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This paper studies polarization of attitudes toward immigration in Norway from 2001 to 2019. The paper studies polarization along five dimensions: dispersion, bimodality, consolidation, constraint, and sorting. Empirical analyses were based on two Norwegian longitudinal, cross-sectional surveys. The findings suggested that, first, overall attitudes toward immigration did not become more polarized in terms of dispersion and bimodality. There was, however, a tendency toward increased polarization of attitudes toward Islam and a decreased polarization of attitudes toward refugees. Second, there was an increasing generational gap in attitudes toward immigration, especially with respect to Islam. Third, attitudes toward immigration were more closely linked to attitudes toward other political issues and to party preference. Although these changes should not be overestimated, finding increased tendencies of consolidation, constraint, and sorting in a consensus-based democracy like Norway indicates the wider existence of polarizing trends similar to those in the UK and US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political discourse, it is common to claim that non-majoritarian institutions are legitimate because they are technical and value-free. Even though most analysts disagree, many arguments for non-majoritarian legitimacy rest on claims that work best if institutions are, in fact, value-free. This paper develops a novel standard for non-majoritarian legitimacy. It builds on the rich debate over the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, which has not, so far, been applied systematically to political theory literature on non-majoritarian institutions. This paper suggests that the argument from inductive risk, a strong argument against the value-free ideal, (1) shows why a naive claim to value freedom is a poor general foundation for non-majoritarian legitimacy; (2) provides a device to assess the degree of democratic value inputs required for an institution to be legitimate; which (3) shows the conditions under which a claim to technical legitimacy might still be normatively acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judicial and political power are inextricably linked, but at this point in time that link seems more important, more pervasive, and more fragile than ever before. Courts are now under stress in many, even consolidated, democratic countries, becoming one of the most stimulating topics for understanding European politics. Indeed, bringing Courts back to the centre of political analysis is a privileged perspective for understanding how and why democracies change. By highlighting the characteristics of the complex political context of conflicting actors, institutions and political processes, this special issue of European Politics and Society reveals the different dynamics and patterns of the role of Courts in contemporary European politics. This paper presents the phenomenon of 'Courts under stress' and the related research questions. In addition, it introduces the articles that make up this special issue, which are indicative of the maturation of Courts as a crucial topic in European political science. Indeed, each article emphasizes different aspects of their role, bringing out new perspectives and complementary theoretical approaches and methodologies, thereby advancing comparative studies of judicial behaviour and constitutional jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature that examines cross-national satisfaction with democracy seeks to discover a set of predictors that are associated with evaluations of regime performance. The most common way of examining the determinants of satisfaction with democracy is null hypothesis significance testing. While this approach has merit, this paper argues that the literature, as it stands, can be complemented to gain additional insights. To date, little research has focused on what variables best predict satisfaction. This is important because it helps guide researchers when determining which features to give attention to when devising theories about what causes (changes) in satisfaction. In this paper, I use machine learning algorithms to determine and evaluate the predictive power of variables identified as important in literature. Drawing on the sixth round of the European Social Survey, I find satisfaction with the economy, procedural fairness and responsiveness to be the most important predictors of satisfaction with democracy. These findings justify a stronger focus on the latter two topics in future studies of satisfaction with democracy, which has received little attention in the scholarly literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on options for reforming European governance. White Paper of the European Commission.

This paper offers an ecocritical interpretation of Walt Whitman's renowned work, "Leaves of Grass." The primary objective is to delve into the multifaceted interpretations of this text within the broader context of Whitman's literary corpus. Our research is grounded in the premise that the act of writing is intricately interwoven with the natural world, particularly plant life. Consequently, we aim to scrutinize the various manifestations of plant imagery and symbolism present in Whitman's oeuvre. The argument unfolds across three distinct sections: the first section delves into the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Whitman's thought; the second section investigates the portrayal of nature's principles within "Leaves of Grass"; and finally, the third section critically examines the assumptions and implications of Whitman's poetic approach to nature. Central to our thesis is the assertion that what we term "minimal natures" not only shape poetic construction and life itself but also engage with pertinent political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data sources systematically tracking government activity such as budgets and bill hearings, the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory literature has demonstrated that policy processes in both democracies and nondemocracies feature long periods of stasis interrupted by dramatic changes. However, there is a lack of research that systematically examines China's policy process. In response, this article introduces a new dataset drawn from China State Council Gazettes from 1980 to 2019 to measure policy punctuations and agenda diversity in China. We find that punctuations in China's policy process are more intense than those in democracies. The findings further show that China's policy process features more positive punctuations than negative punctuations. We also find an overall increasing trend of agenda diversity and a pattern of alternation between agenda expansion and concentration across the forty years analyzed in this paper. These findings provide new long-term evidence regarding patterns of policy stability and change in the Chinese context and contribute to our understanding of China's politics of attention and its linkage with information inefficiency and survival politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diversity of features attributed to populism - and, as a result, the variety of critiques leveled at it - are remarkable. It sometimes seems as though people are using the same terms to address very different phenomena. Is there any distinctive meaning to populism? Is populism inherently anti-democratic or, on the contrary, is it the epitome of democratic practice? What should an engagement with populist movements mean for the theory and practice of democracy? This paper seeks to map the discursive ecosystem that populism determines. It canvasses the phenomena often associated with populism, proposes an interrelated set of concerns that is distinctive to populism, suggests how populism intersects with propensities and affinities with which it is often associated, emphasises the role of growing economic inequality, and suggests responses to populist movements that are grounded in a truly democratic constitutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the dominant frameworks for criticizing capitalism and liberal democracy in contemporary political theory is Socialist republicanism, on the one hand, and radical democracy, on other hand. Whereas radical democratic thinkers have for decades criticized liberal democracy for being elitist, hierarchical and outright anti-popular, socialist republicans have for the last 10 years developed critiques of capitalism centred on the neo-republican idea of freedom as non-domination and proposed various arguments for workplace democracy and cooperative forms of ownership. Despite the common ambition of uncovering hierarchical relations of economic, political and social power, and creating new egalitarian and participatory modes of political organization, no systematic comparison of socialist republicanism and radical democracy exists. This paper fills this gap by comparing the different understandings of (a) institutions and (b) political action and (c) their diverging historical and political relations to socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Novak's concept of democratic capitalism in Poland aroused great interest for several reasons. The most important of them consisted in its close relation to the teaching of the Polish Pope John Paul II. The second was its temporal coincidence with the start of a political transformation in Poland, when a model of development consistent with Polish tradition and social expectations was sought. The third was related to its Slavic roots and origin, which gained in importance given a perceived civilizational backwardness of the countries belonging to the former socialist bloc. For Polish Catholic thinkers, the concept of democratic capitalism initially seemed to promise a smooth transition to a market economy, protecting society from the shock of a possible collision with predatory capitalism. But the discussions of Michael Novak's conception which took place in Poland at that time were unfortunately burdened with fears of cultural pluralism and with leaving individuals too much freedom in implementing their own ways of achieving happiness. Polish conservatives, who were in power at that time, did not seem to understand the important need for a dynamic moral and cultural system in a society that was just starting its modernization processes. It is paradoxical, but in these discussions what was most feared was the weakening of religious traditions in Polish society. According to the author, this fear caused distrust of the democratic conception, and especially its moral foundations, which continues to this day. This paper, therefore, also contributes to reflection on to what extent the teachings of John Paul II have been absorbed in Polish conservative circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: For a connected graph G, the restricted edge-connectivity is defined as the minimum cardinality of an edge-cut over all edge-cuts S such that each component of contains at least p vertices. In the present paper we introduce the more general parameter defined as the minimum cardinality of an edge-cut over all edge-cuts S such that one component of contains at least p vertices and another component of contains at least q vertices where p and q are positive integers. Analogously, we define as the minimum cardinality of a vertex-cut over all vertex-cuts such that one component of contains at least p vertices and another component of contains at least q vertices. A connected graph G is -connected (-connected), if () is well-defined. First we give useful equivalences to -connectivity and -connectivity and characterize the classes of graphs which are -connected and -connected. Then we prove which generalizes Whitney''s well-known inequality . Finally, we characterize the class of graphs for which is minimum, i.e. and the class of graphs for which is maximum, i.e. or . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article attempts to understand the intellectual influence of Aristotle on Tocqueville in the elaboration of his “new political science”. Our thesis is that, in order to try to counteract the threats inherent in democracy, Tocqueville integrates some Aristotelian categories, and that this is one of the nuclei of his new political science, and is also the origin of many of its ambiguities. The paper is divided into five parts. In the first we will briefly examine Tocqueville’s dissatisfaction with a certain liberalism that precedes him. In the second, we will dwell on the notion of citizenship elaborated by the French aristocrat, with which he attempts to resolve his concerns. The third part argues that the Tocquevillian notion of citizenship has a close kinship with some aspects of Aristotelian practical philosophy. The fourth section offers some reflections on Tocqueville’s political philosophy, and the fifth closes with some brief conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address the new material challenges that democracy must address in the 21st century and that go far beyond the simple procedural formal rule defined by Bobbio and that had nothing to do with the substantive contents that are dealt with in the framework of a society or political community, especially complex like those of today. This situation maintains two causes that generate it and sequence it. On the one hand, the very stormy scenario with which the capitalist production model and its crises have generated in the population and, on the other hand, the reaction of the population who has felt orphaned of democracy, delivered naked to the market, and whose The feeling of reaction and annoyance has been reflected in various libertarian social movements, but also in the seduction of authoritarianism and the emergence of the extreme right. For the above, we will review a prospective of issues that democracy will have to face and the classic and contemporary positions that have been at the base of this fundamental discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the political topology of "safe spaces" today and the logics of their advocacy by minoritized and oppressed groups. To do so, it draws on Derrida, a relentless thinker of aporetic topology. Safe spaces can be described as immunitary structures built or called upon against real and/or perceived threats, whose modes of defense, however, might well threaten the defeat of their purpose. A certain politics of immunity may turn into an auto-immune mechanism whereby, in Derrida's terms, the defense against the perceived external danger turns upon itself and, as such, attacks itself, thus jeopardizing, in the case in point, the democratic ideal it means to uphold. Derrida's political topology and his thinking about democracy can help us tackle the aporetic structure of the safe space as well as the complications—but also the promises—of such political gestures. Conversely, contemporary demands for safety emanating from stigmatized minorities, whether sexual or racial, can help us read Derrida anew by locating his emphasis on immunity and auto-immunity within the trauma-induced politics of resistance to injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With their integration into the global political world, the historically Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia have begun to augment, sometimes to the point of replacement, their traditional political structures with Westernized political institutions. Despite these formal changes, far less development has been made as a matter of underlying political theory. Though the language of contemporary Buddhist political thought and action is colored with talk of rights, it remains unclear how firmly this new orientation is founded. The consequences of this mixture of Western democratic political forms built upon an underlying foundation of Buddhist political theory can be seen in the developing human rights crisis in Myanmar. On the subject of the Muslim Rohingya, advocates of Burmese democracy, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, have seemingly found common cause with the military junta, with the country's newly-minted democratic institutions proving themselves to be inadequate as a means of sustaining rights protections for the religious minority group. This paper examines the standing of rights-language in Buddhist political thought and how these concepts have thus far proven insufficient as a surrogate to similar conceptions in the liberal tradition as a foundation for political protections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theory of the relationship between policy disasters and political institutions. Policy disasters, defined as avoidable, unintended extreme negative policy outcomes, are important political, and historical events above that receive relatively little attention from political scientists and scholars of public policy. Using the predictions of punctuated equilibrium theory, I argue that systems with higher error accumulation will experience more policy disasters. Systems with more veto players and weaker information flows will experience more policy disasters, but information flows will have a stronger impact than veto players. I test this theory using data on financial crises and natural and technological disasters across 70 countries over 60 years. I find strong evidence that systems with weaker information flows and more veto players tend to have greater policy disaster risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tension between citizenship and democracy is well documented in the literature on citizenship. The paper revisits it through the lens of populism. It engages with the critics and proponents of the phenomenon and it argues that the juxtaposition that they all stage between the people and the citizens does not just intensify the tension between the exclusionary politics of citizenship and democracy's universalising aspirations, but it also threatens to restrict the appeal of citizenship to mainstream liberal theory. The paper concludes by suggesting that the kind of affectivity, which democratic mobilisations draw on, and that one associates with the 'people', is often missing from citizenship practices – and this further undermines the connection between citizenship and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This helps to see why fully identifying the I demos i with the citizenry fails to yield a I demos i properly: in such a framework, there simply is no I demos i ; there is only a I polis i and a citizenry. It should be noted that, while acknowledging conceptualisations of the I polis i in which it cannot be easily dissociated from citizens or the I demos i , I use the word I polis i throughout this paper merely as a convenient terminological opposition to I demos i , indicating state institutions as opposed to the agents in whose collective name they supposedly operate. Due to the conflation of citizenry and I demos i , it has appeared unproblematic to prioritise the I polis i , since if the I demos i is taken to be identical with the citizenry it is taken to be an institution, in which case it is proper to the I polis i . As the concept of the I demos i is one of the primary concerns of this paper, a more precise definition of the I demos i will become clear below, but as a basic point of departure I take I demos i to be analogous to what Claude Lefort calls "indeterminable" (Lefort, 1986, pp. 257-258). To deny that any I demos i is a political artefact is to depoliticise the I demos i as such; in the final instance, to depoliticise the I demos i is to divest it of what renders it a I demos i . [Extracted from the article]

Protecting science from politicization is an ongoing concern in contemporary society. Yet some political influences on science (e.g., setting public funding amounts) are fully legitimate. We need to have a clear account of when a political influence is politicization (an illegitimate political influence) in order to properly detect and address the problem. I argue in this paper that understanding how the space of scientific inquiry is distinctive from democratic politics can be the basis for defining politicization. Similarities between inquiry and democratic politics have long been noted, but there are important differences as well. I describe four norms that are importantly distinct for inquiry when compared with democratic politics, even if they can be seen as roughly similar. Although there are parallels between democratic political norms and norms for scientific inquiry, there are crucial differences as well. Eliding these differences creates politicization of inquiry. Even as we understand scientific inquiry as pursued within society and responsible to society, we pursue it in a distinctive space, guided by distinctive norms and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been a subject of debate among scholars and political analysis on whether election governance is a prerequisite for ensuring successful decentralization. This is not unconnected with the general notion that the extent of decentralization in any political set-up is solely dependent on the desire of higher levels of government to share its powers with the lower tiers of government. Therefore, this paper examines the roles of electoral governance in the enhancement of successful decentralization. The main thrust of the paper is to determine the implications of electoral process on decentralization. Descriptive survey was adopted for the purpose of data collection. Purposive sampling was used to sample 280 respondents out of a total population of 1,282. Out of a total of 280 questionnaire administered to the staff of Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Abuja. 264 were completed and retuned accordingly. The statistical tool used of testing the validity of hypotheses is chi-square analysis. The research findings revealed that election governance has great role to play in the enchantment of successful decentralization. This is not unconnected with the fact that pluralistic politics during elections and representative government bequeath more influence to citizens, or their representatives in the formulation and implementation of policies. Also, it was discovered that the decisions made with greater participation through favourble electoral governance will be better informed and more relevant to diverse interests in society than those made only by national political authorities. Above all, the selection of representatives from local electoral jurisdictions allows citizens to know better their political representatives and allows elected officials to know better the needs and desires of their constituents. The study therefore recommended that electoral governance should give room for popular participation in grassroots democracy thorough political education and sensitization in order to guarantee successful decentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a theoretical paper in the field of democratic theory. It reviews the discussions on one of the elements proposed to measure the quality of democracies: government responsiveness to citizens' preferences. It analyses theoretical discussions on democracy, quality of democracy and in particular the debate on whether responsiveness is useful to measure quality, what challenges it implies and what are its conceptual and empirical limits. It concludes with a research agenda on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, freedom functions as a foundational value for his entire political philosophy. Parallel to this emphasis is his deep and abiding condemnation of "slavery", at least the slavery that he claims marked the social existence of his European contemporaries living under unrepresentative monarchical systems. However, the striking aspect of Rousseau's work is his virtually complete silence concerning the institution of chattel slavery of his day. Despite his ubiquitous condemnation of the "slavery" of his "civilized" contemporaries, Rousseau wrote next to nothing about the actual enslavement of millions of people who pervaded the social landscape of the European–African–American triangle in the 18th century. In this paper, I trace out the various passages in Rousseau that could be seen as touching on the subject of contemporary slavery practices and show how very scant they were. I also discuss his views on the relation between climate, character, and persons' fitness for democratic forms of government (and hence freedom). I combine these points to draw particular lessons about the dangers of neglect and exclusion inherent in Rousseau's views of democratic freedom, suggesting how similar dangers lurk for contemporary visions of democracy inspired by his views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a global tendency towards the growth of judicial control over the last decades. Have we transited from a rule of law to a rule of rights? The paper offers a brief description of the scope of the institutional transformations around the world and its underlying narrative. It describes the liberal ideals that inspired the concept of a rule of law and argues that these have been profoundly perverted by the institutional transformation legal systems have experienced. I suggest that the transit to a rule of rights jeopardises some of our core democratic values, privatising our politic disputes and eroding our common world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between 'private' and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to 'intermediate' powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emphasise a vision of immediate power in the sense of the possibility of the direct expression of the people's will in political institutions. Populists, of whatever pitch, often tend to invoke a partisan state that will be on the side of the people (however defined) rather than a putatively neutral 'liberal' state that stands over and against civil society. These factors make most populisms more or less generically hostile to liberalism, understood not in ideological terms but more as a doctrine which emphasises the necessity of mediating power through institutions. Very often, populism is a threat to the idea of civil society understood as a concept integral to liberal political theory, as a means of balancing the state and its wider interlocutors. In this paper, various means, largely inspired by the writings of Tocqueville on the one hand and Paul Hirst on the other, are suggested for addressing aspects of this predicament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a major mass Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) has been influential both in culture and politics in Indonesia. In consonance with the decline of democratic politics across the globe, NU internal organization experiences the practice of deliberative democracy with elite deliberation or fox elite fox Dei as its procedure of electing its top leader/Spiritual Leader or Rais Am. Two practices were done at the two NU National Congresses (Muktamar) in 1984 and 2015. This procedure is called Ahlul Hall Wal Aqd (AHWA), as one of the legacies of Muslim civilization. The paper makes an account of this elite deliberation to explore how effective the practice was in developing better practices of democracy. The research is qualitative, along with the perspective of the theory of deliberative democracy. It is our result that the practice of fox elite fox Dei has not been satisfactory in terms of some defects in implementing the rule of the game. NU’s culture of deliberation under the methods of halaqah and Bah-tsul Masaail has been promising, but NU’s elites have not been prepared to harvest it to improve the application of the AHWA procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines early modern discussions of democracy in the context of a chartered company: namely, the Virginia Company. It examines descriptions of the Company's constitution and politics as democratic. It focuses, in particular, upon a petition that William Cavendish (later the Second Earl of Devonshire) presented to the Virginia Company assembly defending the democratic constitution of the Company. Cavendish's secretary, Thomas Hobbes, may or may not have assisted with drafting that petition, but he was closely involved in the debates to which it contributed. The discussion, therefore, provides a broader context for debates about the role of democratic ideas in Hobbes' works. More importantly, however, it shows that sub-state bodies politic in early modern England, such as chartered companies, provided an environment in which political thought, including democracy, could flourish removed from the dangers of national politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against premature claims about the declining political relevance of social class in post‐industrial democracies, recent research indicates that class continues to be a relevant determinant of political preferences. In post‐industrial societies 'old' class divides on economic issues coexist with 'new' class alignments on cultural topics. While there is cumulated evidence of social classes' distinct placement on these issues, this paper argues that the strength of class divides depends on the extent to which these issues are politicized by political parties. Studying preferences on economic and cultural issues (attitudes towards redistribution, immigration, gay rights and European integration), this study shows that class divides in preferences are context dependent. The multilevel analyses drawing on data from the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey for 27 European democracies demonstrate that classes' differences in preferences are accentuated on issues strongly contested and emphasized by parties, and mitigated on issues where party conflict is weaker. Adding to recent literature on parties and class conflict, this study identifies another stage at which parties can affect the strength of class voting. The varying strength of class divides across contexts also has implications for parties' ability to garner support beyond a single class. This becomes increasingly unlikely in contexts of high issue politicization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Rousseau's Philosophical-political Program: the Theoretical Link between the Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of the Inequality Among Mankind and the Social Contract". This paper presents Rousseau's political and theoretical legacy through the interpretation of his Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of the Inequality Among Mankind and the Social Contract, understanding both as a sole argumentative and methodological unit in his work. In order to achieve this objective, the paper explores first the normative and anthropological considerations that mark the problem of Rousseau's political theory. From there, the main ideas of his notion of democracy will be presented. Finally, the paper concludes that Rousseau's democratic legacy is particularly useful as a form of critique in the hegemonic context of the current liberal and representative democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 6 January 2021, the world watched as Donald Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol. However, in this paper, I argue that social scientists should not simply focus on Trump or the Republicans who have supported his false claims that the presidency was stolen from him. Instead, researchers need to leverage the insights provided by sociology, political science and information studies and communication to unpack the increasingly dysfunctional movement-party dynamics in the US, which not only made the 6 January riots possible but continue to erode democratic processes. Here, I outline four developments over the last thirty years that help account for the contemporary political moment and underscore the role of digital technologies in these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is broadly acknowledged that democratic politics should operate through the public competition of binding positions, the careful development of these positions is commonly neglected. Providing ethnographic analysis of the work of staff advisers in parliamentary groups, the paper explores the invisible work invested into these competing positions. We argue that the invisibilization of work serves to accomplish a central tenet of democratic political discourse: the demonstration of resonance between constituents and elected politicians. The latter may be assisted by – but must not depend on – non-elected staff. Against this 'sacred' premise of representative democracy, the paper shows that and how political positions are based on invisible work and the work of invisibilizing. Building on laboratory and workplace studies, we specify the shape and function of invisibility by contrasting studies on invisible work in the natural sciences, in case law, and in party politics. In these instances, invisible work serves different discursive objects-in-formation: scientific facts, legal cases, and binding positions. Understanding invisible work, thus, leads us to consider different constitutive relevancies. In turn, these serve to specify established concepts in STS, such as 'controversy,' to better distinguish the day-to-day conduct of natural science from that of politics or law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers now commonly reject the value free ideal for science by arguing that non-epistemic values, including personal or social values, are permissible within the core of scientific research. However, little attention has been paid to the normative political consequences of this position. This paper explores these consequences and shows how political theory is fruitful for proceeding in a world without value-neutral science. I draw attention to an oft-overlooked argument employed by proponents of the value free ideal I dub the "political legitimacy argument." This argument claims that the value-free ideal follows directly from the foundational principles of liberal democracy. If so, then the use of value-laden scientific information within democratic decision making would be illegitimate on purely political grounds. Despite highlighting this unaddressed and important argument, I show how it can be rejected. By appealing to deliberative democratic theory, I demonstrate scientific information can be value-laden and politically legitimate. The deliberative democratic account I develop is well suited for capturing the intuitions of many opponents of the value free ideal and points to a new set of questions for those interested in values in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resistance is a puzzle for politics. Its presence is perceived as the sign of a healthy political culture, yet the controversies it raises cannot always be resolved without changing the fabric of the political community. In this, some see it as a fundamental danger, a risk within democracy. Resistance is thought of as a problem to solve, a matter to handle, an irritant to quell, a brake on progress and development. Yet there exists a strong current in political theory, and practice, that stood this perspective on its head. This tradition assigns to resistance the role of prime mover in social ontology, and of creative drive in political relations. This paper discusses this contribution and its legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is the analysis of the possibility of renewal and deepening of the democratization processes opened by the Boaventura de Sousa Santos's theory of democracy. Throughout his long academic career, Santos formulates a theory of democracy beyond the limitative hegemonic conceptions (liberal, elitist, representative, procedural, electoral and delegative). In consonance with the theoretical and normative assumptions of the epistemologies of the South, Santos's theory of democracy focuses in its most radical and counter-hegemonic contents, based on high-intensity democracy ideas, demodiversity, experimentalism and articulation between representative democracy and participatory democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science theories and concepts that describe the real political process have always been the empirical basis for political philosophy. According to the author, the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election campaign can best be understood and described using the concepts of "populism" and "post-truth". The paper analyzes the discourse of the concept of "populism", and reveals its content and main features. The need to establish social supervision over the actions of the authorities as a means of countering populism is emphasized. Essential characteristics of the post-truth phenomenon are revealed. The theoretical chain of the terms "verity" - "truth" - "posttruth" is presented. The meme as a unit of post-truth is analyzed. The paper proves that it was the bundle of populism and post-truth that had been the background of the electoral consciousness where the manipulative election technologies of the presidential campaign in Ukraine unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American election and its results in 2016 made it timely to provide a psychoanalytic analysis of the similar political events in the United States and in Hungary. Applying psychoanalytical theories to society has always been part of the tradition of the Budapest school. This paper argues that Hungarian and other transgenerational trauma theories can help us understand these developments. The author begins in using these theories to analyze the impact of political regimes on societies and individuals in Central Europe after World War II. She then continues to look at the political transformation that took place in 1989 in the socialist countries existing since 1945. This transformation promised liberation. But, this paper argues, the unexplored past resulted in the emergence of hierarchic, irrational political forces. The paper uses social and individual examples to help demonstrate these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically engages with Philip Pettit's republican political philosophy, and with his republican theory of democracy in particular. After a brief summary of Pettit's conceptualisation of freedom as non-domination, the paper focuses on the question as to which institutional arrangement Pettit considers commensurate with this normative ideal. The paper prepares the ground for a critical reconstruction of Pettit's theory of democracy by highlighting the understanding of democracy in the republican tradition within which Pettit aims to develop his contemporary theory of democracy. The reconstruction leads to the argument that Pettit, in neo-Roman republican tradition, has written "the people" as a transformative actor out of the script of democratic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the role solitude played in John Stuart Mill's political thought. By doing so, it challenges contemporary appropriations of Mill's thought by participatory, deliberative and epistemic theories of democracy. Mill considered solitude to be contrary to political participation and public debate, but nonetheless regarded it as essential for democracy and for intellectual progress. Since the early 1830s Mill began developing an idea of solitude while simultaneously forming a particular kind of a democratic model which I refer to as 'imperfect democracy'. According to this model, democracy is restrained by non-democratic elements which offer a contrary spirit and are not incorporated by democracy. At first Mill believed the 'leisured class' would fulfil this task, but later considered solitude as a possible solution. This paper follows the way in which these ideas were crystallised in Mill's thought, and by doing so offers a novel interpretation of Mill's political thought and his nuanced understanding of solitude, political participation and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Digital spaces, and in particular social networking sites, are becoming increasingly present and influential in the functioning of our democracies. In this paper, we propose an integrated methodology for the data collection, the reconstruction, the analysis and the visualization of the development of a country’s political landscape from Twitter data. Method: The proposed method relies solely on the interactions between Twitter accounts and is independent of the characteristics of the shared contents such as the language of the tweets. We validate our methodology on a case study on the 2017 French presidential election (60 million Twitter exchanges between more than 2.4 million users) via two independent methods: the comparison between our automated political categorization and a human categorization based on the evaluation of a sample of 5000 profiles descriptions; the correspondence between the reconfigurations detected in the reconstructed political landscape and key political events reported in the media. This latter validation demonstrated the ability of our approach to accurately reflect the reconfigurations at play in the off-line political scene. Results: We built on this reconstruction to give insights into the opinion dynamics and the reconfigurations of political communities at play during a presidential election. First, we propose a quantitative description and analysis of the political engagement of members of political communities. Second, we analyze the impact of political communities on information diffusion and in particular on their role in the fake news phenomena. We measure a differential echo chamber effect on the different types of political news (fake news, debunks, standard news) caused by the community structure and emphasize the importance of addressing the meso-structures of political networks in understanding the fake news phenomena. Conclusions: Giving access to an intermediate level, between sociological surveys in the field and large statistical studies (such as those conducted by national or international organizations) we demonstrate that social networks data make it possible to qualify and quantify the activity of political communities in a multi-polar political environment; as well as their temporal evolution and reconfiguration, their structure, their alliance strategies and their semantic particularities during a presidential campaign through the analysis of their digital traces. We conclude this paper with a comment on the political and ethical implications of the use of social networks data in politics. We stress the importance of developing social macroscopes that will enable citizens to better understand how they collectively make society and propose as example the “Politoscope”, a macroscope that delivers some of our results in an interactive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary peacebuilding debates, it is argued that local ownership renders peacebuilding more sustainable, democratic and legitimate. However, these claims have not been seriously interrogated as to their empirical validity. Such evaluations must begin by answering the question, ‘Who is local?’ Different local actors have varying resources, capacities and levels of authority and autonomy. Taking the relatively unexplored case of diasporas, this paper illustrates the absence of a straightforward relationship between ownership and its normative benefits. By assessing the significance of resources like local/ethnic bonds, financial and social remittances, this paper argues that diasporas can undermine the legitimacy of peacebuilding. Furthermore, although diasporas can enhance the prospects for democratic governance, the causal mechanisms can be corrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do human rights organizations (HROs) aid the consolidation of democracy in post-authoritarian states? It is often argued that these groups contribute to accountability for past repression. Yet HROs can have unintended consequences if they threaten the interests of powerful domestic institutions. This paper develops a simple model of human rights activism in post-authoritarian states. Civilian governments in these states trade off support from the military and human rights activists which seek to punish the military. Counterintuitively, the model predicts human rights activists make amnesty for the military more likely, as activists tempt the government to punish the military and the military becomes more likely to intervene in politics. The model's implications are tested using a sample of post-authoritarian states from 1970-2010. Results show that more HRO influence increases the likelihood of amnesty laws and military involvement in government, though HROs may achieve justice through pathways such as truth commissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions within political theory on naturalisation tend to focus on whether or not it is reasonable and fair to make naturalisation conditional on meeting integration requirements. Those who emphasise the right of long-term immigrants to be included as equal citizens argue that automatic naturalisation is preferable, while those who put emphasis on the state's legitimate interest in promoting the conditions for a reasonably just society tend to argue that conditional naturalisation is normatively preferable. However, most participating in this debate seem to agree that naturalisation rules must balance these different concerns. In this paper, we argue that the conflicting views on each side of the automatic-conditional divide can be reconciled by introducing the model of discounting-conditional naturalisation. We suggest that a practice in which integration requirements are gradually relaxed over time can in fact sufficiently accommodate those normative considerations that are in conflict under the current practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy and democratic governance has widely been debated throughout the world. The study of democratic consolidation has still got prominent position especially in third world countries. Democracy in developing countries particularly in Pakistan is confronting long standing problem of governance. Most important issue to work on is relationship of federal government with parliamentary opposition as well as federating units having opposition parties in power. The second term of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister was expected to be relatively more stable than her previous government. Expectations were roused that democracy in Pakistan will take roots and this would flourish by focusing on welfare of the masses. This paper focuses on the question whether it was the same follies which Benazir Bhutto played with during her second term with opposition in the centre and their governments in provinces. Mostly, secondary sources have been utilized to answer the question and newspapers have also been consulted. Analysing all data, the paper gives a detailed study of the facts along with key findings, on the basis of which suggestions have been given and conclusion is drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political role of radical development NGOs that emerged in Bangladesh to challenge the marginalisation of subordinate groups and strengthen democratic processes. After briefly introducing the political context of Bangladesh and its NGOs, the paper identifies and defines a radical NGO sub-sector. It then reviews the activities of these organisations during the pre-1990 military government era and during the subsequent period of electoral democracy. Some important achievements are identified, but also many failures that have led to decline, leaving behind an NGO sector dominated by credit and service delivery organisations. The paper then explains this decline by focusing on three inter-related factors: (i) an institutional setting dominated by clientelistic structures that have undermined efforts to build horizontal alliances among excluded groups in civil society, or links between NGOs and political parties; (ii) a shift in donor support from mobilisation to market-based service delivery agencies; and (iii) internal structures that have generated legitimacy and accountability problems by encouraging elite capture, co-option and personalised leadership in the radical sub-sector. It concludes with some brief reflections on the main implications of these failures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ‘third democratic wave’ that rose in the 1990s has receded in many countries, as incumbent regimes have manipulated electoral processes and regressive political movements have exploited class, ethnic and sectarian antagonisms to undermine political order. Such events have led many to question the importance of democratic processes. The papers in this special section challenge both the uncritical advocates and over-critical naysayers of the third wave by treating democratisation as a long-term and contested transition from closed to open access societies, where elections represent a necessary but not sufficient mechanism to guarantee representation for excluded groups. The three papers focus on the critical role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in securing representation for marginal actors, drawing on the cases of Bangladesh and Uganda. In doing so the contributions illustrate the challenges that CSOs confront in situations marked by the problems of clientelism, capture and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a speech stylistic analysis of Barack Obama's 2016 Athens speech, and it argues for a culturally conscious take on speech style, which links it to the accumulation of political capital, at least in the context of political speeches. With a focus on stance and intertextuality, the main argument put forward is that Obama constructs a dialogue with Ancient Greek thought, which does not simply draw on experiences and events; rather, it recreates them and, eventually, it creates a whole understanding of cultural politics. Against this take on politics based heavily on Greek democracy legacy, for Obama, his performance serves as his consignment to the global political discourse through an effort to join a very well established and highly respected democratic tradition stemming from (Ancient) Greece, whose sociocultural impact is felt vividly in contemporary US. In this sense, his accumulation of political capital serves as his effort to achieve posthumous fame (ystero'fimia) after his stepping down from the US administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationships between formal, political, economic and social agreements that derive from the institutional design derived from constitutional law that were the pattern of governability in modern pre-covid19 society, and decisions imposed by governments after the declaration of a pandemic by the WHO in March 2020. The protection of the life project, governability as a government relationship with the administration and the application of biopower, are examined in light of the currents that see it with the potential to deepen authoritarianism and those who observe the possibility of reconciling biopower with democracy without implying that there is an operation in favor of undermining it. It is concluded that the positive or pernicious relationship between these elements for the construction of the postpandemic society will depend on the strength of the democratic institutionality, however, a fairly accepted attention, examines this relationship from the perspective of danger to freedom society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the political ideas of founding figures of West German political science by engaging with formative texts from the post-war period of neo-Aristotelian (Dolf Sternberger and Siegfried Landshut), Critical Theory (Arcadius R.L. Gurland and Franz L. Neumann), ordoliberal (Alexander Rüstow) and catholic (Ferdinand Hermens) perspective. It is argued that these early German political scientists coincided in the diagnosis of living in a thoroughly politicized post-liberal age. They rejected the separation between empirical and normative political science and devised heterogeneous disciplinary approaches that can be classified as republican, power-realist, and expertocratic. Although democracy was an important point of reference for some of them, it is not tenable, contrary to older historiography and contemporary self-image, to describe early West-German political science as a Demokratiewissenschaft (science of democracy) in overall terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which dimensions of open government have been adopted by local governments in Canada. Local government structures are sometimes conceptualized as particularly well suited to democratic experimentation. Certainly, it has been the case that many governmental/democratic reform initiatives have started at the local/municipal level. Exploring open government at the local level provides us with insights into two questions. First, it helps us determine the extent to which open government has permeated beyond federal and provincial levels of government in Canada. Second, due to the challenges associated with open government, it allows us to identify and highlight such challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I try to introduce the overall structure of Bretherton's book Christ and the Common Life by showing how each chapter displays how talk of God and talk of politics are mutually constitutive. In particular I try to show how Bretherton's 'case studies' are arranged to develop his constructive thesis. My paper was not meant to be critical, though I raise the question of whether Bretherton's project is not a very sophisticated form of Constantinianism—a question that very much asks Bretherton to make clear for whom he has written this extremely impressive book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]