Order and democracy: Trade‐offs between social control and civil liberties at Lake Parc Place

Abstract

This article applies the classic theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Stuart Mill to the issue of maintaining order, using Chicago's Lake Parc Place public housing project as a case study. I find that public housing residents living in frightening circumstances may be willing to give up some liberties to gain stability and order, but that very order can in turn provide them with the civil space necessary for them to become active participants in their own governance. While Lake Parc Place residents willingly submitted to strict rules to secure a sense of safety, as Hobbes would suggest, once order was established they chose Mill's path, becoming involved in managing their own community. Thus, policies restricting liberties to increase safety have the potential to increase civic participation.     

Class formation and democracy: The decline of working‐class power in Britain

The debate about the future of working‐class power in Britain raises for class theory an important, if neglected, question about how internal politics affects class formation and power. To provide an answer, this article develops an analysis that conceptualises class representation as a particular power relation in a pluralist system, and assesses recent changes in the internal power relations in the labour movement. The conclusion that the fragmentation and disorientation of traditional practices of internal democracy has weakened the movement's collective strength demonstrates that internal politics does matter to class formation.     

The rationalization of democracy: Liberal,elitist, and corporatist conceptions of democracy∗

Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

On Bureaucratic Discourse: A Radical Feminist Analysis of the Role of Public Administration in Late Capitalism

Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . . . or the End of the Social and Other Essays, trans, by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 123 pp.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 159 pp.

Omar Cabezas, Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista, translated by Kathleen Weaver with a foreword by Carlos Fuentes and an afterword by Walter LaFeber (Crown Publishers, Inc.: New York, 1985), pp. 233.     

Early consolidation and performance crisis: The Majoritarian‐consensus democracy debate in hungary

The current period of early consolidation has been a turning point in East‐Central European democratisation. It has provoked, however, a majoritarian‐consensual debate, first of all in Hungary, as is discussed in this article in a shorter theoretical and in a longer ‘empirical’ part. The introduction deals with the conceptual framework, followed by its application as a Hungarian case study in an East‐Central European context. It is argued that Hungary may be the model for the competing conceptions of democracy in political practice, since (i) an extended version of consensual democracy was established in the early 1990s but opposed by the first government; (ii) there was an attempt by the second government to complete consensual democracy but it failed; (Hi) an abrupt turn was made towards majoritarian democracy in the late 1990s by the third government. In Hungary there has been a long debate on majoritarian versus consensual democracy, involving politicians, experts and the general public. Finally, some broad conclusions can be drawn about the troubles of the young democracies.     

The Relevance of Hannah Arendt’s Reflections on Evil: Globalization and Rightlessness

The centenary of Hannah Arendt’s birth in 2006 has provided the catalyst for a body of literature grappling with the legacy of her thought, especially the question of its enduring political relevance. Yet this literature largely excludes from consideration a significant aspect of Arendt’s legacy, namely, her account of evil and its devastating political reality. This article contends that the neglect of Arendt’s understanding of the dynamic reality of evil unnecessarily delimits the opportunities her legacy affords to diagnose forms of evil today. In particular, I propose that Arendt’s notion of evil and her unique insight into its dynamic reality remain very much pertinent in light of a globalizing world where the conditions of extreme deprivation and exclusion have become thoroughly bound up with the structurally unequal conditions of the global political economy. The persistent global poverty knowingly reproduced in and through policies and practices of economic globalization effectively renders vast numbers of people superfluous and “rightless,” resulting in a distinctive form of political evil. I conclude that more attention should be paid to the deeper pertinence of Arendt’s concepts of evil, human superfluousness, and rightlessness for contemporary political life.     

Schools of democracy? Disentangling the relationship between civic participation and political action in 17 European countries

Since Tocqueville's seminal writings, voluntary associations have been proclaimed to be schools of democracy. According to this claim, which regained popularity during the 1990s, involvement in voluntary associations stimulates political action. By participating in these associations, members are socialised to become politically active. Supposedly, having face‐to‐face contact with other members induces civic mindedness – the propensity to think and care more about the wider world. Participating in shared activities, organising meetings and events, and cooperating with other members are claimed to induce civic skills and political efficacy. Over the years, many authors have elaborated on these ideas. This article offers a systematic examination of the neo‐Tocquevillian approach, putting the theoretical ideas to an empirical test. It offers a critical overview of the literature on the beneficial role of voluntary associations and dissects it into five testable claims. Subsequently, these claims are tested by cross‐sectional, hierarchical analyses of 17 European countries. The authors conclude that the neo‐Tocquevillian theory faces serious lack of empirical support. In line with the expectations, they find a strong, positive correlation between associational involvement and political action. Moreover, this correlation is positive in all countries under study. However, more informative hypotheses on this correlation are falsified. First, the correlation is stronger for interest and activist organisations than for leisure organisations. Second, passive (or ‘checkbook’) members show much higher levels of political action than non‐involved, whereas the additional effects of active participation are marginal. Third, the correlation between associational involvement and political action is not explained by civic skills and civic mindedness. In sum, the authors find no evidence for a direct, causal relation between associational involvement and political action. The socialisation mechanism plays a marginal role at best. Rather, this article's findings imply that selection effects account for a large part of the correlation between associational involvement and political action. The conclusion reached therefore is that voluntary associations are not the schools of democracy they are proclaimed to be, but rather pools of democracy.     

Anything goes: Lefort,ideology and the “adventure of democracy’

This article initially introduces and outlines the main aspects of Claude Lefort's theorising of democracy as a radically antagonistic and contingent political formation. This is followed by a critique of those theories, primarily through the application of Slavoj Zizek ‘s work on the politics of community as it applies to the emergence, in Australian politics, of Pauline Hanson and her ^‘One Nation’ party and policies.     

A tale of three cities: Washington‐Paris‐Bonn and triangular asymmetry

This article has two main aims: to identify the sources of Presidential power under the long‐serving Urho Kekkonen and to delineate his important, if at times strictly unconstitutional, role in the domestic policy process. Stress is given to the prestige accruing from his successful handling of Fenno‐Soviet relations and how, when traditional cleavages have threatened the central task of economic management, Kekkonen has used his enhanced authority to mediate. At such times of consensualism in crisis, the Finnish system has been both President‐dominant and President‐reliant.     

Liberalism and Religion: Amplifiers of War between Democratic and Non-Democratic States?

This study tests the association between liberalism and religion on militarized disputes in the politically and religiously similar and mixed state dyads. The analysis (1980–2001) integrates the Correlates of War and World Religion Datasets. The findings suggest that while religious makeup of state dyads does not vitiate the impact of democracy, religious similarity amplifies the impact of liberalism. The results also suggest that Christian–Muslim dyads, especially Christian–Sunni and Christian–Muslim other than Shia and Sunni dyads, are more likely to engage in militarized disputes, and regime differences increase the chances of conflict in the joint Muslim dyads.     

Conditions of success and political problems of a ‘media‐mediated personality‐party’: The case of Forza Italia

The emergence of Forza Italia should not be exclusively reduced to specific Italian conditions. This article attempts to explain the development and establishment of Forza Italia as part of a general change of politics in a modern, highly media‐oriented western society. The type of party represented by Forza Italia can be defined as a ‘media‐mediated personality‐party’. With regard to its structural organisation, it presents itself as an answer to tendencies of differentiation, individualisation and consumerisation in modern society. The leading organisational principle is not inner‐party democracy but inter‐party capability to compete. This model of organisation is seen as functional for a marketing‐based, media‐orientated political strategy. It represents a challenge for the type of democratic, mass‐membership party in western Europe. The 1996 elections in Italy, however, have also pointed out the limits of the model of the media‐mediated personality‐party.     

What is democratic reliability? Epistemic theories of democracy and the problem of reasonable disagreement

It has proven difficult to reconcile epistemic justifications of political authority, especially epistemic theories of democracy, with a basic liberal commitment to respecting reasonable value pluralism. The latter seems to imply that there can be no universally acceptable substantive outcome standard to evaluate the epistemic reliability of different political procedures. This paper shows that this objection rests on an implausible interpretation of political competence. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, that epistemic theories of political authority are in fact compatible with a liberal commitment to respecting reasonable pluralism; but second, that if we take reasonable pluralism seriously, the standard of competence we should use is a pragmatic one. Good political decision procedures reliably fix practical problems of social coordination and adapt to new demands and developments; we need not demand that their decisions are all-things-considered just or optimal. This pragmatic account of political competence is compatible with reasonable pluralism, since on this basis we can comparatively evaluate political procedures without controversially asserting a single standard of ‘truth’ in politics. Hence, it is possible to give an epistemic account of political authority that works within a liberal theory of political justification.     

Egalitarianism and the democratic deconsolidation: Is democracy compatible with socialism?

Public Choice - The unprecedented reduction in popular support for democracy represents a risk of democratic deconsolidation. The new situation echoes old debates on the compatibility of democracy...