Liberalism and Democracy Revisited

In JAP 9 (1992) Gordon Graham argued that liberals cannot be counted on to support democratic institutions since there are no conceptual or strongly contingent links between democracy and liberal ideals. This paper responds to Graham's challenge by claiming that his model of liberal aristocracy is not liberal in several respects. In particular, the liberal should recognise a right to democratic participation which individuals may plausibly claim as an element in a respectable conception of how to live well. The right to democratic participation is shown to stand alongside other important liberal ideals which may be justified in this fashion, e.g. freedom of religious worship and freedom of association. Furthermore, I argue against those who claim that political participation enacts delusory aspirations that the rights which are promoted and protected within a democratic constitution are necessary for both individual and collective autonomy — and so the liberal should defend them.     

A Pluralist Reconstruction of Confucian Democracy

In this paper, I attempt to revamp Confucian democracy, which is originally presented as the communitarian corrective and cultural alternative to Western liberal democracy, into a robust democratic political theory and practice that is plausible in the societal context of pluralism. In order to do so, I first investigate the core tenets of value pluralism with reference to William Galston??s political theory, which gives full attention to the intrinsic value of diversity and human plurality particularly in the modern democratic context. I then construct a political theory of Confucian pluralist democracy by critically engaging with two dominant versions of Confucian democracy??Confucian communitarian democracy and Confucian meritocratic democracy. My key argument is threefold: (1) the unity in Confucian democracy should be interpreted not as moral unity but as constitutional unity; (2) Confucian virtues should be differentiated (or pluralized) between moral virtues and civic virtues; (3) in Confucian democracy minorities have the constitutional right to contest public norms in civil society.     

How Emotional Media Reports Influence Attitude Formation and Change: The Interplay of Attitude Base,Attitude Certainty,and Persuasion

This study examined the influence of an emotionally arousing writing style on attitude formation and change. It has been proposed that different writing styles induce attitudes based on either affect or cognition and with either high or low certainty. Previous work indicates that the interplay of these attitude characteristics determines the persuasiveness of emotional and rational media appeals. To test the hypotheses, participants in an experimental study read articles from a magazine about a fictitious attitude object. In the first step, 4 different types of attitudes varying in base and level of certainty were induced through a respectively manipulated article. In the second step, these attitudes were challenged by an additional article, which presented either an emotional or rational persuasive appeal. The results supported hypotheses on attitude induction through media stimuli and 3 of 4 hypotheses regarding the persuasiveness of emotionally and rationally written articles.     

Democracy Without Participation: A New Politics for a Disengaged Era

Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary. This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation. The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens.     

Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization in Response to Learning About Biological Explanations of Homosexuality

According to attribution theory stigmatized behaviors with biological explanations will be perceived more positively than those with psychological explanations, but informing people of the biological explanations of homosexuality has produced mixed results on attitudes. To examine if biased processing could explain previous findings we tested whether biased assimilation (initial attitudes’ effect on perceived persuasiveness) and attitude polarization (initial attitudes’ effect on reported attitude change) affected learning about biological explanations of homosexuality among 210 U.S. undergraduates. General Linear Model analyses showed that (1) individuals with positive attitudes toward homosexuality saw biological explanations as a more persuasive reason to accept homosexuality than those with negative attitudes, and (2) initial attitudes generally led to a strengthening of those attitudes after learning about biological explanations.     

Democracy as Uninformed Non‐Consent

Carol Gould argues that democratic institutions can serve as mechanisms of informed consent or could at least facilitate creating regulations and other structures which facilitate informed consent in bioethics, medicine, and elsewhere. I am sceptical. I argue that democracies cannot serve as vehicles of consent, let alone informed consent. Further, the problems of democratic ignorance and irrationality created significant barriers to democratic deliberation helping to produce better regulations or conditions for informed consent. Democracy is not a good surrogate for consent.     

Democracy begins at home: Democratic parenting and adolescents' support for democratic values

Although it is generally assumed that support for democratic values and beliefs develops as a result of social learning, the concrete socializing circumstances through which this occurs are less obvious. This study investigated the relationship between democratic family functioning and democratic values of adolescents. Adolescents' (N = 1,341, 16- to 17-year-olds) reports on their parents' psychological control, autonomy granting, warmth, and behavioural control were considered predictors of adolescents' democratic orientation. The results demonstrated that the democratic functioning of families was positively related to adolescents' support for democratic values when controlling for the effects of gender, political experience, authoritarianism, empathy, and political activism. Additionally, this study examined the possible role of empathy as a mediator in the relation between democratic family functioning and adolescent's democratic values. The results show that empathy was a partial mediator of a family's contribution to adolescents' democratic orientation.     

论儒学基本原理与民主政治的兼容与接轨

早期儒家思想中的一些基本原理与现代民主政治的理念是可以兼容和接轨的。儒家以代表“天意”的“民意”作为政权合法性的依据 ,符合民主政治的权力观 ;儒家的“性善论”可以用来论证民主制度的合理性 ;儒家的“中庸”从政治决策的意义上来说往往是民主程序的自然结果 ;儒家提倡的“特立独行”精神所体现的负责任的个人主义是民主政治所需要的前提。     

Reconciling Historical Injustices: Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Reconciliation

Deliberative democracy is often celebrated and endorsed because of its promise to include, empower, and emancipate otherwise oppressed and excluded social groups through securing their voice and granting them impact in reasoned public deliberation. This article explores the ability of Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy to accommodate the demands of historically excluded social groups in democratic plural societies. It argues that the inclusive, transformative, and empowering potential of Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy falters when confronted with particular types of historical injustices. It falters because it pays little attention to the historical dimension of injustices and the demands to which it gives rise. The historical dimension of longstanding injustices, it is argued, gives rise to a set of distinctive demands, such as collective memory of exclusion, acknowledgement of historical injustices, taking responsibility, and offering apology and reparations for causing these injustices, which go beyond the type of democratic inclusion that is often offered by deliberative democracy. Yet, the solution is not to abandon the model of deliberative democracy. Quite the contrary, it remains a valuable basis for forward-looking political decision making. The article concludes that in order to achieve inclusive, empowering and transformative deliberation in consolidated democracies that have experienced historical injustices, the politics of reconciliation is indispensable.     

Early Confucian Principles: the Potential Theoretic Foundation of Democracy in Modern China

The subtle and complex relation between Confucianism and modern democracy has long been a controversial issue, and it is now again becoming a topical issue in the process of political modernization in contemporary China. This paper argues that there are some quite basic early Confucian values and principles that are not only compatible with democracy, but also may become the theoretic foundation of modern democracy in China. Early Confucianism considers ‘the people's will’ as the direct representative of ‘Heaven's will’, with which it legitimizes political power. Confucian theory of ‘human nature is good’ endorses equal potential good for every man. These principles can be used in reasoning towards a system of democracy. In terms of decision-making, the Confucian ‘Doctrine of the Mean’ accords with certain democratic principles. The independent personality and committed individualism advocated by early Confucianism is a required civic merit in a democratic society. These fundamental Confucian principles, through contemporary hermeneutics, may provide a philosophic grounding for democracy and support the construction of a democratic system with a Chinese dimension. To get democracy rooted in the spirit of traditional Chinese culture will benefit the healthy and smooth development of democracy in China.     

Expertise as Argument: Authority,Democracy, and Problem-Solving

This article addresses the problem of expertise in a democratic political system: the tension between the authority of expertise and the democratic values that guide political life. We argue that for certain problems, expertise needs to be understood as a dialogical process, and we conceptualize an understanding of expertise through and as argument that positions expertise as constituted by and a function of democratic values and practices, rather than in the possession of, acquisition of, or relationship to epistemic materials. Conceptualizing expertise through argument leads us to see expertise as a kind of phronetic practice, oriented toward judgments and problems, characterized by its ability to provide inventional capacities for selecting the best possible resolution of a particular problem vis-à-vis particular expectations regarding the resolution of a problem. At its core, expertise thus comes to exist in reference not to epistemic but to dialogical, deliberative, democratic practice.     

Democracy & democratic education

A profound problem posed by education for any pluralistic society with democratic aspirations is how to reconcile individual freedom and civic virtue. Children cannot be educated to maximize both individual freedom and civic virtue. Yet reasonable people value and intermittently demand both. We value freedom of speech and press, for example, but want (other) people to refrain from false and socially harmful expression. The various tensions between individual freedom and civic virtue pose a challenge that is simultaneously philosophical and political. How can we resolve the tensions philosophically in light of reasonable political disagreements over the relative value of individual freedom and civic virtue? Instead of giving priority to one value or the other, this essay defends a democratic ideal ofconscious social reproduction, which consists of three principles:nonrepression, nondiscrimination, and democratic deliberation.     

Liberalism and Democracy

ABSTRACT Political liberalism and the democratic ideal together supply the foundation of almost all contemporary political thinking. This essay explores the relation between them. It argues that, despite common parlance, there is an inevitable tension between the two. Furthermore, attempts to resolve this tension by showing that democracy is a good thing in its own right, or that it is the inevitable development of liberal aspirations, or that it is conceptually connected to fundamental liberal ideas, all fail. The conclusion to be drawn is that liberalism requires a pragmatic rather than a principled approach to democratic aspirations.     

Eros as the Educational Principle of Democracy

This paper explores the value of the eros motif for critical pedagogy and citizenship education. The conceptual affinities between eros and democracy are identified and integrated into a theory of democratic political education. Long recognized as vital to the process of self knowledge, the ancient Greek concept of eros has nevertheless been largely erased from contemporary educational debate. By retrieving eros from the fringe of academic discourse and integrating it with critical pedagogy, the aims of radical democracy can be more fully achieved. The essay emphasizes the civil society or cultural dimensions of democracy as against its legal or procedural aspects. Renewed emphasis on the associational qualities of democracy underscore the importance of eros as an educational principle. The ancient pedagogical motif of educating the desires is posited as an alternative to the liberal/modernist paradigm of education which de-values affective domains of knowledge.     

Democracy as a Way to Social Compromise

In modern society, democracy as a symbol of social civilization and progress is cherished. Any government or organization, whether truly democratic or not, will claim that it is democratic while its opponents are not. However, as a historical notion, democracy does not possess the quality of absoluteness. In my view, democracy, in its original meaning, should be understood as a way to social compromise, whose aim is to guarantee a relatively fair political life. Translated from New Eyesight, 2004(3) by Dong Lihe     

Democracy,Tolerance, Aquinas

Democracy is more than a collection of institutions, laws, and freely contested sources of authority. It is also an ideal. If we think of this ideal in republican terms, in terms of resistance to domination through the practices of mutual accountability, and if we recall that democratic life invariably comes with loss, then those of us who inhabit a democratic political society will need to locate, and then cultivate, responses to loss that do not undermine our commitment to this ideal. Tolerance, one such response, is widely recognized and yet poorly theorized. Thomas Aquinas did not recognize it, but he did praise and endorse its act, toleration, and he does offer resources for bringing the virtue into focus and identifying some of the distinguishing features of its democratic variant.     

Where Democracy Should Be: On the Site(s) of the All-Subjected Principle

Res Publica - In this paper, I set out to defend the claim that a central principle in democratic theory, the all-subjected principle, applies not only when one is subject to a rule by a state but...     

Globalization and the Evolution of Democratic Civil Society: Democracy as Spatial Discourse

At its core, the evolution of democratic civil society is a process of transcending existing, historical social space, a process that desires to dissolve “political society” into “civil society” and with it to reformulate space as more democratic, participatory public space, and global spheres of interaction. In this article, the author examines the implications of globalization and the evolution of democratic civil society. Drawing on the work of French theorists de Certeau and Lefebvre, the author examines the nature of space as a social construct and the importance of understanding space as a practiced place in relation to the evolution of democratic civil society that makes transnational space a practiced place for global civil society. The author argues that as globalization spreads across nation-states, spatial forces produced by economic, cultural, and political discourses and practices give way to the potential for the evolution of democratic civil society.     

How Democracy Can Inform Consent: Cases of the Internet and Bioethics

Traditional conceptions of informed consent seem difficult or even impossible to apply to new technologies like biobanks, big data, or GMOs, where vast numbers of people are potentially affected, and where consequences and risks are indeterminate or even unforeseeable. Likewise, the principle has come under strain with the appropriation and monetisation of personal information on digital platforms. Over time, it has largely been reduced to bare assent to formalistic legal agreements. To address the current ineffectiveness of the norm of informed consent, I suggest that we need a notion of structural injustice (on a distinctive interpretation, elaborated here, which takes account of unequal power and property relations). I then argue that in order to protect and enhance people's freedom, we have to go beyond traditional applied ethics and introduce perspectives from democratic theory and social philosophy. I attempt to show how applications of the ‘all‐affected principle’, together with new forms of democratic participation, deliberation, and representation can helpfully frame the narrower principle of informed consent. There is an important role for what we could call collective consent, and informed consent can only succeed in increasing individual agency if it is situated within enhanced forms of democratic decision‐making.     

Democracy and the Church of Sweden

The Church of Sweden was democratized in the 1930s when party politics was introduced into church elections. Since then, party politics have more and more been part of the governing style of the Church of Sweden. In 2000 the church was disestablished and a new election system was introduced with direct elections to the General Synod. The system of political parties remained. This article questions the democracy of the church using criteria for democratic structures. It also focuses on the role of the ordained ministry in the governance of the church, as the bishops have not been full members of the Synod since 1982. The conclusions are that the Church of Sweden is not fully democratic since participation in elections is at about 10% and the electorate has few chances to understand what the elections are about. The bishops’ weak formal position in the Synod is not in accordance with the teachings of the church on episcopacy. The conflict between democratic principles, inherited from the Swedish constitution, and church teaching on the ordained ministry and its role has not been fully resolved so far.