Democracy and Media Decadence
by John Keane
(Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Description
We live in a revolutionary age of communicative abundance in which many media innovations - from satellite broadcasting to smart glasses and electronic books - spawn great fascination mixed with excitement. In the field of politics, hopeful talk of digital democracy, cybercitizens and e-government has been flourishing. This book admits the many thrilling ways that communicative abundance is fundamentally altering the contours of our lives and of our politics, often for the better. But it asks whether too little attention has been paid to the troubling counter-trends, the decadent media developments that encourage public silence and concentrations of unlimited power, so weakening the spirit and substance of democracy. Exploring examples of clever government surveillance, market censorship, spin tactics and back-channel public relations, John Keane seeks to understand and explain these trends, and how best to deal with them. Tackling some tough but big and fateful questions, Keane argues that 'media decadence' is deeply harmful for public life.
Contents
1. Communicative Abundance [excerpt]
2. Monitory Democracy
3. Media Decadence
4. Democracy's Opponents
5. Why Freedom of Public Communication?
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). He is the author of "Global Civil Society?" (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and "The Life and Death of Democracy" (Simon & Schuster, 2009).
See also some of John Keane's papers:
* "Monitory Democracy and Media-Saturated Societies" [pdf]
* "Media Decadence and Democracy"
* "Democracy in the Age of Google, Facebook, and WikiLeaks" [pdf]
* "Eleven Theses on Communicative Abundance"
See also Ramon A. Feenstra's "Democracy in the Age of New Media Galaxy" [pdf]
"Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy" volume 16, issue 4 (September 2013), is a special issue on "Compromising on Justice".
Here are the introduction and four of the articles:
* "Introduction: Compromising on Justice" [pdf]
by Fabian Wendt
* "Sustaining Democracy: Folk Epistemology and Social Conflict" [pdf] by Robert B. Talisse
Abstract:
"When political philosophers ask whether there is a philosophical justification for democracy, they are most frequently concerned with one of two queries. The first has to do with the relative merits of democracy as compared with other regimes. The second query has to do with the moral bindingness of democratic outcomes. But there is a third query we may be engaging when we are looking for a philosophical justification of democracy: what reason can be given to democratic citizens to pursue democratic means of social change when they are confronted with a democratic result that seems to them seriously objectionable or morally intolerable? In this paper I develop an epistemological response to the third query. The thesis is that we have sufficient epistemological reasons to be democrats. The epistemological norms that we take ourselves to be governed by can be satisfied only under certain social conditions, and these social conditions are best secured under democracy."
* "Toleration Out of Respect?"
by Sune Lægaard
Abstract
"Under conditions of pluralism different cultures, interests or values can come into conflict, which raises the problem of how to secure peaceful co-existence. The idea of toleration historically emerged as an answer to this problem. Recently Rainer Forst has argued that toleration should not just be based on a modus vivendi designed to secure peaceful co-existence, but should be based on moral reasons. Forst therefore advances what he calls the ‘respect conception’ of toleration as an in itself morally desirable type of relationship, which is furthermore the only conception of toleration that avoids various so-called ‘paradoxes of toleration’. The paper first examines whether Forst’s respect conception can be applied descriptively to distinguish between actual patterns of behaviour and classify different acts of toleration. Then the focus is shifted to toleration out of respect as a normative prescription, which Forst presents as a requirement of justice. At both levels, it is argued that Forst’s respect conception is problematic since it presupposes that answers to very substantial normative questions, which are precisely what people tend to disagree on under conditions of pluralism, are already at hand. The respect conception therefore seems to be at best a theoretical idea belonging in ideal-theory, not a useful practical solution to actual conflicts under conditions of pluralism."
* "Consensus, Compromise, Justice and Legitimacy"
by Enzo Rossi
Abstract
"Could the notion of compromise help us overcoming – or at least negotiating – the frequent tension, in normative political theory, between the realistic desideratum of peaceful coexistence and the idealistic desideratum of justice? That is to say, an analysis of compromise may help us move beyond the contrast between two widespread contrasting attitudes in contemporary political philosophy: ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’, on the one side, and ‘salus populi suprema lex’, on the other side. More specifically, compromise may provide the backbone of a conception of legitimacy that mediates between idealistic (or moralistic) and realistic (or pragmatic) desiderata of political theory, i.e. between the aspiration to peace and the aspiration to justice. In other words, this paper considers whether an account of compromise could feature in a viable realistic conception of political legitimacy, in much the same way in which consensus features in more idealistic conceptions of legitimacy (a move that may be attributed to some realist theorists, especially Bernard Williams). My conclusions, however, are largely sceptical: I argue that grounding legitimacy in any kind of normatively salient agreement does require the trappings of idealistic political philosophy, for better or – in my view – worse."
* "Peace Beyond Compromise"
by Fabian Wendt
Abstract
"Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing a moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose a moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace".
John E. Roemer and Alain Trannoy have posted a new paper at SSRN:
"Equality of Opportunity" (112 pages)
Abstract
"This forthcoming chapter in the Handbook of Income Distribution (eds., A. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon) summarizes the literature on equality of opportunity. We begin by reviewing the philosophical debate concerning equality since Rawls (sections 1 and 2), present economic algorithms for computing policies which equalize opportunities, or, more generally, ways of ordering social policies with respect to their efficacy in opportunity equalization (sections 3, 4 and 5), apply the approach to the conceptualization of economic development (section 6), discuss dynamic issues (section 7), give a preamble to a discussion of empirical work (section 8), provide evidence of population views from surveys and experiments concerning conceptions of equality (section 9), and a discuss measurement issues, summarizing the empirical literature on inequality of opportunity to date (section 10). We conclude with mention of some critiques of the equal-opportunity approach, and some predictions (section 11)."
John E. Roemer is Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University. He is the author of "Theories of Distributive Justice" (Harvard University Press, 1996) and "Equality of Opportunity" (Harvard University Press, 1998).
Alain Trannoy is Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
Jürgen Habermas gave a lecture at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam on November 5.
A video of the lecture is now available here:
"Deliberative Democracy and Political Crisis"
Habermas's lecture was part of a symposium on "The Future of Democracy". See my previous post on the event and the programme here.
The lecture will be published in Dutch in "De Groene Amsterdammer".
On November 6, H. M. King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands awards the Erasmus Prize 2013 to Jürgen Habermas at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, at 4.00 p.m.
The Erasmus Prize is an annual award for a person who has made an exceptional contribution to culture, society or social science. The prize money is a sum of Euro 150.000. The theme of the Erasmus Prize this year is "The Future of Democracy". His Majesty the King is patron of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.
See my previous post on the Erasmus Prize here.
Update
* Jürgen Habermas' acceptance speech
* Photos from the ceremony here.
The symposium on "The Future of Democracy" with Jürgen Habermas in Amsterdam on November 5 will be live streamed here.
The symposium starts with a lecture by Jürgen Habermas on "Deliberative Democracy and Political Crisis" at 10.30 a.m. (local time).
See my previous post on the event and the programme here.
Update:
Video of Habermas's lecture here.
The Society of Equals
by Pierre Rosanvallon
(Harvard University Press, 2013)
384 pages
Description
Since the 1980s, society’s wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon — the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic equality at their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics.
There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today’s realities.
Contents [preview]
Introduction: The Crisis of Equality
1. The Invention of Equality
2. The Pathologies of Equality
3. The Century of Redistribution
4. The Great Reversal
5. The Society of Equals: A Preliminary Outline
Pierre Rosanvallon is Professor of Political History at the Collège de France and Director of Studies at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is the author of "Democracy Past and Future" (Columbia University Press, 2006) and "Democratic Legitimacy" (Princeton University Press, 2011).
See Rosanvallon's lecture "Rethinking Equality in an Age of Inequalities" [pdf] from November 2011. A video of the lecture is available here.
A review of the book by Daniel Ben-Ami in "The Financial Times" here.
An interview with Rosanvallon on his book here (in French).
German edition: "Die Gesellschaft der Gleichen" (Hamburger Edition, 2013). A review by Anna Hollendung here.
An interesting paper by Professor Menachem Mautner (Tel Aviv):
"Religion in Politics: Rawls and Habermas on Deliberation and Justification".
The paper is based on Mautner's lecture at the international conference on "The Role of Religion in Human Rights Discourse" held in Jerusalem in May 2012. See a video from the event here. An abstract booklet is available here [pdf].
Menachem Mautner is Professor of Comparative Civil Law and Jurisprudence at the Tel Aviv University. He is the author of "Law and the Culture of Israel" (Oxford University Press, 2011).
A Companion to Rawls
Ed. by Jon Mandle & David A. Reidy
(Wiley-Blackwell, October 2013)
587 pages
From the Introduction
"It is now more than 10 years since John Rawls died in 2002, at the age of 81, and more than 60 years since his first publication in 1951. Yet, his work continues to occupy a unique and central position in contemporary political philosophy. Over the years it has generated an enormous secondary literature and sparked numerous interpretive and critical debates. The recent publication of Rawls's Princeton undergraduate thesis and his Harvard lectures in moral and political philosophy and the archival processing by Harvard of Rawls's unpublished papers, lectures, letters, annotated books, and so on, have only served further to stimulate interest in and debate over Rawls's work, often raising new questions, reviving debates thought to be settled, and suggesting new ways of understanding Rawls's work. With all this in mind, we were keen to produce with this volume not so much a summary of past scholarly work as a serviceable roadmap for current and future work on Rawls. Accordingly, we asked our contributors to address themselves to the themes and issues that in their view will or should occupy the attention of scholars engaged or likely to engage in this work."
Contents [preview]
Introduction - Jon Mandle & David A. Reidy
Part I. Ambitions
1. From Philosophical Theology to Democratic Theory - David A. Reidy
2. Does Justice as Fairness Have a Religious Aspect? [pdf] - Paul Weithman
Part II. Method
3. Constructivism as Rhetoric - Anthony Simon Laden
4. Kantian Constructivism - Larry Krasnoff
5. The Basic Structure of Society as the Primary Subject of Justice - Samuel Freeman
6. Rawls on Ideal and Nonideal Theory - Adam Swift & Zofia Stemplowska
7. “The Choice from the Original Position” - Jon Mandle
Part III. A Theory of Justice
8. The Priority of Liberty - Robert S. Taylor
9. Applying Justice as Fairness to Institutions - Colin M. Macleod
10. Democratic Equality as a Work-in-Progress - Stuart White
11. Stability, a Sense of Justice, and Self-Respect - Thomas E. Hill, Jr
12. Political Authority, Civil Disobedience, Revolution - Alexander Kaufman
Part IV. A Political Conception
13. The Turn to a Political Liberalism [pdf] - Gerald Gaus
14. Political Constructivism [doc] - Aaron James
15. On the Idea of Public Reason [pdf] - Jonathan Quong
16. Overlapping Consensus - Rex Martin
17. Citizenship as Fairness - Richard Dagger
18. Inequality, Difference, and Prospects for Democracy - Erin I. Kelly
Part V Extending Political Liberalism: International Relations
19. The Law of Peoples - Huw Lloyd Williams
20. Human Rights - Gillian Brock
21. Global Poverty and Global Inequality - Richard W. Miller
22. Just War - Darrel Moellendorf
Part VI. Conversations with Other Perspectives
23. Rawls, Mill, and Utilitarianism - Jonathan Riley
24. Perfectionist Justice and Rawlsian Legitimacy - Steven Wall
25. Rawlsian Liberalism versus Libertarianism - Barbara H. Fried
26. The Young Marx and the Middle-Aged Rawls - Daniel Brudney
27. Challenges of Global and Local Misogyny [abstract] - Claudia Card
28. Critical Theory and Habermas - Kenneth Baynes
29. Rawls and Economics - Daniel Little
30. Learning from the History of Political Philosophy - S.A. Lloyd
31. Rawls and the History of Moral Philosophy - Paul Guyer
Jon Mandle is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University at Albany. He is the author of "Global Justice" (Polity Press, 2006) and "Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction" (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
David A. Reidy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee. He is co-editor (with Martin Rex) of "Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia?" (Blackwell, 2006).
Roadmap to a Social Europe [pdf]
Ed. by Anne-Marie Grozelier et.al.
(Social Europe Report, October 2013)
155 pages
Social Europe Journal, together with its partners for this project - the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the IG Metall, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Hans Böckler Stiftung and the French Institute Lasaire - has published an eBook with 43 articles on different aspects of the European social dimension written in spring and summer 2013.
The book has three principal sections: In the first part, some of Europe’s most prestigious thinkers and analysts make the connection between the discussion about Social Europe and the wider European malaise. One cannot discuss the social dimension in isolation but has to link it to the wider debate about the future of European integration if you want to be realistic, up-to-date and relevant.
Following this, the second part brings together trade union views "from the ground" across Europe. European political discussions are often perceived as detached from the real lives of people in the member states and the discussion about Social Europe is no exception. Therefore we collected the views of European and national trade union leaders and thus added an important dimension that has often found too little appreciation.
In the third and final part, some of the best experts in the field address a series of more specific issues related to the social dimension of the European Union and make recommendations for how to tackle them.
The essays in the first section of the book are:
Democracy, Solidarity And the European Crisis
- Jürgen Habermas
Europe Is Trapped Between Power And Politics
- Zygmunt Bauman
Pragmatism, Idealism And European Demoicracy
- Kalypso Nicoalidïs
What Is The Social Dimension Of The EU?
- Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
What Does A Social Europe Look Like Today?
- Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Xavier Timbeau
Social Policy Will Be Critical To A Sustainable EMU
- Simon Deakin
Social Europe Is The Only Solution
- Robin Wilson
Europe’s Democracy Deficit: Putting Some Meat On The Bones
Of Habermas’ Critique
- Steven Hill
The Euro-Dividend
- Philippe van Parijs
