Inclusive Democracy and its Prospects

ABSTRACT Takis Fotopoulos' inclusive democracy project has generated one of the most interesting and ambitious undertakings within contemporary political philosophy. Fotopoulos synthesises what he regards as the principal contributions of five discrete traditions, retrieves classical Athens as democratic exemplar, thinks through and extrapolates the implications of his vision for daily life, and seeks to anticipate and resolve conundrums likely to follow. Any one of these dimensions would render his project noteworthy. Nonetheless, his project occurs within a historic moment that limits its prospects of consideration beyond its own political constituency. However unfairly, Fotopoulos' proposals will struggle for mass attention for reasons not principally of his creation. A leading reason for this is the widespread and probably reasonable leeriness toward large-scale alternatives borne of the pathological nature of much 20th century political radicalism.     

Transitional Strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to critically assess the various transitional strategies for radical social change that have been proposed in the past, as well as some recently developed strategies, like the civil societarian approach, the Libertarian Municipalism strategy and the 'lifestyle' strategies. Second, to propose a new transitional strategy that aims at the transition to a confederal inclusive democracy. In this context, the emancipatory subject in present society is discussed, a new type of politics and political organisation is suggested and a series of steps for the transition to a political, economic, ecological democracy, as well as a 'democracy in the social realm' is proposed.     

Class Divisions Today—the Inclusive Democracy Approach

The aim of this article is to show that the collapse of the socialist project and the consequent abandonment of 'grand narratives' should not be followed by the rejection of every type of class analysis and politics, or, even more so, by the abandonment of every attempt to develop a universal project for human emancipation. Instead, class divisions have to be redefined to extend beyond the original conception of them which was restricted to the economic sphere, and a new class model should be developed, which would embrace the politics of 'difference' and 'identity' and would be appropriate to the era of an internationalised market economy. In the first part of the article, the historical development of economic class divisions is examined and the inadequacies of the Marxist class categories are assessed. In the second part, a new model of class divisions based on the unequal distribution of power in all its forms is developed, whereas in the final part an attempt is made to define the subject of emancipatory politics today.     

The Politics of Inclusive Agreements: towards a Critical Discourse Theory of Democracy

This article offers a critical assessment of Jürgen Habermas's discourse theory of democracy. It suggests that the main thrust of a discursive account of legitimacy is the attempt to show how the demands of maximal democratic inclusion might be reconciled with a politics of reasoned agreements. While this aim is endorsed, the thrust of the argument is that a critical theory of democracy requires that normative frameworks that bring certain substantive features of democratic life into focus should supplement Habermas's procedural approach. First, the account of maximal inclusion has to be developed in a way that clarifies the egalitarian demands of distributive justice. Secondly, the account of a politics of reasoned agreements has to be connected to a theoretical analysis of the bonds of solidarity that could underpin such a form of political engagement. These developments contribute to a critical theory that gives a more adequate account of the motivational basis of discursive democracy.     

和合文化视野下我国基层协商民主的包容性建构及其限度

我国基层协商民主与和合文化之间具有一定的契合性,立足于中层理论的维度,建构一个基于场域、关系与机制的分析框架,探讨和合文化视野下我国基层协商民主的建构逻辑,发现包容差异性是其主线。和合文化由于其自身的历史局限性,它的某些要素也会在一定意义上阻滞我国基层协商民主的健康发展,在新的历史条件下,推动我国基层协商民主朝着广泛、多层、制度化方向发展,既要从和合文化中汲取有益要素,也要反思和总结和合文化中的阻滞成分,那就是,警惕和合文化型塑的场域压制个体主体性和正当利益诉求;防止和合文化维持的关系滑向特殊主义;避免和合文化确立的机制在运行中相互掣肘。     

Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and "marxism", the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural "democracy" is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of the "market" but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of "freedom". The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals.     

From Evaluating Democracy Assistance to Appraising Democracy Promotion

Organisations involved in delivering international democracy assistance are engaging increasingly with questions about how to assess their activities. A double shift in the terms of reference, from the ex post evaluation of assistance projects or programmes to ex ante appraisal of the broader democracy promotion strategies, could make democracy promotion more effective. This does not mean abandoning the former; on the contrary its status would be enhanced. Improving the chain of learning that leads from assistance evaluations to the formulation of promotion strategies could improve decision-making over how and whether to promote democracy abroad. Because strategies for democracy promotion are constitutive of the political relationship with countries, different strategies have different implications for the possibilities of political self-determination. For that reason and because democratisation and hence effective democracy promotion may be beneficial for human development, international peace and national security, strategies that reflect informed appraisal would be an improvement on a defective status quo. The challenges include: more systematic data gathering; innovative ways of comparing the various democracy promotion options; and institutional changes that connect the research findings to the high politics of policy-making.     

Understanding Democracy as a Prerequisite for Spreading Democracy

The cultural underpinnings of American democracy are discussed with emphasis on ideas made famous in Max Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In particular there is emphasis on the way America built upon the British cultural tradition so that the American working class would not be dependent upon bread and circuses offered by a political elite, a tradition in Europe dating back to the Roman Empire. Instead cultural emphasis on moral integrity and the self-respect of the American working class, the underpinnings of moralistic individualism as a key component of democratic culture in America but not necessarily in many other parts of the world, is emphasized. These ideas are elaborated with discussion of a certain decay of these values in present-day America, and the problems the American government has had in conveying the importance of these values to other nations seeking to democratize partly under our influence.

Engineering Democracy

This paper presents a critical assessment of current initiatives to deepen democracy and seeks to examine why they often fail. By analysing their various, and conflicting, conceptions of participation and associational life, it argues that many of the difficulties they encounter can be attributed to a usually unexamined set of organisational assumptions. These assumptions are then inspected in order to analyse the breakdown of communication that can occur between incumbent social engineers trying to institutionalize more democracy, and those more critical and grassroots initiatives which emanate from the periphery of power. With this distinction in view, a series of recurrent problems around the institutionalization of democratic processes are investigated. Finally, the paper explores the implications of the distinction for how we can aid and deepen democracy more effectively.     

Enacting Democracy

We do not need more 'models of democracy', but we do need a fresh view of democratic theory to take full advantage of deliberative, ecological, cosmopolitan and other innovations of recent years. Approaches such as these can be understood in terms of the devices they deploy – deliberative forums and cross-border referendums, for example, as well as more familiar elections and legislatures. Devices enact democratic principles; indeed, it is argued that principles gain their meaning and force through enactment. Devices can also be reordered in different ways; democrats can construct sequences which enact democracy in particular, desired ways. Pursuing this argument involves adopting a reflexive and procedural perspective, which puts a premium on democracy as sensitive to context, open-ended, productive and adaptable.     

再论以党内民主推进社会民主——关于党内民主的几个问题

以党内民主推进社会民主,应看作是中国进行渐进性政治体制改革的合理路径选择,是符合中国实际情况,代价最小收益最大,最能获得各方面认同而形成最大共识的改革方案。但如何发展党内民主,目前仍有不少问题,如党内民主的可能性问题,党内民主建设的顺序问题,对民主集中制的理解问题,如何有效保障党员的民主权利问题,我们都需要进行认真地讨论,其中一些错误的观念也需要澄清。     

协商民主:社会主义民主的重要实现形式

民主的本质在于人民当家作主。选举民主顺利地实现了人民对政府更替的控制,有利于实现人民当家作主,但选举并不等于民主,选举民主也有其内在的局限。协商民主在承认和反思选举民主的基础上应运而生,它有助于使民主更加完美,也是我国实现社会主义民主的重要途径。