4th European Social Science History Conference Gothenburg, Sweden, 12-15 April 2023 Politics, Citizenship and Nations Network Call for Papers and Sessions Heroes and Villains in Political History Agencies, conflicts and continuities (original) (raw)
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Popular Struggle and Democracy in Scandinavia : 1700 to the Present
2018
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary themes in the field of Political Sociology. Over recent years, attention has turned increasingly to processes of Europeanization and globalization and the social and political spaces that are opened by them. These processes comprise both institutional-constitutional change and new dynamics of social transnationalism. Europeanization and globalization are also about changing power relations as they affect people's lives, social networks and forms of mobility. The Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology series addresses linkages between regulation, institution building and the full range of societal repercussions at local, regional, national, European and global level, and will sharpen understanding of changing patterns of attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, the political use of new rights and opportunities by citizens, new conflict lines and coalitions, societal interactions and networking, and shifting loyalties and solidarity within and across the European space. We welcome proposals from across the spectrum of Political Sociology and Political Science, on dimensions of citizenship; political attitudes and values; political communication and public spheres; states, communities, governance structure and political institutions; forms of political participation; populism and the radical right; and democracy and democratization.
Populism is politics' buzzword and its impact is being felt across the globe, but beyond a widespread concern about its explosive appearance, there's little agreement about what the phenomenon is, the reasons behind its surge, what factors in our current conjuncture facilitated it, and what it indicates about 'the human condition'. The Populism Specialist Group seeks papers that confront these questions, paying particular attention to: what populism indicates about the role of representation and antagonism in politics; whether there are different variants of populism such as right-wing and left-wing, or even a populism of the centre; the impact of communication and mediation on the populist explosion; the advantages of qualitative and quantitative methods in researching populism; and more general considerations about the relationship between populism and politics and/or the political at the local, national and trans-national level.
3 Democracy’s Challenge: Nordic Minority Politics in the European Context
The Challenge of Minority Integration Politics and Policies in the Nordic Nations, 2015
3.1 Democracy, the people and the paradox of sovereignty 'The people' is a ubiquitous category both in modern constitutionalism and in the rhetoric of democratic politics. When it comes to defining what democracy is in a nutshell, the formula of 'government by the people' is recurrently used. At first sight, this sounds reasonable enough: In a polity that is supposed to meet democratic standards, the subjects of rule must also have a decisive voice in the process of ruling. Yet the apparent common sense may well hide one of the most intractable problems of democratic theory and practice, as Robert Dahl (1989: 116) would put it. The problem concerns the very identity of 'the people': Which are the specific features a given collectivity of persons must have to be able to claim that they constitute a people? If the people are supposed to be the ultimate source of democratic legitimacy, who can legitimately establish who the people are? By raising these questions we approach one of the big 'black hole' areas of political sociology and political science. Modern theories of democracy implicitly assume that 'a people' exists. In the language of modern constitutions, the assumption typically becomes a programmatic declaration. But what are the social and political realities underneath the constitutional claims of 'government by the people'? I suspect that much of the concern many scholars and public intellectuals express when they are confronted with issues of identity politics may be caused by the uncomfortable feeling of getting close to the 'black hole'. An argument that can frequently be heard in this context is that instead of looking at our navels and discussing who we are we should rather focus on 'proper problems', i.e. problems that relate to the allocation of scarce resources. In contrast with this view, I will hold that defending an interest presupposes identity. After all, one of the main lessons to be drawn from the debate on multiculturalism and democracy of the last decades-a debate that seems far from being closed yet-is that democratic politics involves, by definition, identity politics. To ignore this would simply imply to keep one of the core domains of democratic rule insulated against the very logic of democracy. Here, the point not only lies in acknowledging the importance of input-oriented mechanisms of legitimation for democratic decision-making, as most political scientists would do. Input legitimation (Scharpf 1999: 6) is based on strong collective ties between the members of a community. These ties translate into a general consent which makes the outcome of an open political process acceptable to all community members. What identity politics now typically puts to the test are the very foundations of democratic input. For in many cases, raising identity issues means to question the legitimacy
Politics and Civil Society in European Values Study BiH 2019
Vrijednosti u BiH: Prikaz rezultata Europske studije vrijednosti 2019, 2020
This is the English version of a chapter published in Bosnian by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. This chapter covers the ways that citizens participate in politics at the ballot box and on the streets, what forms of politics (if any!) that they value, and how they conceptualize important political ideas like democracy itself. The first section addresses how interested citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are in politics, how they identify themselves on a left-to-right political spectrum and their sources of information about politics. This is followed by analysis of opinions about the political system within which politics happens - Which social and political institutions are trusted more and which less? To what degree are they satisfied with the system and do they prefer military rule, government by experts, a strongman, or democracy? The next section unpacks the idea of democracy and explores how important it is and how democratic BiH is. This background then helps to frame the following section about political participation – do people (claim to) vote? Are elections free and fair? do people participate in petitions, strikes, and demonstrations? The final section takes up the ideas of civil society and social capital and provides data on how many citizens are members of associations and what kind, and to what degree they are engaged as volunteers.
Democracy ’ s Challenge : Nordic Minority Politics in the European Context 3
2015
3.1 Democracy, the people and the paradox of sovereignty 'The people' is a ubiquitous category both in modern constitutionalism and in the rhetoric of democratic politics. When it comes to defining what democracy is in a nutshell, the formula of 'government by the people' is recurrently used. At first sight, this sounds reasonable enough: In a polity that is supposed to meet democratic standards, the subjects of rule must also have a decisive voice in the process of ruling. Yet the apparent common sense may well hide one of the most intractable problems of democratic theory and practice, as Robert Dahl (1989: 116) would put it. The problem concerns the very identity of 'the people': Which are the specific features a given collectivity of persons must have to be able to claim that they constitute a people? If the people are supposed to be the ultimate source of democratic legitimacy, who can legitimately establish who the people are? By raising these questions we approach one of the big 'black hole' areas of political sociology and political science. Modern theories of democracy implicitly assume that 'a people' exists. In the language of modern constitutions, the assumption typically becomes a programmatic declaration. But what are the social and political realities underneath the constitutional claims of 'government by the people'? I suspect that much of the concern many scholars and public intellectuals express when they are confronted with issues of identity politics may be caused by the uncomfortable feeling of getting close to the 'black hole'. An argument that can frequently be heard in this context is that instead of looking at our navels and discussing who we are we should rather focus on 'proper problems', i.e. problems that relate to the allocation of scarce resources. In contrast with this view, I will hold that defending an interest presupposes identity. After all, one of the main lessons to be drawn from the debate on multiculturalism and democracy of the last decades-a debate that seems far from being closed yet-is that democratic politics involves, by definition, identity politics. To ignore this would simply imply to keep one of the core domains of democratic rule insulated against the very logic of democracy. Here, the point not only lies in acknowledging the importance of input-oriented mechanisms of legitimation for democratic decision-making, as most political scientists would do. Input legitimation (Scharpf 1999: 6) is based on strong collective ties between the members of a community. These ties translate into a general consent which makes the outcome of an open political process acceptable to all community members. What identity politics now typically puts to the test are the very foundations of democratic input. For in many cases, raising identity issues means to question the legitimacy
The original experiments with democracy in ancient Europe disappeared and meaningfully re-turned only two millennia later with the birth of the republic. The championing of pluralism, diversity, and basic liberties and the long traditions of encouraging and protecting public debates on political, social, and cultural matters in, say, Eurasia, Middle East and many parts of Africa, demand much fuller recognition in the history of democratic ideas. This global heritage is ground enough to question the frequently reiterated view that democracy is just a Western idea, whose recognition has direct relevance in contemporary politics in pointing to the global legacy of social deliberation and pluralist interactions, which cannot be any less important today (Sen, 2003). In the 20th century, Communism, Nazism and Fascism presented powerful challenges only on the battlefield but also in the realm of ideas. With the downfall of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama decreed The End of History, while Huntington underpinned in The Third Wave, democracy did not roll steadily forward, but rose and fell in waves (Muravchik & Gedmin, 2017). Today, populism is the harbinger of democratic de-consolidation. Right-wing populists ascend when toxic forces converge: a failing economy and high unemployment, the political system legitimacy with regular people and finally some foreign men¬ace causes people to seek shelter in a strongman (Kuttner, 2017). Beyond the sphere of unemployment, racism, xenophobia and immigration, populist surge can be grasped in terms of the related domain of ideology, whose elements and constructs might be seen as the very constitutive structure of political openness or closure. Populism will commonly be characterized by a number of distinctive and shared elements, including cultural values, traditions of political discourse and arguments, and modes of depiction of specific interests, needs and issues. These complexes of elements will tend to assume varying forms and to enter into shifting relations of competition, co-operation and hegemony during elections. Key words: populism, elections, democracy, legitimacy, economy, employment, racism,
Global Discourse • vol 9 • no 1 • 195–213, 2019
The term ‘illiberal democracy’, coined by Fareed Zakaria in 1997, has gained much traction, specifically since its use by Hungarian Prime Minster Victor Orbán in 2014. Ever since, Orbán and his governing party Fidesz have been implementing this vision resulting in major cutdowns on free speech, freedom of press, of various NGOs which support human rights, and so forth. Moreover, Fidesz won the 2018 national election with a strong focus on anti- immigration policies. Although Orbán’s restrictive migration policies were widely criticised during the so-called refugee crisis 2015, many EU member states have started to follow the Hungarian policy of closing borders and protecting the EU from asylum-seekers and an alleged invasion by Muslims. Hence, I claim that formerly taboo subjects and expressions in mainstream discourse are being accepted more and more (‘normalisation’). Such normalisation goes hand in hand with a certain ‘shamelessness’: the limits of the sayable are shifting regarding both the frequency of lies and the violating of discourse conventions – as well as regarding repeated attacks on central democratic institutions. Normalising the assessment of migrants as a threat to inner security and a burden on the welfare state and education system must be perceived as an international development – generally instrumentalising a ‘politics of fear’.
The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratization in Europe: Concepts and Histories
2008
Contents: On the politics, concepts and histories of European democratization, Tuija Pulkkinen and Jose MarA-a Rosales. Part I Concepts: Representative democracy: Rosanvallon on the French experience, Frank R. Ankersmit Direct democracy, ancient and modern, Mogens Herman Hansen Neither ancient nor modern: Rousseau's theory of democracy, Gabriella Silvestrini Representative government or republic? Sieyes on good government, Christine Faure Democratic politics and the dynamics of passions, Chantal Mouffe Disobedient state and faithful citizen? Re-locating politics in the age of globalization, Olivia Guaraldo The gendered 'subjects' of political representation, Tuija Pulkkinen. Part II Practices: Political rhetoric and the role of ridicule, Quentin Skinner Political times and the rhetoric of democratization, Kari Palonen Democratization and the instrumentalization of the past, Irene Herrmann The rhetoric of intellectual manifestos from the First World War to the war against...