Liberal Democratic Theory Research Articles

The Anti-Authoritarian Populisms: Ideologies of Democratic Struggle in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Worldwide

AbstractMany opposition parties in electoral-authoritarian regimes identify as democracy movements. I ask: what ideologies do they publicly express? The first-glance answer is ‘democratic ones’, but there are many theories of liberal democracy, and they say little about living under or indeed confronting authoritarian regimes. I analyse the public messages of two such democracy movements: Chadema (Tanzania) and the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC, in Zimbabwe). I argue that they each articulate a homegrown vision of democracy in which they adapt democratic theory to make sense of their electoral-authoritarian circumstances. They do so by articulating that theory through the ‘populist logic’ conceptualized in the discourse-theoretic perspective. I call them anti-authoritarian (and democratic) populisms. Previous research has overlooked the distinctiveness of these ideologies because it has adopted concept configurations which invisibilize them. I argue that there are reasons to expect there to be a wider body of anti-authoritarian populisms articulated by democracy movements in electoral-authoritarian regimes in Africa, and indeed, worldwide.

The Epistemic Violence of Transitional Justice: A View from Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT In this article I explore the failures of transitional justice in post-war Sri Lanka. For most commentators this is simply explained in terms of a lack of political will. However, I argue that beyond this transitional justice in Sri Lanka is a story of epistemic violence. This is a result of its over-reliance on abstract, universalist liberal democratic theory that fails to properly grasp the historical, cultural and socio-political specificity not just of the locations where transitional justice is proposed but of the conceptual foundation of transitional justice itself. As a result, transitional justice simultaneously discounts colonial legacies while reproducing colonial categories. In the case of Sri Lanka this has resulted in a failure to fully understand and address the root causes of conflict and an inability to see and draw upon resources for reconciliation, reparation and redress.

Seeing the Whole Picture. Towards a Multi-perspective Approach to News Content Diversity based on Liberal and Deliberative Models of Democracy

ABSTRACT By providing diverse news content, news media are key for a well-functioning public sphere. However, agreement on how to measure news content diversity is lacking. Research often refers to democratic theory as normative reference point, but different models of democracy understand news content diversity differently. Our study makes a unique, innovative contribution to this field: (1) We develop a methodological framework for measuring news content diversity, that is a set of comprehensive measuring instruments that derive different operationalizations of topic and actor diversity each from liberal and deliberative democratic theories. (2) Considering that a good public discourse requires more than diversity, we analyze news content diversity in the context of four other journalistic standards: neutrality, rationality, discursivity, and civility. (3) We prove the applicability of our measuring instruments by means of a standardized content analysis of six German news media as a case study. The different quality profiles of these outlets our analysis reveals are explained by their different functions in the media system. Our study shows how important a multi-perspectival normative approach to news content diversity is, both empirically and theoretically. Future studies on news content diversity should make their normative foundations transparent and derive their indicators purposefully therefrom.

Post-election litigations outcome and the credibility of the election management institution in Nigeria, 1999-2019

Over the years, Nigeria has continued to search for better ways of consolidating her fragile democracy. This study therefore, seeks to examine how the electoral process, particularly post-election litigations have contributed to strengthening democratic governance in Nigeria within the period under study. To achieve this, the study adopted the Liberal Democratic Theory as a theoretical guide and ex-post-facto research design. The Documentary Method of data collection was employed for collecting data while the Qualitative Descriptive Method was used for analyzing the data. The study found that the credibility of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been truncated at different periods. Again, both the post-election litigations outcome and the credibility of the election management body (INEC) were dependent on the credibility of the leadership of INEC at different periods. In order words, if the leadership of INEC lacks credibility, it will definitely impact on the credibility of the elections, the post-election litigation outcomes and the overall credibility of INEC as an institution. The study therefore recommends that proper scrutinizing of the leadership of INEC be always done before appointment, to ensure that people of integrity are appointed into such office since their actions immensely shape the electoral process.

When News Use Feels Wrong: Four Reactions to Misalignments Between Feeling Rules and Feeling Responses

ABSTRACT Audiences’ involvements with news have been shown to be far more varied than normative theories of liberal democracy typically suggest, often evading standards of unemotional objectivity prescribed by civic duty ideals. However, news users’ methods of navigating normative expectations about their emotive experiences with news remain unclear. This article operationalizes the concept of “feeling rules” to uncover responses to discrepancies between emotive expectations and experiences with news, developing a novel analytical approach using linguistic and paralinguistic indices of perceived norm breaking. It applies this to a quota sample of Danes between 18 and 24 years of age, asked about their information-seeking practices using semi-structured interviews and a card-sorting exercise to prompt reflections about a broad spectrum of media. The article makes manifest four strategies for negotiating misalignments between feelings rules and emotive experiences: (1) discontinuation and (2) continuation of media use flouting feeling rules, (3) compartmentalization, and (4) justification. The findings advance our scholarly understanding of news use as a site of complex social identity negotiation for young people, where not only externally visible behaviors but also emotive experiences such as seriousness and (dis)trust are prescribed, in order to explain underlying mechanisms behind the behavioral change—and resistance to change.

Ordoliberal White Democracy, Elitism, and the Demos

Focusing on selected “Western” conceptions of democracy, we expose and normatively evaluate their conflictual meanings. We unpack the white democracy of prominent ordoliberal Wilhelm Röpke, which comprises an elitist bias against the demos, and we discuss different assessments of his 1964 apologia of Apartheid South Africa. Our critical-historical study of Röpke’s marginalized meaning of democracy traces a neglected anti-democratic continuity in his work that is to be contextualized within wider elitist (neo)liberal discourses: from his critique of Nazism in the 1930s to the defense of Apartheid in the 1960s. We provide an alternative, marginalized meaning of democracy that draws on Marxist political science. Such a meaning of democracy helps explain why liberal democratic theory is ill equipped to tackle anti-democratic tendencies re-emerging in liberal-democratic polities.

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The impact of national democratic representation on decision-making in the European Union

ABSTRACT The extent to which decision-making in the European Union (EU) is responsive to national democratic representation has profound implications for understanding how the EU works in practice and for assessing it normatively. The contributions to this special issue examine key aspects of national representation, including national public opinion, elections and partisan government control. They do so with a shared theoretical approach and a newly updated common dataset, which facilitates cumulative knowledge. Here, we identify some of the main findings and their implications. Despite seismic political changes in many national arenas, EU decision-making is marked by more continuity than change. The evidence indicates that EU decision-making does respond to national democratic processes, but in ways that are highly conditional. For instance, member states' negotiating positions in the EU are shaped by public opinion and national parties' positions, but this responsiveness is conditioned by the presence of Euroscepticism, the timing and competitiveness of national elections and coalition politics. We discuss the contrasting implications of the findings from the perspectives of promissory representation and liberal democratic theory.

Understanding democratic education policy queerly: Toward a queer democratic framework

The aim of this paper is to bring together concepts and commitments from both liberal and queer theories with the purpose of designing an integrated framework for equity-focused education policy analysis and implementation. In essence, we aim to build a conceptual bridge between queer and liberal democratic theories and to develop what we call a “queer democratic framework” for policy analysis and implementation. We use the case of the Fair Accurate Inclusive and Respectful Education Act (FAIR) throughout this paper as an exemplar of how queer policy analysis and implementation change the terms of the policy discussion. We argue that as an example of a policy that comes out of liberal democratic theory, FAIR can only go so far. It is symbolic and positive, but cannot reach emancipatory aims in practice without queer analysis and implementation.

Assessment of Political Participation and Democratic Governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Generally, this study examined the state of political participation and democratic governance in Nigeria’s fourth republic. It relied mainly on descriptive qualitative research approach and secondary sources of data such as journal articles, books, reports from political parties amongst other works from scholars on politics, democracy and governance in the fourth republic. The study equally adopted the liberal democratic theory as its framework of analysis. The emerged result revealed that political participation and democratic governance in the fourth republic had not been in the favor of the populace. It further revealed negative indices against the system such as political and electoral violence, corruption, weak institutions of democracy, godfatherism, poor provision of positive leadership, poverty, inequalities, political intolerance, manipulation of electoral processes, blatant act of impunity, lawlessness, selfish interest and militarization. They have led to lack of trust on the political leaders, and by implication, remains a huge challenge against popular participation, democratic governance and consolidation. These ills are in sharp contrast with the tenets of the liberal democratic theory. Based on the above revelations, therefore, the study believes that it is pertinent that the political leadership must not only practice what is obtainable in the fourth republic constitution but must equally adhere to the doctrines of a liberal democratic system. The political system and the electoral processes must be violent free to encourage popular participation and consolidation of democracy. The citizens must also endeavor to hold their leaders accountable.

Statism’s Catch-22: An Austro-Libertarian Analysis of 'Self-Determination of Peoples' under International Law

“Self-determination of peoples” is a relatively new international law principle which has gone through numerous changes in its history, making it an elusive concept. The principle has received interest the last 30 years, prompted at first by the Soviet breakup, more recently by growing nationalist movements, and most recently by states’ totalitarian measures enforced in the name of combating COVID-19. Important issues concerning the future of self-determination’s status in and impact on the international system remain. This paper outlines and analyzes the history of self-determination using a three-phase framework. In Phase One, the principle was a non-legally binding political principle. In Phase Two, the principle became legally binding but was limited to the decolonization context. In Phase Three, the principle becomes a universally accepted human right that some judges and jurists argue has become a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens), which no state can violate under any circumstances. This historical inquiry reveals that the principle has always been asserted and argued against by states with the goal of maintaining or gaining power for themselves. This paper then summarizes the principle’s modern incarnation as a human right under international law, whereby “peoples” – i.e., the entire population of a state’s territory – have the right to both “external” and “internal” self-determination. “External” self-determination is the right of a people to have a state with independent international status. “Internal” self-determination means that the people in the state must be free to pursue their economic, social, and cultural development, while having adequate ability to participate in government. Self-determination and secession are often paired together, but current international law does not directly allow or disallow secession. This paper then delineates theoretical issues the modern incarnation of the self-determination principle poses for statism and the international system, including: how to define “peoples” under the principle; what the relationship of the principle to states’ sovereign territorial integrity should be; how to redraw state boundaries after a successful secession; whether radical self-determination leads to violent conflict; and what is the relationship of unfettered secession to liberal-democratic theory that much of the international system is based upon. Then, this paper applies Austro-libertarian theory to these issues, arguing that: the principle relies on an unfounded collectivist conception of rights; the international system slavishly adheres to the incoherent concept of states’ sovereign territorial integrity; the principle, when its inconsistencies are removed, must theoretically justify unfettered secession; and the conflation of democracy with both liberalism and government by consent keeps properly understood self-determination from being achievable in fact. This paper concludes that the modern self-determination principle’s theoretical deficiencies and inconsistencies present a catch-22 dilemma for the international system. Either self-determination must be extended to take supremacy over state territorial integrity, or it must be rejected explicitly and entirely. Either choice, or trying to split the difference between them, incentivizes delegitimization of statism and the international system.

Nostalgia as Pedagogical Practice: Democratic Education in Rural South Africa

Since 1994, South Africa’s Department of Basic Education has focused on curricular changes that reflect the post-apartheid transformation to democracy. Innovations in the classroom, such as a course on “Life Orientation” that trains future citizens, rely upon liberal democratic theory and emphasize specific forms of civic engagement. At the same time, many South Africans have lost hope in democratic transformation, instead fostering disappointment with increasing wealth inequality and liberal legislation. In the rural Eastern Cape, this is expressed as nostalgia for elements of apartheid seen as more secure and allowing for greater cultural autonomy. Teachers in particular malign a government that has legalized gay marriage and abortion while banning corporal punishment, citing these examples as evidence of the erosion of local forms of social reproduction and effective pedagogy. This paper shows how longings for the past can be viewed through the lens of pedagogical practice, suggesting that nostalgia for apartheid forms an integral part of educational experiences for rural youth.

Whatever Happened to the Social in American Social Thought? Part 1

The efforts of liberal thinkers to incorporate mutualistic social principles into Americans’ understanding of liberalism extended through the century, but the strongest and most holistic conceptions of the social sphere took hold during the New Deal era and World War II. Contrary to recent accounts that locate the weakening of that social liberal project in the 1970s and attribute it to underlying economic changes, this article builds on two generations of historiography to argue that the decline began during the long 1950s when totalitarianism changed the political context of social thought. The theory of mass society that developed to explain the rise of totalitarianism replaced the citizens of liberal democratic theory with the anxious, rootless masses of modern society and forecast the collapse of liberal democracy into totalitarianism. Americans cast totalitarianism as the antithesis of America, its Other in the narrative of American identity, a threat both without and within. In that context, mutualistic conceptions of the social sphere were put on the defensive and individual liberty was valorized. Liberal intellectuals, trusting in American capitalism and in the weak social state, focused on the threat of McCarthyite anti-intellectualism and mass irrationality. Their commitment to social democracy weakened and their chief concern shifted to the no-longer-autonomous individuals of modern society.

Nudging, Umweltschutz und Recht

This article analyses nudging from the perspective of liberal democratic theory of law. On the level of constitutional law, nudging is criticised for being paternalistic. At second thought, many forms of nudging are in contrast not paternalistic, because they do not protect individuals from themselves, but others from negative effects of the actions of an individual. Especially in environmental policies, nudging therefore proves to be legitimate. However, nudging might not be as effective as a policy instrument for environmental issues, as many hope. Even though this article shows interesting possible examples of nudging, it also argues why the effect of nudging as a main policy instrument in solving environmental problems will be limited.

Western Liberalism At Twilight (?)

The chorus of doubts concerning the continued viability of the Western liberal tradition itself, in both ideational and institutional aspects, has grown much louder over the past several years. Can this tradition be said to be in a time of twilight – that time that falls? It is this question that would be explored in this paper. While searching the confirmation of the position, indicated in the title of the paper, author turns to contemporary ideological sources of Western liberalism. Such concepts as capitalism, socialism, justice, democracy are considered in this context based on the works of two thinkers, John Rawls and Fred Dallmayr. By stressing ideal justice and ignoring concrete injustice, Rawls’ ideas seem strange even apart from the present crisis. The subsequent evolution of his thoughts is estimated by the author as the transition from daylight to twilight. It has manifested in Rawls’ refusal to apply his principles of justice to the international arena, his condescending attitude toward underdeveloped countries. The atmosphere of The Law of Peoples is still redolent of the assumption of American hegemony. The author wishes to extract from Dallmayr’s book for present purposes is above all his commitment to a version of socialism. But what neither Dallmayr nor Rawls and other liberal thinkers will gainsay is that central to the twilight zone in which we are wandering is the heavy hand of global capitalism. The next problem is that the modern liberal democratic theory has always professed to make the assumption of equality, but it has never fully embraced it. The most important conceptual element in accounting for this failure is the notion of majority rule. The author mentions three difficulties with the idea of majority rule: the problem of time and the problem of the identity of the human units who compose the majority, and the problem of information. He analyzes the recent political evolutions of both the United Kingdom and the United States, and France as well, which have certainly given Western liberalism a badname in many quarters.

Public reason and reliability democracy

The article starts with a sketch of Prijic Samarzija?s hybrid theory. After that, it provides an overview of the virtue epistemology theory, to which she attributes a relevant influence on her own position, as well as that of reliability democracy which constitutes her view about democratic legitimacy. Secondly, her proposal is discussed and confronted with a slightly amended version of the leading liberal democratic theory of democratic legitimacy, formulated and defended by John Rawls.

“Listen, Marxist!”: On the Forgotten Past of Self-Management and the Contemporary Orgasms of History

Abstract In this article, we argue that self-management should not be understood only as an economic project, but rather as a political form based on the transformation of the core principles of modern capitalist societies. We start from the supposition that self-management does not imply an economic, but primarily a political recomposition of society, which is why it is necessary to draw attention to the economic reductionism in the discussions on self-management. The purpose of this article is three-fold: first, we recover the original meaning of self-management, its forgotten, anarchist (pre)history, and elaborate on the anarchist theory of organisation that has dynamised the idea/practice of self-management throughout history. Second, we analyse Yugoslav self-management through the categories and concepts of Praxis philosophy, which leads us to the conclusion that the Yugoslav model of self-management was above all a non-political form that remained in the framework of liberal democratic theory. Finally, we explore the global mass assembly movement Occupy, building on the recent academic attention devoted to the notion of non-state spaces. We analyse the encampments and occupied squares as self-managed exilic spaces in which protesters (in)voluntarily escaped from both state regulation and capitalist accumulation.

Introduction

Introduction

Expanding the Parameters of Participatory Public Law: A Democratic Right to Public Participation and the State’s Duty of Public Consultation

This article examines the potential for an improved and expanded democratic relationship between the state and its legal subjects in public law. In Part I, I synthesize several of the compatible features of liberal, civic republican, and deliberative democratic theories in order to advance a new framework for public law in Canada that grounds a right to public participation, and the state’s public consultation duties. The framework illustrates how liberalism, civic republicanism and deliberative democracy possess mutually beneficial effects for public law. This type of democratically-informed common law juridical relationship has not yet been achieved—the topic of Part II—but, in Part III, I employ two typical Canadian public law cases to highlight the nature of current limitations as a springboard to suggest that expanded participation rights are both immanent and possible in Canada. In Part IV, I argue that along with the framework from Part I, jurisprudential pieces are already in place to expand the parameters of participatory public law. Drawing on insights from other jurisdictions, current limitations and anxieties about this expansion can be mitigated or overcome. I then briefly consider two criticisms concerning the effect that more robust public participation requirements may have on courts and governments. Drawing on the theoretical framework presented in Part I, I conclude that an individual right to public participation combined with a general duty of public consultation is an essential legal requirement in modern rights-respecting democracies, such as Canada’s, which aspire to be deliberative, fair, and participatory.

Anarchist Ethics as a Foundation for Educational Alternatives

In this article, the distinctions between anarchism as a political philosophy are outlined and contrasted with that of liberal democratic theory upon which much of educational philosophy is based. The principles upon which the social anarchist position rests are briefly outlined with respect to the state, authority, and human beings’ way of interacting with and relating to one another. Next, some of the anarchist critiques of state-controlled schooling are considered. Following the discussion of traditional anarchism, largely rooted in late 19th and early 20th century European workers’ movements, some of the foundational principles of contemporary anarchism, beginning in the 1960s and continuing up through the present, are considered. Finally, the article conceptualizes what it might look like to utilize anarchist principles as an organizing framework for education and how these principles might be put into action in a real-world educational context.