When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
In: Politiikka: Valtiotieteellisen Yhdistyksen julkaisu, Band 52, Heft 3, S. 251-253
ISSN: 0032-3365
In: Politiikka: Valtiotieteellisen Yhdistyksen julkaisu, Band 52, Heft 3, S. 251-253
ISSN: 0032-3365
In: Politiikka: Valtiotieteellisen Yhdistyksen julkaisu, Band 52, Heft 3, S. 234-240
ISSN: 0032-3365
In: Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, Band 106, Heft 2, S. 125-145
ISSN: 0039-0747
The article argues that Aristotelian virtue ethics & deliberative democratic theory can beneficially be considered to have a shared normative structure. The review is conducted as a comparative idea analysis, through which the respective perspectives are reconstructed. The first reconstruction, that of the Aristotelian virtue ethics, is led by three dimensions of relevance to ethical theory. These dimensions are, although indirectly, also guiding the reconstruction of the second theory, i.e. the deliberative democratic theory. The conclusion we reach is that the theories, be it with different emphasis, generally share a common view in relation to all three of the aforementioned dimensions, as well as regarding the value of deliberation. They both have a dialectical or structured approach regarding ontological basics. Both of them also motivate their main values with intrinsic as well as instrumental reasons. In addition, they share a mainly particularistic conviction, as they believe that the values are determined through a deliberative process. The concluding remarks stress the need for further & ongoing discussions on the relationship between theories of ethics & theories of democracy. 33 References. Adapted from the source document.
It may be challenging to see how illegal hunting, a crime that ostensibly proceeds as shoot, shovel and shut up in remote rural communities, at all communicates with the regime. Examining the socio-legal interplay between hunters and state regulation, however, clarifies illegal hunting to be part of a politically motivated pattern of dissent that signals hunters' disenfranchisement from the polity. While few contemporary illegal hunters cut conscientious figures like Robin Hood, their violation of illegitimate law may likewise testify to a profound disjuncture between legality and legitimacy. This is the premise taken in the following research. Here it is observed contemporary Swedish hunters experience the deliberative system pertaining to wildlife and wolf conservation to be systematically stacked against them and unable to serve as a site for critical law-making that provides equal uptake of all voices. One manifestation of their growing disenfranchisement is the establishment of a counterpublic mobilised on the basis of shared semantics for the sorts of deliberative deficits they argue befall them in the present. Within the remit of their counterpublic, hunters undertake and justify illegal hunting along with other forms of disengaging dissent like abstentions, non-compliance, boycotts and conscientious refusals with state agencies. The research captures hunters' dissent in Smith's deliberative disobedience, a deliberative and Habermasian grounded reinterpretation of the more familiar classical theory of civil disobedience. On this perspective, illegal hunting signals a deficit in the deliberative system, which hunters both bypass by taking an alternative conduit for contestation, and draw attention to when they undertake dissent. The dissent in this case study is deconstructed in terms of its grammar—as simultaneously engaging and disengaging with the premises of power—and in terms of its communicative content. Set within the field of Environmental Communication, the dissertation is intended as an empirical and theoretical contribution to a discussion on the boundaries of political dialogue in the context of civic disenfranchisement: it asks whether some of hunters' dissent may be parsed as a call for a more inclusive debate, or as dialogic acts in themselves. Finally, it presents ways toward short-term and longer-term reconciliation of hunters with the deliberative system, drawing on the work of contestatory citizen mini-publics from the third wave of deliberative democracy.
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This study takes as its point of departure the theorizing on citizenship and globalization. Today it is common to discuss a "flexible" citizenship beyond the paradigm of the nationstate, which, besides its legal aspects of rights and obligations, also includes identification with and participation in various communities, primarily political ones. "Politics", in this context, is considered to be constituted on the micro-level, discursively between individuals (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe 1985). The aim of the study is to, through the study of collective meaning making, contribute to the theory building about citizenship and globalization. The study consists of three cases, each of which attracted much media attention, with varying degrees of proximity and distance. The construction of political community, on various levels on the globalization scale (subnational, national, transnational) within the collective meaning making, is studied. The aim of the study also includes the analysis of the discursive resources that are used for the making of meaning. "External" discourses such as media messages and interpersonal communication are analyzed as well as "internal" ones: e.g. values, norms, identifications and experiences. In addition, the study aims at localizing the construction of meaning and community within the structural context , and relating it to current structures of power. The thesis is concluded with a suggestion of how to relate the discursive construction of political identity to deliberative democracy theory. The empirical material is collected by means of focus-groups interviews, including 2–5 people, with a total of 133 respondents. The transcribed material is analyzed by means of critical discourse analysis, CDA. The study identifies two different types of identity constructions: processes of nationalization, where the experienced Swedish identity and community function normatively in the making of meaning, and processes of subnationalization, among those groups that somehow felt excluded from and mistreated by the national (Swedish) environment. The thesis concludes that the collective making of meaning within an assumed national community contains ideological elements and works to a large extent in the service of power. However, the subnationally compressed communities create meaning in an oppositional manner, compared with the nationalized community and in relation to structures of power. Active citizenship is thus best located in conflict, among groups that experience exclusion and oppression in different situations (Mouffe 1995b). If this is right, the focus must shift from consensus to communication, efforts to open up discursive bridges between the hegemonic community and dissident voices should be made (c.f. Aronowitz 1995). An important space for transgressing communication is of course the media. However, the study shows that the media must deal with some problems before they are ready to serve as discursive bridges, for instance the tendency to make the factual antagonisms subordinate to homogenizing emotional reporting. In addition, there seems to exist a need for the political institutions to move beyond the paradigm of the nation-state, and find other frameworks for the democratic processes, not least at the subnational level. Thus, instead of discussing either a global or a national citizenship one could, with Habermas (2001), reflect on a postnational citizenship relating to the reflexive transformation of national civic sovereignty into subnational and supranational citizenship.
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The thesis has two purposes. The first is to understand the organizational forms of the public administration when it participates in international rule making processes. The second purpose investigates democratic implications of internationalization of the Swedish state administration. A theoretical framework, combining theories of governance with ideas on resource dependence and a neo-institutional approach, is applied to three empirical cases. The cases follow decision making processes within the European Employment Strategy, The Kyoto Protocol for reduction of green house gasses and negotiations on trade facilitation within the WTO. The studied processes can be described as complex and fragmented, containing multiple types of actors and parallel arenas, complex technical material and bureaucratic processes. They were also characterised by the fact that policy was created throughout the course of the processes. They also seemed to lack an ending and were to a high degree bound by their history. The administrations' response resulted in an organisational form that is theoretically developed in the study – enclaves. Enclaves contain members from different organizations, both private and state organizations and the work within them is carried out in an informal and interactive way. They are de-coupled units with stable membership that is related to positions in the hierarchy. As opposed to networks, enclaves are not self-organizing but the membership is mainly controlled by state-actors. The second aim of the study is carried out through a number of indicators derived from the deliberative and the representative models of democracy. The blurring of responsibilities, the lack of transparency and the barriers for entrance into the enclaves made the organisational forms of the administration seem problematic in relation to the representative model. However other features of the enclaves seemed to support a more communicative logic of action, leaving the deliberative model more promising as a way of understanding the administrations' work as democratically legitimate. Still, the analysis showed that the deliberative model also faced some challenges in terms of lack of openness and inclusion of all relevant stake holders.
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Stratagems adopted by democratic leaders to try to insinuate, or anchor, a preferred course of action into the larger collective will have a variety of repercussions. Beyond the apparent success of the venture itself, the long-term integrity of the democratic fabric may be at stake if simmering rancour and discontent is left unheeded. These questions would seem particularly pertinent when studying the national side of the evolution of the European Union. The periodic shunting of competencies to European institutions is highly complex, so much so that popular legitimacy for the momentous changes is in effect something of an ephemeral commodity. The referendum, with its unique potential to determine the prevailing vox populi, has from time to time been employed to offset these problems, and lend continued credence to the relinquishment of sovereign power. The political entities that will be the powerhouses in this contest for the hearts and minds of the public are, inevitably, national political parties. They, too, are likely to pay whatever political price will be exacted as a consequence of this unusual form of battle – including the exposition and potential widening of internal rifts. Noticing a dearth of investigative tools that can help us unravel these processes, the author develops a structured framework of analysis specifically designed to "parse" strategic or tactical action, with the aim to gauge likely party-democratic fallout. She makes a first-level distinction between "convincing" strategies (basically conceptualised as compatible with deli¬berative-democratic tenets), and "persuading" strategies (closely associated with a subset of negotiation theory principles focusing on strategic action). While both strategies may lead to the desired short-term outcome – where leadership preferences are duly propagated – a convince/persuade analysis is shown to yield improved understanding of the concomitant, longer-term effects. The author studies the Swedish Social Democratic Party's internal handling of the debates leading up to two pivotal referenda – the EU membership referendum of 1994, and the EMU referendum of 2003. Reviewing a wealth of secondary sources and conducting more than 40 interviews with high-level party officials and other centrally positioned actors (representing both sides of the two issue divides), she is provided with a unique material, which is parsed through the framework (which at this point also proves to be a sound analytical instrument). The study is primarily qualitative in nature, but an entire chapter is devoted to a complementing quantitative analysis where an existing Discourse Quality Index (DQI) is used to determine the level of deliberation prevalent in four party congresses (two preceding the EU referendum; two preceding the EMU referendum). One "convince" sub-dimension, respect, proved to be the one most easily affected by external events, not to mention deadline imposed by the referendum. The qualitative analysis revealed a generally higher level of justification (another "convince" sub-dimension) in the EMU case than in the EU case, and the reverse was true for the respect dimension. In both instances, the party leadership acted to pacify [persuade] the debate, notably by prohibiting government ministers from being active in the respective no-campaigns. A preliminary hypothesis that "deliberative space" shrinks as the final deadline looms was in part corroborated, as turned out to be valid for the respect dimension.
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