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After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fear-mongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal-democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.
In times of increased political polarization, the continuing existence of a deliberative arena where people with antagonistic views may engage with each other in non-violent ways is critical for democracy to live on. Social media are usually not conceived as such arenas. On the contrary, there has been widespread worry about their role in increasing polarization and political violence. This paper suggests a more positive impact of social media on democracy. Our analysis focuses on the subreddit “r/WallStreetBets” (r/WSB) - a finance-related forum that came under the spotlight when its users coordinated a financial attack on hedge funds during the Gamestop saga in early 2021. Based on an original method attributing partisanship scores to users, we present a network analysis of interactions between users at the opposite sides of the political spectrum on r/WSB. We then develop a content analysis of politically relevant threads in which polarized users participate. Our analyses show that r/WSB provides a rare space where users with antagonistic political leanings engage with each other, debate, and even cooperate.
This essay explores the problem of legitimation crises in deliberative systems. For some time now, theorists of deliberative democracy have started to embrace a “systemic approach.” But if deliberative democracy is to be understood in the context of a system of multiple moving parts, then we must confront the possibility that that system’s dynamics may admit of breakdowns, contradictions, and tendencies toward crisis. Yet such crisis potentials remain largely unexplored in deliberative theory. The present article works toward rectifying this lacuna, using the 2016 Brexit and Trump votes as examples of a particular kind of “legitimation crisis” that results in a sequence of failures in the deliberative system. Drawing on recent work of Rainer Forst, I identify this particular kind of legitimation crisis as a “justification crisis.”
Right-wing populist parties often resort to a xenophobic rhetoric which both exploits and fuels existing illiberal anti-immigrant sentiments. Since populist anti-immigrant sentiments are at odds with fundamental liberal values and challenge the implementation of any liberal ethics of migration, this essay argues that states should adopt civic education policies to counter such sentiments and persuade citizens to develop liberal attitudes towards immigrants. Empirical evidence suggests that sentiments may be malleable, and there are already examples of local governments devising or supporting initiatives aimed at dispelling prejudices and promoting positive interactions. It might be objected that a government’s involvement in shaping sentiments and opinions conflicts with liberal democratic states’ commitment to individual autonomy and electoral fairness. However, I argue that civic education policies are not necessarily incompatible with such values and I provide five criteria to identify policies that liberal democratic governments may legitimately adopt to counteract anti-immigrant sentiments.
This article argues that populism, cosmopolitanism, and calls for global justice should be understood not as theoretical positions but as appeals to different segments of democratic electorates with the aim of assembling winning political coalitions. This view is called democratic realism: it considers political competition in democracies from a perspective that is realist in the sense that it focuses not first on the content of competing political claims but on the relationships among different components of the coalitions they work to mobilise in the pursuit of power. It is argued that Laclau’s populist theory offers a sort of realist critique of other populists, but that his view neglects the crucial dynamics of political coalition-building. When the relation of populism to global justice is rethought from this democratic realist angle, one can better understand the sorts of challenges each faces, and also where and how they come into conflict.
A tradição de pensamento conhecida como Teoria Crítica, que conta com os nomes de Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse e Habermas, entre muitos outros, é composta por diferentes modelos críticos. Encontramos, numa mesma geração ou ainda num mesmo autor, diferentes formulações da crítica social apoiadas em diagnósticos do tempo renovados. O presente artigo procura pensar as condições de renovação dos diagnósticos a partir da qual os obstáculos à emancipação ou potenciais emancipatórios, quando presentes numa dada sociedade, sejam considerados e analisados de modo crítico. Essa renovação implica desvincular a fundamentação normativa da crítica do "paradigma produtivista" e conceber as lutas emancipatórias na pluralidade de seus sentidos.
Habermas defensa en aquest escrit l’existència d’un nexe intern entre l’Estat de dret i lademocràcia. Aquest nexe sorgeix del concepte modern de dret i del fet que el dret positiuja no pot legitimar-se a partir d’un dret d’ordre superior. Així doncs, el dret es legitima apartir de l’autonomia que tot ciutadà té garantida, de tal manera que l’autonomia pública ila privada es pressuposen mútuament. Aquest nexe es fa visible en la dialèctica entre la concepcióliberal del dret i el paradigma jurídic de l’Estat social, dialèctica que fa necessària unaautocomprensió procedimental de l’Estat democràtic de dret. Finalment aquest nou paradigmajurídic procedimental és exemplificat a partir de les polítiques feministes d’emancipació.
La revitalització de les grans religions: un repte per a l’autocomprensió secular de la modernitat?
(2014)
La vitalitat de la religió ha conduït a un qüestionament de la tesi que vincula la modernització i la secularització. Cal, doncs, repensar el mateix significat de la “modernitat” per tal d’adaptar-la a l’escala mundial. A l’hora de dur a terme un diàleg intercultural ja no es pot confiar en un suposat universalisme de la raó. La raó secular no pot pretendre establir els criteris de la racionalitat sense prendre en consideració també altres tradicions, com les que beuen de la religió. Es planteja, doncs, la pregunta si el pensament postmetafísic por aprendre alguna cosa de les tradicions religioses i si per fer-ho cal que s’hi relacioni de manera agnòstica.
The European Union is at the crossroads between intelligent expansion of future horizons and frightened shrinking to a perspective of local areas. Fear of descent of the citizens on one side and a politics of crisis, that goes along with harsh injustice have made upset the national societies against each other, missing courage on the side of politicians, to bring European issues to the fore, endanger the European project. There is only one way to overcome this situation by establishing a democratic union, which conserves not only the social and civilian achievements of the national state, as well as the assets of a greater democratic political unity, that offers an unity of European citizens and European state demos.
Wallonien lässt die westliche Welt zappeln – und wird dafür je nach politischem Standpunkt des Betrachters als einzig aufrechtes gallisches Dorf besungen oder als eigennützige Erpresserbande geschmäht. Stutzig macht jedoch die prompte Reaktion, man hätte CETA besser doch nicht als "gemischtes Abkommen" einstufen sollen, sondern als Abkommen zwischen der EU und Kanada ohne direkte Beteiligung der Mitgliedstaaten. Diese Reaktion zeugt von Demokratieverachtung.