Democracy

1
Democracy

• What is and where is it going?

2
Democracy
Community offers us security and fraternity but
often imposes demands of conformity and
responsibility. Heterogeneous plural societies
offer considerable autonomy to individuals but do
so at the price of alientation or loneliness.
Is it possible to combine the best features of
community and plural society? How do we all get
along?
3

• What is democracy?
• Elections
• Essential characteristics
• Freedom
• Popular sovereignty
• Liberal democracy
• System of government in which the people rule
  themselves, either directly or indirectly
  (through chosen officials), but in either case
  subject to constitutional restraints on the power
  of the majority.
• Representative democracy

4
Descriptions of Democracy

• Who gets to play
• Dahl degree of contestation of political power
  and extent of popular participation in such
  contestation
• Polyarchy
• How they get to play?
• Lijphart Marjoritarian and consensus democracies
• How democracy is done?

5
Lipjhart Majoritarian-Consensual
Institutional Variable Majoritarian Consensus
Executive power Single party majority Multiparty coalitions
Executive-legislative relationship Executive dominance Balance of power
Party system Two-party Multi-party
Electoral system Majority or plurality PR
Interest group system pluralist corporatist
Levels of govt unitary federalism
Legislative chambers Unicameral Bicameral
Constitutional amendment By simple majority By special majority
Judicial review no yes
6
De Tocquevillian
Formal Substantive
Rule of law Inclusive citizenship Elected power holders Free and Fair elections Freedom of Expression and alternative sources Associational Autonomy Civilian Control of Security Forces Separation of Power Legitimized public authority. Acceptance of limitations of power Rights based culture Participatory culture Strong civil society Support for dissenting opinions and free speech.
7
Colin Hay

1. Politics as any and all social interaction
   occurring within a sphere of government
2. Politics as government, where government is
   understood as a formal decision-making process
   the outcomes of which are binding upon members of
   the community in question
3. Politics as a public and formal set of processes
   and rituals through which the citizens of a state
   may participate, often at arms length, in the
   process of government.
4. Politics as the noble art of preserving a
   community of citizens (the republic) through the
   construction, pursuit and defence of the common
   or public interest.
5. Politics as the art of stabilizing and insulating
   the power and authority of those with access to
   and control over public institutions through the
   use of the resources that they thereby possess.
6. Politics as a process of public deliberation and
   scrutiny of matters of collective concern or
   interest to a community.

8
Hay (cont)

• Politics as a process for holding to account
  those charged with responsibility for collective
  decision making within the community.
• Politics as a perverse set of influences upon
  society, associated with deception, duplicity and
  the promotion in the name of the collective good
  of singular or sectional interests.
• Politics as a descriptive noun for a range of
  collective and public, yet informal and
  extra-govenmental/parliamentary, activities
  designated to draw attention to issues of
  contention.
• Politics as concerned with the distribution,
  exercise and consequences of power.
• Political as an adjective to describe the
  motivation of participants and non-participants
  in a range of both formal and informal, public
  and private, processes where such motivations
  are political to the extent to which they reflect
  or express a view as to the legitimacy of the
  process.
• Political as an adjective to describe the
  motivations of participants in matters of public
  governance or social interaction where such
  motivations are political to the extent to which
  they reflect or express the narrow self-interest
  of the participant.

9
Hays definition of politics
Politics is the capacity for agency and
deliberation in situations of genuine collective
or social choice. (pg. 77)
10
Politicization/Depoliticization

• Politicization
• Read Mansbridge!!!
• Depoliticization
• Down-loading public policy to the public
  non-governmental sphere
• Privatization
• Uploading to the transnational sphere
• Issues as consumer choices
• Disavowal of a capacity deliberation. Making
  issues non-negotiable
• Defining something a religious issues
• Fatalism pessimistic and opptimistic
• The lose of public civic space