Journal Article•
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
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.
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01 Jan 2006
2,797 citations
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
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: The authors investigates the sources of sociability in modern financial systems as a prelude to assessing the prospects for financial regulation, and identifies three sources: sociality dependent upon contract, relational interdependency and the operation of will and passion.
Abstract: This article investigates the sources of sociability in modern financial systems as a prelude to assessing the prospects for financial regulation. Three sources are identified: sociality dependent upon contract, upon relational interdependency, and upon the operation of will and passion. Each of these would provide its own rationale for regulation but it is the third that is stressed here as a radical conception, one that needs to be more fully addressed than has so far proved possible in an analytical context. And it is this conception that connects most closely to a second overall theme of the article which is to explore further the nature of ‘irrationality’ as manifest in financial crises. When the contours of both these aspects of financial calculation have been elaborated, the article moves on to consider how they might shape regulatory responses to the seeming inevitability of financial crises in modern capitalist economies.
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a conceptual model of the public sphere in public libraries can serve as a potential framework and research agenda for the public library sector, which can be used to orient research and practice.
Abstract: Abstract Public libraries continually struggle to define their social value, and economic or educational rationales are commonly submitted to this end. In contrast to these approaches, public sphere theory emphasizes the political and social justice aspects of public libraries. Existing library literature has established strong associations between public sphere theory and public libraries, and a tentative model of the public sphere in public libraries has been developed. It is not yet clear, however, how a public sphere model of public libraries might benefit the profession. This paper therefore explains how a conceptual model of the public sphere in public libraries can serve as a potential framework and research agenda for the public library sector. A model of the public sphere in public libraries contains three main arenas of discourse: governance, legitimation, and commons. Each of the arenas represents values that are central to public librarianship. Practitioners and scholars in the public library sector can use the public sphere model to orient research and practice. This paper explains each arena in detail and discusses the model’s relevance as a philosophy and research agenda.
22 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that late modern changes in society help to alleviate the great Achilles heel of his Marxist theory of law-the need to rely on an all-encompassing and thus implausibly elastic dominant ideology associated with a well defined ruling class.
Abstract: When grounded in Marx's 1859 Preface, historical materialism raises two key problems for legal scholars: One concerns determination, and the other the notion of base and superstructure. One way of understanding how each theorist tackles the two problems is to realise that their solutions are context bound; bound by time, bound by place, bound by what we might call their concrete socio-political situation. Each theorist takes the insights of Marx and applies them to their own time and place. This has led to a wealth of Marxist approaches to law, which will be detailed in Part 1. The solutions that have been proposed to the two problems, however, have been consistently unsatisfactory. As Part 2 will outline, socio-economic and political conditions have changed massively over the last three decades or so: A distinctive 'late modern' period has emerged. Just as each Marxist legal theorist responded to their own distinctive milieu, so any contemporary socio-legal theorist must recognise and respond to the realities of the late modem world. Late modern developments have created the potential for a modified Marxist legal theory that seeks to alleviate the difficulties associated with the old ones. The shape of such a theory is outlined in Part 3. The new theory is based on the work of Hugh Collins, but it is contended that late modern changes in society help to alleviate the great Achilles heel of his Marxist theory of law- the need to rely on an all-encompassing and thus implausibly elastic dominant ideology associated with a well- defined ruling class. Instead, under late modern conditions a series of 'micro-ideologies' guide the creation of law and norms in a number of discrete spheres, and the state's former monopoly on law- making is progressively eroded. Thus, the core idea of Collins' work- the ideological determination of law- is preserved, but adapted to contemporary, late modern conditions. The result is a prolegomenon for a revived Marxist theory of law that is in tune with current socio- political and economic conditions.
22 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that a promise that education will counteract cultural and social disintegration involves a risk of engendering narrow social and cultural incorporation, and argue that education is thought to provide a certain outcome.
Abstract: Education is thought to provide a certain outcome—apromise. I argue that a promise thateducation will counteract cultural and social disintegration involves a risk of engenderingnarrow social and cultural incorporation. On what reasonable basis could education contributeto civic life, when contemporary Western society is represented by a diversity of lifestylesand beliefs, with roots in different traditions? Habermas’s communicative theory and theoryof procedural democracy contain a normative core of presuppositions that function asenabling conditions for practical discourse to take place under such conditions. However,Habermas’s perspective conceptualizes these presuppositions as features of a politicalculture whose ‘accommodating quality’ citizens need to be able to expect sociologically.Within a political and moral theory, Habermas only counts on these preconditionsimplicitly, but he does hope for such accommodating qualities to be fulfilled in a process ofsocialization and in political forms of life.
22 citations
Dissertation•
15 Apr 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the adaptability of deliberative democracy in the Chinese context in terms of a normative perspective and proposed a discourse theory of Confucian rationality to balance the tension between normative theories and social-political facts.
Abstract: The adaptability issues of Western democracy in the context of China have always been an important academic concern. This research was intended to study the adaptability of deliberative democracy in the Chinese context in terms of a normative perspective. At the beginning, this research focused on Habermas‘s Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, because it is one of the most discussed normative deliberative democratic theories in China today. Taking into consideration the normativity and ideality of Habermas‘s theory, Foucault‘s discourse theory of power relations is then introduced to illustrate the tensions between different Western discourse theories. In order to investigate the adaptabilities of these two discourse theories in the Chinese context, and to balance the tension between them, another normative concept, namely the Confucian Rationality, is then drawn upon from traditional Chinese cultural sources. Accordingly, these three dimensions of discourse theory, as well as the relations between them, are presented. The employment of some empirical descriptions of certain Chinese historical-political facts is also necessary to explain, to supplement, or to question this theoretic framework. Two tension perspectives are critical throughout the research: the tension between universality and particularity, and the tension between normative theories and social-political facts.Through the approaches of textual studies, aided by conceptual and empirical studies as complements, the research is conducted as following: Chapter 1 discusses the tension between Habermas‘s normative discourse theory of law and democracy and social facts; Chapter 2 analyzes the tension between Habermas‘s discourse theory and Foucault‘s discourse theory of power relations, and proposes to rethink the tension problems. Chapter 3 tries to search for the resources in traditional Chinese political cultures, and to put forward another normative discourse theory- the discourse theory of Confucian rationality- to balance the tension between the foregoing two normative discourse theories. It is argued that an ideal type of Confucian rationality (a kind of normative value rationality) can be used as a bridge between the two opposite discourse theories. Chapter 4 further explains the normative theory that was proposed in Chapter 3, and tries to reexamine and redefine the concepts of ―Public Sphere‖ and ―Deliberative Politics in the context of traditional China through empirical descriptions on the ―Public Sphere‖ and political/legal discussions in traditional Chinese society. Finally,Chapter 5 focuses on the descriptions of the political and legal discussions in China's new media public sphere today. It is an empirical response to all the normative studies mentioned above, and at the same time an investigation on the tensions between the normative theories and the social experiences. We argue that, because of the different cognitive structures and diverse modes of thinking in specific cultures, there should be different normative paradigms of discourse democracy in corresponding cultural contexts. Normativity and reality are the two sides of the same coin. Normative discourse theories serve as the guidance for the practices of deliberative democracy, which can, in its turn, verify, supplement, improve and challenge the normative discourse theories. Apart from demonstrating of the multiple dimensions of discourse theories, another practical intent of this thesis is to promote an approach leading to discourse democracy that would combine elements of both Chinese and modern, consistent with both the fundamental predilections of Chinese civilization, and the practical needs of a modern China.
22 citations