Liberal Democratic Societies Research Articles

Conditions for the sustainability of democracy according to Aristotle

Purpose: to present the national security environment from the perspective of the main assumptions formulated by Aristotle. This was he, who examined 158 constitutions of states, and he also undertook the work of describing the known regimes in detail. He can be considered the first thinker to approach the entire spectrum of political and social issues in a scientific manner.
 Method: the research was conducted using the following general scientific and special methods: the historical method during the study of the examination of constitutions by Aristotle; the method of analysis and synthesis related to the functioning of the state by Aristotle, abstract-logical method – for formulating theoretical generalizations and research conclusions.
 The results of the study: are related to Aristotleʼs indications, that a democratic system can be a matrix for other forms of government and of utmost importance is to preserve sustainability. The intention was not to develop or to reject the existing theories, but it was possible to formulate the assumption, that democracy, as we know it, has been a specific system whose durability depends on specific virtues and goods, most often called liberal.
 Theoretical implications: the practitioners can learn from the paper, that following Aristotle, the virtue of moderation should be incorporated into the cross-section of liberal political values for the benefit of the sustainability of democracy and the citizens who participate in its achievements. In this respect, the relationship between politics and ethics was revealed, which is characteristic of the classically understood philosophy of politics.
 Practical implications: the findings could serve as the research streams related to deeper analysis of the democratic systems, and the relations with the essence of the democracy of ancient Athens and looking for inspiration and parallel solutions for the political culture of current liberal democratic societies.
 Papertype: theoretical.

Discriminating Borders: Nationality, Racial Ordering, and the Right to Exclude

State borders allocate access to basic goods, opportunities, rights, and protections along lines of nationality, race, and gender. However, the discriminatory effects of state borders rarely appear as an issue in the self-understanding of liberal-democratic societies and their political theorizing. In this paper, I explore how the category of nationality has been and continues to be used to exclude people who have been negatively racialized by European colonialism. I draw on a number of studies that reconstruct the colonial history of states' claims to authority over people's movements and over the composition of their populations. The idea of territorial nationalities allowed nation-states, in particular those emerging from the settler colonies and metropoles of European empires, to continue practices of racial ordering without using explicit racial categories. With the help of these studies, I criticize liberal nationalists such as David Miller for appealing to the value of national identities to support a right of states to exclude would-be immigrants. I suggest that using genealogical and phenomenological methods allows us to undermine the default authority that is often accorded to the category of nationality.

Democratic Trust and Injustice

Trust is a crucial condition for the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic institutions in conditions of deep diversity and enduring injustices. Liberal democratic societies require forms of engagement and deliberation that require trustful relations between citizens: trust is a necessary condition for securing and sustaining just institutions and practices. Establishing trust is hard when there is a lingering suspicion that the institutions citizens are subject to are illegitimate or undermine their ability to participate and deliberate on equal terms. The promise of participation, the appeal to deliberation and inclusion, in other words, is experienced as a form of bad faith. In this paper, I offer four conditions required for democratic trust and discuss them in relation to a series of examples of both democratic mistrust and attempts at rebuilding trust.

The Justice and Ontology of Gastrospaces

In this paper, we establish gastrospaces as a subject of philosophical inquiry and an item for policy agendas. We first explain their political value, as key sites where members of liberal democratic societies can develop the capacity for a sense of justice and the capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good. Integrating political philosophy with analytic ontology, we then unfold a theoretical framework for gastrospaces: first, we show the limits of the concept of “third place;” second, we lay out the foundations for an ontological model of gastrospaces; third, we introduce five features of gastrospaces that connect their ontology with their political value and with the realization of justice goals. We conclude by briefly illustrating three potential levels of intervention concerning the design, use, and modification of gastrospaces: institutions, keepers, and users.

Building Social Cohesion through Community Leadership

Within Australia’s multicultural policy, the current social cohesion paradigm stresses the role of grassroots actors in building a harmonious society. A subcategory of this cohort are Muslim women leaders who work with governments to this end. Not only have these individuals been of specific policy interest, but anecdotal evidence and research suggests that they play leading roles within grassroots social cohesion activities. This article explores the tensions that exist in Muslim women leaders’ relationships with governments. It is argued that women feel gendered pressures to support government policies and be a certain type of Muslim leader. However, being seen to work too closely with governments create credibility issues for leaders within their own communities. Finally, women’s understandings of their roles in building social cohesion go further than those conceived for them by policymakers to encompass female family leadership and the inculcation of Islamic values in their children. This highlights an underlying tension regarding the relation Islamic values are seen to have to social cohesion in western liberal democratic societies. Understanding these tensions and how they are expressed is of strategic importance to social cohesion policy given its emphasis on grassroots approaches and solution to complex social issues.

The concept of national security in the light of Aristotle’s philosophy of Politics

Purpose: to present the main assumptions of Aristotleʼs Politics through the prism of the category of national security. Also, to reflect on the characteristics of political systems presented by Aristotle as the basis for the search for the essence of the functioning of the state, as well as an attempt to describe the perfect state (politeia).
 Method: the research was conducted using the following general scientific and special methods: the historical method during the study of the development of the political systems by Aristotle in chronological order; the method of analysis and synthesis related to the functioning of the state by Aristotle, abstract-logical method – for formulating theoretical generalizations and research conclusions.
 The results of the study: in the history of socio-political thought, Politics should be perceived as an important work that was the first to scientifically deal with the entire spectrum of issues of internal and external politics, tasks faced by rulers and citizens, goals of the state, and factors of its stability and development.
 Theoretical implications: deepened unique perception of the state, in line with the spirit of antiquity, in which the boundary between politics and ethics is not clearly drawn. It really matters, as seen from the current approaches to the roles the state is able or supposed to play. That’s why it is worth treating the research as a good starting point for analyzing the tasks of the state, including national security.
 Практична цінність дослідження: the results of the research can be considered, while analyzing the socio-political theory of Aristotle, as a supporter of the democratic system - looking for inspiration and parallel solutions for the political culture of current liberal democratic societies.
 Papertype: theoretical.

The Value Dimension of Public Opinion in Ukraine During the Full Scale War and Its Role for Post-War Reconstruction

The article is devoted to the relevance of the social values of liberal-democratic societies during the war, their structural features, and their role in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. The corresponding values include safety, diversity, selectivity, normativity, freedom, equality, order, stability, development, independence, and strength.
 The empirical part of the study is based on the results of an online survey conducted in July 2022. The sample size is 2,350 respondents (women – 51,3 %, men – 48,7 %, average age – 37,3 years). The structure of the sample repeats the structure of the urban population of Ukraine aged 18 to 55 at the beginning of the war in settlements with 50 thousand inhabitants or more for all regions, except the following groups: 1) population on the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions temporarily occupied at the beginning of the war, as well as AR Crimea; 2) population on other territories of Luhansk region; 3) population on the territories of Kherson region.
 The ranking of societal values (Condorcet method) was established: safety (80,5 %), strength (63,8 %), order (61,3 %), normativity (58,9 %), equality (53,6 %), liberty (48,4 %), stability (44,0 %), independence (37,4 %), development (35,6 %), diversity (34,1 %), selectivity (32.3 %).
 Two clusters are identified in the structure of societal values. The first includes order, safety, diversity, selectivity, normativity, liberty, and equality. In general, this value cluster emphasizes the need for internal balance, which is a fundamental guarantee of national resilience during a large-scale war, as it preserves the ability of society to generate additional resources needed by the state. The second value cluster includes strength, development, independence, and stability. This substructure is related to that part of national resilience responsible for responding to external crises and challenges.
 Forecasts were made regarding the priority relevance of almost all societal values in the period of post-war reconstruction: 1) safety due to the damage caused by the war to the population and territories of Ukraine; 2) strength due to the successes of Ukraine in the defense and diplomatic spheres; 3) order due to the inadmissibility of cleavage narratives in society; 4) normativity due to the request for implementation of the rule of law; 5) equality due to the need for support of broad sections of the population from the state; 6) liberty due to the need of gradual easing of restrictions that arose due to the war; 7) stability due to the constant demand for it in peacetime; 8) development due to its fundamental importance for the national subjectivity of Ukraine; 9) diversity due to modern landmarks of civilizational development; 10) selectivity due to the need for effective management decisions.

Incitement to Violence and Stochastic Terrorism: Legal, Academic, and Practical Parameters for Researchers and Investigators

ABSTRACT In the U.S., legal incitement is generally understood as speech that is intended to incite or produce imminent lawless action, and is likely, in fact, to do so. It is an a old construct extending back to ancient Greece. In contrast, stochastic terrorism is a relatively new academic term describing an unpredicted act of targeted violence stemming from political demagoguery. Both constructs are hard problems in a liberal democratic society. How do we think about such issues of speech involving both persuasion and influence that may lead to intentional harm of others? In furtherance of understanding such historical attacks and those that may unfold in the future, we juxtapose the concepts of stochastic terrorism and incitement to violence, and define the legal, academic, and practical parameters of these concepts for researchers and investigators who are not formally trained in the law. There are points of both convergence and divergence regarding these terms, both legally and psychologically, which may help clarify their application to academic research, legal opinion, and other real world problems.

The dangerous construction of national, religious and moral identities in the Ukrainian War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine violates fundamental norms of international law and is at the same time an attack on the order of values of liberal democratic societies. The long prepared, ideologically based aggression was massive underestimated. In the foreground of the war are not rationally comprehensible interests, but identity-related conflicts of recognition with their very own grammar of uncompromisingness and power dynamics. For Russia, Ukraine and Europe, the scholarly reappraisal of the highly divergent identity constructions is of central importance. The theological critique of a nationalist-identitarian-political use of the Christian faith is an important peace service that the churches have to perform.

The Dangerous Construction of National; Religious and Moral Identities in the Ukrainian War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine violates fundamental norms of international law and is at the same time an attack on the order of values of liberal democratic societies. The long prepared, ideologically based aggression was massive underestimated. In the foreground of the war are not rationally comprehensible interests, but identity-related conflicts of recognition with their very own grammar of uncompromisingness and power dynamics. For Russia, Ukraine and Europe, the scholarly reappraisal of the highly divergent identity constructions is of central importance. The theological critique of a nationalist-identitarian-political use of the Christian faith is an important peace service that the churches have to perform.

Agnosticism on Racial Integration: Liberal-Democratic or Libertarian?

Theorists of racial justice in the United States have long disagreed about the respective merits of integration versus separatism. In an attempt to reframe this debate, Andrew Valls has developed a liberal approach that purports to cut across the integration/separation divide. On this approach, the goal is to establish fair choice conditions for individuals choosing where to affiliate; when fair conditions obtain, the theory espouses a normative agnosticism toward whatever patterns of spatial distribution result. If successful, Valls’s choice-based framework represents a potentially transformative intervention in debates over racial justice. However, this article argues that the framework’s agnostic approach is in tension with its putative applicability to liberal-democratic societies. Specifically, it contends that the theory’s criteria for fair choice are excessively permissive, and that its conception of racial justice relies on an unwarranted assumption that under just conditions, individual choices will produce just aggregate outcomes. The maintenance of the theory’s agnosticism requires it to adopt positions that are better described as libertarian, rather than liberal-democratic. These problems suggest that the integration–separation debate cannot be circumvented via an agnostic appeal to individual choice, because that agnosticism obscures questions about the nature of democracy which are at the heart of the disagreement.

The Problem of Liberal Equality in Contemporary Political Thought Michael Sandel as A Model

Building a liberal democratic society has many dimensions, and one of these dimensions is equality, as a philosophical principle, or formal equality as a legal and political principle. Equally, and from a liberal perspective thought; the importance of equality in these societies will be achieved by reducing inequality in conditions, without prejudice to basic freedoms. Equality as a principle emerged through the long debate in western political history, especially in the context of liberal equality. There have been different trends and views in how to achieve equality in liberal societies and apply it to the level of governance practice, self-development and ability level. Thus, this led Michael Sandel to become one of the liberal thinkers, and embark on a study that includes a broad discussion between social liberalism against differences and the dangers these differences pose to social cohesion and political consensus, and between the libertarian tendency against expanding the circle of equality, and the dangers it poses to the freedom of the individual, and liberalism based on individual values and rights, and communitarianism based on group values and rights. Therefore, the different ideas, trends and views within liberal thought on equality are considered as different theories and perceptions about building a just society in political, social, and economic terms.

Critical problems and pragmatist solutions

In this special issue, we draw on pragmatist political and social theory and philosophy to illustrate the creative potential of this intellectual tradition for thinking about the numerous crises that haunt liberal democratic societies today. The introduction identifies five overlapping problem constellations (demise of public power, lasting consequences of inequality, pluralization of society, return of authoritarian practices and globalization of the world) that have driven the recent rise of undemocratic or authoritarian patterns of social organization and political rule. Against this backdrop, we conclude that the revitalization of certain dimensions of liberal democracy will not suffice to overcome these problems, which means that democratic practices need radical rethinking and reconceptualization. For this intellectual and political endeavour, we argue, pragmatism provides a suitable framework to identify problems that require resolution and define and mobilize collective problem solving capacities from already existing practices. All eight contributions to this special issue draw on pragmatist political and social theory and philosophy to illustrate to what extent, and to what ends, this intellectual tradition can revitalize the political and social discourse on the past, present and future of democracy. The articles are organized in two sections : (1) Pragmatist critique and the critical potential of pragmatism, (2) pragmatist politics and theories of democratic practice.

‘Partisan civility and civic education’*

ABSTRACT Education is central to creating well-informed citizens capable of participating in social and political life. However, civic education in some liberal democratic societies has often focused on teaching students the mechanics and structure of party politics, overlooking many of the public virtues that help to sustain democratic life. In this article we examine one such virtue, i.e., civility, and its role in party politics. We focus especially on partisan ‘civility as politeness,’ which entails the norms of politeness and etiquette that regulate partisans’ speech and behaviour during electoral campaigns and within legislatures. We analyse partisan civility as politeness and explore its connection with two other dimensions of partisan civility, i.e., ‘moral civility’ and ‘justificatory civility.’ We conclude by developing recommendations on how to advance civility in party politics by creating well-informed citizens and politicians who recognize the importance of civility in democratic life.

Why Conscience Matters: A Theory of Conscience and Its Relevance to Conscientious Objection in Medicine

Conscience is an idea that has significant currency in liberal democratic societies. Yet contemporary moral philosophical scholarship on conscience is surprisingly sparse. This paper seeks to offer a rigorous philosophical account of the role of conscience in moral life with a view to informing debates about the ethics of conscientious objection in medicine. I argue that conscience is concerned with a commitment to moral integrity and that restrictions on freedom of conscience prevent agents from living a moral life. In section one I argue that conscience is a principle of moral awareness in rational agents, and that it yields an awareness of the personal nature of moral obligation. Conscience also monitors the coherence between an agent’s identity-conferring beliefs and intentions and their practical actions. In section two I consider how human beings are harmed when they are forced to violate their conscience. Restrictions on the exercise of conscience prevent people from living in accord with their own considered understanding of the requirements of morality and undermine one’s capacity for moral agency. This article concludes with a consideration of how a robust theory of conscience can inform our understanding of conscientious objection in medicine. I argue that it is in the interest of individual practitioners and the medical profession generally to foster moral agency among doctors. This provides a prima facie justification for permitting at least some kinds of conscientious objection.

Religion and Its Public Critics

To have the right and possibility to criticize religions in public life is crucial for developing a healthy liberal democratic society. However, this criticism could take many different forms with respect to who offers the criticism, on what grounds it is based, its aim, what the target of the criticism is, and whom the critics try to convince. In this article, I develop a theoretical framework we can use to distinguish and assess different forms of criticism, focusing primarily on secular criticism of religion. Furthermore, I argue that in performing such a meta-study of criticism, it is vital that we reflect more carefully on how to develop plausible ethics of criticism. Finally, by comparing public criticism and academic criticism, I show that such ethics must be developed in a way that is sensitive to discourse.

Crossing the Binaries of Mobility Control: Agency, Force and Freedom

This article draws on qualitative data on journeys to Europe or Brazil undertaken by adults and teenagers from Sub-Saharan African countries to develop a conceptual analysis of the blurriness of the lines drawn between supposedly different types of movement via referencing the conceptual binary of forced/voluntary movement (such as asylum, trafficking, smuggling). It questions the liberal model of ‘agency’ that is employed not just by state actors, but also by many antislavery, anti-trafficking, child rights, and refugee rights activists, to construct boundaries between different ‘types’ of people on the move. Conceptual divisions between refugees and economic migrants, trafficked and smuggled persons, forced and voluntary labourers, child and adult migrants, and the idea of ‘modern slavery’, deflect attention from the structures that limit the choices open to people on the move. This article argues that the voluntary/forced binary encourages a tendency to falsely conflate choice with freedom and works to preserve the illusion that human freedom is a defining feature of liberal democratic societies rather than working to universally protect the freedoms of actual living human beings.

Educating citizens to public reason: what can we learn from interfaith dialogue?

ABSTRACT John Rawls’s political liberalism demands that reasonable citizens comply with the duty of civility, which limits the justification of state action to public reasons. However, many religious citizens in liberal democratic societies reject the exclusion of religious reasons from public debate. What can be done to encourage these citizens to endorse public reason? Rawls proposes the idea of reasoning from conjecture (RC), i.e. directly engaging with someone’s comprehensive doctrine and showing them that such a doctrine actually supports public reason. In this article, we argue that reasoning from conjecture faces serious objections and that interfaith dialogue (ID) provides a better and more effective tool to encourage religious citizens to endorse public reason. More specifically, ID provides support to public reason by (i) relying on the principles of equality, sincerity and self-criticism, which are also central to public reason; (ii) leading participants to de-parochialize religion; and (iii) promoting tolerance. Moreover, ID avoids the main objections faced by RC, which undermine the latter’s morality and effectiveness.

‘Respect for Religious Feelings’: As the Italian Case Shows, Fresh Paint Can’t Fix the Crumbling Wall of Blasphemy

This article examines the relation between free speech and blasphemy laws and assesses whether the latter may still have a place in secular, liberal democracies. After a theoretical introduction on free speech, its function in a liberal society and the possible grounds for restrictions, the analysis will focus on Italy – prototypical case of a country that has experimented with diverse ways of outlawing blasphemy. The article argues that blasphemy laws, even when wrapped in the new clothes of the ‘protection for religious feelings’, perpetuate a favour toward institutionalized religions that is hardly justifiable today from a constitutional or even logical perspective. The privilege enjoyed by stronger religious denominations, the discrimination between different expressions of individual conscience, the chilling effect on free speech in the name of dogmas – these are all issues of serious concern inextricably linked to blasphemy laws that are intolerable in secular, liberal democratic societies. blasphemy, free speech, freedom of expression, religious feelings, religious sensibilities, freedom of religion, Italy

Mass culture as a form of production of images, ideas and meanings: artistry and propaganda

In a liberal democratic society, the development of mass culture is determined by the market. The authors show that the social order comes from the management of companies that produce "cultural products", as well as from publishing concerns, film and television corporations, and music firms. They finance only those projects that satisfy the company, while producers select only those scripts and promote those projects and performers that satisfy the tastes and attitudes of social groups in society. Prestigious awards in any field of art (for example, the Oscar Academy Award) are given to the authors of those works that meet the ideological guidelines and criteria for artistic expression. And every award is also a kind of benchmark for artists. The article shows that mass culture acts as a form of production of images, ideas and meanings.