Nongovernmental organizations act on behalf of citizens in politics and society. Yet many question their legitimacy and ask who they speak for. This book investigates how NGOs can become stronger advocates for citizens and better representatives of their interests. Sabine Lang analyzes the choices that NGOs face in their work for policy change between working in institutional settings and practicing public advocacy that incorporates constituents' voices. Whereas most books on NGOs focus on policy effectiveness, using approaches that treat accountability largely as a matter of internal performance measurements, Lang instead argues that it is ultimately several public accountabilities that inform NGO legitimacy. The case studies in this book use empirical research from the European Union, the United States and Germany to point to governments' role in redefining the conditions for NGOs' public advocacy.

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NGOs, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere

This piece speculates on the internet’s wider influences on the shape of institutional politics in representative ‘actually existing democracies’. Findings, based on 100 semi-structured interviews with political actors (politicians, journalists and officials) operating around the UK Parliament, suggest two contrasting trends. On the one hand, more political actors at the immediate edges of the UK institutional political process are being further engaged in a sort of centrifugal movement going outwards from the centre. At the same time, the space between this extended political centre and its public periphery is increasing. This fatter, democratic elitist shift in UK politics may be interpreted as ‘new’ and ICT-driven. It might equally be argued that new media is exacerbating pre-existing political party and media trends in mature democracies which fail to engage ordinary citizens.

New Media and Fat Democracy: The Paradox of Online Participation

1. Introduction: Autonomy and Education 2. Authority and Autonomy 3. Critical Rationality 4. The Development of Critical Rationality in a Practical Context 5. Critical Thinking and Context Independence 6. Autonomy and the Self 7. Autonomy and Conceptions of the good 8. Autonomy and the Polity 9. Autonomy and Schooling 10. Autonomy, the Difference Principle and Educational Resources 11. Autonomy and Civic Education 12. Education and the Balanced Life 13. Policy Implications of the Argument of the Book

Education, autonomy, and critical thinking

How can the world's religious traditions debate within the public sphere? In this book, Nicholas Adams shows the importance of Habermas' approaches to this question. The full range of Habermas' work is considered, with detailed commentary on the more difficult texts. Adams energetically rebuts some of Habermas' arguments, particularly those which postulate the irrationality or stability of religious thought. Members of different religious traditions need to understand their own ethical positions as part of a process of development involving ongoing disagreements, rather than a stable unchanging morality. Public debate additionally requires learning each other's patterns of disagreement. Adams argues that rather than suspending their deep reasoning to facilitate debate, as Habermas suggests, religious traditions must make their reasoning public, and that 'scriptural reasoning' is a possible model for this. Habermas overestimates the stability of religious traditions. This book offers a more realistic assessment of the difficulties and opportunities they face.

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Habermas and Theology

Deliberative democracy harbors a recurrent tension between full inclusion and intelligible speech. People with profound cognitive disabilities often signify this tension. While liberal deliberative theorists sacrifice inclusion for intelligibility, this exclusion is unnecessary. Instead, by analyzing deliberative locations that already include people with disabilities, I offer two ways to revise deliberative norms. First, the physical presence of disabled bodies expands the value of publicity in deliberative democracy, demonstrating that the publicity of bodies provokes new conversations similar to rational speech acts. Second, the inclusion of people with profound disabilities necessitates a form of collaborative speech in which individuals make claims collaboratively. Habermas offers an ideal site to pursue this analysis because he recognizes the theoretical tension between inclusion and intelligibility and because his personal testimony reveals important insight into the lived experience of disability.

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Making disability public in deliberative democracy

This collection of writings by eminent philosophers explores the controversial career of jurgen Habermas, whose adherence to the Enlightenment ideals of rationality, humanism, and respect for discourse has set him apart from most postmodernist thinkers.

Lewis Edwin Hahn

Papers

Perspectives on Habermas