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It is with good reason that decisionism stresses the crucial importance of decisions in the political process. But it is necessary to evaluate critically its dramatic pretension (from Schmitt to Agamben), according to which the normality of life is juxtaposed with the pathos of the state of exception & crisis. This erases not only every distinction between normality & the state of exception, but even between democracy & dictatorship. The proper framework from which an explanation of decisionism & its dramatizing forms can be derived is the modern age as a whole. The birth of decisionism from the crisis of tradition & commonality can be observed already in the beginning of modernity: with Machiavelli & Hobbes. We find the peak of dramatisation in Schmitt's decisionism, in the use of political theology for the dramatization of politics as drama of the subject which obtains his self-willed freedom through a secularist disempowerment of God. The other strand of political philosophy advocates the political priority of discussion & discourse, as opposed to the priority of decision. The author is interested in forms of discourse which revolve in a Habermasian or Rawlsian way around the concept of deliberative democracy. The theories of deliberative democracy are mostly characterized by the following postulates: demand for equality & inclusion, for non-coercion & communicativeness, oriented towards mutual understanding. The author points out that these demands reflect too great expectations, which cannot be fulfilled by discourse & discussion (expectations of consensus & rationality, underestimating of pre-discursive assumptions). In the final section, the author concludes that both decisionism & theory of discourse resulted from the modern-age loss of tradition & commonality. Decision & discussion could be perceived as feuding brothers, although they are doing their best to negate their kinship. A mediation of opposition is possible insofar as the feuding brothers recognize the fact that they are related. Unification at least protects them from the danger of irrationalism & excessive expectation of rationalism. Adapted from the source document.

The texts focuses on constitutionalisation of democracy in the European Union and the phenomenon of democratic deficit through the failed Constitution for Europe and, thereafter, the Lisbon Treaty, which takes over the definition of democracy as the foundation of the European Union. In this context, the author also looks into the contribution of political scientist Zvonko Posavec, who was one of the first in Croatia to advocate the need for constitutionalisation of the European Union as a project of finalising the process of European integration. While writing about the need for constitutional foundation of the European Union, Posavec simultaneously reflects on representative democracy as the form of democracy on which the European Union is predominantly founded. Beside a valorisation of Posavec's works on democracy in the European Union, this paper deals with the problem of the democratic deficit in the European Union which is manifest in the lack of democratic legitimacy of EU institutions, with the sole exception of the European Parliament. The author finds, however, that the main deficit of the European Union is not the democratic process, but political alienation. He perceives the latter as alienation of citizens from the EU as a derivative community, non-transparent and distanced from the basic interests of the citizens and the media interest in politics. Although the European Union declaratively relies on basic democratic values, in practice democracy is experienced primarily through a democratic deficit contrasted by a more obvious bureaucratic surfeit of the European political construction. The author asserts that the Lisbon Treaty was a step towards founding the EU on democratic principles inasmuch as it introduced elements of participative democracy, although it did not accept proposals for introduction of direct democracy in the EU. Finally, the author puts forward some ideas which might reduce the degree of political alienation of citizens in relation to the European Union; this requires giving greater authority to the European Parliament, abolishing the monopoly of the legislative initiative of the European Commission, incorporating the Council of the European Union into the European Parliament as the second House, i.e. the European Senate, and consequently implementing the mechanism of consulting the citizens regarding the legislative initiatives of the EU. The author concludes that the democratic deficit and political alienation cannot be overcome in the European Union without overcoming the democratic deficits and concrete forms of political alienation in the member states which the European Union consists. Adapted from the source document.

The article provides basic information on the course of life and theoretical work of contemporary French political thinker Claude Lefort (1924-20 10). Particular emphasis is put on the contents and importance of Lefort's theoretical trilogy on Stalinist totalitarianism, which consists of the following books: Elements of a Critique of Bureaucracy (1971), One Man Too Many. Reflections on "The Gulag Archipelago"(1976), and Democratic Invention (1981). These works contain an original and profound understanding of such a type of order as a modern social formation. Such research shows that true insight into the political and into democracy is possible only on the basis of thorough investigation and understanding of totalitarianism. Adapted from the source document.