The negative outcome of the referenda on the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands raises challenging questions about the nature of constitution-making. How does one begin a democracy? Does it matter who writes the constitution? The present essay addresses the distinction between the constituent and the constituted power, seen through the eyes of three thinkers: Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Sieyes and Rogers M. Smith. It looks at Arendt's notion of beginning, Sieyes's idea of the nation as the constitutent power behind government, and Smith's proposal of a people constituted through political contestation. References.
In Karl Popper's famous book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, appears the formulation social engineering. That is an unfortunate wording. There is nothing mechanical in Popper's political strategy. The keywords are rather piece-meal & trial & error. It is even possible to characterize Popper as -- up to a point -- anti-rationalistic. His warning that we should not think too much of our knowledge of the functioning of the social world & of our ability to make forecasts, reminds one of what a critic of the French Revolution like Edmund Burke had to say. We should start with the delivered institutions, diagnose what is working badly &, aware of possible error, try to improve it. That said, one is not surprised of meeting a strain of antipolitics in Popper's philosophy. Although Popper welcomes measures to clear away suffering & distress, it is uncertain how he would balance his negative utilitarianism against individual freedom. He is distrustful of political power. The idea that democracy gives the people the instrument of governing is an illusion. Democracy's point is to make it possible to dismiss a government (notice the parallel with his methodology, a government is a kind of hypothesis, the election an opportunity for falsification.) However, it is not Popper's political philosophy in a substantial meaning that makes him worth studying, but his theory of the critical discourse, a theory that is very relevant for a reformistic political strategy. The idea of the Popperian discourse is not to get the parties closer emotionally, not to reach a compromise, not even to convince, but for me to listen to & learn from the criticism of my hypotheses. People with divergent standpoints should not be kept out of the discourse, they should be welcomed. Popper admires Greek culture up to Socrates & he emphasizes its openness to influences from other cultures along the shores of the Mediterranean. That is in keeping with Popper's antinationalism. Nationalism fattens stupidity & is often the cause of devastating violence. In his later works Popper regularly uses an evolutionary model & his theory of language is no exception. He sets forth how the development of describing, language's third function besides expressing & warning, created the possibility of storytelling. Now, stories can be true & false, & that makes language's fourth function necessary, the function of argumentation, of proving or disproving of what has been said. Lying, however, is a wonderful invention. To lie, to say what is not, but could be true, is a nursery for fantasy & creativeness. 33 References. Adapted from the source document.
The formation of a green party in Sweden, "Miljopartiet De Grona", in 1981, can be explained as a result of the established party system's failure to handle a change of zeitgeist in an ecological direction, & most of all the political trauma arising from the focal point of Swedish environmental protest, the popular referendum on Nuclear Power 1980. Initially, Miljopartiet De Grona originally was organized as an alternative, non-hierarchical party, without a distinct party leadership & an with an ultrademocratic ideal. The party failed to achieve the 4 percent necessary to enter parliament in the elections of 1982 & 1985, but in 1988 it finally established itself in the Swedish Riksdag. Since then, Miljopartiet has step by step changed in the direction of a more "normal" political party. In 2002 they were allowed as a semi-coalition partner of the Social Democrats & the formerly communist Left Party. Still eager to be an alternative party, Miljopartiet will, perhaps, enter a red-green government after the election in autumn 2010. If so, they have in 30 years managed to move from "alternative exclusion" to what may be labeled "included alternativism.". Adapted from the source document.
This article reports a study on the role of the media in democratic governance. Interestingly, this issue has not been given much attention by researchers, neither by media scholars with little interest in governance, nor by governance scholars with little knowledge about how the media works. Yet, as this study substantiates, the media is a key actor in governance. Theoretically, the paper aims at providing a cross-fertilization of perspectives on the role of the media in governance by drawing on governance research as well as on research on political communication & the public sphere. The empirical aim of the paper is to analyze how policy makers assess the importance of the media in governance. A key question addressed is the significance of fostering good media relations in order to be successful in governance in different policy areas. In addition, the paper analyzes the media strategies of policy makers' in terms of the intensity of the media contacts & of whether or not the policy makers themselves initiate the contacts. The study draws on a unique dataset, comprising questionnaire responses from the corporate, political, cultural & administrative elites (policymakers within the central government office) in Sweden. Adapted from the source document.
In Norway, 2005 was a year of celebrations, linkel, first & foremost, to the fact that 100 years had passed since the peaceful dissolution of the personal union between Norway & Sweden. Despite the absence of broad popular support for the idea that this should merit any celebrations, government & media spent considerable resources on high-profile promotion of the 1905 story, including the side-events leading up to or following the famous 7 June Declaration of the Norwegian Storting (Parliament). In the context of nation-building, historical milestones tend to take on a flavor of history-building, -- the stuff that national myths are made of. In the saga of Norwegian nation-building, 1905 had come to play a perhaps surprisingly inflated role. Thus -- less surprisingly -- in the interpretation handed over to a contemporary audience, the various events of 1905 have been suffused with a series of myths, some of which have assumed the character of national dogmas. In particular, the author explores the myths surrounding the referendum of 12-13 November 1905, & demonstrates how vested interests have been instrumental in consolidating the popular (but false) interpretation that the real issue of the referendum was Norway's constitution (monarchy vs. republic) & not the conditions set forth by Prince Carl of Denmark for accepting the offer made by the Norwegian Government & its parliament to assume the Norwegian throne. In fact, employing devious tactics, prime Minister Michelsen succeeded not only in winning a comfortable victory for prince Carl's candidacy (whereby the prince became King Haakon VII of Norway), but he also managed to entrench the notion that the referendum above all was a resounding confirmation of a (continued) monarchical constitutional order. The long-term effect (which is still very much a defining feature of Norway's political self-image) was to give the country's republicans (who, at the onset of 1905 were a dominant force in the Norwegian political discourse) a permanently marginalized position as a fringe movement of eccentrics & certified losers. References. Adapted from the source document.
Karl Popper's strong attachment to music is seldom observed. He expresses strong opinions about what is good & bad in that field. Are these opinions just expressions of his subjective preferences? No, it is obvious that Popper finds a place for musical values in his "world 3." One of the aims of Popper's theory of the three worlds is to solve the body-mind problem; another is to demonstrate the possibility of objective knowledge. As the case of music indicates, world 3 does not consist of just factual knowledge; even values have a place there. Each world is said to be autonomous but interacting. What Popper has to say about the interaction between world 1 & world 2 is a polemic against the thesis that mental processes can be reduced to the physical. In the same way, the interaction between worlds 2 & 3 contradicts the idea that knowledge can be reduced to knowing & values to evaluation. Although Popper wrote Objective Knowledge, & accordingly is suspected of being a "positivist," it is, on the other hand, also possible to pick up arguments to accuse him of "decisionism." For example, he says that there is nothing that strictly compels the researcher to accept a falsification; after evaluating the results he has to make a decision. More fundamentally, nothing compels Popper or anyone to choose a critical-rationalistic philosophy. For Popper's part, such an attitude to life seems to be the only alternative to violence, & Popper insists that he hates violence. That means that objectivism follows from a fundamental ethical choice. Even the second word in the title Objective Knowledge may mislead the unprepared reader. The fact is, that Popper emphasizes how uncertain & limited our rational knowledge is. One might ask how it is possible to survive under such conditions. The answer is that we provisionally have to trust a lot of "knowledge" that is not rationally grounded. Does that means that anything goes? No, in life as in science we have to start with what is delivered, traditional, but we also should make our best to refine it into rational knowledge. Popper's acceptance of "metaphysics" is what separates him from the "positivists." From this it can already be anticipated that Popper is a "reformist," & that is what interests us as political scientists. 36 References. Adapted from the source document.
Enligt många bedömare befinner sig den liberala, parlamentariska demokratin i en allvarlig kris, en världsomspännande, accelererande kris som tar sig skilda uttryck på olika platser men som i ett eller annat avseende kan kopplas samman med högerpopulismens, radikalnationalismens och den auktoritära nykonservatismens framgångar under det senaste decenniet. Mot den bakgrunden resonerar författarna i denna antologi kring demokratins status idag och vilka möjligheter som finns för dess vitalisering. Utifrån skilda perspektiv presenteras ett antal teoretiska interventioner och reflektioner om demokratins villkor och samtidens politiska tillstånd
