science and political psychology. On the model of mutuality, not only can political philosophy inform theorizing and hypothesis-formation in political science and psychology, the latter fields also serve as data for political philosophy. More importantly, collaboration between philosophers and scientists can inform a conceptual dialectic that significantly benefits both areas of inquiry. The second half of the paper develops the example of democratic virtues as a case study. Capitalizing on existing work in philosophical virtue theory and related areas of psychology, I propose that the topic of democratic and not merely civic virtues is a novel area of inquiry that would profit from mutual engagement between political philosophers and political scientists and psychologists.