Suchergebnisse

The author analyses the relationship of atomism, pluralism, and democracy from the viewpoint of contemporary theory of justice as presented by Rawls and Kafka. Subjective and objective justice are characterized as forms of substitution of democratic decision-making in multicultural communities. (SOI : PM: S. 117)

The author elaborates his proposition concerning the distinction of cultur-historical and political identity by differentiating cultural-historical majorities and minorities from political winners and losers. He points out to a democratic paradox according to which a state is governed by political minorities of winners and not by political majorities of losers. In multiethnic societies, holds the author, both popular and political culture have to be developed, that is, both the cultural and the political tolerance. + After all, European peoples, including Croatians are today facing a process of transformation of the new-age concept of democracy as a form of legitimation of sovereignty of nation state. Europe is rapidly being transformed into a multinational political unit sui generis, the sovereignty of which, as it seems, cannot be legitimized either by ethnic or political majorities. Activist Europeans today require their citizens to gradually renounce segments of their state sovereignty for the sake of cooperation witli other sovereign States of the European Union. For citizens of Croatia this sounds too much like the Brezhnevs doctrine of limited sovereignty. But, what does this restruction of sovereignty of the existing nation States in the European Union really mean? It: means a restriction of democratic popular will as a traditional sovereign of a state. A part of sovereignty should be transferred to a new political entity and ist institutions, i.e. to European Union. However, this Sovereign suffers democratic deficit since it lacks both ethnic and political majority. This is where the mushrooming of non-democratic judicial and bureaucratic powers comes from. It should, therefore, be asked whether the much debated democratic deficit in the European Union really is an indicator of a qualitatively new transformation of political relations among Europeans? If there is no possibility in the Europe of Nation States for the creation of supranational democratic majorities, then Europe faces significant difficulties which call for a transformation of the inherited notion of democracy. As it seems, Europe is becoming less the guarantor of sovereignty of nation states and more the guarantor of human rights regardless of ethnic and political identity. Europeans have to, when rethinking their political past and future learn to make democratic decisions about their human and civil rights. These rights are clearly wider than national and political rights and in this sense one could expect them to be more acceptable to individuals in the long run, since they provide for more safety. + It seems to us that Europe is in a critica phase of the process of transformation of democracy from a political form that legitimized power and sovereignty of a nation state into a political form that legitimizes human and civil rights within the European Union. Europeans, certainly, are preoccupied with their history much more than Americans, and shall never understand Europe as a melting pot but as an institution that guarantees higher standards of human and civil rights than the former nation-state. In this way democracy shall get a new form in which common business and culture are to play the integrative role which is being denied by eurosceptics who have in mind the existing deficit of democracy and nation state, contending that common culture and business do not suffice for the formation of the European political subject. European democratic majority, if it ever comes into being, shall decide about what rights of individuals are. Namely, it seems that only this can be the new substance of the European democratic form. However, if it turns out that this democratic form is incapable of absorbing this heterogeneous political and ethnic substance, then European prospects as an active political subject are not good in the near future. This is the fundamental political issue in Croatia today. (SOI : PM: S. 83; 87f.)

An obituary for Ante Pazanin. Adapted from the source document.

In interpreting current social and political processes, one should recognize new and mutually different political and democratic forces, which should offer an alternative to trends which had generated the crisis. Since totalitarian regimes such as fascism and communism (and even neoliberalism) did not solve the crisis of capitalism in the past, writers like Habermas, Searle, Luhmann, Wolin, Vesting and others do not consider them as potential solutions for the contemporary crisis. The solutions are not being sought within the framework of universalisation of particular interests either. Even less they look for a solution within some universal virtue that would represent all other virtues. On the contrary -- the contemporary theory recognizes that humanity in its lifeworld operates within different media and that the unified lifeworld is represented in different, incommensurable media, so the new theory attempts to create a modus vivendi among various representations of the world, not one single unitary interpretation. Contemporary theories are interested in the issue of coexistence between incommensurable differences, and thus they ask: how to preserve pluralism of social life. This process remains open. On the other hand, any idea of a single solution within a single unified medium leads to renewal of totalitarianisms, or even a world war, a new Holocaust or a new Hiroshima. Adapted from the source document.

The author suggests that the multilayered concept of secularization should be understood as the dezideologization of culture, religion, nation, language. economy, opening the space for democratic decision-making in the European Union, & consequently the space for politics with the capacity for collectively binding decisions in the democratically generated pluralism, & not in the historically generated pluralism of the old Europe. Secularization originally meant the transfer of clergy (priests or monks) from regular to secular thereby making them secularis or laypersons. Since the Westphalian Treaty of 1647 the word secularization has meant the transfer of ecclesiastical property to civil possession or use. Secularization means a strict separation of the church & the state. It also means a secular implementation of Christian postulates of universal equality of equals among equals. Today, the concept of secularization is used metaphorically as dezideologization i.e. as the criticism of state forms such as fascism and communism which possessed only ideological & not democratic legitimacy. In that sense the thesis of the cultural or spiritual unity of Europe as its legitimizing grounds is undemocratic as it replaces & conditions democracy with a vague concept of culture or spoken communication. References. Adapted from the source document.

The author's starting assumption is the domination of two undemocratic ideological orientations: liberalism & republicanism. The author sees republicanism & liberalism as the ideas proximate to the political or the democratic. These ideas operate semantically but cannot be identified with the political or the democratic. This is not possible as they are not commensurable structures. By providing a theoretical account of various historical traditions the author shows that European republicanism ignored democracy & considered it to be the worst form of government. This is partly true of the liberal political doctrine that evolved later. The author argues it is possible to convert republicanism to democratic pluralism i.e. that this is the biggest common good today. In this way republicanism may be spared its controversies. References. Adapted from the source document.

The author argues that democracy is not appropriate for the resolution of the relationship between law & the democratically conditioned state authority in the multinational Europe. The so-called democratic deficit should be understood not only as the empirical fact of a multinational Europe, but also as a paradoxical structural attribute of modern political thought from Kant until today. The author claims that the people should not rule as they might violate all the laws they enacted themselves. Thus the question of the equality of citizens cannot be a democratic one but legal & constitutional. Democracy cannot lay claim to be the sole provider of the legal equality of citizens just as law cannot be the only arbiter in making democratic distinctions among them. Since democracy should be understood as an independent autopoietic & autoimmune medium relatively independent of political power & legal constraints as its setting, the author concludes that the existing forms of immediate & representative democracy, as well as of the traditional form of democratic decision/making represent a risk of regressive progress in Europe in the direction of democracy limited by nation, religion or by class. Adapted from the source document.

Polazeći od postmodernih teorija diferencije (Luhman, Derrida, Castells) autor ustvrđuje da se pitanje europske budućnosti i demokracije ne može razumjeti preko bilo koje vrste projekta višeg jedinstva, već kao proces političkog djelovanja uz koji se ne može vezati perspektiva unaprijed određenog ustrojstva Europe. Ishodište takve ocjene autor pronalazi u oprečnosti dvaju nesumjerljivih pluralizama: povijesno proizvedenog, koji se očituje u specifi čnim nacionalnim ili religijskim svojstvima i onog koji je određen demokratskom procedurom, koji ne polazi od specifi čnih svojstava pripadnika neke zajednice nego od načela pravne jednakosti. Upravo zbog spomenute razlike, demokracija, pravo, politika ili pak religija su naprosto auotopoietični sustavi, koji se ne integriraju u viša jedinstva, već funkcioniraju kao funkcionalno limitirane cjeline, koje uključuju i isključuju iz sustava različite segmente okoline. Ako nema tog višeg cilja prema kojem Europa treba ići, čemu treba težiti Europa, pa onda i europska demokracija? Odgovor je, smatra autor, u dekonstrukciji europskih vizija, iluzija i projekata, pri čemu kritički potencijal teorija diferencije nije u njihovoj praktičkoj primjeni, nego u njihovom drugačijem razumijevanju stanja stvari. ; Proceeding from postmodern theories of diff erence (Luhman, Derrida, Castells), the author concludes that the issue of the European future and democracy cannot be understood through any kind of project of higher unity, but as a process of political action which cannot be tied with a perspective of a predetermined structure of Europe. The author fi nds the origin of such an assessment in the oppositeness of two incommensurate pluralisms: a historically produced one, manifested in specifi c national or religious properties, and the one determined by a democratic procedure, which does not proceed from specifi c properties of members of a community, but from a principle of legal equality. It is because of the mentioned diff erence that democracy, law, politics or religion are ...