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Demoicratic Authority
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Book Synopsis Democratic Authority by : David Estlund
Download or read book Democratic Authority written by David Estlund and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is not naturally plausible. Why turn such important matters over to masses of people who have no expertise? Many theories of democracy answer by appealing to the intrinsic value of democratic procedure, leaving aside whether it makes good decisions. In Democratic Authority, David Estlund offers a groundbreaking alternative based on the idea that democratic authority and legitimacy must depend partly on democracy's tendency to make good decisions. Just as with verdicts in jury trials, Estlund argues, the authority and legitimacy of a political decision does not depend on the particular decision being good or correct. But the "epistemic value" of the procedure--the degree to which it can generally be accepted as tending toward a good decision--is nevertheless crucial. Yet if good decisions were all that mattered, one might wonder why those who know best shouldn't simply rule. Estlund's theory--which he calls "epistemic proceduralism"--avoids epistocracy, or the rule of those who know. He argues that while some few people probably do know best, this can be used in political justification only if their expertise is acceptable from all reasonable points of view. If we seek the best epistemic arrangement in this respect, it will be recognizably democratic--with laws and policies actually authorized by the people subject to them.
Book Synopsis The Constitution of Equality by : Thomas Christiano
Download or read book The Constitution of Equality written by Thomas Christiano and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the ethical basis of democracy? And what reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? And when do we have reason to say that we may justly ignore democratic decisions? These questions must be answered if we are to have answers to some of the most important questions facing our global community, which include whether there is a human right to democracy and whether we must attempt to spread democracy throughout the globe. This book provides a philosophical account of the moral foundations of democracy and of liberalism. It shows how democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways they can see are treating them as equals. The principle of public equality is shown to be the fundamental principle of social justice. This account enables us to understand the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life. It gives an account of the grounds of the authority of democracy. It also shows when the authority of democracy runs out. The author shows how the violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy, how the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons weaken the legitimate authority of democracy.
Book Synopsis Democratic Sovereignty by : Matthew S. Weinert
Download or read book Democratic Sovereignty written by Matthew S. Weinert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book argues that sovereignty, generally defined as the supreme authority in a political community, has a neglected democratic dimension that highlights the expansion of substantive individual rights and freedoms at home and abroad. Offering an historically based assessment of sovereignty that neither reifies the state nor argues sovereignty and the state are eroding under globalizing processes, the book maintains that sovereignty norms have continually changed throughout the history of the sovereign state. Matthew Weinert links international legal developments that restrict and coordinate sovereignty practices with an ethical undercurrent in International Relations, one such example is the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002. Drawing on seven additional historical case studies, he outlines how campaigns informed by a commitment to the common good, or at the very least by opposition to harmful state policies, can be and have been efficacious in transforming the normative basis of sovereignty. Democratic Sovereignty will be of great interest to students working in the fields of sovereignty, international history, ethics, globalization and international relations.
Book Synopsis Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State by : Robert Audi
Download or read book Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State written by Robert Audi and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book clarifies the relation between religion and ethics, articulates principles governing religion in politics, and outlines a theory of civic virtue. It frames institutional principles to guide governmental policies toward religion and counterpart standards to guide individual citizens; and it defends an account of toleration that leavens the ethical framework both in individual nations and internationally.
Book Synopsis Authority and Democracy by : April Carter
Download or read book Authority and Democracy written by April Carter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book debates the nature and functions of authority: it examines how far our inherited images of authority derive from an aristocratic and traditional order and considers which models of authority are still relevant in a democratic and rationalist society. It discusses the characteristics of the authority relationship, whether political authority differs from other kinds of authority, how authority relates to power and whether authority should be distinguished from the concept of legitimate rule. The latter part of the book explores the relevance or irrelevance of authority in contemporary society. In particular it examines recent libertarian arguments for the rejection of all forms of authority and the special problems of creating and maintaining authority after revolution.
Book Synopsis Democratic Religion by : Gregory A. Wills
Download or read book Democratic Religion written by Gregory A. Wills and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person. Paradoxically no denomination could wield religious authority as zealously as the Baptists. Between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace an exclusivist spirituality--a spirituality that continues to shape Southern Baptist churches in contemporary conflicts between moderates who urge tolerance and conservatives who require belief in scriptural inerrancy. Wills's analysis advances our understanding of the interaction between democracy and religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as to Baptist observers.
Book Synopsis Deliberative Democracy by : James Bohman
Download or read book Deliberative Democracy written by James Bohman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions in this anthology address tensions that arise between reason and politics in a democracy inspired by the ideal of achieving reasoned agreement among free and equal citizens.
Book Synopsis Prophetic Authority by : Michael Hubbard MacKay
Download or read book Prophetic Authority written by Michael Hubbard MacKay and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mormon tradition's emphasis on prophetic authority makes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unique within America's religious culture. The religion that Joseph Smith created established a kingdom of God in a land distrustful of monarchy while positioning Smith as Christ's voice on earth, with the power to form cities, establish economies, and arrange governments. Michael Hubbard MacKay traces the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' claim to religious authority and sets it within the context of its times. Delving into the evolution of the concept of prophetic authority, MacKay shows how the Church emerged as a hierarchical democracy with power diffused among leaders Smith chose. At the same time, Smith's settled place atop the hierarchy granted him an authority that spared early Mormonism the internal conflict that doomed other religious movements. Though Smith faced challenges from other leaders, the nascent Church repeatedly turned to him to decide civic plans and define the order of both the cosmos and the priesthood.
Download or read book Nation of Devils written by Stein Ringen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a government get the people to accept its authority? Every government must make unpopular demands on its citizens; the challenge is that power is not enough, the populace must also be willing to be led.
Book Synopsis Authority Stealing by : Wale Adebanwi
Download or read book Authority Stealing written by Wale Adebanwi and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The post-Cold War world has produced a global consensus on the devastation caused by corruption in society. However, in spite of the growing awareness of the danger that corruption constitutes to democracy and development, and the growing number of anti-corruption agencies in Africa in the last decade, there is yet no elaborate scholarly focus on these agencies, most of which were created in the wake of the recent expansion of multi-party democracy in Africa. As a corrective to this, Authority Stealing chronicles the story of Nuhu Ribadu, arguably Africa''s most courageous and most successful anti-corruption Czar and former head of Nigeria''s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The book places the anti-graft exploits of Ribadu in post-military Nigeria on a larger canvass of the crisis of nationhood in a country in which public office is regarded as an ''eatery.'' This revealing and riveting narrative of one of Africa''s biggest cesspools of graft explains how the systemic or structural crisis which reproduces a thieving ruling class in a typical postcolonial state has pushed a country with an abundance of human and material resources to the bottom of the global human development index. This crisis has also led to the phenomenon of the advance-fee fraud, otherwise known globally as ''Nigerian 419'' or ''Nigerian Scam.'' While focusing on the era of democracy in Nigeria, the book uses biographical, structural and historical perspectives covering fifty years of Nigeria''s existence, illuminating the paradoxes of anti-corruption campaign in Africa. This book, which is based on ethnographic and archival materials, supplemented with interviews with key dramatis personae, will appeal to a variety of audiences and disciplines, including Africanists, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, historians, economists, policy makers, international development experts, criminologists and investigators of international crime syndicates, global anti-graft agencies and activists, and lay readers interested in the issue of corruption around the world. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "The reader will find him or herself ... cringing at the extent of debauchery that has enveloped Africa''s most populous state. Adebanwi''s writing appears most fluent and concise when he tackles head-on the corrosive nature of political decadence and corruption, and the multifaceted vision employed by [Nuhu] Ribadu and his contemporaries at the EFCC to rid the nation of this cancer.... [A] salient document depicting an important crusader for justice..." -- Professor Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, and David and Marianna Fisher University Professor, Brown University "An excellent, richly detailed source for readers with little knowledge of--but great interest in--the micro-underpinnings of the more visible macro-phenomenon of prebendal politics in Nigeria over the last decade, drawn primarily upon local media reporting and interviews with principals." -- African Studies Review "Will the cesspools of corruption in Nigeria be forever drained and will this great nation discover a path to democratic prosperity? That is the question which confronts us on almost every page of Adebanwi''s searing exposé." -- Richard Joseph, John Evans Professor of International History and Politics, Northwestern University "Authority Stealing documents how discovering, documenting, publicizing, and gesturing at eradicating corruption have constituted the most common methods with which regimes have been compromised, and regime changes have been justified, in Nigeria since independence. When Adebanwi concludes that corruption seems to have become a key instrument of state policy in Nigeria, he cannot be faulted. This book provides the evidence to theorize corruption discourse as the main instrument with which Nigerian rulers invent legitimacy, induce consent from the governed, nurture public goodwill, and sustain continuation. Governance in Nigeria thrives on corruption!" -- Adeleke Adeeko, Humanities Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University "Readers will be rewarded with a thorough education in the personalities, practices, and political culture that allow billions of dollars of Nigerian state revenues to disappear every year." -- Foreign Affairs "Wale Adebanwi has written an important and illuminating account of Nigeria''s anti-corruption war during Nuhu Ribadu''s courageous leadership of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) ... Adebanwi is good at navigating the thickets of conflicting information that emanated from each high-profile corruption case." -- Journal of Modern African Studies
Book Synopsis Does Truth Matter? by : Ronald Tinnevelt
Download or read book Does Truth Matter? written by Ronald Tinnevelt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-11-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The claim once made by philosophers of unique knowledge of the essence of humanity and society has fallen into disrepute. Neither Platonic forms, divine revelation nor metaphysical truth can serve as the ground for legitimating social and political norms. On the political level many seem to agree that democracy doesn’t need foundations. Nor are its citizens expected to discuss the worth of their comprehensive conceptions of the good life. According to Rawls, for example, we have to accept that “politics in a democratic society can never be guided by what we see as the whole truth (...)”. (1993: 243) And yet we still call upon truth when we participate in defining the basic structure our society and argue why our opinions, beliefs and preferences need to be taken seriously. We do not think that our views need to be taken into account by others because they are our views, but because we think they are true. If in a democratic society citizens have to deal with the challenge of affirming their claims as true, we need to analyse the precise relationship between truth and democracy. Does truth matter to democracy and if so, what is the place of truth in democratic politics? How can citizens affirm the truth of their claims and accept - at the same time - that their truth is just one amongst many? Our book centers on the role of the public sphere in these pressing questions. It tries to give a comprehensive answer to these questions from the perspective of the main approaches of contemporary democratic theory: deliberative democracy, political pragmatism and liberalism. A confrontation of these approaches, will result in a more encompassing philosophical understanding of our plural democracy, which – in this era of globalization – is more complex than ever before. Because a good understanding of the function, meaning and shortcomings of the public sphere is essential to answering these questions, a good deal of the book addresses these issues. Historically, after all, the idea that citizens have to engage each other in discussion in order to determine the structure and goals of society, is connected to the rational ideal of a public sphere where conflicting views can be expressed, formed, and transformed. But hasn’t the collective decision making in which everyone participates on an equal footing turned out to be a deceptive ideal or a simple illusion? Not every individual in society has equal access to the podium. Furthermore, power, being an inevitable feature of the public sphere, seems to permanently endanger its democratic value. Moreover, the existence of this sphere depends on a specific ethos and particular public spaces where citizens are called upon to present themselves as citizens, as people taking responsibility for their society. It is not clear whether this ethos and these spaces exist at all, and if so, if they preserved their ascribed capacity for constituting ‘democratic’ truth? By answering these questions we expect to deepen our understanding of the relation between truth and democracy.
Book Synopsis Democratic Legitimacy by : Pierre Rosanvallon
Download or read book Democratic Legitimacy written by Pierre Rosanvallon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's a commonplace that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But in Democratic Legitimacy, Pierre Rosanvallon, one of today's leading political thinkers, argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. He makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy. Drawing on examples from France and the United States, Rosanvallon notes that there has been a major expansion of independent commissions, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and watchdogs in recent decades. At the same time, constitutional courts have become more willing and able to challenge legislatures. These institutional developments, which serve the democratic values of impartiality and reflexivity, have been accompanied by a new attentiveness to what Rosanvallon calls the value of proximity, as governing structures have sought to find new spaces for minorities, the particular, and the local. To improve our democracies, we need to use these new sources of legitimacy more effectively and we need to incorporate them into our accounts of democratic government. An original contribution to the vigorous international debate about democratic authority and legitimacy, this promises to be one of Rosanvallon's most important books.
Book Synopsis Democratic Authority at Century's End by : Jean Bethke Elshtain
Download or read book Democratic Authority at Century's End written by Jean Bethke Elshtain and published by Oregon Humanities Center. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Democratic Justice written by Ian Shapiro and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and justice are often mutually antagonistic ideas, but in this innovative book Ian Shapiro shows how and why they should be pursued together. Justice must be sought democratically if it is to garner legitimacy in the modern world, he claims, and democracy must be justice-promoting if it is to sustain allegiance over time. Democratic Justice meets these criteria, offering an attractive vision of a practical path to a better future. Wherever power is exercised in human affairs, Shapiro argues, the lack of democracy will be experienced as injustice. The challenge is to democratize social relations so as to diminish injustice, but to do this in ways that are compatible with people's values and goals. Shapiro shows how this can be done in different phases of the human life cycle, from childhood through the adult worlds of work and domestic life, retirement, old age, and approaching death. He spells out the implications for pressing debates about authority over children, the law of marriage and divorce, population control, governing the firm, basic income guarantees, health insurance, retirement policies, and decisions made by and for the infirm elderly. This refreshing encounter between political philosophy and practical politics will interest all those who aspire to bequeath a more just world to our children than the one we have inherited.
Download or read book Utopophobia written by David Estlund and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy.
Book Synopsis The Problem of Political Authority by : Michael Huemer
Download or read book The Problem of Political Authority written by Michael Huemer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state is often ascribed a special sort of authority, one that obliges citizens to obey its commands and entitles the state to enforce those commands through threats of violence. This book argues that this notion is a moral illusion: no one has ever possessed that sort of authority.
Book Synopsis The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics by : Stephen Breyer
Download or read book The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics written by Stephen Breyer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sitting justice reflects upon the authority of the Supreme CourtÑhow that authority was gained and how measures to restructure the Court could undermine both the Court and the constitutional system of checks and balances that depends on it. A growing chorus of officials and commentators argues that the Supreme Court has become too political. On this view the confirmation process is just an exercise in partisan agenda-setting, and the jurists are no more than Òpoliticians in robesÓÑtheir ostensibly neutral judicial philosophies mere camouflage for conservative or liberal convictions. Stephen Breyer, drawing upon his experience as a Supreme Court justice, sounds a cautionary note. Mindful of the CourtÕs history, he suggests that the judiciaryÕs hard-won authority could be marred by reforms premised on the assumption of ideological bias. Having, as Hamilton observed, Òno influence over either the sword or the purse,Ó the Court earned its authority by making decisions that have, over time, increased the publicÕs trust. If public trust is now in decline, one part of the solution is to promote better understandings of how the judiciary actually works: how judges adhere to their oaths and how they try to avoid considerations of politics and popularity. Breyer warns that political intervention could itself further erode public trust. Without the publicÕs trust, the Court would no longer be able to act as a check on the other branches of government or as a guarantor of the rule of law, risking serious harm to our constitutional system.
