an article by Shany Mor published in Tablet [grateful thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for this piece]
A wave of recent books warning about a ‘crisis of democracy’ reveals that even our experts are confused about how democracies actually work
Book after book in recent years has alerted us—as if we couldn’t tell by reading the news and absorbing the panicked media—that democracy is in crisis. Did it start with Trump or with Brexit? In Europe or the U.S.? The diagnosis varies among authors of different backgrounds and political persuasions, as do their prescriptions on what to do now. Not all of the books even share the premise that the loss of democracy is such a bad thing—at least one recent work argues that the real crisis was a democratic surplus.
What the books have in common, beyond their shared subject matter, is a common confusion over what democracy actually is. This confusion about the differences between democracy’s complementary functions like lawmaking and voting is, in its own way, rather illuminating, as the shared shortcoming in the books suggests a broader breakdown in democratic understanding that helped engender the very crisis they were written to address.
Probably the best, and certainly the most talked about entry in the “crisis of democracy” catalogue, is Yascha Mounk’s The People vs. Democracy.
Mounk was, at the time of the book’s release, a Harvard lecturer, and his well-timed tome has catapulted him into the world of celebrity academics. This clearly came as no surprise to his publishers at Harvard University Press, who put the book out with no fewer than four gushing blurbs from an exhaustive array of celebrity intellectuals ranging all the way from a Harvard AB (Dani Rodrik), a Harvard Ph.D. (Francis Fukuyama), a Harvard JD (Anne-Marie Slaughter), and all the way to a current Harvard professor (Michael Sandel).
Continue reading
I found this well worth the time and effort.
Showing posts with label liberal_democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberal_democracy. Show all posts
Friday, 16 August 2019
Friday, 18 January 2019
Populism and civil society
a column by Tito Boeri, Prachi Mishra, Chris Papageorgiou and Antonio Spilimbergo for VOX: CEPR&rsquo's Policy Portal
The claim by populist leaders to have a monopoly on representing ‘the people’ stands in contrast with the concept of liberal democracy, which is based on pluralism where different groups represent different interests and values.
Using data from several waves of the European Social Survey, this column demonstrates that individuals who belong to associations are less likely to vote for populist parties. Alexis de Tocqueville appears to have been right when he wrote almost two centuries ago that civil society is a key defence of liberal democracy.
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The claim by populist leaders to have a monopoly on representing ‘the people’ stands in contrast with the concept of liberal democracy, which is based on pluralism where different groups represent different interests and values.
Using data from several waves of the European Social Survey, this column demonstrates that individuals who belong to associations are less likely to vote for populist parties. Alexis de Tocqueville appears to have been right when he wrote almost two centuries ago that civil society is a key defence of liberal democracy.
Continue reading
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Post-secular schooling: freedom through faith or diversity in community
an article by Jacqueline Elizabeth Watson (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) published in Cambridge Journal of Education Volume 43 Issue 2 (June 2013)
Abstract
Post-secularism and neo-liberalism have converged in education policy and theory to generate a new enthusiasm for faith schools, along with criticism of the publicly-funded common or community school.
However, in a post-secular social context, where religious and spiritual pluralism exponentially increases, and belief positions are both polarised and syncretised, the democratic notion of the common or community school appears even more crucial to address community understanding. There need to be strong reasons, therefore, for abandoning the common or community school in favour of faith schools.
This article presents a critique of recent key philosophical defences of the public funding of faith schools, put forward by Richard Pring and Harry Brighouse, and by the Christian educationalist, Trevor Cooling. It also gives support to Michael Fielding and Peter Moss’ arguments for radicalising and reforming the common school, to enable it to be a community for understanding in an increasingly challenging post-secular environment.
Abstract
Post-secularism and neo-liberalism have converged in education policy and theory to generate a new enthusiasm for faith schools, along with criticism of the publicly-funded common or community school.
However, in a post-secular social context, where religious and spiritual pluralism exponentially increases, and belief positions are both polarised and syncretised, the democratic notion of the common or community school appears even more crucial to address community understanding. There need to be strong reasons, therefore, for abandoning the common or community school in favour of faith schools.
This article presents a critique of recent key philosophical defences of the public funding of faith schools, put forward by Richard Pring and Harry Brighouse, and by the Christian educationalist, Trevor Cooling. It also gives support to Michael Fielding and Peter Moss’ arguments for radicalising and reforming the common school, to enable it to be a community for understanding in an increasingly challenging post-secular environment.
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