We do not need more 'models of democracy', but we do need a fresh view of democratic theory to take full advantage of deliberative, ecological, cosmopolitan and other innovations of recent years. Approaches such as these can be understood in terms of the devices they deploy -deliberative forums and cross-border referendums, for example, as well as more familiar elections and legislatures. Devices enact democratic principles; indeed, it is argued that principles gain their meaning and force through enactment. Devices can also be reordered in different ways; democrats can construct sequences which enact democracy in particular, desired ways. Pursuing this argument involves adopting a reflexive and procedural perspective, which puts a premium on democracy as sensitive to context, open-ended, productive and adaptable.The move 'beyond deliberative democracy' seems to have begun over six years ago; certainly it gathers pace (See Young, 1996;Dryzek, 2000). This paper sketches a new approach to democratic theory which draws on provocative aspects of the deliberative turn, among other resources. It offers an approach rather than a new 'model of democracy'; a way of thinking about democracy rather than a prescription. In this sense, I offer a meta-theoretical discussion rather than a theory; a way of orienting oneself among different models rather than a new model as such. The argument is intended to be a product of 'interpretive reason'. As Bauman puts it, interpretive reason 'is engaged in dialogue where legislative reason strives for soliloquy' (1992, p. 126). Legislative reason involves the philosopher's untrammelled 'licence to judge' and to impose; interpretive reason centres on the acceptance of the inevitability of pluralism and 'the undecidability and inconclusiveness of all interpretation' (Bauman 1992, pp. 117, 131). I would not want to push the distinction too far -there are moments in what follows where I acknowledge a 'legislative' impulse, and explain how that can be. But the intention will, I hope, become clear enough: to open up existing lines of innovation in democratic theory to mutual enrichment via mutual engagement.The approach I sketch is distinctively proceduralist: it is focused on the shaping of binding collective decision-making procedures, and it accepts that in principle outcomes can be regarded as legitimate if they have been produced by a certain procedure. It is also reflexive, in that it regards political principles, mechanisms and institutions as open to constant change and adjustment of their meaning and importance. Democracy can and will be interpreted in different ways in different times and places (countries, cultures). These emphases follow in part from the proceduralist focus and reflexive character of deliberative models, but the latter too often take an unduly limited view of other procedural possibilities -dismiss-
Shape-shifting representation is common in practice but largely shunned in theoretical and empirical analysis. This article resurrects, defines, and explores shape-shifting and closely linked concepts and practices such as shape-retaining. It generates new concepts of representative positioning and patterning in order to aid our understanding, and makes the case for placing this critical phenomenon front and center in the analysis of political representation. It examines crucial empirical and normative implications for our understanding of representation, including the argument that shape-shifting representation is not intrinsically undesirable. Developing the theory of shape-shifting representation can prompt a new level of analytical purchase on the challenge of explaining and evaluating representation's vitality and complexity.
Despite their importance to one another, the current literatures on political parties and normative democratic theory continue to develop largely in mutual isolation. Empirical studies of contemporary political parties and party systems tend to have little to say about the meanings and possibilities of democracy, and therefore also about the varied potential roles of political parties within it. Meanwhile, contemporary democratic theorists quietly sidestep the issue of whether political parties perform a legitimate function in democracies. This lack of mutual engagement is regrettable, in particular given the pervasive erosion of popular support and legitimacy of political parties as representative institutions. In this article we explore the key reasons for democratic theorists and scholars of political parties so rarely taking on each others' core concerns, and we outline the key ways in which this mutual disengagement is mutually impoverishing. We will also suggest ways forward, by pinpointing and illustrating potentially productive areas of engagement which might serve to deepen our understanding of democracy's present and its possible futures. D espite many recent successful cases of democratization, democracy arguably suffers from serious problems of disaffection.
This article interrogates the norms of good citizenship invoked in and across different social domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK as one field in which good citizenship is constituted. It is possible to make visible the political struggle inherent in the mechanisms of framing the good citizen by unpacking the differences between citizenship as acts, status and virtues. This is a necessary step in assessing good citizenship claims in the absence of moral and political absolutes. We deploy a two-tiered account of Butler's theory of performativity to examine how ordinary citizenship acts are preceded by elite rhetorical framing. We conclude that citizenship, like democracy, is always enacted in particular contexts in which positioning, method and motives play an important part. IntroductionOur aim in this article is to contribute to the important task of bringing to the debate on good citizenship greater theoretical depth and empirical richness. We interrogate the norms of good citizenship invoked in different social domains and extend our analysis across as well as within particular domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK to illustrate our argument. At the centre of our efforts is the specification of a framework for analysing invocations of the good citizen. The aim of this style of analysis is to reveal or unmask the making of conceptions of the good citizen and good citizenship. The good citizen is a figure who is 'framed', or set up, by political and academic observers alike; framed in the sense of viewed from a certain perspective, and in the different sense of set up for a particular purpose (to contribute to a sustainable society or cohesive community, for example). Indeed, the frames constitute ideas of the good citizen and the desired practices that flow from that: there is no single normative ideal outside frames. By deploying an interpretative methodology, it is our intention to make visible the political struggle inherent in the practices and mechanisms of framing the good citizen, and to speculate on the possibility of assessing such claims in the absence of moral and political absolutes.We argue that a focus on good citizenship means a focus primarily on acts of citizenship, showing how key actors performatively construct both the content (approaches) and products (domains) of good citizenship, indicating a constitutive relationship between 'elite' representations and 'ordinary' performative acts of citizenship and their specific contexts. As we will go on to elaborate, the invocation of the good citizen is twofold: the frame itself is produced through elite actions (the constitution of a domain and an approach) and in turn provides the repertoires of possible acts and social roles that are deemed to be 'good', as performed by ordinary would-be citizens themselves. Analysts therefore need to embrace the inevitable plurality of conceptions of the good citizen, and would benefit from a specific set of linked concepts that can genuinely help us to map and ...
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