Participatory Equality Research Articles

Deliberative democracy in feminist theory and practice: The case of the Unitary Feminist Assembly of Seville (Spain)

Feminist democratic theory has questioned and added complexity to the Habermasian deliberative model. In this article, we conduct a case study on the Unitary Feminist Assembly of Seville through participant observation and ‘active’ interviews. We reflect on the development of the field by discussing six key findings that capture a number of resolved issues in feminist theory. The aim is to verify the presence and relevance of the debates formulated by feminist theoreticians in the assembly and, above all, to check if these debates about deliberative democracy among feminists have a real reflection on feminist practices. We concluded that the concerns feminist theoreticians express about the conditions for the debate are shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by the activists who, moreover, implement measures to enhance participatory equality albeit with important pending challenges.

Fair Enough? Mini-Public Composition and Outcome Acceptance from the Maxi Public

One hope associated with the spread of deliberative mini-publics in established democracies is that they could increase acceptance of policies because of their inclusive and diverse composition. Yet, participants are not representative of the broader public in all characteristics. They tend to be more engaged with politics or debated policy issues than the average population. Building on a Climate Citizens’ Assembly commissioned by the Luxembourg government in 2022 (Klima Biergerrot-KBR), this study examines how the maxi public reacts when informed about the profile of mini-public participants. Via a survey experiment, we found that descriptive representation and similarity matter to accept the outcomes, but not universally. It depends on respondents’ attitudes about mini-publics prior to the experiment and situations of cognitive dissonance. Indeed, when people initially neutral or opposed to mini-publics (‘participatory skeptics’) learn that the process is fairly representing (their in-) groups, they increase their willingness to accept the outcomes, stressing improvement in the perceived legitimacy. By contrast, the lack of social inclusion and political diversity is an issue to keep the ‘participatory enthusiasts’ on board, stressing that they also pay attention (and perhaps even more) to how and which groups of citizens are represented within a mini-public. Our message is that deliberative mini-publics need to address more thoroughly how they can best meet their normative assumptions of participatory equality and procedural fairness; otherwise, they may not help to foster political legitimacy.

When the election rains out and how bad weather excludes marginal voters from turning out

Ostensibly random and trivial experiences of everyday life, e.g., local weather, can have significant political consequences. First, we present a comprehensive meta-analysis of 34 studies of electoral turnout and rainfall – the vast majority demonstrating a negative association. Secondly, we present a new analysis of a voter panel with validated turnout for a complete electorate merged with fine-grained meteorological observations to show that Election Day rainfall reduces turnout by 0.95 percentage points per centimeter, while more sunshine increases turnout. Marginal voters (young voters) are up to six times more susceptible to bad weather and respond more positively to pleasant weather. Thus, bad weather exacerbates unequal democratic participation by pushing low-propensity voters to abstain. Efforts to include marginal voters therefore ought to be intensified during poor weather, and elections could even be moved to seasons with more pleasant weather to improve participatory equality.

Unequal inequalities? How participatory inequalities affect democratic legitimacy

AbstractDemocratic theorists have long emphasized the importance of participatory equality, that is, that all citizens should have an equal right to participate. It is still unclear, however, whether ordinary citizens view this principle as central to democracy and how different violations of this principle affect subjective democratic legitimacy. The attitudes of citizens are imperative when it comes to the subjective legitimacy of democratic systems, and it is therefore important to examine how participatory inequalities affect these attitudes. We here contribute to this research agenda with survey experiments embedded in two surveys (n = 324, n = 840). We here examine (1) whether citizens consider participatory inequality to be an important democratic principle, and (2) how gender and educational inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and the perceived usefulness of the participatory input. The results show that citizens generally consider participatory inequalities to be important, but only gender inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and usefulness. Hence it is important to consider the type of inequality to understand the implications.

Pengembangan Model dan Strategi Reformasi Birokrasi Yang Berorientasi Pada Pelayanan Publik Untuk Mewujudkan Good Governance di Daerah

Bureaucracy of regional government in reformation era is demanded to affors in creating clean and good, transparency, responsive, efficient and effective government as well. The demand is increasingly avoidable by public distrust because of KKN (Corruption, Collution, Nepotism) practice in government bureaucracy wich is increasingly systemic and privade to areas of region. Bureaucracy reformation is the needy wich capable to lessen KKN practical, it is, however in appropriate if phenomena tern only in administrative technigues. Public servant status must be put to have main role from government bureaucracy to create good local governance.
 This study want to examine comprehensively how bureaucracy of government to increase public servant in the framework of good local governance and review the factors of causality relationship as well which influence either bureaucracy internal or external so it able to create clean and accountable in regions. The result from the study is : The development of participatory bureaucracy reformation model and equality wich oriented to public service. Among other creative, innovative and proactive public servant, low cost administration and easy license, transparency cost, fast and easily accessible, society as locust (citizen charter)

Safety after neoliberalism

Neoliberalism refers to the political, economic and social arrangements that have become globally dominant since the 1980s. It promotes privatization, free markets, and deregulation. Neoliberal governance can be linked to safety management by stifling rules developed by non-experts, bureaucratic overreach, imposition of discipline and accountability, and a hemming in of autonomy and discretion on the frontline. Using a variety of sources, this paper examines what safety and safety management can look like after neoliberalism. Centrally, it hinges on changing the belief that complex risks can be managed by rule-based uncertainty reduction, documentation-based liability management, or shrinking the bandwidth of allowable human performance. Safety after neoliberalism involves regulation on the basis of capacities to make things go right as opposed to compliance; de-bureaucratizing safety by putting safety expertise closer to the ‘messy details’ of actual practice, and instituting investigations and restorative incident responses that emphasize safe working conditions as a collective responsibility. In addition, safety after neoliberalism takes a fresh look at global supply chains, participatory equality, and workers’ compensation practices.

Igualdade Participativa e Políticas Públicas: o caso de conselhos gestores de turismo de Ouro Preto e Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, Brasil

Este artigo analisa a igualdade participativa e as políticas públicas municipais a partir dos casos de conselhos gestores municipais de Turismo de Ouro Preto e de Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, Brasil. Na literatura, a discussão de igualdade participativa perpassa pela análise da forma de escolha de representantes e análise de políticas públicas. Neste sentido, o questionamento é: quais são as etapas de políticas públicas predominantes e a forma de escolha dos representantes? Para tanto o objetivo deste artigo é caracterizar as atividades dos conselheiros enquanto etapas de um ciclo político e a forma como estão organizados para decidir sobre estas políticas. Os procedimentos metodológicos foram guiados por uma abordagem qualitativa. Utilizou-o método de estudo de caso múltiplo. As técnicas de coleta de dados contemplaram entrevistas e pesquisa documental. A intepretação dos dados ocorreu a partir das categorias que emergiram da revisão bibliográfica e da análise de conteúdo temática. Os resultados evidenciam que as atividades dos conselheiros, enquanto etapas de um ciclo político, apresentam distanciamentos na agenda, implementação e avaliação. Em ambos os conselhos gestores, as convergências entre o que é esperado e observado em termos de políticas públicas só ocorre (quando ocorre) na formulação. A não paridade e a representação vinculada apresentaram-se como elementos que põem em risco a igualdade de oportunidade de participação de membros da sociedade e do governo. Como contribuições, este estudo expande a análise da igualdade participativa para além da gestão social, comtemplando aspectos conceituais para análise da representação em espaço deliberativos e políticas públicas tendo o turismo como contexto de estudo empírico.

Race, Poverty, and the Redistribution of Voting Rights

The relative political disengagement of people living in poverty poses an enduring challenge to the integrity of American democracy. In 1993, Congress attempted to address this by passing section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act. This law requires that all public assistance agencies serve as voter registration sites. Though advocates had high hopes for section 7, it has proven difficult to implement. Since very early on, state compliance has varied widely, maintaining an overall trajectory of decline. This article explains the reasons for such patterns. By examining changes in compliance between 1995 and 2012, I demonstrate that race is a pivotal determinant of when states incorporate low-income policy beneficiaries into the electorate. I find that state compliance decreases significantly when (i) non-Whites are less active in electoral politics relative to their White counterparts; (ii) African Americans comprise a greater share of the state population; and (iii) welfare bureaucracies employ more Latinos. These findings raise concerns about the political equality of disadvantaged citizens and underscore the need to scrutinize the outcomes of expansionary voting policies. Even more broadly, this research shows how the entanglement of race and poverty in a federalist polity frustrates efforts to advance participatory equality.

Assessing How Participators Combine Acts in Their \u201cPolitical Tool Kits\u201d: A Person-Centered Measurement Approach for Analyzing Citizen Participation

Scholars have recognized that a recent increase in the ways citizens participate beyond the electoral arena may be a promising avenue of renewal for citizen participation. In this article we test the theory that different kinds of citizenship norms motivate some citizens to specialize in electoral-oriented activities (e.g. voting), while others specialize in non-institutionalized activities (e.g. protest). The latent class analysis of data from the U.S. Citizen, Involvement and Democracy Survey (2005) in the current study assesses how actors combine a variety of acts in their “political tool kits” of participation, and facilitates a comparison to prior findings that analyze single political behaviors. Results indicate a participatory type that specializes in non-institutionalized acts, but the group’s high probability of voting does not align with the expectations in the literature. An electoral-oriented specialist type is not identified; instead, the findings show that a majority of the population is best characterized as disengaged, while a small group of all-around activists embrace all possible opportunities for political action. The actor-centered theoretical and measurement approach in this study identifies caveats to the theory that changing citizenship norms are leading to civic and political renewal. We discuss the implications of these findings for measuring different aspects of democratic (dis)engagement and participatory (in)equality.

Equality and the Uniqueness of the Individual. Towards Just Gender Relations

The paper addresses the asymmetrical gender relations which have shaped all spheres of life, arguing that in both the public and private domains just relations cannot be accomplished unless the uniqueness of the individual is duly acknowledged. Examining the background for the persistent discrimination of women, Part I discusses the naturalistic fallacy implied in traditional gender norms, the fatal correlation of ‚women‘ and ‚nature‘, and the ‚feminization of poverty‘. Part II focuses on the ways in which philosophical conceptions such as ‚autonomy‘ and ‚equality‘ have been, and still are, important tools for elaborating legislative measures – on the national as well as the international level – that aim at abolishing gender discrimination. Participatory equality is one case in point. Emphasizing that legislation represents but one element of what is needed in order to achieve fully reciprocal gender relations, Part III argues that the understanding of intimate human relations needs to be re-considered. Hegel’s portrayal of ‚love‘ that is based upon mutual recognition of individuals in their unique personality, and his conception of ‚we‘ prove relevant here.

Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is it Equality of Opportunity or Equality of Outcomes?

ABSTRACTThis article explores the impact of gender equality on economic growth. In particular, we focus on the multidimensional nature of gender equality with the object of identifying the relative salience of different aspects of equality. Using exploratory factor analysis on five measures of gender equality, we identify two distinct dimensions: equality of economic opportunities and equality in economic and political outcomes. Regression analysis conducted on an unbalanced panel of 101 countries taken over nonoverlapping five-year periods from 1990 to 2000 reveals that a standard deviation improvement in equality in economic opportunity increases growth by 1.3 percentage points and a corresponding improvement in participatory equality improves growth by an average of about 1.2 percentage points. However, this impact is contingent on a country's stage of development: while developing economies experience significant improvements in growth from greater equality in opportunity, developed societies see significant improvements resulting from greater equality in outcomes.

Democracia deliberativa: leitura crítica do caso CDES à luz da teoria do discurso

Este artigo propõe uma leitura crítica da prática da democracia em tempos atuais. Para tanto, empreende uma reflexão sobre a democracia na modernidade, em que os limites impostos pelo Estado burocrático apontam para a possibilidade do desenvolvimento mais profícuo da democracia deliberativa. Os autores observam teoricamente a prática discursiva e seu potencial democratizante, para então desvelar em que medida a orientação estratégica da ação em espaços discursivos pretensamente democráticos compromete o sentido de igualdade participativa. Para ilustrar a abordagem teórica, analisam empiricamente o caso do Conselho de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (CDES), um fórum de debates entre representantes da sociedade civil e do governo, criado no início da gestão Lula no intuito de fomentar a participação da sociedade em questões do Estado. A despeito do avanço obtido na adoção de tal modelo, quando o contexto democrático é analisado à luz da teoria do discurso, surgem novas referências de análise das contradições nas quais se estabelece a prática democrática nesses tipos de fóruns. O caso do CDES revela um paradoxo: apesar de certos procedimentos da democracia deliberativa, é recorrente a orientação estratégica.

Toward Participatory Equality: Protecting Minority Rights under International Law

The principal claim made by this Article is that the realization of full and effective equality for all citizens and residents within a multi-ethnic state requires “participatory equality.” Creating a system of participatory equality entails, for most states, making drastic and fundamental changes to the state's legal system, public spaces, social and economic structures, and funding and space provided for ethnic, cultural, and religious institutions; however, this type of transformation is the only means of respecting human dignity and ensuring peace. This claim is first made as a normative moral claim based on principles of justice and dignity; as this Paper will show, a broad and effective interpretation of international law concerning minority rights supports the same normative claim.This Article first reviews existing international law and other legal frameworks regarding national minority rights, including discussions of the specific case of indigenous peoples'rights and the intersection between individual and collective rights. The bulk of the Paper proposes a universal model, building upon existing legal frameworks, for building participatory equality for all members of a society, which requires the full and equal sharing of its resources in three primary domains: the public, the internal, and the historical domain. The need for such a model is all the more so for indigenous and minority groups of substantial size living under systems that cater to a majority based on ethnicity, religion, race or other dominant traits. Only when a nation's legal system secures the rights of all citizens to share equally in all of these domains can that nation fulfill the purpose of international minority rights legal bodies and deliver substantive equality to majority and minority concerns, both in law and practice.

Recognition and Justice

In this article, Axel Honneth outlines a plural theory of justice. In developing his argument he takes his departure not in the classic elimination of ‘inequality’, but in the avoidance of ‘humiliation’ or ‘disrespect’. He is convinced that an appropriate point of departure for a recognition-theoretical conception of justice must show that the experience of social injustice is always measured in terms of the withholding of some recognition held to be legitimate. Throughout the article, Honneth makes strong reservations about Nancy Fraser’s approach, where ‘recognition’ and ‘redistribution’ are separated into two conceptual totalities with the single goal of ‘participatory equality’. On the contrary, he suggests having a more elaborate concept of identity formation, so that participating in the public realm means participating without shame, capable of unfurling his or her own personality’s potential in an unforced manner and of thus developing a personal identity. From this standpoint Honneth points to three differentiated spheres of recognition that must be obtained if the individual is to obtain a personal identity, namely love, equal treatment in law and social esteem.

Risky Discourses: The Politics of GM Foods

Risk is a category that has been filled by the contingency of history; it is a way of structuring reality and rendering it intelligible. In western societies, risk has traditionally been identified and defined by a phalanx of social institutions, which have constituted the dominant 'relations of definition' (Beck, 1995). Despite the expansion of 'expert' methods of risk assessment, in recent times, a series of cases of institutional mismanagement - the BSE crisis being the most notorious - have thrown into doubt the ability of expert systems to effectively identify and mitigate social risks. In the last decade, the hegemonic relations of risk definition have increasingly been challenged by a plethora of subaltern discourses, which have emerged from civil society. These discourses have forced an institutional reflexivity that acknowledges the need for greater participatory equality in risk characterisation. However, drawing on the ongoing debate about GM foods, we argue in this paper that there are particular technologies of government which limit the democratisation of risk definition in contemporary western society.

Positive Theory and Voice and Equality

S idney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady (VSB) have concentrated scholarly attention on the inequality of political voice in America. Employing an innovative survey design that produced a novel data set of political activists, VSB demonstrate that activists and nonactivists have different sets of policy concerns and that different modes of participation send different messages to public officials. In short, the participatory process-which they argue is based on citizen resources, psychological engagement, and access to networks-is biased. More participatory equality would yield a different mix of policy messages to political leaders. We asked three senior scholars, who approach the problem of participation in America from different angles, to evaluate VSB's work. They declare Voice and Equality a modern masterpiece of political science and probe the best they can for weakness. John H. Aldrich emphasizes positive theory. He stresses the limits to assuming that all acts of political participation are part of the same theoretical universe and therefore to constructing a measure of the overall volume of participation. Aldrich argues that only a domain-specific approach to participation (e.g., elections, community action, interest-group politics) that focuses on an actor's goals and his or her interactions with other actors and institutions in the domain can explain why someone is an activist. Jane Mansbridge highlights normative theory. She observes that adversarial theories of democracy suggest that the inequality of participation matters because it affects the Who gets what? question, while participatory theories of democracy suggest that inequality matters because it affects the Who are we as citizens? question. Mansbridge argues that research must be concerned with both the distributive and educative effects of participation. Finally, Jennifer L. Hochschild stresses practical politics. For example, she notes the limits of VSB's finding that group identity is irrelevant to political activism. Hochschild proposes an empirical investigation of how group-specific factors (e.g., black consciousness) affect participation. In sum, the reviewers maintain that VSB's general theory of political participation in America must address contextually specific and historically disaggregated factors: particular goals and domains of political activity, the redefinition of political values that occurs during the political process, and group-level forces of identity and consciousness. In a rejoinder, VSB defend their work and yet graciously accept the many useful suggestions made by Aldrich, Mansbridge, and Hochschild. The discipline's ongoing research agenda should explore participation, representation, and democracy in America.

Class Power and Participatory Equality: Attitudes towards Economic Democracy in Denmark and Sweden*

Proposals for capital sharing (i.e. the spreading of ownership rights to productive assets), also known as ‘economic democracy’, have been advanced by the trade unions in both Denmark and Sweden. In view of their redistributive intent, these schemes have met surprisingly little enthusiastic response in traditional labor constituencies. The article makes an attempt to explain why. An examination of wage earner attitudes (which goes into greater detail for Denmark) shows that the presently entertained proposals appeal in a cross‐cutting manner to conflictual notions of class power and participatory opportunity. The result is a fragmentation of wage earner support.