Notion Of Democracy Research Articles

Democracy compromised. An interpretation of the Greek economic and political crisis in the period 2009–2015

Abstract: The key objective of this study is to clarify the gap between democracy and representation in modern state as well as its results, as to how policy is formed and implemented. In this context, the core questions to be considered are the following: How is democracy defined in the modern era? What is the relationship between policy (democracy) and civil society-citizens? How can we explain/interpret the question of the political function of democracy by society? The mutation of the notion of democracy in the modern era, leads to the weakening of its content and the dislocation of its variable qualifiers condensing in the distinction between ‘direct’ and ‘representative’ democracy. As a result to the pre-representative relation between society and executive branch, a democratic deficit exists and thus a ‘legitimacy crisis’ arises in the executive branch, causing the inability to meet the basic requirements of each society.

Varieties of democratic understanding and political participation: multi-level evidence from the world

ABSTRACT This article explores the linkage between different conceptualisations of democracy and forms of political participation. Specifically, it examines the correlates of conventional and unconventional modes of political participation, especially in light of three major understandings of democracy, namely liberal, redistributive, and authoritative understandings. This article maintains that different notions of democracy have their unique relationships with different forms of political participation. The article argues that people with a predominantly liberal notion of democracy are expected to partake in both conventional and unconventional modes of political participation, whereas those with an authoritative understanding of democracy are relatively more hesitant to take part in both forms. Finally, citizens with a redistributive notion of democracy are expected to appear more in unconventional forms of political participation, such as boycotts and lawful demonstrations. We test our arguments based on a global and up-to-date dataset and a multi-level framework, which covers more than 100,000 democratic citizens across the globe.

Bibliotek för alla?

The Swedish Library Act states that “Library activities shall be available to everyone” and other policy documents in Sweden promote the public library as a place making information and culture accessible to all. The Library Acts of Denmark, Finland and Norway include similar statements, as well as the core values of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. However, the concept of accessibility is seldom defined or discussed. During recent years, the concept of participation is widely used in the context of accessibility in cultural policies, including policies related to public libraries. Even so, this concept also lacks a clear meaning. Accessibility and participation are closely related to democracy; by making information accessible and by enabling participation libraries are considered as promoters of democracy. Thus, when the meaning of accessibility and participation changes, the understanding of democracy is affected. In this article, I explore the meaning of the concepts accessibility and participation in Swedish library policies. Eleven library policies are analyzed utilizing Arnsteins “ladder of participation” and Fraser’s critique of Habermas notion of the public sphere. The article also discusses how the notion of democracy is affected by the different meanings accessibility and participation hold in the respective policies.

The Relevance Of Shura In Promoting Shared Prosperity In Developed And Developing Countries: ICIS 2021

The issue of greater inequalities and social exclusion reckoned to be the result of economic growth led the World Bank to set the new goal, to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity. Interestingly, the approach of the contemporary solution is largely in consonance with the maqasid or objectives of the Shari’ah. Islam is a universal religion and addresses the entire mankind not the believers alone. It is, therefore, no surprise that people irrespective of faith do often think along Islamic lines. The term shura has generally accepted by Muslims scholars as that which most closely approximates the notion of democracy. This study analyzed the impact of the shura as one elements of governance from Islamic perspective on poverty, by adopting a cross-country approach. Specifically, the study examined the impact of Shura on the poorest quintiles of the population by evaluating the relationship between the factors and the changes in the per capita income of the poor of the developed and developing countries. This study applied panel regression to examine the significance of the shura as one component of the governance from Islamic perspective towards the shared prosperity of the developed and developing countries. It is found that equality of participation, effective participation and representation are the significant factors in promoting shared prosperity. It is hoped that this study will serve as an effective mechanism for poverty eradication in the respective countries.

Parental choice, collective identity and neoliberalism in alternative education: new free democratic schools in Poland

The article analyses a new educational development in Poland, that is, free democratic schools, which are grassroots initiatives of parents seeking an alternative to the traditional pedagogies of the public schooling. These schools form a broader network. Based on ethnographic research carried out at eight such schools over five years, the authors discuss the formation of schools, parents’ motivations, collective identity constructions, and internal tensions of inclusion and belonging. Regarding the potential impact of the schools on a broader educational sphere, the authors argue that the alternative schooling as an option for parental choice parallel to the expansion of neoliberal policies and new inequalities creates tensions between the notions of democracy and the consumer logic. However, as observed practices suggest, democratic school communities face internal political dynamics intertwined with societal issues and may seek involvement outside their circles. While these communities are constantly being reformulated, the question of exit and voice becomes their permanent feature.

Democracia em crise?

A ideia de crise ou degradação democrática é, assim como a própria noção de democracia, disputada teórica e analiticamente. Neste artigo, discorremos sobre as ações implementadas pela administração de Donald Trump nos Estados Unidos, focando a discussão nos impactos que os discursos e políticas adotadas pelo governo do republicano tiveram sobre os direitos de grupos historicamente marginalizados, como a população negra, as mulheres, as comunidades migrantes e a população LGBTI+. Defendemos que a análise de processos de desdemocratização devem considerar não só dimensões procedimentais, mas os efeitos desses quadros para a garantia e efetivação de direitos dos sujeitos. O reforço de desigualdades, o aumento de violências, a exclusão social e o desmonte de políticas públicas são alguns dos quadros observados, o que demanda reflexões mais amplas sobre as crises democráticas, bem como sobre as possibilidades de luta e resistência.

Romancing the public school: attachment, publicness and privatisation

ABSTRACT In Anglophone countries, narratives of public schooling tend to emphasise generic hopes about schooling as central to the idea of a public good, including fostering community, delivering equality and protecting broad notions of democracy. However, as public systems become more open to privatised logics, these hopes sit alongside fears for the future of ‘publicness’. Through analysis of participant interviews in four education systems in Canada, England, New Zealand and Australia, this paper shows that these fears emerge from the specific nature of privatisation evident within specific contexts. Our argument is that while hopes remain in common, parochial policies and histories inform particular fears about how public school systems are losing their ‘publicness’. There is evidence of a ‘cruel optimism’ among participants as they try to hold onto their belief in the good of publicness, even as their institutions become hybridised by creeping privatisation.

Measurement Invariance of Liberal and Authoritarian Notions of Democracy: Evidence From the World Values Survey and Additional Methodological Considerations

This article offers a gentle introduction to the measurement invariance (MI) literature with a focus on its relevance to comparative political research. It reviews 1) the conceptual foundations of MI; 2) standard procedures of testing for MI in practical applications within the multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) paradigm; and 3) two novel approaches to MI, Bayesian approximate measurement invariance, and MGCFA alignment optimization, which are especially suitable for dealing with extremely heterogeneous data from large-scale comparative surveys typical for modern political science. It then provides an empirical illustration of the key concepts and methods from the MGCFA-MI literature by applying them to testing for MI of two recently introduced measures of democracy attitudes, so-called liberal and authoritarian notions of democracy, across 60 countries in the sixth round of the World Values Survey. These analyses show that both measures can be considered reliable comparative measures of democratic attitudes, although for different reasons. Finally, this study emphasizes that some survey-based constructs, e.g., authoritarian notions of democracy, do not follow the reflective (correlation-based) logic of construct development. These alternative measures, known as formative measures, do not assume strong correlations between their indicators, for which reason it is inappropriate to test their comparability using the reflective MGCFA approach. Instead, their comparability can be tied to their correlations with theoretically relevant external variables.

To Delegate or Redelegate: Is That the Question?

Abstract Conflicts between those supporting and opposing congressional redelegation to executive agencies go back to the earliest days of the Republic, but given the enormous development of the administrative state, now raise issues of great practical importance. The arguments back and forth implicate abstract notions of democracy, efficiency, and judicial power, though typically partisan and other self interested considerations actually drive the debate. The future is likely to see some retrenchment, but not wholesale rejection of redelegation, as the massive and unpredictable consequences would deter courts from acting.

Enter the Matrix: What the new brain-computer interfaces teach us about agency, privacy, and human subjectivity

Within the last decade, the global brain-computer interface (BCI) industry has experienced significant economic growth and captured the public’s imagination through enthusiastic coverage in the popular media. Responding dialectically to this growing public discourse, this paper overviews the social, ethical, and philosophical aspects of BCIs that pose the greatest concern for information policymakers. By reading the industry’s techno-economic trends against contemporary critical philosophy, I argue that these technologies enable new “posthuman” forms of surveillance and control that challenge democratic notions of freedom, privacy, and equality.

Public Value Measurement vs. Public Value Creating Imagination – the Constraining Influence of Old and New Public Management Paradigms

ABSTRACT Public value management emerged as a response to the limitations of new public management, to incorporate notions of democracy and inclusive dialogue and deliberation. However, the contestation around the expression of public value limits its capacity to guide thinking and practice. This article explores the competing expression of accountability under new public management (NPM) and public value management (PVM) value frames. It argues that a measurement focus is a legacy of NPM values frames which are incompatible with those of PVM. As such, the focus on measurement is blocking a coherent exposition of an emerging PVM paradigm.

The relationship between diffuse support for democracy and governing party support in a hybrid regime: evidence with four representative samples from Turkey

ABSTRACT Political culture is congruent with the regime’s form in stable democracies as well as autocracies. In contrast, hybrid regimes are unstable by nature, and the relationship between political culture and regime legitimacy remains ambiguous. How does diffuse support for democracy influence the vote for the governing party in a hybrid regime? By employing the Turkish case as an example and using four nationally representative samples, we discover that being an active citizen and participating in civic political engagement decrease the probability of voting for the governing party. Preferring a strong leader and a stable government over a democratic one and feeling satisfied with the current level of democracy have the opposite effect. Previous literature suggested the lack of a democratic political culture in Turkey. In contrast to these findings, the results show traces of civic culture and the presence of democratic notions.

The Death of Administrative Democracy

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Notions of democracy in France: uncovering causes and consequences

Based on the latest European Values Study released in 2018, this study investigates the characteristics that French citizens ascribe to democracies to be essential. So far, little is known about democratic notions in a comparative perspective and even less about their origins and political consequences. To fill this research gap, this study adopts an exploratory research design where notions of democracy are, at first, inspected as dependent variables and, subsequently, scrutinized as determinants of political attitudes and participation. The empirical evidence reveals the deviating effects that different types of democratic notions exert on political attitudes and action and underscores the impact of personality traits and political ideology.

Ciudadanía republicana: deberes generales y especiales regulados desde la esfera jurídico-penal

On this paper the author reveals that a republican government model demands an active participation of their citizens, democracy must not be just understood in participation terms but Also deliberative ones. Also, under the same idea, citizens not only have rights, but also have obligations that are imposed by the government from that moment, some of them, from a legal-criminal sphere, some obligations are general (do not kill) and others are aimed at a closed number of people (civil servant). Therefore, the purpose of this work is aimed at deepening the notions of democracy and freedom that are inherent in a republican model of government, continued from a study on the general and specific duties of certain citizens and, in particular, it will analyze what is related to the civic duty of “Prudence of public servants” that brings with it a series of consequences for non-compliance. In this way, once a doctrinal and jurisprudential review of the issues avoided is prepared, it will be possible to conclude that in a republican model of government democracy must be deliberative, freedom will have to be understood in terms of “nondomination”, and the legal consequences for breach of general and special duties should adhere as far as possible to the idea of restorative justice.

Decentralized planning and role of panchayat in post covid-19 pandemic

Known as the country of villages, the India represents a diversified cultural mosaic all over the world. India is basically an agricultural country and village India forms the major chunk of population. As per census 2011, 68.8 per cent of its population still resides in the villages and solely depend on agriculture and related sources of livelihood for its survival. Rural areas also constitute 72.4 per cent of work force and further population projections indicate that India will continue to be predominantly rural, till the year 2050. To fulfil the dreams of the founding fathers of making India as cooperative federalism, various systemic efforts have been taking place to visualize notion of democracy as the grassroot level. The present paper seeks a note on the role of panchayats during the unprecedented crisis which has emerged after the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.

AKTUALISASI SPIRIT ISLAM NUSANTARA DAN ISLAM BERKEMAJUAN, DUA INSTRUMEN PENANGKAL ARUS RADIKALISASI PENEGAK NEGARA DEMOKRASI

The emergence of radical notions in the ideology of the Ummah is a public phenomenon that must be eradicated from the minds of mankind, because this understanding can present a negative impact that can disturb the condition of social people which lead to acts of terrorism. This action occurs because the majority of radical groups tend to respond to religious normative texts in a written manner without any further analysis, so that there is a stagnation of the interpretations in their mindset. Indonesia itself is one of the countries that adopts the notion of democracy as a principle of citizenship and constitutionality, but on the other hand the unity of Indonesian is weak and vulnerable to radical understanding which is increasingly attacking the solidarity of the country's integration. This can be seen by reflecting on the active actions of religious radicalization and terrorism in Indonesia which have been ongoing, especially entering the early 21st century. Therefore, in response to the presence of phenomenology, the author tries to present a counteractive response as an antithetical refutation of the argument. That is an effort to counteract the radical notion, the author tried to explain the views of two major assemblies of Muslim organizations in the country, namely NU with the spirit of Islamic Nusantara and Muhammadiyah with Islamic Spirit Progressing (Islam Berkemajuan), by using paradigm- comparative analysis method between both of them. Where the results are found that both are indigenous products, which is where Islam Nusantara is a spirit that tends to ukhuwahwataniyah as a multicultural people while Islam progresses towards social modernism. With the final conclusion, the two spirits did not at all mention the negative radicalist doctrines, but explicitly oriented to the movement of tolerance, moderation and contextualization which led to the upholding of democratic values in the Indonesian country.

La educación como política pública en la democracia: una perspectiva hermenéutica en el siglo XXI

La educación en el siglo XXI es vista como la piedra medular de la sociedad, la cual se cumple como parte de las políticas públicas de Estado en un sistema de gobierno democrático. En esta investigación se busca indagar sobre la noción que se posee sobre democracia en el siglo XXI para poder describir la relación existente entre la democracia y el cumplimiento de las políticas públicas según otros investigadores. El eje teleológico central es generar una perspectiva hermenéutica sobre la educación como política pública de la democracia en el siglo XXI. El fundamento metodológico se llevó a cabo desde el paradigma postpositivista con enfoque cualitativo, bajo la técnica de investigación documental y un procesamiento de la información mediante el análisis de contenido. Las reflexiones que surgieron a partir de la perspectiva hermenéutica del discurso de otros actores sociales, permitieron develar que la educación es un derecho humano esencial para el desarrollo sostenible de los países, que además se considera una política pública que garantiza el sentido de democracia.

González Palacios, Carlos (comp.). Reflections on Democracy and the Rule of law in the contemporary world. Lima: ESAN, 2020

Esta obra es un importante esfuerzo de recopilación —y en la mayoría de casos, de traducción— conformada por once trabajos de investigación de juristas alemanes, franceses y peruanos acerca de temáticas jurídicas ligadas a las nociones de democracia y de Estado de derecho. Cada contribución, que toma la forma de una reflexión académica de aproximadamente diez páginas, rinde cuenta de una realidad a partir de la especialidad de cada autor en materias tan distintas, pero complementarias, como la lucha contra la corrupción, la administración pública en su relación con el ciudadano o, de manera más puntual, los aportes de la jurisprudencia Lüth del Tribunal Constitucional peruano, la cual expresa que la Constitución de valores adquiere su legitimidad no por estar basada exclusivamente en la voluntad del pueblo, sino en el valor universal de la dignidad humana. Todo ello hace de esta publicación, probablemente, una de las de mayor valor teórico reciente para la teoría del derecho público, por lo que se recomienda su lectura a investigadores y estudiantes.

Den digitale offentligheten i kultur- og bibliotekpolitikken

Echo chambers, fake news, filter bubbles and algorithms have been framed as great threats to our contemporary democracies and public spheres. In the Nordic countries, the state plays an active role in sustaining democracy and the public sphere through culture- and knowledge policies. The Norwegian Government have over the last years presented a white paper on overall cultural policy and a library strategy document. Both documents address the effects of digital technology on democracy, and how culture institutions in general and libraries in particular can help sustain our democracies in changing times. In this article, we study these and preceding documents on culture- and library policies. We analyze how they address digital technology and how they see culture- and library policies as providing solutions to digital threats to democracy and the public sphere. Furthermore, we study what notion of democracy and the public sphere are prevalent in Norwegian cultural policies. The results show that the Government view culture as a remedy against a fragmented public sphere, and that libraries play a key role as providers of digital guidance and teaching.