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Journal Article

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

01 Feb 1997-Review of Metaphysics-Vol. 51, Iss: 1, pp 153-155
About: This article is published in Review of Metaphysics.The article was published on 1997-02-01 and is currently open access. It has received 2568 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Democracy.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Archon Fung1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation, including who participates, how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and how discussions are linked with policy or public action.
Abstract: The multifaceted challenges of contemporary governance demand a complex account of the ways in which those who are subject to laws and policies should participate in making them. This article develops a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation. Mechanisms of participation vary along three important dimensions: who participates, how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and how discussions are linked with policy or public action. These three dimensions constitute a space in which any particular mechanism of participation can be located. Different regions of this institutional design space are more and less suited to addressing important problems of democratic governance such as legitimacy, justice, and effective administration.

1,526 citations

01 Dec 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the current debate about the nature of democracy and discuss the main theses of the approach called "deliberative democracy" in its two main versions, the one put forward by John Rawls, and the other one put forth by Jurgen Habermas.
Abstract: This article examines the current debate about the nature of democracy and discusses the main theses of the approach called 'deliberative democracy' in its two main versions, the one put forward by John Rawls, and the other one put forwardby Jurgen Habermas. While agreeing with them as regards to the need to develop a more of democracy than the one offered by the 'aggregative' model, I submit that they do not provide an adequate understanding of the main task of democracy. No doubt, by stating that democracy cannot be reduced to a question of procedures to mediate among conflicting interests, deliberative democrats defend a conception of democracy that presents a richer conception of politics. But, albeit in a different way thanthe view they criticize, their vision is also a rationalist one which leaves aside the crucial role played by 'passions' and collective forms of identifications in the field of politics. Moreover, in their attempt to reconcile the liberal tradition with the democratic one, deliberative democrats tend to erase the tension that exist between liberalism and democracy and they are therefore unable to come to terms with the conflictual nature of democratic politics. The main thesis that I put forward in this article is that democratic theory needs to acknowledge the ineradicability of antagonism and the impossibility of achieving a fully inclusive rational consensus. I argue that a model of democracy in terms of 'agonistic pluralism' can help us to better envisage the main challenge facing democratic politics today: how to create democratic forms of identifications that will contribute to mobilize passions towards democratic designs.;

1,338 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Public diplomacy, as the diplomacy of the public, not of the government, intervenes in this global public sphere, laying the ground for traditional forms of diplomacy to act beyond the strict negotiation of power relationships by building on shared... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The public sphere is the space of communication of ideas and projects that emerge from society and are addressed to the decision makers in the institutions of society. The global civil society is the organized expression of the values and interests of society. The relationships between government and civil society and their interaction via the public sphere define the polity of society. The process of globalization has shifted the debate from the national domain to the global debate, prompting the emergence of a global civil society and of ad hoc forms of global governance. Accordingly, the public sphere as the space of debate on public affairs has also shifted from the national to the global and is increasingly constructed around global communication networks. Public diplomacy, as the diplomacy of the public, not of the government, intervenes in this global public sphere, laying the ground for traditional forms of diplomacy to act beyond the strict negotiation of power relationships by building on shared...

936 citations

Book
05 Oct 2012
TL;DR: Tweets and the Streets as mentioned in this paper examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest, arguing that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality.
Abstract: Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park. An exciting and invigorating journey through the new politics of dissent, Tweets and the Streets points both to the creative possibilities and to the risks of political evanescence which new media brings to the contemporary protest experience.

911 citations

References
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose that normative analysis should provide the basis for developing research agendas for certified fair trade goods and that biases that tend to favor mainstreaming practices in the generation of knowledge are minimized.
Abstract: This paper examines two issues related to research of certified fair trade goods. The first is the question of how agendas for fair trade research should be developed. The second issue is the existence of major gaps in the fair trade literature, including the study of the particular features of fair trade practice in individual northern countries. In taking up the first of these issues, the paper proposes that normative analysis should provide the basis for developing research agendas. Such an approach is important to ensure that the necessary types of questions to make normative judgments and policy decisions are posed and that biases that tend to favor mainstreaming practices in the generation of knowledge are minimized. The paper addresses the second research issue by examining the development of research agendas at the level of individual countries, using Canada as a case.

24 citations

01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of four white families living in the town of Newcastle, South Africa, and focusing on the institutional apparatuses of welfare, almost two decades after apartheid, was conducted.
Abstract: This paper is based on a study of four white families living in the town of Newcastle, South Africa, and focuses on the institutional apparatuses of welfare in the town almost two decades after apartheid. Beginning with a reading of the production of the category of the ‘poor white’ during the first half of the twentieth century, we then discuss the particular rise and fall of Newcastle as an industrial town. We focus on contemporary welfare in the town and the interaction between whites receiving welfare and welfare officials. in the midst of moral evaluations of character, it becomes clear to officials that models of individual reformation and transformation are inadequate to realise substantially improved lives. in these conditions, officials join white recipients in invoking ‘reverse racism’ to explain the continued reliance of these white families on welfare and their inability to improve their conditions, regardless of ‘improvements in character’. Such a claim, we argue, portrays whites as threatened and even attempts to re-claim the pathological figure of the poor white in a bid to remain exceptional, and thus to be recognised as being poor in a manner that would distinguish them from Africans.

24 citations

15 Apr 2014
TL;DR: The authors argue that the modern state in liberal democratic societies can be understood as a multi-system -the complex amalgam of ten different forms of state, which are held together or integrated by six main attractive and interconnecting factors.
Abstract: The contemporary state has been the focus of considerable controversy - about whether it exists and has ontological status (or not); about how it may be delineated; and about the sense in which it operates as a unity or some form of integrated agency in relation to civil society, and viz a viz other states. I argue that the modern state in liberal democratic societies can be understood as a multi-system - the complex amalgam of ten different forms of state, which are held together or integrated by six main attractive and inter-connecting factors. States additionally cohere because of their endogenous dependence on a particular economic system, interactions with national culture, and the generic impact of state efficacy. If we are to make progress in analysing states, both political science and the social sciences more generally need to move on from previously over-simplistic concepts of what the unity of the state entails. On the one hand, to deny the existence of the state because of institutional multiplicity, or a diversity of organizational forms, is crude and ungrounded. On the other hand, traditional statism cannot be rescued by emphasizing just one form of the state, or over-weighting a particular integrative force. Instead we need to recognize the simultaneous systemic oneness and empirical diversity of the state as a multi-system.

24 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a take down policy to remove access to the work immediately and investigate the claim. But they did not provide details of the claim and did not investigate the content of the work.
Abstract: • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

24 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the prospects for democratic solidarity in a secular age, according to Max Weber's classic theory that social cohesion shatters social cohesion, and examine the possibility of democratic solidarity.
Abstract: Secularization, according to Max Weber’s classic theory, shatters social cohesion. But if this is so, what are the prospects for democratic solidarity in a secular age? In this article, I examine t...

24 citations