Wie lässt sich Demokratie am besten messen? Zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung * Die vier Autor(inn)en arbeiten in einem gemeinsamen Forschungsprojekt des NCCR Democracy (vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds finanziertes National Centre of Competence in Research: Challenges to Democracy in the 21^st Century) und des WZB an einem „Demokratiebarometer“ für die 30 OECD-Staaten, das die Ignoranz der 0-Varianz bei Polity und Freedom House aufkl?ren will.

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Antwort auf die Replik von Marc Bühlmann,Wolfgang Merkel,Lisa Müller und Bernhard Weßels zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Islamists in the “Rainbow” Coalition

In the 1980s, Britain’s Labour Party promoted a system of race-relations that envisioned Britain as a collection of discrete cultures with equal status. This multicultural model for organizing society conflicted with traditional British notions of a unified national culture, with an assimilationist model of immigrant incorporation. Today, the Labour Party’s relationship with Islamists is sharply dividing Labour’s “rainbow” constituency. Whereas the horrific events of 9/11 and 7/7 have led many Labour leaders to replace its defense of multiculturalism with Tory-sounding calls for immigrant assimilation, other Labour leaders are working harder than ever to accommodate their Muslim constituents.

Drastic Plastic and the Global Electronic Economy

This article considers the rise of cosmetic surgical culture against the backdrop of recent explanations that foreground celebrity culture and the consumer industries. By contrast to these mainstream accounts, the article contends that surgical culture has become increasingly interwoven with major institutional changes of the global electronic economy. Personal vulnerabilities in the workplace and wider new economy are explored in the context of people seeking to reinvent themselves and improve their life prospects through cosmetic surgery.

Can We Have a Public Bioethic?

This essay examines the viability of a publically held, articulated, and enacted bioethic in America's democratic regime. The essay takes the writings of several thinkers associated with the President's Council on Bioethics as its point of departure. The essay draws attention to some of the enduring moral, political, religious, and intellectual currents inherent in American civil society that will continue to provide both resources for and obstacles to any publicly held bioethic in America.

Extending a Life with Meaning

This essay questions Callahan’s criticism of people’s aspiration to extend their life. It argues that ideas about life are subject to historical variations and the question at issue is whether society can give meaning to aging. It also questions the claim that the radical extension of human life will jeopardize the welfare of future generations. It suggests that the application of the precautionary principle to the question of aging avoid facing up to question how society should value the old.

Immigration Benefits America

David Stoll suggests that because contemporary immigrants are non-European, uneducated, poor, and uninterested in joining the moral community of American society, their presence threatens national unity, obscures citizens’ obligations to one another and will shortly change the US into a minority–majority society. Drawing from historical accounts and statistical evidence, this article asserts that immigrants provide American society with social, economic and demographic benefits. Moreover, while pundits have long predicted that immigrants with national origins distinct from those of natives will transform American life to its detriment, the record reveals the US has been able to incorporate diverse nationalities to the benefit of immigrants and the native-born alike.

Stuck with Virtue in Our Pro-Life Future

Callahan is wrong to be pro-death, but he’s right to say that to live well—or for society to have a real future—we have to care about more than mere life. Futile attempts to stop the pursuit of extreme personal prolongevity are contrary to our rights-based way of life. It’s also contrary to human love and dignity to regard the old as a threat.

Why Is the Estate Tax so Controversial?

There are some social issues whose significance for society nobody would seriously question but which nevertheless receive only scarce attention in sociological research. One of these is the bequest of private wealth from one generation to the next. It is currently estimated that about 550 billion dollars are transferred annually in the United States, amounting to more than 4% of the American gross national product (Havens and Schervish 1999). Not only is this a huge amount of wealth that changes ownership, but the bequest of wealth speaks to some of the core questions of sociological scholarship.

Close But Not Close Enough

The authors comment on an earlier aritice in Society by Eugene Goodheart and offer a novel hypothesis about the origins of religion.

Why it Never Really was About Authenticity

Critics of the concept fail to note that staged authenticity is not authenticity but its opposite or negation. This error is illustrated referencing Ed Bruner’s reading of The Tourist in his recent book Culture on Tour.

The Need for Death

‘Social precognition’ is the forerunner of new developments in science and technology such as extended life or immortality. While life-extension may have been neglected by philosophers or social scientists, it has been explored in depth by creative writers. They underline the threat of new kinds of inequality and of the conservatism of a society that protects the interests of the long-lived. They also question the quality of a longer life as likely to be lonely and empty rather than wise, peaceful and fulfilled.

Secularism,American-Style

The American approach to secularism is distinctive, differing from the laicite of the French or the Turks in its greater friendliness to the public expression of religious beliefs and sentiments. Such arrangements are challenging to sustain, requiring constant renegotiation of acceptable boundaries, but may also provide a more fruitful way of drawing on the moral energies and insights of religion while keeping them contained within appropriate limits.

Cohabitation,Marriage, and Child Wellbeing: A Cross-National Perspective

Non-marital cohabitation has become widespread in modern, Western nations. It has led to dramatic declines in marriage rates and contributed to high levels of unwed births and lone-parent families, thus negatively affecting child wellbeing.

Heroic Action and Its Discontents: Safe Horizon’s Response to 9/11

Based on first-hand qualitative research, this article describes and analyzes the significant role that a local, New York City-based social service agency played in responding to 9/11; the sources of its notable ability to provide assistance to individuals and families affected by this terrorist attack; and the structural strains and unanticipated divisions within the agency that the heroism of its fervid engagement nevertheless engendered.

The Prison Boom and the Decline of American Citizenship

The US imprisonment rate increased fivefold in the three decades from 1975 to 2005. Growth in the scale of criminal punishment was linked partly to a more punitive politics that repudiated the goal of rehabilitation, and partly to the collapse of economic opportunity for young unskilled men in inner cities. The growth of the penal system produced extraordinary rates of incarceration among recent cohorts of young black men with little schooling. We can understand the growth of incarceration to produce and erosion of citizenship among young black men, weakening the web of mutual obligation that defines full membership in American society.

The Weakness of Our Political Parties

Whatever else the 2008 presidential election may result in, we can be sure that it will only contribute further to the steadily declining role of political parties in American politics, and the myriad negative consequences arising from that decline.

The world revolution of our time: a review and update

In 1935 Harold D. Lasswell introduced constructs of the world revolution to improve the rational selection of topics and timing for policy research. This article reviews and updates his construct of the skill revolution arising from the differentiation of specialized environments in modern society, including three variants: the garrison-state construct, the permanent revolution of modernizing intellectuals, and the unspeakable revolution. Among transformations of the skill revolution facilitated by the growing interdependence of modern society, or globalization, are contending fundamentalist and cosmopolitan revolutions. A Gnostic revolution of declining faith in Western civilization is also possible. This article concludes with a preferential construct tracing a possible sequence of events leading toward a world order of peace, welfare and social justice.

International Obligations and the Morality of War

Americans are not as religiously divided on foreign policy questions as they are over such hot-button, culture war domestic issues as abortion and gay marriage. Nevertheless, surveys suggest that Americans’ attitudes on several foreign policy fronts are consistent with a religious worldview. This analysis draws primarily on the findings of various PRC polls to examine the relationship between religion and three areas of foreign policy: the role of the USA in the world; the nature of international obligations; and the morality of war.

The 2008 Election

The 2008 presidential election will be significant both for domestic and for foreign policy. Issues of security in domestic policy will continue to trump issues of freedom. The difficulties of resolving our military presence in Iraq will be the first among many important issues the new administration must confront. In both domestic and foreign affairs the new administration will have to deal with the unanticipated consequences of inherited policies even as it creates its own agenda and its own set of unintended consequences.