Praise and criticism of First Republic democracy is a study that deals with the way the pros and cons of First Republic democracy were evaluated at the time, as well as the way society perceived this concept at the time and what it highlighted or criticized in the political reality of the First Republic political system.
The two important events that shape our thinking about the democratic standards within the European Union and its member states at the break of the first and second decade of the XXI century are: the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty as well as the economic crisis in some members of the euro-zone. This analysis examines the major claims of the Treaty on democracy, its mechanisms and legitimacy. Subsequently, it contextualises them in the existing literature on democratic deficit and the legitimacy questions in the multilevel governance system of the EU. The author builds a scheme which reflects the channels of legitimacy in the decision-making process which the EU is entertaining. This system is then confronted with the problem of the current economic crisis. The ‘rescue policies’ intervention of the EU is criticised by many for violating the vox populi in the indebted countries. Therefore, this paper reflects upon the tension between democratically justified but economically irresponsible decisions on the one side, and the austerity measures imposed as a consequence of the previous decisions imposed from the outside and therefore seen as ‘undemocratic’. The author concludes that the present legitimacy equilibrium is sufficient to democratically justify the austerity measures imposed on the reform-resistant economies.
The object of the article is to present the rulings of the primary and secondary law of the European Union pertaining to the citizens’ initiative at the suprastate level that serve the implementation of organizational and infrastructural solutions as well as the first experiences with applying the accepted legal norms, administrative procedures and informative-communicative means. The analysis of the legal grounds aims at positioning the European citizens’ initiative in the classifications of democracy and its tools proposed so far, and adjusting theoretical approaches to states to the needs of studies on a suprastate organization of an integrative character. Analysis of the course and results of hitherto application of the rulings on the European Citizens’ Initiative purports to answer the question whether and how the direct power of the citizens of the European Union is exercised in practice at the level of this organization. The focus of the study is the question whether implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon actually results in a significant broadening of the scope of participating democracy and whether the European citizens are interested in using this new instrument of democracy, namely popular initiative at the suprastate level.
Artykuł poświęcony jest zagadnieniu wprowadzania zasad reżimu demokratycznego do życia politycznego Japonii po zakończeniu II wojny światowej. Zamierzeniem autora była próba określenia sposobu i poziomu zakorzeniania się wartości demokratycznych w świadomości społeczeństwa japońskiego. Dlatego też autor stara się określić wpływ wartości demokratycznych na postawy społeczne Japończyków w omawianym okresie czasu. W tym celu zostaje dokonana analiza kilku kluczowych dla zrozumienia problemu płaszczyzn: aksjologicznej, normatywnej i instytucjonalnej. Autor ukazuje także wpływ wewnętrznych postaw społecznych w Japonii manifestowanych w zakresie kultury politycznej na konwersję zasad i wartości demokracji i proces demokratyzacji.
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The article describes the problem of democracy in Japan as an external political system introduced after the end of World War II. The author tries to explore how deeply democratic values were rooted in Japanese society in the first decade after the war. The key objective of this article is to analyse how Japanese democratic values functioned at that time, how they influenced political attitudes and if they were coherent. There are three basic dimensions of the author’s considerations: axiological, normative and institutional. To achieve this, the author describes democratic values, internal elements of Japanese political culture and the democratisation process as a single complex process.
In the text I take a closer look at the political paradigm of self-sufficiency as outlined by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The paradigm is at work in all traditional Western political views, ideologies and practices, and can be reduced to two schematic models of politics: that of the subject, and of the citizen. The models are seen by Nancy to be no longer relevant to the urgent demands of contemporary social and political reality; they are also held to be responsible for contemporary problems and crises in, and of, democracy. Nancy tries to present an another approach to political practice and focuses on the issue of the (social) tie as one that is not given in any substantial way but always remains to be tied, always to be decided and continually reshaped in a response to unforeseeable events. As a part of a sketch of a political philosophy of relation and non-self-sufficiency, Nancy discusses the issues of singularity, incommensurability, justice and ,,equaliberty'', and stresses the need for constant invention of new forms of a democratic politics. The latter is meant as a politics of ,,democracy to-come'', democracy that always remains in statu nascendi, in the process of eventual transformation.
To speak of a new functioning of “Romance philology”, the article reflects on the problems and challenges facing our discipline, resulting from the crisis in the humanities and their teaching. In this view, the perspective outlined by Martha Nussbaum and Michał Paweł Markowski shows that these problems and challenges are not only a risk but also an opportunity for “Romance philology” insofar as the idea of “teaching for democracy”, advocated by these two authors, corresponds perfectly to the actual content of our courses and research work, inextricably linked to the French tradition. They must, however, take a new form to circulate in the media reality of today.
Besides pointing out economical preconditions for states applying for membership in the European Union, the „Copenhagen criteria” are supposed to test and verify if candidates fulfill „the European standard of a well‑ordered state” that is democratic, respecting the rule‑of‑law, human rights and minority’s rights. The article is an reflection on „European political cohesion” of the states entering the European Union in 2004 and in the following decade. In the face of deficit of, so called, „Copenhagen mechanism”, a serious doubt arises: is it possible to evaluate impartially whether candidates and/or member states implement properly „the European standard of a well‑ordered state”? This doubt is shared by the author of the article.
This article is looking at theoretical approaches to the study of corruption and tries to answer the question what could be the reason behind differences in the level of corruption between post-communist countries and established democracies in Europe on the theoretical level. First, this article discusses the problems of the definition of corrupt on. Next, this article presents the most important theories explaining corruption from the sociological point of view. This article will focus especially on norms (which are connected to rational choice, theory of ‘bad apples’ and ‘bad barrel’ and to criminological theories), on values (Max Weber, Inglehart and his theory of post-materialism), and finally on the extensive literature on corruption omitting any kind of theory. This paper will conclude with a discussion about which theories could explain the different levels of corruption in different countries.
The purpose of this article is to specify the complex social phenomenon, defined as surveillance society. Its strong manifestation within society should be considered a threat to the civil liberty; in a broad sense it is a threat to participatory democracy and civil society. These are the reasons that convinced the author to attempt a reconstruction of the causes of this phenomenon and analysis of its conditions. In a certain sense, reflections presented in this article are of a warning character. In modern Europe the issue of surveillance society can be considered a recent problem. However, it is not only Europe, but the whole globalized world that is facing major challenges which are brought with technology that allows for taking away people’s privacy, freedom, property and right to defence against “floating surveillance.” Resolving this issue is a challenge of the future, but nonetheless, to save individuals from the omnipotence of authority — political, legal and institutional solutions should be searched for now.
The phenomenon of democracy may be considered either as some desired political project or some kind of political reality. This paper focuses on normative and empirical theories of democracy. They are both essential in the research of it. The main task of normative theories is to deliver the vision of political system based on such values as liberty, equality and dignity of individuals, protecting civil and political freedoms, and making the government accountable to the citizens. Empirical theories describe and explain the mechanisms of such a systems. Without normative theories we lack the knowledge about how should democracy function. Without empirical theories we do not know how and why does it really work. What we really need in order to understand democracy is the uniting of both approaches.
In the contemporary outlook the convergence between liberal values and democratic order of state power election appears widely acknowledged. Democratic liberalism is the dominating tendency in the reflection about political systems of countries today. This is the result of a long debate among liberals, during which this standpoint was not unanimously accepted. The tension between individual liberty and the power of government is not invalidated simply by means of introduction of democratic procedure. The „people” can also be the tyrant. While some great liberals (Bentham, Guizot) believed that democracy leads to violation of individual liberties and chaos, others (Tocqueville, Mill) pointed out a possible „liberal democracy” if constitutional guarantees of a liberal rule of law are in place and government remains limited. This debate re-emerges in times of political and economic crisis.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that their political project involved a com-mitment to democracy, and many subsequent Marxists have claimed that Marxism’s conception of socialism and communism represents a supremely democratic social arrangement. Many of Marxism’s critics, however, reject this belief, holding that the Marxist conception of socialism and communism entails anti-democratic policies, prac-tices and institutions. While the position of Marxism’s critics is, without question, the predominant view today, it turns out that the arguments used to support this position are highly problematic, insofar as they proceed from certain liberal-democratic assumptions about democracy that Marxists can reasonably reject.
In this article the author points out that analyzing the role of Confucianism in Chinese society, and in particular the role of the Contemporary New Confucianism in relation to the possibility of establishing democracy in the ‘Middle Kingdom’, one should adopt the perspective of the widest possible openness to the values practiced there today. Adaptation of democracy to the circumstances of historical, cultural and political is evident. The values existing in Chinese society – those derived from tradition, and those created in the course of changes in the last century – will hardly shape democratic values. Confucian model of democratization can vary between conservative Confucian model of parliament and extreme political liberalism where “everyone is sovereign, all are subjects”. Democracy – or more precisely “Confucian democracy” – in China will be born with a moral conformity between the human individual and the state that reasonable public trust and turn them into co-government. It was then that the power of a “new contract” will arise new Chinese institutions of democracy, concludes the author.
This paper explores the stratagems of the Athenian oligarchs on their way to power in 411 BC. It focuses on political propaganda – the cynical manipulation of democratic ideals, principles and procedures for the purpose of promoting oligarchy as a different form of democracy. The study challenges the widely accepted view of a moderate Theramenist faction in an attempt to demonstrate that until the oligarchs have usurped power there is no justifi cation for differentiating between extremists and moderates among them. As to the historiography of the revolution, the paper argues that, for all its weaknesses and deficiencies, on the whole Thucydides’ account is a genuine attempt to free history from the distortion of propaganda, whereas the parallel account of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, despite recent attempts at its rehabilitation and validation, appears by and large to have achieved precisely the opposite effect – perpetuating by means of systematic omission and commission the historical distortion generated by propaganda.
John MattesonJohn Jay College of Criminal JusticeCity University of New YorkUSA“Believe and tremble”: A Note on Margaret Fuller’s Roman RevolutionAbstract: 1848, Europe’s year of revolutions, was also a revolutionary moment in the United States, for it witnessed the holding of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first formal gathering for the purpose of discussing the social and civil rights of women in America. A significant step on the road to Seneca Falls had taken place three years earlier when Margaret Fuller, the former editor of Emerson’s literary magazine The Dial, published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, an erudite and impassioned plea for female equality that had no precedent in American letters. Yet when the pioneering band of feminists gathered to ratify its Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, Fuller was thousands of miles away. The revolutionary movement to which she devoted her heart and toil that year was not the cause of American feminism, but the democratic revolution in Rome.
Regarding the contemporary role of mass media, especially television, and rising allegations of trivialization of the political life it is worth to consider how these opinions are justified. It evokes the question whether we are dealing with a situation in which public debate through the media seems to be based not on rational and logical conclusions, but on the competition, whose participants focus exclusively on creating their own images and pursuing symbolic politics. These trends cause that democracy evolves towards mediocracy, and the nineteenth-century ideologies lose their attraction to the simple message, free of thought. This phenomenon is considered in this paper in the meme theory context. The theory, introduced by Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural transmission, and in politics can be interpreted as short, blunt message, image or symbol, catchy enough to take over the imagination of the recipient. It is characterized by aggressive persuasion, apparent ambiguity and it is aimed to falsify the reality. Besides, its emotional assessment excludes any rational debate. It seems interesting, therefore, the trend of contemporary democracy, and question whether the public debate limited to an exchange of simplified, emotional arguments involves the danger of civil society erosion.
The theory of ‘development’, when applied to sports, remains an ambiguous and unclear reference. ‘Development’, like ‘modernization’, can be interpreted as Western sports exported to the Third World, as a neo-colonial ‘brawn drain’ of African athletes to the West, as evolutionism and ‘individualization’, none of which considers cultural diversity. This article analyses functionalist developmental theory, currently mainstream in countries like Germany. Developmental theory has a tendency to overlook diversity in sports and, more specifically, dynamics in popular sports and movement culture within different social contexts. There is nothing like ‘the one sport’, nor does ‘the soccer game’ exist alone in the rich world of football. Diversity in sports inspires differentiated views of democracy. How are different forms of democracy, especially in today's ‘competitive state’, implicated in sports? There is no reason to cultivate an attitude of better-knowing when facing the development of ‘the others’. This limitation launches a humble start for sports development as a means of mutual exchange and enrichment.
Participation has recently received renewed attention in the context of governance. This is especially relevant in countries where democratization and decentralization have led to an increased promotion of citizen involvement into the decision-making process. This article suggests that the current debate on civic engagement would benefit from further reflection on how the concept of participation is implemented in contexts, particularly in the Nordic as well as Central and Eastern European countries, where ideas of local democracy, urban governance and involvement can be understood differently. By exploring citizen participation from the perspective of local officials in two European cities – Lublin, Poland and Tampere, Finland, the article seeks to add significant data to the on-going scholarly discussion. Based on qualitative research, it examines advantages and disadvantages of the provisions of the local citizen-participation frameworks, as perceived by the officials of the selected case cities. In the conclusion, the authors point out that although both cities have different democratic institutional systems as well as commonly accepted notions of citizen participation, their city halls frequently face similar problems related to the use of participatory tools.
Accountability and evaluation have become an integral part of education systems and the day-to-day practice of educators in many countries around the world. The purpose of this presentation is to share an exploration of the links among evaluation, accountability and democracy which draws on the work of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. It will be argued that evaluation and accountability intertwine not just as a condition for democracy and its improvement but also as a challenge for democracy. Firstly, the notion of evaluation and its relevance to accountability will be outlined. A more detailed outline of accountability will follow in order to present evaluation and accountability as ´explanatory scheme´ (Rancière, 2010); that is, an structure that primarily serves to explain and provide justification. To conclude, connections between accountability and democracy will be discussed and challenges posed by the former one to the latter one are explored.
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