People,Territory, and Legitimacy in Democratic States

Who are the people who should govern themselves in a democracy? This is the famous boundary problem to which this article offers a new approach. Most democrats, even nationalists and cosmopolitans, delimit the demos by relying on territorial jurisdictions. However, territory is not explicit in their arguments. This article urges democrats to recognize territory's normative importance rather than overlook the role it already plays in their theories. Acknowledging territory is a risky, yet promising, strategy. Risky, because it may lead to a vicious circle: one needs well‐defined territorial borders to delimit the people, yet one needs a well‐defined people to establish legitimate territorial borders. Promising, because it forces democrats to scrutinize implicit assumptions and find new resources for dealing with the vicious circle. The article describes four possible tacks by which theorists could navigate the waters of people, territory, and legitimacy in democracies: asserting, circumventing, solving, and dissolving the circle.     

Democratic Legitimacy, Public Justification and Environmental Direct Action

This article addresses the question of whether environmental direct action against policies or institutions that are recognised as democratically legitimate can be justified. Arguments that seek to tie environmental outcomes to stipulated requirements of either the democratic process or distributive theories of justice are found wanting in this regard. However, one of the central justifications for the losers in a democratic settlement accepting defeat is policy reversibility. The non-reversible element in significant areas of environmental change entails that environmentalists are forced to play a 'one-shot' political strategy. This fact lends support to the justification of environmental direct action in such cases, although it may also apply beyond the sphere of environmental politics.     

Democratic Performance of Parties and Legitimacy in Europe

This article analyses the development of legitimacy across 20 European democracies (1990–2010). The claim is that the democratic performance of parties affects levels of legitimacy. A conceptual and empirical discussion is presented to establish this relationship. Democratic performance is characterised by trusting parties to be responsive to the electorate and responsible in government. Legitimacy is defined as a composite measure representing satisfaction with parties, compliance with the rule of law as well as voter turnout and willingness to protest. The responsiveness of parties appears less representative on public concerns and governmental responsibility appears closer to party interests than to the general interest. Hence, a ‘democratic deficit’ seems to have emerged across Europe, manifested by more electoral volatility, new parties and alternation in government and lower survival rates of governments. This negatively affects trust in parties, parliament and government efficacy. Hence, party behaviour has not strongly contributed to political legitimacy since the 1990s.     

The Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union Committee System

This article investigates both the operation and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union committee system. This vast but rarely studied system is an important site of European governance, exercising an increasing amount of policy responsibility while also providing the essential arenas necessary for supranational problem solving. Despite their contribution to the success of the “European project,” committees are increasingly coming under attack, notably for their lack of democratic credentials. The article employs original empirical research based on interviews and internal documentary evidence to answer a timely question: does the EU committee system strike an appropriate balance between the values of system effectiveness and democratic legitimacy? Following the application of a set of democratic principles to EU committees, the article finds that a poor balance has been struck between effectiveness and democracy. The article concludes with some operational suggestions for improving this balance in the short‐to‐medium term.     

Democratic Norms and Means of Communication: Public Sphere,Fourth Estate,Freedom of Communication

Abstract

This article assesses some major democratic norms commonly invoked in relation to means of communication or ‘media’, especially in the context of ‘media policy’. The paper argues that freedom of communication provides the most appropriate normative discourse in which to re-articulate the case for the European policy practice of ‘regulated pluralism’ outside Europe. Recent developments in Australia provide a brief case-study of this thesis.     

Democratic Dilemmas of Multilevel Governance: Legitimacy,Representation and Accountability in the European Union

How is sovereignty managed in the EU? This article investigates the relationship between sovereignty and European integration through the prism of national opt-outs from EU treaties, addressing an apparent contradiction in contemporary European governance: the contrasting processes of integration and differentiation. On the one hand, European integration is increasing as states transfer sovereign competencies to the EU. On the other hand, we see a multitude of differentiation processes through which member states choose to disengage from the EU polity by negotiating exemptions or derogations. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's political sociology, the article argues that to understand how sovereignty is interpreted and exercised in the EU, it is necessary to focus not only on the constitutive and regulative dimensions of sovereignty, but equally on the practice dimension. This entails an exploration of how sovereignty claims are managed in a particular social setting. Rather than seeing opt-outs as classic instruments of international law, accentuating the member states' unchanged sovereignty, the article argues that the management of the British and Danish opt-outs quite paradoxically expresses the strength of the doxa of European integration, i.e. the notion of ‘an ever closer union’.     

Balancing Procedures and Outcomes Within Democratic Theory: Core Values and Judicial Review

Democratic theorists often distinguish between two views of democratic procedures. 'Outcomes theorists' emphasize the instrumental nature of these procedures and argue that they are only valuable because they tend to produce good outcomes. In contrast, 'proceduralists' emphasize the intrinsic value of democratic procedures, for instance, on the grounds that they are fair. In this paper. I argue that we should reject pure versions of these two theories in favor of an understanding of the democratic ideal that recognizes a commitment to both intrinsically valuable democratic procedures and democratic outcomes. In instances in which there is a conflict between these two commitments, I suggest they must be balanced. This balancing approach offers a justification of judicial review on the grounds that it potentially limits outcomes that undermine democracy. But judicial review is not justifiable in any instance in which a bad democratic outcome results from democratic procedures. When the loss that would result from overturning a democratic procedure is greater than the gain to democracy that would result from ensuring against an undemocratic outcome; judicial review is not justifiable. Loss or gain to democracy is defined by the negative or positive impact of each action on the core democratic values of equality and autonomy, aspects of the democratic ideal. Even when judicial review is justified, the fact that it overturns intrinsically valuable procedures suggests that such review is never ideal from the standpoint of democracy.     

Rethinking Democratic Procedures: Democracy and Deliberative Experiences in Turkey's LA21 Process

This paper attempts to describe the conditions necessary for the furthering of democracy in Turkey by focusing on a certain conception of democratic legitimacy that goes beyond formal arrangements. It argues that the effective participation of citizens in democratic procedures is necessary for the consolidation of democracy in public life. To defend this argument, the theoretical background developed in deliberative models of democracy is followed. The quality of 'talk', as a constitutive feature of democracy, is explored by following the critical perspectives in deliberative theory that focus on the discursive mechanisms of exclusion and on power relations intrinsic to deliberative procedures. For this purpose, the deliberative processes in a series of 'working group meetings', carried out as a part of the Local Agenda 21 project, are analysed. The democratic capacity of deliberative experiences and public dialogue is analysed by examining the inclusion/exclusion of opposing ideas, different identities and discourse styles during these working groups meetings.     

Deliberation, Legitimacy, and Multilateral Democracy

Is deliberation essential to legitimate democratic governance? Deliberation may have epistemic value, improving the quality of information and arguments. Deliberation may be transformative, shaping beliefs and opinions. Or deliberation may be part of a conception of justice that constrains authority, by requiring that procedures be justified in terms of reasons acceptable to those burdened by authoritative decisions. Although appealing, the epistemic and transformative arguments are limited by the scale and complexity of many problems for which democratic solutions are sought. But the reason–giving argument is persuasive whenever collective decisions allow burdens to be imposed on others.     

Legitimacy,self-determination,and conditional cooperators

ABSTRACT

This article critically examines the account of collective self-determination and state legitimacy developed by Stilz in her book. Central to this account is the idea that for a state to be legitimate it must reflect the shared will of the people over which it governs. I argue that the normative taxonomy Stilz employs to develop this criterion of legitimacy ignores the possibility of conditional cooperators: groups who are alienated from society due to the injustices they experience but are willing to affirm their participation in state institutions if these injustices are rectified. I then demonstrate that since there are no grounds for discounting the dissent of conditional cooperators, their presence significantly increases the threshold for state legitimacy that follows from Stilz’s theory. As a result, Stilz is forced to abandon her claim that basically just states generally enjoy a qualified ‘right to do wrong’.     

Legitimacy,citizenship and state redress

This article explores how state redress programmes work to legitimate the state. The primary thesis concerns how state redress aims to restructure citizenship identity. This restructuring enables civic identification by victims of state wrongdoing which in turn enables greater legitimacy. Consequently, redress constitutes a movement by the state from lesser to greater legitimacy. The article illustrates the legitimating thesis by examining two Canadian responses to state wrongdoing with regard to indigenous peoples, Gathering Strength (1998) and the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat). This context provides material for contrasting the legitimating thesis with a competing approach – redress as ‘therapy’.     

Norms, Interests and Institutional Change

This paper provides a norms-based account of institutional change. It compares two cases of attempted change, one successful and one unsuccessful. The argument advanced is that norm-based change occurs when the norms are congruent with the perceived interests of the actors who have the power to take on the decision. Norms affect the process of institutional change not only by providing legitimacy to some forms of political action, but also by shaping the actors' perception of their interests as well their strategies. It is argued that norms, in that sense, help political actors combine Max Weber's zweckrational (goal-orientated) and wertrational (value-orientated) categories of behaviour. Empirical evidence drawn from the context of the evolving European Union supports this argument.     

American Democratic Practice,France, and Russia: Institutions,Values, and Alternative Democratic Experience

The US emphasis on democratic procedures and property rights profoundly distinguishes the American polity from nearly all consolidated and newly emergent democracies; democracies that place stress on more egalitarian notions of social justice. Interrelating institutional arrangements and democratic values through an application of George Tsebelis's veto players theory and Isaiah Berlin's notions of positive and negative liberty, we juxtapose the American and French democracies as we assess Russia's post-Soviet democratic consolidation. We focus on the policy-making proclivities of these three states, and a combined application of the veto players framework and positive-negative liberty dichotomy reveals a US policy bias toward the status quo as contrasted with a French and Russian system bias facilitating more substantial policy change. The 1993–1995 Clinton health-care initiative, the 1997–2002 Jospin-Left program, with attention to the 35-hour workweek and associated policies, and the 2000–2006 Putin policy agenda, with attention to health care and housing measures, serve as national case studies to illuminate our arguments.