Suchergebnisse

Anti-politics has emerged as an important concept for analysing the effects of distrust on liberal democratic politics. However, it is unclear why democrats should trust individuals who distrust politics to help them in renewing democracy. This article addresses this puzzle by defining four types of anti-politics: technocratic, elitist, populist and participatory. It then compares the political thought of four democratic thinkers associated with each type, to discern the extent to which they are 'productive' or 'unproductive' for representative democracy. The article argues that participatory and technocratic types of anti-politics, illustrated by the thought of Carole Pateman and, to a lesser extent, Friedrich Hayek, are productive for representative democracy because they prompt reflexivity in how representative institutions work. By contrast, populist and elitist types of anti-politics, illustrated by the thought of Ernesto Laclau and Joseph Schumpeter, are less productive. The article concludes that scholars need to carefully discern the logic underlying populist and technocratic 'solutions' to our contemporary democratic crisis because those solutions can themselves be advocated by 'false friends' who are unreflexive about what should be considered ideal sources of 'expert knowledge' or 'popular will'.

In 2017, the European Medicines Agency staged the first effort at democratic innovation within transnational European Union institutions directly influencing the transnational regulation of medicines. Alongside its public consultation on epilepsy drug Valproate, European Medicines Agency included a public hearing involving representatives of patients and testimony from those directly affected by the medicines. Using this critical case study, the article argues from a deliberative democratic perspective that although the hearing in many ways exhibited the traditional shortcomings of elite-driven deliberation, it also demonstrated unexpected and surprising deliberative qualities. Based on new quantitative analysis of the hearing using the Discourse Quality Index, and qualitative observation of over 4 hours of footage, the article argues European Medicines Agency's hearing facilitated equitable access and influence of patients and members of the public who had previously been excluded from decision making on drug distribution. These findings provide important new evidence of the deliberative democratic value of public hearings.

Consumer Health Information Programs and Services: Best Practices presents examples of successful and long-standing library programs and services that provide health information to consumers-the general public, patients, and families or patients - who seek information about health and diseases. This best practices volume brings together library programs and services currently offered in hospital libraries, public libraries, academic health sciences libraries, and standalone consumer health libraries, covering a range of topics and special programs.

Valuable to both the health professional and information provider, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed look at online biomedical database searching by end users. Experts fully assess the numerous implications of end user searching and synthesize a wide variety of views and successful practices. By examining the types of users, institutional settings, products used, and applications, this important volume probes the specific variations among programs and provides a solid overview of end user searching in the health science field. The volume includes informative chapters on determini

This article opens a Special Issue on Democratic Stress. Against the background of recent debates on 'democratic crisis', we argue that the concept of 'democratic stress' provides a useful way to understand the diversity of pressures that representative democracy faces in the contemporary context, as well as a valuable 'organising perspective' for developing more nuanced analyses. We then map out the main contributions of the articles included in this special issue, and survey the way in which they further this agenda, conceptually and empirically.