Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política 

About: Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política is an academic journal published by Centro de Estudos de Cultura Contemporânea, CEDEC. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Democracy. It has an ISSN identifier of 0102-6445. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 915 publications have been published receiving 10271 citations.

Reframing justice in a globalizing world

Abstract: Globalization is changing the way we argue about justice. Not so long ago, in the heyday of social democracy, disputes about justice presumed what I shall call a “Keynesian-Westphalian frame.” Typically played out within modern territorial states, arguments about justice were assumed to concern relations among fellow citizens, to be subject to debate within national publics, and to contemplate redress by national states. This was true for each of two major families of justice claims – claims for socioeconomic redistribution and claims for legal or cultural recognition. At a time when the Bretton Woods system of international capital controls facilitated Keynesian economic steering at the national level, claims for redistribution usually focused on economic inequities within territorial states. Appealing to national public opinion for a fair share of the national pie, claimants sought intervention by national states in national economies. Likewise, in an era still gripped by a Westphalian political imaginary, which sharply distinguished “domestic” from “international” space, claims for recognition generally concerned internal status-hierarchies. Appealing to the national conscience for an end to nationally institutionalized disrespect, claimants pressed national governments to outlaw discrimination and accommodate differences among citizens. In both cases, the Keynesian-Westphalian frame was assumed. Whether the matter concerned redistribution or recognition, class differentials or status hierarchies, it went without saying that the unit within which justice applied was the modern territorial state.

Elections and representation

Abstract: The claim connecting democracy and representation is that under democracy governments are representative because they are elected: if elections are freely contested, if participation is widespread, and if citizens enjoy political liberties, then governments will act in the best interest of the people. In one – the “mandate” – view, elections serve to select good policies or policybearing politicians. Parties or candidates make policy proposals during campaigns and explain how these policies would affect citizens' welfare; citizens decide which of these proposals they want implemented and which politicians to charge with their implementation, and governments do implement them. Thus, elections emulate a direct assembly and the winning platform becomes the “mandate” that the government pursues. In a second – “accountability” – view, elections serve to hold governments responsible for the results of their past actions. Because they anticipate the judgment of voters, governments are induced to choose policies that in their judgment will be positively evaluated by citizens at the time of the next election. Yet both views are problematic. Representation is an issue because politicians have goals, interests, and values of their own, and they know things and undertake actions that citizens cannot observe or can monitor only at a cost. Even if once they are in office politicians may want to do nothing but serve the public, to should be doing or to judge retrospectively if they did what they should have done.

Three normative models of democracy

Abstract: This chapter provides a proceduralist view of democracy and deliberative politics which differs in relevant aspects from both the liberal and the republican paradigm. It describes the opposite features of these two established models. The chapter introduces a new proceduralist conception by way of a critique of the "ethical overload" of the republican view. It further elaborates the three normative models of democracy by comparing their corresponding images of state and society. The normative models are republican model, liberal model, and proceduralist model. In contrast to the ethical constriction of political discourse, the concept of deliberative politics acquires empirical reference only when we take account of the multiplicity of communicative forms of rational political will-formation. According to the communitarian view, there is a necessary connection between the deliberative concept of democracy and the reference to a concrete, substantively integrated ethical community.

As três versões do neo-institucionalismo

Abstract: O neo-institucionalismo nao constitui uma corrente de pensamento unificada. Ao contrario, pelo menos tres metodos de analise diferentes apareceram nessa area no ultimo quarto de seculo: o institucionalismo historico, o institucionalismo da escolha racional e o institucionalismo sociologico. Todas elas tratam, por ângulos diferentes, do papel desempenhado pelas instituicoes na determinacao de resultados sociais e politicos. Expoe-se e examina-se a genese de cada uma dessas variantes do "neo-institucionalismo", assim como o que distingue suas maneiras de tratar dos problemas sociais e politicos.

Accountability horizontal e novas poliarquias

Abstract: The poliarchies developed in the western world have been shaped by three different political traditions: the liberal, the republican and the democratic. The liberal and republican traditions foster horizontal accountability, a crucial feature of those poliarchies wich is not to be found in the new democracies. After discussing what this absence implies ways of generating horizontal accountability in the latter are suggested.