THE ESSENCE AND MECHANISMS OF AD HOC DEMOCRACY (Istota i mechanizmy funkcjonowania demokracji ad hoc)

• Authors: Szewczak Wiktor
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The article presents a particular mechanism of political decision making in contemporary democratic systems. It is called here 'ad hoc democracy'. This notion refers to the phenomenon of making political decisions (that are general and abstract) on the basis of premises that are individual and situational. After defining ad hoc democracy, the author reconstructs a typical scenario of the phenomenon, demonstrates selected examples of ad hoc democracy and discusses its main consequences. The analysis of ad hoc democracy construction process follows. The main cause of ad hoc democracy is defined as the interference of internally inconsistent logic of actions taken by three types of actors in political sphere: media, society (treated as an audience) and political decision-makers. In the last part of the article it is hypothesized that the systems experiencing rapid social changes and democratization processes are particularly prone to the emergence of ad hoc democracy. The hypothesis is justified and substantiated by referring to an example of Poland during the systemic transformation process.

Keywords

EN

AD HOC DEMOCRACY.; DEMOCRACY; MEDIA; POLITICAL DECISIONS; RATIONALITY

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Studia Socjologiczne
• Year: 2010
• Issue: 2(197)
• Pages: 11-30
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Szewczak Wiktor

• Wiktor Szewczak, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika w Toruniu, Wydzial Politologii i Studiów Miedzynarodowych, Katedra Teorii Polityki, ul. Batorego 39L. 87-100 Torun, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10PLAAAA083514