@misc{GieblerRuthTanneberg2018, author = {Giebler, Heiko and Ruth, Saskia P. and Tanneberg, Dag}, title = {Why choice matters}, series = {Politics and Governance}, volume = {6}, journal = {Politics and Governance}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cogitatio Press}, address = {Lisbon}, issn = {2183-2463}, doi = {10.17645/pag.v6i1.1428}, pages = {1 -- 10}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized by three recurrent topics of debate: (1) what is democracy, (2) what is a good measure of democracy, and (3) do our measurements of democracy register real-world developments? As the answers to those questions have been changing over time, the field of democracy measurement has adapted and reached higher levels of theoretical and methodological sophistication. In effect, the challenges facing contemporary social scientists are not only limited to the challenge of constructing a sound index of democracy. Today, they also need a profound understanding of the differences between various measures of democracy and their implications for empirical applications. The introduction outlines how the contributions to this thematic issue help scholars cope with the recurrent issues of conceptualization, measurement, and application, and concludes by identifying avenues for future research.}, language = {en} } @article{Mackert2021, author = {Mackert, J{\"u}rgen}, title = {Social life as collective struggle}, series = {sozialpolitik.ch}, journal = {sozialpolitik.ch}, number = {1}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t}, address = {Freiburg}, issn = {2297-8224}, doi = {10.18753/2297-8224-174}, year = {2021}, abstract = {In recent years, all over the globe we have seen intensifying economic exploitation, political disenfranchisement, social marginalization and cultural repression in all kinds of political regimes, from liberal democratic to authoritarian and dictatorial. Although the strategies vary with regard to regime and context, in all of them we observe that while a growing number of social groups are speaking out and rising against them, a presumably much higher number of groups do not. In this article, I argue that all these processes can be conceived as aspects of ongoing closure struggles in social life. However, in order to understand why some social groups are able to fight against closure strategies while others are not, closure theory in its current state of elaboration is not of any help. While it operates with the term solidarization, it does not offer any explanation of how such acting in solidarity may become possible in closure struggles. The article is a mainly theoretical contribution of how to solve this problem.}, language = {en} } @book{TallbergBaeckstrandAartScholteetal.2023, author = {Tallberg, Jonas and B{\"a}ckstrand, Karin and Aart Scholte, Jan and Sommerer, Thomas}, title = {SNS Democracy Council 2023}, publisher = {SNS F{\"o}rlag}, address = {Stockholm}, isbn = {978-91-89754-06-5}, pages = {199}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Transboundary problems such as climate change, military conflicts, trade barriers, and refugee flows require increased collaboration across borders. This is to a large extent possible using existing international organizations. In such a case, however, they need to be considerably strengthened - while current trends take us in the opposite direction, according to the researchers in the SNS Democracy Council 2023.}, language = {en} } @article{Yilmaz2018, author = {Yilmaz, Zafer}, title = {Revising the culture of political protest after the gezi uprising in Turkey}, series = {Mediterranean Quarterly}, volume = {29}, journal = {Mediterranean Quarterly}, number = {3}, publisher = {Duke Univ. Press}, address = {Durham}, issn = {1047-4552}, doi = {10.1215/10474552-7003168}, pages = {55 -- 77}, year = {2018}, abstract = {The Gezi uprising can be considered a crucial turning in Turkish politics. As a response to countrywide democratic protests, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government revived the security state, escalated authoritarian tendencies, and started to organize a nationalist, Islamist, and conservative backlash. This essay argues that the Gezi Park protests revealed both the fragility of the AKP's hegemony and the limits of the dominant political group habitus, which were promoted by the party to consolidate political polarization in favor of the party's hegemony. Moreover, it is argued that the Gezi uprising transformed the culture of political protests in the country and paved the way for the emergence of affirmative resistance, radical imagination, and a new politics of desire and dignity against authoritarian and neoliberal policies.}, language = {en} } @article{Baehrens2015, author = {Baehrens, Konstantin}, title = {Introduction to Georg Lukacs: Why Democracies are superior to Autocracies? and The real Germany}, series = {Deutsche Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Philosophie : Zweimonatsschrift der internationalen philosophischen Forschung}, volume = {63}, journal = {Deutsche Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Philosophie : Zweimonatsschrift der internationalen philosophischen Forschung}, number = {2}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0012-1045}, doi = {10.1515/dzph-2015-0019}, pages = {358 -- 366}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Two short typescripts by G. Lukacs from the archive, dating from 1941/42, shed light on his appraisal of the cultural 'inner reserves' of Germany and the 'moral reserves' of the democracies involved in the Second World War, as well as on Lukacs's political philosophy at that time. The conception of an intrinsic interrelation of a humanist philosophical anthropology and rationalist epistemology elucidates his egalitarian and democratic account. Both texts are located within the intellectual development of the author in an introduction by the editor, which sketches the historical background and indicates relevant contemporaneous theoretical and political debates, such as the controversies over realism and humanism and also a dispute with K. Jaspers on German collective guilt.}, language = {de} } @article{Nuesiri2017, author = {Nuesiri, Emmanuel O.}, title = {Feigning Democracy}, series = {Conservation \& society}, volume = {15}, journal = {Conservation \& society}, number = {4}, publisher = {Medknow publications \& media Pvt LTD}, address = {Mumbai}, issn = {0972-4923}, doi = {10.4103/cs.cs_16_106}, pages = {384 -- 399}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus the sustainable management of forest and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) is a global climate change mitigation initiative. The United Nations REDD Programme (UN-REDD) is training governments in developing countries, including Nigeria, to implement REDD+. To protect local people, UN-REDD has developed social safeguards including a commitment to strengthen local democracy to prevent an elite capture of REDD+ benefits. This study examines local participation and representation in the UN-REDD international policy board and in the national-level design process for the Nigeria-REDD proposal, to see if practices are congruent with the UN-REDD commitment to local democracy. It is based on research in Nigeria in 2012 and 2013, and finds that local representation in the UN-REDD policy board and in Nigeria-REDD is not substantive. Participation is merely symbolic. For example, elected local government authorities, who ostensibly represent rural people, are neither present in the UN-REDD board nor were they invited to the participatory forums that vetted the Nigeria-REDD. They were excluded because they were politically weak. However, UN-REDD approved the Nigeria-REDD proposal without a strategy to include or strengthen elected local governments. The study concludes with recommendations to help the UN-REDD strengthen elected local government authority in Nigeria in support of democratic local representation.}, language = {en} } @article{Baehrens2015, author = {Baehrens, Konstantin}, title = {Einleitung zu Georg Luk{\´a}cs}, series = {Deutsche Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Philosophie}, volume = {63}, journal = {Deutsche Zeitschrift f{\"u}r Philosophie}, number = {2}, issn = {2192-1482}, doi = {10.1515/dzph-2015-0019}, pages = {358 -- 366}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Two short typescripts by G. Lukacs from the archive, dating from 1941/42, shed light on his appraisal of the cultural 'inner reserves' of Germany and the 'moral reserves' of the democracies involved in the Second World War, as well as on Lukacs's political philosophy at that time. The conception of an intrinsic interrelation of a humanist philosophical anthropology and rationalist epistemology elucidates his egalitarian and democratic account. Both texts are located within the intellectual development of the author in an introduction by the editor, which sketches the historical background and indicates relevant contemporaneous theoretical and political debates, such as the controversies over realism and humanism and also a dispute with K. Jaspers on German collective guilt.}, language = {de} } @article{Tanneberg2020, author = {Tanneberg, Dag}, title = {Does repression of campaigns trigger coups d'{\´e}tat?}, series = {The politics of repression under authoritarian rule : how steadfast is the Iron Throne?}, journal = {The politics of repression under authoritarian rule : how steadfast is the Iron Throne?}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, address = {Cham}, isbn = {978-3-030-35477-0}, issn = {2198-7289}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_5}, pages = {121 -- 162}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Does complementarity between restrictions and violence stabilize authoritarian power-sharing in the face of popular rebellion? Scholars widely concur that the central political conflict in authoritarian regimes plays out between people on the inside of the regime. This chapter adds to the debate and studies coup attempts in light of two interconnected hypotheses. First, violence against campaigns destabilizes power-sharing because it exposes a weak leadership. Second, this adverse effect of violence declines as the routine level of restrictions increases, because restrictions act as a sorting mechanism for uncompromising political opposition. Both hypotheses are tested using Bayesian multilevel statistical analysis on a data set of 253 coup attempts in 198 authoritarian regimes between 1949 and 2007. This study design allows separation of repression's time-dependent effects from its context effects, and it demonstrates the value of Bayesian methods for studying rare political phenomena such as coups d'{\´e}tat. The chapter's conclusion, however, is straightforward: Once citizens form campaigns, repression can only deteriorate the situation because it opens a frontline right at the center of authoritarian rule.}, language = {en} } @article{Ganghof2013, author = {Ganghof, Steffen}, title = {Does public reason require super-majoritarian democracy? Liberty, equality, and history in the justification of political institutions}, series = {Politics, philosophy \& economics}, volume = {12}, journal = {Politics, philosophy \& economics}, number = {2}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {Thousand Oaks}, issn = {1470-594X}, doi = {10.1177/1470594X12447786}, pages = {179 -- 196}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work of Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise 'neutral' democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus's own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies.}, language = {en} }