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Our paper examines what is required to protect and promote effective public discussion and policy development in the current climate of divisive disagreement about many public policy questions. We use abortion as a case example precisely because it is morally fraught. We first consider the changes made by Dobbs , as well as those which led up to the Dobbs decision, accompany it, and follow from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current national and international guidelines for the ethical design and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics emphasize ethical theory. Various governing and advisory bodies have generated sets of broad ethical principles, which institutional decisionmakers are encouraged to apply to particular practical decisions. Although much of this literature examines the ethics of designing and developing AI and robotics, medical institutions typically must make purchase and deployment decisions about technologies that have already been designed and developed. The primary problem facing medical institutions is not one of ethical design but of ethical deployment. The purpose of this paper is to develop a practical model by which medical institutions may make ethical deployment decisions about ready-made advanced technologies. Our slogan is "more process, less principles." Ethically sound decisionmaking requires that the process by which medical institutions make such decisions include participatory, deliberative, and conservative elements. We argue that our model preserves the strengths of existing frameworks, avoids their shortcomings, and delivers its own moral, practical, and epistemic advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2021 contribution to Politics and Religion , Jesse Russell wrote that St. Thomas Aquinas "had a decidedly illiberal view of a government." He says Aquinas "advocates a government in which the people are not given public liberty" and did not "prepare the way for the mixed monarchy of the English constitution." But Aquinas places the rule of moral law above politics, endorses participatory government, prioritizes reciprocal duties rather than coerced conformity, favors a mixed regime with democratic representation, and sanctions resistance to tyrants. Each idea is an important component of modern understandings of freedom. Liberal democracy as a constitutional arrangement, and its various philosophical defenses, postdate Aquinas by centuries. It would be anachronistic to cast him as their partisan. But neither was he a proto-reactionary: his political philosophy is congenial to free, limited government that belongs to the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many governments in semi-democratic regimes have adopted participatory democratic institutions to promote development and accountability. But limited resources, weak civil society, and a history of authoritarian politics make building subnational democratic institutions daunting. Do participatory institutions expand accountability in these environments? We address this question by evaluating citizen decision-making in Kenya's local participatory processes. We first administered a survey experiment surrounding citizens' development policy preferences to 9,928 respondents in four Kenyan counties. We then nest this survey experiment in participant observation and over 80 elite interviews. Our conclusions are mixed: respondents readily change their policy preferences to align with the government's policy actions, which suggests limited prospects for accountability. However, respondents use participatory budgeting venues to question government officials about missing projects, which provides a potential foundation for accountability. Yet, uncompetitive local elections, the absence of independent civil society's participation, and new program rules are likely to limit democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The burgeoning literature on the democratic deficit of international organizations, and the United Nations in particular, has, for the most part, inherited a pervasive state-centrism commonly associated with conventional approaches to international law more generally. While this approach is understandable, it appears incompatible with a holistic account of democracy, especially accounts that seek to situate the locus of power within the individual. Drawing on attempts to empower individual citizens to influence global governance decision-making in other contexts—especially the experience of the European Citizens' Initiative—this Article considers a bold idea: The establishment of a "World Citizens' Initiative," through which individuals could directly influence the agenda of the primary organs of the United Nations. This Article critically analyzes the legal feasibility of such an initiative and the challenges of implementation. In doing so, it offers both a theoretical and institutional contribution to the debate about the normative case for the democratization of global governance through effective citizen participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In environmental politics, social movements play a crucial role, promoting participatory rights and confronting injustice, inequality, and the interests of the powerful. This article examines an underexplored topic in the literature on social movements, especially in Latin America: the use of litigation to force decisionmakers to comply with participatory formats, specifically in the course of opposition to hydroelectric dams. These projects often are destructive to the local environment and communities. This study examines four cases of environmental litigation that halted dam construction in Brazil and Chile, singling out causal pathways for successful collective action. It focuses on two dimensions of movement success: the implementation of participatory formats and the resulting cancellation of dam projects. In line with the joint effect model of social movement theory, the cross-case comparison of legal disputes shows that pursuing legal strategies in parallel to broad social mobilization and the support of institutional allies, can lead to successful outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An energetic scholarly debate discusses possible reforms of representative democracy. Some support participatory forms of democracy, others a more elite-driven or technocratic democracy. This study contributes to the growing literature on the subject by emphasizing political sophistication as a theoretically relevant predictor of attitudes to democracy: different models of democracy make different demands regarding the political sophistication of citizens. The analysis includes two dimensions and three measures of sophistication: personal sophistication measured as political knowledge and internal efficacy, and impersonal sophistication measured as assessment of others' political competence. Using the 2011 Finnish National Election Study, we find that perceptions of the sophistication of others have a substantial impact on preferences for political decision-making, and that politically sophisticated people support representative democracy. The analysis shows that perceptions of others' political competence, which has been largely neglected by previous research, is a both theoretically and empirically relevant predictor of preferences for political decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion research has shown that voters accept many falsehoods about politics. This observation is widely considered troubling for democracy – and especially participatory ideals of democracy. I argue that this influential narrative is nevertheless flawed because it misunderstands the nature of political understanding. Drawing on philosophical examinations of scientific modelling, I demonstrate that accepting falsehoods within one's model of political reality is compatible with – and indeed can positively enhance – one's understanding of that reality. Thus, the observation that voters accept many political falsehoods does not necessarily establish that they lack political understanding. I then address three worries: that voters cannot generally engage in such political modelling; that political modelling obscures facts that are crucial to political understanding; and that successful political modelling would require knowing that one's model contains falsehoods. My responses reveal how, going forward, we should measure political ignorance, and they highlight the standing importance of participatory democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how musical practices in 1970s Spain formed ways of imagining democracy and how they participated in the wider social struggle to define freedom and equality for the final years of Franco's dictatorship and its immediate aftermath. I shall analyse two case studies: a large-scale experimental art festival held in the streets of Pamplona in 1972 and a grassroots musical collective created in 1973 on the initiative of the composer Llorenç Barber. Drawing on previous studies on the relationship between music and democracy, participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, and the insights of political science and philosophy into democracy, I offer a critical reassessment of the Pamplona festival and explore the relationship between grassroots collaboration and ideas of participatory democracy, and analyse the significance of this relationship in 1970s Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to understand the relationship between populism and participatory democracy through analysis of Rafael Correa’s left populist regime in Ecuador (2007–2017). It argues that rather than adhering to its own standard for participatory democracy, what the Correa regime referred to as the “Socialism of Buen Vivir,” it employed the rhetoric of participatory democracy in the service of populist rule. As a result, the Correa regime failed to promote the participatory form of democracy and citizenship promised in Buen Vivir, its version of twenty-first-century socialism. Accordingly, analysis of the Correa regime demonstrates how the concentration of top-down executive power characteristic of populism in general, and rentier populism in particular, impedes the egalitarian and solidaristic mission of participatory democracy. Thus, inductive analysis of the Correa regime reinforces the conceptual understanding that populism is antagonistic and antithetical to participatory democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory democrats argue that citizen engagement at the local level serves an important educational function. Through involvement in participatory mechanisms, citizens develop various skills, become better informed, and cultivate a greater sense of political efficacy. There has been considerable debate in the academic literature over the extent to which participation can produce these benefits, but deliberative and participatory theoretical approaches have been criticised for neglecting power dynamics within participatory mechanisms themselves, and for overlooking structural inequalities between women and men. Numerous critics have charged that participatory mechanisms tend to mask, but not eliminate, gender inequalities, particularly in societies where these remain firmly entrenched. While the theory on the educational function of participatory democracy is well developed, there remains a lack of empirical work on the impact of participation on women in Latin America, a region that has been at the forefront of democratic innovation. Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile, this article identifies the types of skills that women gain through participation, and questions the extent to which these reproduce traditional gender roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is the most common mental health disorder. It has consequences not only on individuals but also on social and political levels. We argue that depressive symptoms impair political participation by reducing the motivation and physical energy of sufferers. We test our hypotheses by conducting regression analyses of four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys that collectively span many democracies. Our results are threefold. First, we find that the severest depressive symptoms lower the probability of voting by 0.05–0.25 points, an effect that is exceeded only by education and age. Second, we show that depressive symptoms negatively affect political interest and internal efficacy, thereby confirming that they diminish political motivation. Third, we find that depressive symptoms most strongly affect physically demanding acts, thereby confirming that they reduce the physical energy required for participation. We conclude by urging scholars to take depressive symptoms seriously in the study of political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory budgeting (PB) has been one of the most popular local democratic reforms in Latin America in recent decades. This article examines what happened to PB when it was scaled up to the state level and integrated in a participatory system in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2011–14). Using theories of deliberative systems, multichannel participation, 'venue shopping' (the practice of seeking the most favourable policy venue) and countervailing power, as well as a multimethod research design, we explain how the systems approach allowed for both deliberation and direct democracy and mobilised new sectors to participate online. However, on the negative side, the different participation channels undermined each other. Social movements migrated to other spaces, leaving the budgeting process open to control by well-established, powerful public-sector groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutionalization of community participation in the context of policing has become increasingly common in Latin America as a means of addressing the seemingly intractable increase in crime and insecurity. The creation of formal spaces for community participation in security differs markedly from how police forces have historically operated. Moreover, opening spaces for citizen input and oversight could potentially limit an executive's control over the police, an important political tool. Why, then, do politicians sometimes turn to "participatory security" when reforming the police? This article argues that politicians choose participation as a safety valve to disaggregate societal discontent, particularly when police-society relations are fractious and police capacity and resources are low. Drawing on qualitative evidence from Buenos Aires Province, São Paulo State, and Colombia, this study demonstrates that participation can serve a range of strategic purposes, which, in turn, shape the institutional design of the participatory mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 21st Century Cures Act is a major act of legislation that contains numerous changes to drug and device regulation. The House of Representatives passed the Act after considerable interest group lobbying, but the bill and the key changes made during its drafting remain controversial. Using publicly disclosed records of written comments on the bill, we reviewed the key areas of lobbying activity and the compromises made in the final text. We focused on legislative provisions relating to management of the National Institutes of Health, incentives for medical product development, and approval standards for new drugs and devices. By the end of the first comment period, the Committee received 118 comments. Most respondents were patient organizations, professional societies, and pharmaceutical and device companies. Overall, the majority of public comments were positive, although public health and consumer organizations were underrepresented in the number of submitted comments. As the legislative process continued, the draft bill underwent several changes relating to NIH funding, market exclusivity provisions, and scrutiny of regulatory evidentiary standards. Understanding the key statutory provisions and how they have evolved could help patients, researchers, and advocates make more informed comments on the bill and future health care legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite policy commitments and legislated mechanisms, the system of participatory democracy in post-1994 South Africa is largely considered to have failed. In order to understand how underlying ideas can help to explain weaknesses in practice, this article examines how participatory democracy is understood by the ruling African National Congress (ANC). It shows that the multiple intellectual traditions shaping the participatory model have led to a set of policy initiatives that are not without internal tension. In part, the technocratic creep associated with improving public sector performance has stymied participatory efforts by placing efficiency and delivery over democracy and empowerment. Alongside this, however, the ANC's own conception of ‘democracy’ remains interwoven with its mass movement history – linking the role of popular participation to the extension of its own hegemony. The intent of policy to deepen democracy through structures of participatory governance is thus undermined by a teleological framing of participation as an intra-movement activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the appearance of religious metaphors and imagery--related to the evil eye, envy, energy, and purification--in the narratives of former leaders from Porto Alegre's internationally renowned initiative in direct democracy, the Participatory Budget. The data come from qualitative interviews conducted with female grassroots community leaders who for various reasons have withdrawn from active civic participation. While notions of envy and evil eye are commonplace in everyday life in Brazil, their appearance in discourse around citizen participation appears out of place. This article uses four ethnographic cases to examine how notions of envy and evil eye are drawn upon to explain discontinued civic participation. I argue that the apparent anachronism of religious imagery such as envy and evil eye reflects a widespread assumption among activists, politicians, and scholars that civic participation initiatives like the Participatory Budget are inherently secular. I also advance the broader argument that bringing scholarly attention to nonpolitical metaphors and tropes that shape grassroots political experience leads to a more complete account of citizenship practices and identities in Porto Alegre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Participatory Democracy' and 'Deliberative Democracy' are two terms that have entered common use, but you certainly cannot say that the meaning attributed to these two notions of democracy are identical or even similar. Indeed, in many cases, and in many current debates, the two terms are confused or conflated. The article contends that a debate on these issues is particularly useful, and that a promising approach might be a theoretical reconstruction of the genealogy of these two notions of democracy: namely, a survey that seeks to bring to light the history of these two concepts, their first formulations, and the conceptual (but also historical and political) matrix that may be identified at the roots of their genesis and development. In this article, we will relate only one chapter of this history: the 'transitional phase' that can be traced in some texts that go 'beyond participatory democracy', that is to say the works of Jane Mansbridge (Beyond Adversary Democracy, 1980) and Benjamin Barber (Strong Democracy, 1984). These works entailed an approach which, in many aspects, was still within the discussion on 'participatory democracy', but at the same time introduced many novelties, thus opening paths to a successive stage, and indicating some possible bridges to a deliberative view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the administration of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela went through a political regime change that transformed it from a representative to a participatory and protagonist democracy. In this article, I present my research findings on the Catholic origins of the concept of participation that appears in the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999. In the first part, I reconsider notions of participation elaborated in the Second Vatican Council. Second, I show how those ideas became the basis for participatory political proposals of the Social Christian party Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI). Third, I compare these ideas with the ideas on participation of the Venezuelan Left. The fourth and fifth parts examine the notion of participation in the proposals of the Comisión para la Reforma del Estado (COPRE) and in the failed constitution reform of 1992, where the principle of participation was introduced for the first time, and later successfully integrated into the 1999 Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has long been held up as a model of how grassroots social movements, in alliance with a Left party in power, have deepened democracy in a highly clientelistic context. But what happened to this democratic reform when the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party, PT), which supported this initiative while it held the mayorship of Porto Alegre for 16 years, lost political power? This article examines the shifting fortunes of the participatory budgeting process following the defeat of the Workers' Party in the 2004 local elections. It explores how and why succeeding local administrations weakened participatory budgeting amid the changing political configuration of Porto Alegre, underscoring the critical role played by considerable executive branch powers in the process. The article concludes by examining what questions this raises for the sustainability of local democratic reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As institutions are created to engage citizens and civil society organizations more directly, who participates, and what effect does participation have? This article explores two of Peru's participatory institutions, the Regional Coordination Councils and the participatory budgets, created in 2002. Specifically it asks, once these institutions are set up, do organizations participate in them? and what effect does this participation have on the organizations? The data show that the participatory processes in Peru are including new voices in decisionmaking, but this inclusion has limits. Limited inclusion has, in turn, led to limited changes specifically in nongovernmental organizations. As a result, the democratizing potential of the participatory institutions is evident yet not fully realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses some relatively new aspects of the Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre. In particular it tackles the double bond for the Conselho do Orcamento Participativo (imperative mandate and budget constraint according to redistributive justice), as well as the rule providing for an equal proportion between the participants at the assemblies and the number of delegates for each Forum. Participatory budgeting is suggesting to be a procedure aimed at adopt fair decision from a social point of view, and not only at promote the largest political participation of the citizens. According to the author the originality of the Brazilian experiment is to propose the formalisation of «constitutional » rules for achieving social justice, beyond the virtues of popular participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]