Search results for "technocracy"

Democratic Meta-Deliberation: Towards Reflective Institutional Design

2014

Theories of deliberative democracy are popular for their promise that in a deliberative polity, democracy can realise both participatory politics and rational policies. However, they are also confronted with the allegation that by qualifying essentially non-democratic practices as deliberative, they inadvertently (or not) become accomplices in the trend towards post-democratic governance. A central example of such a development is the rise of non-majoritarian bodies to which governments delegate decision making, thereby de-politicising conflicts and turning democratic discourses into technocratic ones. This article adopts a systemic perspective on deliberative democracy, asking whether non-…

Ecological Justice in the Anthropocene: A Proposal

2019

The power created by technoscience during the 20th century has turned human beings into global ecological agents. In the face of this challenge, unique in the history of humankind, there are three answers that have been proposed: to accelerate the process of human control over nature (technocratic paradigm); to revert the present situation to a previous stage in which nature recovers its independence from human beings (decrecentism); and to maintain the current system with some measures to solve the side effects (ecocapitalism). The technocratic paradigm does not recognize the value and limits of nature. Decrecentism ignores the duty of using technology to provide more dignified, decent lif…

Education, practice and professionalism: a comparative history of the development of urban and regional planning in Italy and Australia

2014

This paper outlines the historical relationship between planning legislation, planning practice and planning education in Italy and Australia by identifying the positive and negative roles of institutional influences and the emergence of professional planning communities. The key findings revolve around the gap between plan preparation and plan implementation, and the role of institutions and professional communities in resisting political interference and maintaining a technocratic imperative within planning systems. While the exertion of professional power can be seen to achieve positive planning and development outcomes, it is often at the expense of the democratic traditions that have c…

The Legitimacy Crisis: An Introduction

2020

This section examines how the crisis of democratic legitimacy shapes the prospects for further integration. All the authors find evidence for ‘muddling through’ by the EU in response to its legitimacy crisis. Raube and Costa Reis show how the Commission and European Parliament took incremental steps of starting infringement proceedings against Hungary and Poland in response to breaches in the rule of law by elected populist governments, yet partisanship undermined the EU’s response. Holst and Molander discuss the democratic pitfalls of technocratic decision-making in response to crisis and detail the kinds of reforms needed to enhance accountability and citizen nonexpert participation in po…

Multilevel Governance and Participation: Interpreting Democracy in EU-programmes

2014

This article offers an ethnographically oriented, interpretive approach for the research into the democratic qualities of multilevel governance (MLG). The complex and networked MLG arrangements, such as the European Union's (EU) participatory policy practices, are changing the traditional roles of public administration and politics in ways we cannot yet fully foresee. Especially, the impact on democracy is subject to debate. With two case studies, this article seeks to shift the focus of the discussion on the democratic possibilities of MLG from theoretical analysis to empirical research into local and mundane experiences concerning EU policy implementation. The cases studied are the rural …

Crises and the EU’s Response: Increasing the Democratic Deficit?

2020

Since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty and the end of the permissive consensus, the European Union (EU) has—with varying intensity and emphases—been criticized for its democratic deficits. Whereas previous crises often ended up in further integration and strengthening institutions with popular anchoring (notably the European Parliament), this time many commentators are in doubt as crises pile up and common solutions seem hard to find. The EU’s problem is that the technocratic, non-majoritarian bodies dominate policymaking and, on top of that, are not anchored in other sources of legitimacy than its ability to deliver desirable outcomes. In other words, the crises highlight the fact tha…

Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces: Communication as Practice and Resource

2018

In this chapter, the author offers an analysis of European public spaces and follows with a discussion of the transformations in the European Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004. For the first time, the European Commission openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions. It was involved in the construction of a new communication strategy that would fill the gap between supranational segmented publics and general national publics. This risky political move involved the redefinition of the status of political communication, the reinforcement of the communication aspect in all of the Commission’s activities, the recruitment of new …

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

2020

The Selection and Deselection of Technocratic Ministers in Democratic Spain

2017

This chapter analyses the presence of non-political ministers in the Spanish cabinet in the democratic period since 1977, where one out of five ministers did not belong to the ruling party at the time of her appointment and one out of three can be considered as a non-political minister. By observing the selection and deselection of these individuals, it shows the cabinet dynamic behind the ministerial appointments and the differences between the more political type of ministers and those coming from outside political pathways. Despite some outstanding exceptions, non-political ministers are often recruited from outside the parliament and have fewer chances to develop a relevant ministerial …

Los límites de la tecnocracia: la modernización autoritaria de la asistencia psiquiátrica en la España del segundo franquismo

2019

orcid.org/0000-0001-6823-563X. Instituto Interuniversitario López Piñero de Estudios Históricos y Sociales, Universitat de València. enric.novella@uv.es