Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

The Human Condition.

This article explores how public managers can use insights about public sector innovation and public value governance to make more than incremental progress in remedying society’s most pressing needs. After outlining the features of public innovation, it considers some traditional barriers to achieving it. It then considers the usefulness of the public value framework for managers seeking to design innovative solutions for complex problems, and examines the type of leadership that is likely to foster collaborative innovation and public value. It finishes by offering levers for achieving innovation by adopting design logics and practices associated with inclusive, experimentalist governance.

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Public value creation through collaborative innovation

On the Political

Personalized recommendations in search engines, social media and also in more traditional media increasingly raise concerns over potentially negative consequences for diversity and the quality of public discourse. The algorithmic filtering and adaption of online content to personal preferences and interests is often associated with a decrease in the diversity of information to which users are exposed. Notwithstanding the question of whether these claims are correct or not, this article discusses whether and how recommendations can also be designed to stimulate more diverse exposure to information and to break potential ‘filter bubbles’ rather than create them. Combining insights from democratic theory, computer science and law, the article makes suggestions for design principles and explores the potential and possible limits of ‘diversity sensitive design’.

https://tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1271900

Exposure diversity as a design principle for recommender systems

Democracy is often invoked as the very ground of political legitimacy, but there is little agreement on what democracy means or how it is best embodied in state institutions and law. With democracy now entering a period of acute crisis, both in the United States and abroad, a focused reassessment of the meaning of democracy, and of the challenges it faces, is an urgent requirement for political scholars.

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What Is Democratic Theory

One of the main criticisms of agonistic democracy (and of post-structuralism more generally) is that it fails to get beyond a purely negative assessment of alternative theories. The article takes u...

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Can agonism be institutionalised? Can institutions be agonised? Prospects for democratic design:

Agonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies.
Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers.　　Paxton then delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen’s perfectionist agonism, Mouffe’s adversarial agonism and William Connolly and James Tully’s inclusive agonism. She demonstrates how each is fundamental to enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further.
By discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, this book provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory.

Marie Paxton

Papers

Can agonism be institutionalised? Can institutions be agonised? Prospects for democratic design:

Agonistic Democracy: Rethinking Political Institutions in Pluralist Times