The Limits of Free Speech: Democratic Legitimacy in Canada and New Zealand

<p>This paper explores the balancing act between freedom of expression and hate speech. It takes its cue from a recent dialogue between Ronald Dworkin and Jeremy Waldron concerning democratic legitimacy. This dialogue forms the conceptual starting point for the paper, and a detailed analysis of democratic principles will follow. Robert Post’s participatory theory of democracy is critiqued, and his recent conversion to democratic relativism is analysed. The operation of hate speech laws in Canada and New Zealand will both be assessed in order to see how both of these countries treat the issue of democratic legitimacy.</p>

The Limits of Free Speech: Democratic Legitimacy in Canada and New Zealand

<p>This paper explores the balancing act between freedom of expression and hate speech. It takes its cue from a recent dialogue between Ronald Dworkin and Jeremy Waldron concerning democratic legitimacy. This dialogue forms the conceptual starting point for the paper, and a detailed analysis of democratic principles will follow. Robert Post’s participatory theory of democracy is critiqued, and his recent conversion to democratic relativism is analysed. The operation of hate speech laws in Canada and New Zealand will both be assessed in order to see how both of these countries treat the issue of democratic legitimacy.</p>

Legal Aspect of Relationship between Political Parties, People, and People's Representatives

This article discussed the topic of political party membership in the Indonesian Parliament institutions, which is based on the pattern of relations between the People's Representatives and the people they represent, and their impact in the process of forming and implementing strategic policies that rely on popular sovereignty. The article focused on the study of politics of law in the institutionalization of political parties within the parliament's institutions and the impact on the exercise of popular sovereignty. This paper has several different approaches if related to the basic theory of democracy about political links which generally examines the relationship between political parties and their voters, between politicians and citizens, and between members of parliament and their people. The results emphasize the pattern of relations between the representatives of the people and the people they represent, in connection with the institutional existence of the Indonesian parliament which is the executor of people's sovereignty.

Habermas and the public sphere: Rethinking a key theoretical concept

The challenge of realizing the democratic power of publics through public sphere remains acute but not hopeless. While claiming that Habermas communicative social theory offers a way forward in spite of a productive but constraining turn towards a modified social liberal frame, nonetheless three limitations of the theory are identified. The first bears on the insufficiency of the sociological evolutionist description of society relevant to the public sphere drawn from classical sociological accounts of differentiation and integration. The second identifies learning theoretical limitations of the normative interactionist, proceduralist account of democracy and democratization potentials. And the third observes on the disconnection between the theory of communicative reasoning from, on the one hand, the critique of pathologies of reasoning, and, on the other, from its implications for lifeworld rationalization. These identified limitations are intended to provide new impetus to radically rethink the public sphere as intrinsic to solving contemporary problems of democracy that Habermas’s more recent account of deliberative theory, with the public sphere merely supplementary, cannot fully do. Yet, with Habermas, this should be on the basis of advancing the communication theory of democracy.