Democracy and the Preparation and Conduct of War

In Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos highlights several negative consequences the preparation for war has for individuals and states. But he misses what I consider perhaps the most significant consequence of military mobilization for states, especially democracies: how war and the preparation for it affect deliberative politics. While many argue that all states, including democracies, require strong militaries—and there is some evidence that long wars can build democracies and states—I focus on the other effects of militarization and war on democratic states. War and militarism are antipodal to democracy and undermine it. Their normative bases are conflicting—democracy takes force off the table, whereas force is legitimate in war. Thus, while militarism and militarization can sometimes yield liberalization and the expansion of civil rights, they are arguably more likely to undermine democratic norms and practices.

Interruptive protests in dysfunctional deliberative systems

The field of deliberative democracy has long recognised the role of interruptive protests to make polities more sensitive to good reasons. But how exactly interruptive protests enhance deliberative systems remain an open question. ‘Non-deliberative acts may have deliberative consequences’ is a crucial line of argument in the deliberative systems literature, but the precise character of these consequences is yet to be spelled out. In this article, I describe three ways in which consequences of interruptive protests enhance the deliberative system. I argue that interruptive protests can redistribute (1) voice and visibility, (2) attention, and (3) deliberative agency which, in turn, can lay bare the weaknesses of a dysfunctional deliberative system. The arguments I put forward are based on interpretive case studies focusing on protest movements in the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the aftermath of record-breaking hurricanes. Overall, this paper seeks to clarify the relationship between deliberative politics and protest action, by identifying the distinctive contributions of interruptive protests in redistributing power in dysfunctional deliberative systems.

Revisiting Politics in Political CSR: How coercive and deliberative dynamics operate through institutional work in a Colombian company

This article analyses the political dynamics taking place within a Colombian supplier company during the implementation of a client’s global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, which radically transformed the local understandings of the supplier’s social responsibilities. We distinguish two forms of politics in political CSR – coercive and deliberative politics – and examine how they unfold through lower-level managers’ institutional work. Our longitudinal case study identifies four types of institutional work, which combine into three political configurations – irreconcilable politics, complementary politics and aligned deliberative politics – resulting in the hybridization of explicit and implicit CSR. By analysing how local managers from emerging countries and at the bottom of the supply chain cope with the new political role of MNCs, we expand the political microfoundations of CSR and highlight the interactive and political nature of institutional work aimed at addressing major societal challenges.

Surrogate Publics

What can global spectators do to give voice and visibility to the suffering of distant others? Chapter 4 introduces the concept of ‘surrogate publics’ to describe the ways in which witnesses to tragedies act as representatives to communities of misery by making claims about their recovery. The case of Haiyan demonstrates how surrogate representatives like celebrity humanitarians, public figures, and ordinary citizens assert the presence of disaster survivors by offering the voice of care and the voice of justice. While the voice of care was successful in sustaining global attention to the spectacle, the voice of justice sustains the political conversation beyond the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The chapter concludes by examining the legacy of surrogate publics to deliberative politics.

The Transformation of Communicative Power Into Political Power

This article examines Jürgen Habermas’ concept of communicative power and describes how it transforms into political power in actual decision-making. For this purpose, the article develops the use of Habermas’ typology of validity claims in communicative action as a framework for analysis. This means analyzing how public performances invoking these validity claims affect actors’ authority, which is then capitalized in policymaking. The article thus integrates Habermas’ procedural view on deliberative politics with the more culturally oriented view on political performances. It also contributes to the discussion about the “mediatization of politics” by introducing a communicative perspective to complement the more common institutional and systems perspectives. This theoretical and analytical approach is illustrated by examples drawn from evidence in 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with participants in the policy networks involved in the 2015 Finnish labor market negotiations.

Deliberative Politics through Citizens’ Participatory Democracy: A model for Africa Political Processes

This article explores the present crisis of democratic governance or administration in Africa and examines the elective capability of deliberative majority rules system of democracy, in which the desire of the general public is educated by mindful, engaged citizen’s commitment and conversation. There are various questions needing answers; are the various and spellbound citizenry even equipped for consultation? How likely is amass thought of deliberation to achieve a very much contemplated choice? Wouldn’t it gather consultation reproduce a similar power lopsided characteristics blocking different sorts of talk? Deliberative models are displayed in principle and practical discourse, with contextual investigations including the furious populism of the Brexit vote, the ascent of deliberative components. What the contributing creators do share is the acknowledgement that the authenticity of appointive portrayal or representatives endures when individuals in the majority rule system of governments end up frustrated, disillusioned, and repelled. This study gives challenging and convincing thoughts regarding how to re-establish confidence in popular democratic governments by making them stronger and responsive. This study adopted a qualitative method of analysis.

Africa and Deliberative Politics

This chapter shows that deliberative democracy is an important consideration for African nations, especially with an eye on the divisive effects of aggregative politics on democracies involving multi-ethnic groupings. The chapter explores Wiredu’s plea for democracy by consensus as an alternative model better suited than multi-party politics for an African context, and concludes that we need further research to determine where we could institute consensual mechanisms in African countries. Furthermore, it proposes that research on deliberation in Africa needs to go beyond philosophical discussions, and that empirical scholars need to begin testing various arguments in the philosophical and theoretical debates about deliberation.

Deliberation in Protests and Social Movements

The chapter addresses the relations between social movements and deliberative democracy, pointing at opportunities but also at tensions in theorization and practices of democracy. While social movements are important for deliberative democracy, and vice versa, activists and deliberative democrats alike have addressed a number of tensions between deliberative democracy and protest. The global diffusion of deliberative norms, practices, and experiences of democracy in social movements is discussed in the light of the growing literature on deliberative democracy. In particular, faced with challenges to the legitimacy and efficacy of representative democracy, social movements’ democratic innovations, such as the Forum and the Camp, represent important experiments in cooperation in settings of deep diversity and inequality. In addition, the reflections on social movements’ conceptions and practices help in specifying some conceptualization of deliberative politics.