Constrained Elitism and Contemporary Democratic Theory

Constrained Elitism and Contemporary Democratic Theory PDF

Author: Timothy Kersey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-08

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1317928288

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Today, examples of the public’s engagement with political issues through commercial and communicative mechanisms have become increasingly common. In February 2012, the Susan G. Komen Foundation reversed a decision to cease funding of cancer screening programs through Planned Parenthood amidst massive public disapproval. The same year, restaurant chain Chic-fil-A became embroiled in a massive public debate over statements its President made regarding same-sex marriage. What exactly is going on in such public engagement, and how does this relate to existing ideas regarding the public sphere and political participation? Is the public becoming increasingly vocal in its complaints? Or are new relationships between the public and economic and political leaders emerging? Timothy Kersey’s book asserts that the widespread utilization of internet communications technologies, especially social media applications, has brought forth a variety of new communicative behaviors and relationships within liberal polities. Through quick and seemingly chaotic streams of networked communication, the actions of these elites are subject to increasingly intense scrutiny and short-term pressure to ameliorate or at least address the concerns of segments of the population. By examining these new patterns of behavior among both elites and the general public, Kersey unearths the implications of these patterns for contemporary democratic theory, and argues that contemporary conceptualizations of "the public’" need to be modified to more accurately reflect practices of online communication and participation. By engaging with this topical issue, Kersey is able to closely examine the self-organization of both elite and non-elite segments of the population within the realm of networked communication, and the relations and interactions between these segments. His book combines perspectives from political theory and communication studies and so will be widely relevant across both disciplines.

Constrained Elitism and Contemporary Democratic Theory

Constrained Elitism and Contemporary Democratic Theory PDF

Author: Timothy Kersey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-08

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 131792827X

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Today, examples of the public’s engagement with political issues through commercial and communicative mechanisms have become increasingly common. In February 2012, the Susan G. Komen Foundation reversed a decision to cease funding of cancer screening programs through Planned Parenthood amidst massive public disapproval. The same year, restaurant chain Chic-fil-A became embroiled in a massive public debate over statements its President made regarding same-sex marriage. What exactly is going on in such public engagement, and how does this relate to existing ideas regarding the public sphere and political participation? Is the public becoming increasingly vocal in its complaints? Or are new relationships between the public and economic and political leaders emerging? Timothy Kersey’s book asserts that the widespread utilization of internet communications technologies, especially social media applications, has brought forth a variety of new communicative behaviors and relationships within liberal polities. Through quick and seemingly chaotic streams of networked communication, the actions of these elites are subject to increasingly intense scrutiny and short-term pressure to ameliorate or at least address the concerns of segments of the population. By examining these new patterns of behavior among both elites and the general public, Kersey unearths the implications of these patterns for contemporary democratic theory, and argues that contemporary conceptualizations of "the public’" need to be modified to more accurately reflect practices of online communication and participation. By engaging with this topical issue, Kersey is able to closely examine the self-organization of both elite and non-elite segments of the population within the realm of networked communication, and the relations and interactions between these segments. His book combines perspectives from political theory and communication studies and so will be widely relevant across both disciplines.

Democratic Elitism

Democratic Elitism PDF

Author: Heinrich Best

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 9004179399

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Joseph Schumpeter's competitive theory of democracy often labeled democratic elitism - has struck many as an apt and insightful description of how representative democracy works, even though convinced democrats detect an elitist thrust they find disturbing. But neither Schumpeter nor subsequent defenders of democratic elitism have paid enough attention to actual behaviors of leaders and elites. Attention has been riveted on how adequately democratic elitism captures the relationship between governors and governed in its insistence that competitive elections prevent the relationship from being one-way, that is, leaders and elites largely unaccountable to passive and submissive voters. Why and how leaders and elites create and sustain competitive elections, what happens if their competitions become excessively stage-managed or belligerent how, in short, leaders and elites really act - are some of the issues this book addresses.

Democracy & elitism of ancients and moderns

Democracy & elitism of ancients and moderns PDF

Author: Giuseppe Tosi

Publisher: Editora CRV

Published: 2024-02-21

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 6525158249

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Democracy is a concept so worn out by intensive use and polysemy of meanings, and at the same time so essential to contemporary political theory and practice, that it deserves to be recurrently revisited and reinterpreted. That's what we want to do in this book, raising some questions and confronting different theories about democracy, without any claim to completeness. Our objective is not to cover the entire discussion about democracy, but to restrict itself to the debate between democracy and elitism. Our central working hypothesis is that a compromise between democratic and elitist theory is possible, through the so-called democratic elitism, which embraces elements of both theories and promotes a synthesis. From this perspective, democracy, realistically, is not the "government of the people, by the people, and for the people", but the government of elites by competing among themselves for popular consensus, to achieve power. This does not mean denying the possibility of popular participation if this is understood not as an alternative to representative democracy, but as its necessary complement. This thesis is developed through a history of the main concepts in dispute: people, elite, government, citizenship, representative, direct, plebiscitary, participatory democracy, which change according to different historical, political, economic and social contexts.

Machiavellian Democracy

Machiavellian Democracy PDF

Author: John P. McCormick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-01-31

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1139494961

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Intensifying economic and political inequality poses a dangerous threat to the liberty of democratic citizens. Mounting evidence suggests that economic power, not popular will, determines public policy, and that elections consistently fail to keep public officials accountable to the people. McCormick confronts this dire situation through a dramatic reinterpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought. Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today. It reassesses one of the central figures in the Western political canon and decisively intervenes into current debates over institutional design and democratic reform. McCormick proposes a citizen body that excludes socioeconomic and political elites and grants randomly selected common people significant veto, legislative and censure authority within government and over public officials.

Critical Elitism

Critical Elitism PDF

Author: Alfred Moore

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-22

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1107194520

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This book re-imagines expert authority for an age of critical citizens, and shows how expertise can contribute in a deliberative system.

The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy

The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy PDF

Author: Pedro T. Magalhães

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1351654004

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By re-examining the political thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, this book offers a reflection on the nature of modern democracy and the question of its legitimacy. Pedro T. Magalhães shows that present-day elitist, populist and pluralist accounts of democracy owe, in diverse and often complicated ways, an intellectual debt to the interwar era, German-speaking, scholarly and political controversies on the problem(s) of modern democracy. A discussion of Weber’s ambivalent diagnosis of modernity and his elitist views on democracy, as they were elaborated especially in the 1910s, sets the groundwork for the study. Against that backdrop, Schmitt’s interwar political thought is interpreted as a form of neo-authoritarian populism, whereas Kelsen evinces robust, though not entirely unproblematic, pluralist consequences. In the conclusion, the author draws on Claude Lefort’s concept of indeterminacy to sketch a potentially more fruitful way than can be gleaned from the interwar German discussions of conceiving the nexus between the elitist, populist and pluralist faces of modern democracy. The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy will be of interest to political theorists, political philosophers, intellectual historians, theoretically oriented political scientists, and legal scholars working in the subfields of constitutional law and legal theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315157566, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

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