This book explores key contemporary issues of democracy in our globalized and highly technologized world. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, with contributions including the fields of philosophy, political science, media studies, linguistics, and aesthetics, it reflects on the characteristics of the democratic state and democratic social practices.The book features contributions on topics such as the status of political parties, the separation of powers and the rule of law, bureaucracy and meritocracy, equality, forms of democratic participation and governance, comparisons between historical and contemporary democratic practices, individual rights, propaganda, political engagement, and consent. Further, it discusses how global information flows and new technologies affect democratic processes, including topics such as cyber-activism and open-source software as a means of empowerment to ethnocentric and class-centric technological design, globalization and media neutrality, and the mechanization of public administration. Overall, the book demonstrates how historical, philosophical, technical, and institutional issues relate to contemporary democracy. It will appeal to political theorists, social scientists and everybody interested in contemporary democracy.
Author(s): Juan José Gómez Gutiérrez, José Abdelnour-Nocera, Esteban Anchústegui Igartua
Series: Contributions to Political Science
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 246
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Contents
Does the Constitutional-Pluralist Regime Have a Future?
1 Introduction
2 The “Technocratic Dream” Versus Politics
3 “Political Resistance”
4 On Equality and Inequality
5 On Freedom, Individuality and Unity
6 The “Opulence Society”
7 Freedom, Equality, Welfare
References
A Commitment to the Principles of Judicial Ethics Against the Danger of Judicial Politicization to the Democracies in the European Union
1 Introduction to Democracy and the Rule of Law
2 Law’s Empire as Principle
3 The Separation of Powers as Principle
4 The Fight Against the Politicization of the Judicial Power: A Reason in Favor of Judicial Ethical Codes
5 The European Union as a European Rule of Law
6 Some Final Conclusions
References
Democracy of People: Beyond the Citizen and the Individual
1 Introduction
2 Democratic State and Citizenship
3 The Democratic State and the Individual
4 Democracy of People
References
On Contemporary Democratism: The Twilight of Political Virtue and Its Paradoxes
1 Some Historical Considerations
2 The Break-Up of the Common Good and the Emergence of Modern Individualism
3 Liberal Virtue and Republican Virtue: Two Problematic Notions
4 The Impossibility of Virtue in Post-modern Democratism
References
Democratic Representation and the Nature of Political Parties
1 Introduction
2 Historical Antecedents
3 The Electoral Unit and Political Equality
4 Regarding Political Representation
5 Political Representatives and the Party System
Bibliography
Democracy, Representation and Critical Aesthetics
1 Introduction
2 Rationalisation and Democratic Legitimacy
3 Conditions of Historical Reason
4 Dialectics of Recognition
5 Dialectics of Representation
6 Universality and Legitimacy
7 Political Passion and Metaphorical Legitimacy
8 Conclusion
References
Communism or Freedom: Right-Wing Populist Discourse and the False Disjunctives
1 Introduction
2 Left-Wing Versus Right-Wing Populist Discourses
3 The False Disjunctives
4 Jair Bolsonaro
5 Isabel Díaz Ayuso
6 Keiko Fijimori
7 Conclusions
Appendix
References
Meritocracy: The Keyword of Market Populism
1 Populism: An Introduction
2 Market Populism
3 Meritocracy
4 Meritocratic Populism
References
Controlling the Desire for Control: Machines, Institutions and Democracy
1 The Delegation of Control
2 The Control of Delegation
3 Delegation as Control
Bibliography
Random Recruitment, Civil Society, and the State
1 Introduction: The Social Value of the Lottery Process
2 The Definitions of Civil Society
3 The Structure and the Role of the State
4 Setting Up a Framework for Analysis
5 Case Study One: The Seditious Libel Controversy
6 Case Study Two: The Custodians of the Bags
7 Case Study Three: Ancient Athenian Democracy
8 Conclusion
References
Visions and Forms of Democratic Participation in Italian Universities after 1968
1 A Symbolic Date
2 Generations in Conflict
3 Rousseau vs Montesquieu
References
The Ethics and Politics of Design for the Common Good: A Lesson from Alibaug
1 Introduction
2 Socio-Technical Design, Participatory Design and Democracy
3 Human-Work Interaction Design
4 Technological Frames and Its Political Dimension
5 The Alibaug Fishery Case Study
6 HWID Analysis of Alibaug Case Study
7 TF Analysis of Alibaug Case Study
8 Conclusions
References
Democratic Practice in the Era of Platforms: From Clicktivism to Open-Source Intelligence
1 Digital Technopolitics as a Democratic Practice
2 Platforms
3 Open Data
4 Open-Source Intelligence
5 The Challenges for Democratic Practices
References
A Media Citizenry and Communication Policies: The Challenges of Information Democracy
1 Introduction
2 A Map of the Virtual Agora
3 Thesis 1: The Digital Revolution Is Contributing to Construct an Oppositional Public Sphere
4 Thesis 2: The Main Problem of the Information Society Is the Struggle for the Code
5 Thesis 3: Smart or Digital Cities Represent a New Type of City Planning
6 Thesis 4: Digital Culture Has Given Rise to the Need for a New Participatory Democracy
7 Thesis 5: The Challenge of Participatory Democracy Is Community Building
8 Thesis 6: Participatory Democracy Calls for Communication Policies
9 Thesis 7: Participatory Democracy Should Not Assume That Small Is Beautiful
10 Thesis 8.:Unguaranteed Access to Digital Democracy
11 Thesis 9: The Transformation of Political Culture Calls for Disputing the Algorithm
12 Thesis 10: The Digital Revolution Validates the Theses on Feuerbach
13 Conclusions
References
