Safeguarding the Future of Democracy

Abstract

The tenets of democracy appear to be facing a crisis in modern western societies, as trust in public figures and institutions—including politicians and government—declines and distrust of them increases. This decline is particularly visible in the cynical attitudes and non-voting behaviour of British young people. This paper presents a more contemporary conceptualisation of trust and distrust, from which four segments of young voters and non-voters emerge. A mix of calculative, predictive and identification trust-building strategies are applied to these four segments to reinforce their trust and reduce their distrust, thereby reconnecting them with parliamentary politics. This paper concludes with an agenda for further research.     

Citizenship and Democracy: A Journey to Europe's Past

The relationship between citizenship and democracy is poorly understood, and the two notions are often used synonymously. Governing is obviously the central issue, but whereas citizenship seems to require self-limitation by calling on civic virtues, democracy is actually enlarging citizens' power. The Polish and Dutch Republics from the seventeenth and eighteenth century present an interesting mirror image of how citizenship and democracy relate to each other in political practice.     

文明批判的已往与未来

文明批判是对文明发展的负面效应的深层反思。本文依次考察了社会早期较为朦胧的文明批判;两千多年的一次较深入的文明批判;近代以来一些不成气侯的文明批判;纪元第三千年期间新的文明批判。在批判中,人与自然、人与社会、社会有机体内部达到一种境界——和谐。     

Special Section: The Future of Democracy

Contributions by:
Leif Lewin (Introduction), p.245
Robert Dahl, p.246
Juan Linz, p.252
Arend Lijphart, 265
Alexander George, p.273
Elinor Ostrom, p.280     

Post-Marxism, Democracy and the Future of Radical Politics

This paper takes issue with the suggestion that the work of post-Marxists, largely informed by a 'post-modern' perspective, should be viewed with suspicion by those concerned with advancing a radical democratic agenda. I argue that such a reading fails to penetrate beneath the surface of the post-Marxist engagement with liberal theory, seeing their willingness to concede the necessity for a mediation between 'particular' and 'universal', individual and community as a sign of their happiness to rest within the presuppositions of classical liberal theory. In fact, the opposite is the case: only by treating seriously the question of 'mediation' can left radical demands for greater democratisation, increased equality and autonomy make sense within a modern, industrialised context. By extension, it is exploring the forms and modalities of mediation that left radical demands can become politically relevant.     

Humanitarian Intervention: Past, Present and Future

Bellamy, A. (2006) Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq . London: Polity Press.
Weiss, T. (2007) Humanitarian Intervention . London: Polity Press.
Reed, C. and Ryall, D. (eds) (2007) The Price of Peace: Just Wars in the Twenty-First Century . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seybolt, T. B. (2007) Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success and Failure . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heazle, M. and Islam, I. (eds) (2007) Beyond the Iraq War: The Promises, Pitfalls and Perils of External Interventionism . Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.     

Democracy through Time: Identity Politics and Future Generations

Since the 1980s identities have re-emerged as a powerful factor shaping support for specific public policies, often doing so at the expense of prioritising the interests of future generations. Outside the United States a major causal factor has been the declining ability of many political parties to mobilise support for themselves and their policies. Consequently, considerations derived from the past can be at the expense of future citizens. This article analyses two major policies separated by a century—Prohibition in the US and Brexit. With both, the enacted policies featured limited previous public discussion about their likely consequences. Moreover, in both cases it was a ‘hard’ version that would be enacted, even though some supporters had favoured more moderate policy options. While not all policies driven by support from particular identities harm future generations, some do. This results from politicians in public utterances previously being insufficiently focussed in detail on the policy’s consequences.     

The Past and Future of the New Judicial Federalism

This article argues that the new judicial federalism, the increasedreliance by state judges on state declarations of rights tosecure rights unavailable under the U.S. Constitution, representsnot a return to an earlier federalism but rather something new.Although the basis for a state civil liberties jurisprudencehad long existed, the "discovery’ of state constitutionalguarantees did not occur until the Warren Court pioneered anapproach to civil liberties that state courts could emulate.This "discovery" has led to only intermittent reliance on stateguarantees. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that state judges willreturn to the total deference to federal rulings in civil libertiescases that characterized preceding decades.     

Past and Future Budget Classics: A Research Agenda

This article summarizes the content of four classic articles on budgeting that have appeared in Public Administration Review, outlines some of the major changes in budgeting that have occurred since those authors wrote, and, based on those changes, offers a research agenda for the next set of budget classics.