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Contemporary democratic theories that draw on Socrates for inspiration have addressed his method of investigation too narrowly because there has been insufficient attention to the need for authority, which Socrates also identifies. Because his appeals to authority initially appear antidemocratic, we cannot overlook this aspect of his thought. I describe a virtue, civic competence, which is the excellence of citizens who critically engage with the norms of the community, but who also recognise that authority is politically necessary. Deliberation requires elenctic-like scrutiny, but also a willingness to accept some arguments as authoritative. My overarching claim is that failure to exhibit such character traits can appear in more than one form, a point neglected in recent literature, and that not all such forms are antidemocratic. Civic competence is susceptible to corruptions that may never result in citizenship that is simply undemocratic. I define two corruptions of civic competence: 'disagonism' and 'eristicism'. The former treats disagreement as signalling either confusion or wickedness and deliberation as a process of clarifying and tidying discourse. The latter treats disagreement as ineliminable and deliberation as gaming with words in order to defeat an opponent in argument.

Abstract
Citizens value competence in politicians. However, while offering high pay is a key strategy when recruiting competent candidates in the job market, most citizens are highly averse to paying politicians higher salaries. We argue that this aversion arises from one fundamental concern among citizens: self-interested politicians. Using data from a large-scale preregistered survey experiment, we show that citizens are affected by the argument that higher salaries may attract self-interested politicians, whereas they are not affected by the argument that higher salaries will attract competent politicians. Surprisingly, the more positively citizens view politicians, the more they are affected by the argument about self-interested politicians. These results suggest that citizens may view modest salaries as a guard against self-interested politicians.

El ciudadano competente es esperanza de renovación de la democracia de las sociedades del siglo XXI. Este ciudadano, generador de una nueva democracia, es producto de una educación democrática cuyos ejes fundamentales son una ética cívica democrática (posconvencional, procedimental, dialógica) y un modelo de democracia éticamente deseable. A partir de la reflexión acerca de estos dos ejes se propone un modelo educativo que genere una competencia cívica democrática, siguiendo el modelo educativo por competencias clave de aprendizaje permanente propuesto por la OCDE, el cual formaría ciudadanos para la práctica democrática en cualquier momento y lugar, preparados para dar respuesta a cualquier reto que deban afrontar en su compromiso con su comunidad. ; The competent citizen is the hope of democratic renewal for societies in twenty first century. This citizen, who is able to generate a new democracy, is the result of a democratic education whose fundamentals are a democratic civic ethic (post-conventional, procedural and dialogic) and an ethically desirable model of democracy. From the reflection about these two fundamentals it is suggested an educational model that produces a democratic civic competence, according to the educational model of key competences for long-life learning from OECD, which would prepare citizens for democratic practice at any time and in any place, ready to take up any challenge relating to their compromise with community.

Transparency of government inspections enables citizens to pressure companies and public organizations into behaving according to their demands. This paper reports an empirical study into the effects of the increased transparency of inspection services on civic competence. Civic competence is defined as a citizen's ability to accomplish public tasks. The study indicates that, although citizens make little use of inspection data and civic competence is not strengthened, transparency does stimulate organizations to score better on performance indicators and comply with legislation. (Paper presented at European Conference on E-Government (ECEG2005), Antwerp, June 2005.)

The purpose of the article is a study of components of digital competence (technological and humanistic) in cybercrime behaviours, based on the example of internet levels (technical, social and informative) as well as the confrontation of theoretical assumptions with the frequency of their experience by the citizens of the European Union. Subject to analysis were fourteen reports of Eurobarometer, carried out in twenty-eight countries of the EU in the years 2011-2019. The method applied is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of data available, comparative, historical as well as analytical-synthetic. Two research hypotheses were accepted: 1) A catalogue formulation of digital competences focusing on social-demographic traits should be replaced by a relational formulation taking into account the skills, knowledge and attitude of internet users. 2) EU citizens possess greater digital competences of a technological character and more often admit being affected by cybercrime behaviours of a technological kind than of a humanistic one. The first hypothesis was confirmed, whereas the second was only partially confirmed. In basing ourselves on a typology of three layers of the internet, we proposed two areas of digital competence: technological competence and humanistic competence (social and informative). These were subordinated to particular layers of the internet and in this context an analysis was carried out of the social opinion of EU citizens on the subject of cybercrime behaviours. The low level of humanistic competence (52%) reported by EU citizens determines a high degree of fear which does not show a causal-effective connection in the actual level of noted experiences of being a victim of criminal behaviour. ; Celem artykułu było uporządkowanie i określenie w ujęciu relacyjnym zakresu komponentów kompetencji cyfrowych w zachowaniach cyberprzestępczych oraz skonfrontowanie teoretycznych założeń z częstotliwością ich doświadczania przez mieszkańców Unii Europejskiej. Analizie poddano 16 raportów ...

The acquisition of digital skills, media diet management, and general knowledge of ICT, is essential for the development and empowerment of audiences in the current media ecology, particularly considering the political and social challenges of the Latin American environment. In that sense, the study of media competence is urgent for sizing up the needs and characteristics of these communities. This work analyses the axiological and ideological dimension of media competence during an electoral process in northwestern Mexico, a region that is generally subject to violence related to organized crime. Twenty-three items pertaining to this dimension were selected from an instrument designed to evaluate media competence, which were applied to a probability sample of 385 subjects divided by digital natives, digital migrants, and digital illiterates. After an exploratory factor analysis, seven factors were identified. The intra and inter-group scores were explored, lower scores were found in components that allude citizens' participation and social action, likewise, three of seven factors showed statistically significant differences, being digital natives who reported a lower score. Therefore, the need to search for new strategies for citizens to acquire media competence is evident, in order for pro-summing to become a social empowerment tool.

Le texte de Fishkin que nous publions ici montre qu'une filiation étonnamment claire l'unit à James Bryce et à George Gallup. Comme ses deux prédécesseurs, James S. Fishkin accorde un intérêt particulier aux mécanismes favorisant la manifestation des opinions, l'expression des préférences et la production des décisions collectives, dans une relation critique et distanciée avec les procédures électorales (.).

Le texte de Fishkin que nous publions ici montre qu'une filiation étonnamment claire l'unit à James Bryce et à George Gallup. Comme ses deux prédécesseurs, James S. Fishkin accorde un intérêt particulier aux mécanismes favorisant la manifestation des opinions, l'expression des préférences et la production des décisions collectives, dans une relation critique et distanciée avec les procédures électorales (.).

The paper deals with women?s education in Ancient Greece. In ancient times, women were dominated by men throughout the Greek world, while their roles and competence were strictly defined (albeit differently across various city-states). Although not all women were deprived of education, their education was almost never organized by the city-state. Women?s knowledge and voice were never welcome in the public domain. However, the picture of women?s education, knowledge and competences is not one-dimensional and it would be wrong to claim that those did not exist. Foreign women sometimes had more freedom of education and free communication with men than Greek citizens? wives (especially in Athens); education was also available for girls from rich families; some city-states other than Athens were less restrictive towards their women. The other aspect of the issue was the fact that there was some knowledge available to women, and in some professions, women did not appear as an exception, but rather as a rule. Such was the case of midwives, women physicians and herbal specialists/pharmacists. Their prominent role in the private domain did not only involve care of home and closest kin, but also rituals, and this should be considered an important aspect of women?s competence. However, researching women?s education and knowledge in antiquity is a difficult task, because veils of silence were cast over women?s voices in ancient times, including those that attempted to break through the barriers of their age.

In Germany, the mobilization of grass-roots citizen groups in the past two decades has posed a fundamental challenge to institutional politics. One important aspect of this challenge, which is often overlooked, is the relationship of democratizing movements to technology. Grass-roots protest arose mainly in reaction to large, state-sponsored technological projects. Citizen movements reopened the question of the citizen's proper role in technological decision making, which had long been part of theoretical discourse. Grassroots activists challenged not only policy decisions but also the legitimacy of the bureaucratic institutions that produced those decisions. Informed political participation has raised the technical competence of policy in Germany while eroding the legitimacy of traditional policymaking institutions. Citizen groups have since directed their efforts toward developing alternative political forms that will reconcile technical competence and participatory democracy. The theories of Claus Offe and Jürgen Habermas illuminate the legitimation problems that lead to citizen protest. A comparative analysis of grass-roots movements in several issue areas explores the various forms of citizen activism and their impact on German politics.

The mandatory authorities – the municipal office and the mayor of the municipality – play an irreplaceable role at the municipal level. Both bodies are elected. These authorities influence the direction of municipal development in the upcoming term of office, the municipal representatives' protection of citizens' needs and interests as well as fulfilment of the tasks and obligations imposed by the law. The main aim of the article is to clarify the importance and seriousness of the mayor as the highest representative of the municipal government in the Slovak Republic. Another aim is to present new realities connected with the mayor's office as well as new requirements associated with it.

Abstract
This paper offers an analysis of the relation between political populism and mass media, and how this relation becomes problematic for democratic societies. It focuses on the fact that mass media, due to their purpose and infrastructure, can unintentionally reinforce populist messages. Research findings from communication science and political psychology are used to illustrate how, for example, a combination of mass media agenda setting and motivated reasoning can influence citizens' political decisions and impair their political autonomy. This poses a particular normative challenge for modern democracies: how to counter these populism-supporting effects within the constraints of democratic legitimacy? After showing how severely limited legal measures to curb populist media effects would be, the paper argues in favour of media competence education as a way of providing future citizens with an epistemic toolkit to navigate the media environment and strengthen their political autonomy.

AbstractWhile public service professionals may rely on stereotypes and social categories in exercising who gets what, when and how in clientelist citizen‐state interactions, it remains unclear whether negative judgments similarly pervade in settings where citizens help produce–rather than consume–public services. We propose that service professionals judge volunteers as incompetent based on (1) a lack of the skills necessary to solve specific tasks, and/or (2) negative stereotypes toward volunteers as a means of shielding the privileged position of the profession or safeguarding the quality of services. Using an experiment among 817 nursing home professionals, negative judgments of volunteer competence were invoked simply by priming professionals to think of citizens volunteering in service production. The effect, however, is not conditional on the type of task (complementary vs. core) solved by volunteers, suggesting that judgments of competence mainly stem from stereotypes of volunteer (in)competence in assisting with service production.