Search results for " Democracy."

(Re)creating “society in silico” : surveillance capitalism, simulations and subjectivity in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal

2021

This article provides a different angle to understand the Cambridge Analytica (CA) data scandal. It focuses on the role of models and simulations in the big data campaigning tools CA allegedly used, and their epistemological and ontological potential to produce and reproduce voters' digital doubles that would first colonise and eventually replace the analogue selves they were related to. By integrating and revising Zuboff's surveillance capitalism framework with Debord's classic theory of the Spectacle, the article argues that the dystopian simulations played as real life experiments by surveillance capitalist firms such as CA have the ultimate goal of replacing analogue humanity with digit…

Mapping Local Democracy in Romania

2016

In East European settings, during transition, local democracy experienced great difficulties in turning from a theoretical model into a functional mechanism. As basis for citizens' political involvement, local democracy can be mapped in various ways. The authors intend to draw a map of local democracy in Romania by focusing on the function and scope of local government (second tier government), the relationship between local and central government, and the outcomes of the recent reform process. The authors intend to evaluate the quality of local democracy by the interactions between elected councilors and citizens. How elected councilors imagine their functions and responsibilities and how …

Philosophical and Youth-Studies Perspectives on the Participation Imperative

2020

In this article we analyse the concept of participation. The analysis is informed by both quantitative and qualitative youth studies conducted in Finland. To analyse different aspects of participation special emphasis is placed on the migrant young seeking asylum. Young can be seen as sometimes engaged and disengaged from the existing forms of participating. The results of the youth studies also show that there seems to be a gap between representative democracy and the peer-group-based forms of participation of the young. To analyse in detail how this gap can be understood, the theory of recognition developed by Axel Honneth is used to pinpoint different arenas of participation. Honneth’s l…

Political Discussion in Modern Democracies

2010

1. Introduction: Political Discussion in Modern Democracies from a Comparative Perspective Michael R. Wolf and Ken'ichi Ikeda Part 1: Deliberation and Discussion as the Object of Analysis 2. Dissecting Deliberative Democracy: A Review of Theoretical Concepts and Empirical Findings Andre Bachtiger and Seraina Pedrini 3. The Equality Paradox of Deliberative Democracy: Evidence from a National Deliberative Poll Kasper Moller Hansen 4. What Political Discussion Means and How Do the French and (French-Speaking) Belgians Deal with It? Sophie Duchesne and Florence Haegel 5. Participatory Budgeting, Discussion Networks and Political Information in Two Brazilian Cities Lucio R. Renno and Barry Ames …

The Secondary Reality of the Media

2018

In this chapter, the author explores the relationship between Bourdieu’s idea on communication and his political philosophy. Bourdieu’s approach to communications was dominated by a paradox: on the one hand, he held communication to be a key social activity; on the other hand, he reach as a scientist for a level of existence where reality is not so much communicated as it is imposed on us. The author focuses on two central questions: Bourdieu’s analysis of the social activities as sign activity and his analysis of political representation and its links to civil society on the one hand and the critique of representative democracy on the other hand.

Vācijas pašaizsargājošās demokrātijas modeļa piemērošanas iespējas Latvijā

2017

Maģistra darbs “Vācijas pašaizsargājošās demokrātijas modeļa piemērošanas iespējas Latvijā” ir izstrādāts ar mērķi analizēt demokrātijas aizsardzības veidus un apdraudējuma pakāpi, kā arī sabiedrības attieksmi pret demokrātijas pašaizsargāšanās modeli Latvijā. Pētījuma iecere saistāma apstāklī, ka demokrātiskās iekārtas stiprināšana un nodrošināšana pret iespējamu apdraudējumu ir ar pieaugošu aktualitāti Latvijas politiskajā procesā un sabiedriskajā domā. Pētījumā analizēts pašaizsargājošās demokrātijas teorētiskais modelis, tā ieviešana un attīstība Vācijā, kā arī analizēti demokrātijas aizsardzības veidi Latvijas Republikas likumdošanā un politiskajā procesā, tos aplūkojot kontekstā ar ie…

Defending democracy against technocracy and populism : deliberative democracy's strengths and challenges

2020

The Regulatory State vs. the Networked Polity: confronting narratives of change

2014

The aim of the article is to summarize and reassess the innovations brought about by governance theory. It is argued that the notion of governance is a conceptual device that could help rationalise and articulate the changes undertaken by liberal democracies since the late 1970s. The article suggests the need to distinguish between two distinct research programmes composing governance studies, which are influenced by alternative epistemic traditions—political economy and economic sociology. Rationalizations of change influenced by political economy support the idea that the outcome of recent political change is a market-oriented “Regulatory State”, while those influence by economic sociolog…

Una nueva forma de hacer política: dar la voz a la militancia ¿realidad o mera apariencia?

2020

Political parties have been accused of being controlled by an elite or caste that has looked more for their own interests than for general interests. A new way of doing politics and new parties has appeared whose stated objective has been to return the voice to the militancy, assuming that it had been kidnapped by the inbreeding elites of the parties. This paper analyses whether the parties, whose power has traditionally been built from top to bottom, have assumed this change that would mean that power flows from the bottom up or has simply taken a cosmetic operation that apparently responds to this new way of doing policy, although the power is still in the hands of a minority. Summary:1. …

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Quality of Democracy: The Citizens' Perspective

2018

In recent years, several measurements of the quality of democracy have been developed (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy Project). These objective measurements focus on institutional and procedural characteristics of democracy. This article starts from the premise that in order to fully understand the quality of democracy such objective measurements have to be complemented by subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens. The aim of the article is to conceptualize and measure the subjective quality of democracy. First, a conceptualization of the subjective quality of democracy is developed consisting of citizens’ support for three normative models of democracy …