Can Democracy Be Saved? E-Book

Donatella della Porta

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 444

Beschreibung

Financial crisis, economic globalization and the strengthening of neoliberal policies present stark challenges to traditional conceptions of representative democracy. Yet, at the same time, new opportunities are emerging that propose alternative visions for the future of democracy. In this highly articulate book, Donatella della Porta analyses diverse conceptions and practices of participatory and deliberative democracy, building upon recent reflections in normative theory as well as original empirical research. As well as drawing on key historical examples, the book pays close attention to the current revitalization of social movements: the Arab Spring uprisings in processes of democratic transition; the potential of new technologies to develop so-called e-democracy in the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street protests; and proposals for cosmopolitan democracy found in recent campaigns for democratization of the European Union and United Nations. Alongside such social movements, the book also assesses institutional reactions, from the policing of protest to efforts at reform. This contribution to a critical contemporary debate, by a leading political sociologist and scholar of social movements, will be of great value to students and scholars of political sociology, political science and social movement studies, as well as anyone interested in the shape and development of democracy.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

1 Models of Democracy: An Introduction

Conceptions and practices of democracy: an introduction

Not one, but four models

This volume

2 Liberal Democracy: Evolution and Challenges

The conception of liberal democracy: an introduction

The emergence of democracy in the liberal state

Transformations in democracy: the challenges

Challenges and/or opportunities?

Conclusion

3 Participatory Democracy

Participatory democracy: an introduction

The historical development of participatory democracy

A participatory revolution?

Conclusion

4 Deliberative Democracy: Between Representation and Participation

Deliberative democracy: an introduction

Deliberative and participatory democracy

Global social movements, public spheres and deliberative democracy

Indignados, Occupy and deliberative democracy

Conclusion

5 E-Democracy? New Technologies and Democratic Deepening

What media studies do (and do not) say, on democracy: an introduction

Social movements as agents of democratic communication

Web 1.0, social movements and democracy

Arab spring, indignados and (very) new technologies

Conclusion

6 The Challenge of Global Governance

Globalization and democratic deficit: an introduction

A global civil society?

Social movements and global democracy

Social movement activists as critical cosmopolitans

Conclusion

7 Democratization and Social Movements

Democratization studies and the (neglect of) social movements

Democratization in social movement studies

The exogenous dimension: Attribution of political opportunities

The endogenous dimension: mobilization of resources

Framing democratization from below

The power of action

Conclusion

8 Restricting Citizens’ Participation: The Policing of Protest

Social movement and the policing of protest: an introduction

Militarization, fortification and intelligence-led control

The policing of protest: some explanations

Conclusion

9 Deliberative Experiments inside Institutions

Institutional experiments with deliberative democracy: an introduction

The performance of institutional experiments

How to explain the different characteristics of deliberative experiments

Conclusion

10 Can Democracy Be Saved? A Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Copyright © Donatella della Porta 2013

The right of Donatella della Porta to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

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To Alessandro, Colin and Philippe,

with whom – without their knowing – this project started

Acknowledgments

I began to reflect on this volume in 2003 when – together with Colin Crouch, Alessandro Pizzorno and Philippe Schmitter – I organized my first seminar at the European University Institute. The subject was ‘Transformations in Democracies’, and the debate was not only engaged, but deliberative as well.

Subsequently I went on to study changes in the conceptions and practices of democracy in the framework of the comparative research project ‘Democracy in Europe and the Mobilization of Society’ – ‘Demos’ (financed by the European Commission under the 6th framework). I am grateful for their many reflections to Massimiliano Andretta, Marco Giugni, Raffaele Marchetti, Lorenzo Mosca, Mario Pianta, Herbert Reiter, Dieter Rucht, Simon Teune and all my other colleagues, both junior and senior.

While the results of that research were published in various volumes, dedicated in particular to the global justice movement, this book was helped along by other additional stimuli. First and foremost was the preparation of a comparative research project on experiments in deliberative democracy (developed with the help of Bernard Gbikpi, Joan Fonts and Yves Sintomer), as well as that project’s first study, a piece of research carried out with Herbert Reiter, and supported by the Region of Tuscany.

The second (I believe), chronologically speaking, came to me from Alessandro Pizzorno who asked me to write a chapter on social movements and democracy for a project he was coordinating on the democratic state – specifying, however, that I was to concern myself not, as I usually do, with the post-1968 era, but with the last three centuries (or more). For suggestions and inspiration for that chapter, discussed at the conference organized by the Feltrinelli Foundation in Cortona in 2010, I am grateful – in addition to Alessandro Pizzorno – to Roberto Biorcio, Pietro Costa, Colin Crouch, Klaus Eder, Leonardo Morlino, Bernardo Sordi and the other participants.

The third stimulus came from Mauro Calise who, as the then president of the Italian Society for Political Science, asked me to give the inaugural speech at the association’s annual conference in 2009. It was in preparing that speech that I entered the normative debate on democracy, albeit seeking to link it with the results of many pieces of empirical research – both mine and others’ – on transformations in democracies. It was on that occasion, finally, that Massimo Baldini asked me to write the Italian version of this book. My thanks also go to Mauro and Massimo for their trust and advice.

This book is, in any case, more than the final part of a journey, it is that journey’s continuation. Some of the reflections contained in this work have helped me prepare the project ‘Mobilizing for Democracy’, now financed by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), and its preliminary results are reported in various chapters. While the responsibility for what I have written remains mine, I’m grateful to the ERC and the European Commission for their support to my research.

Throughout these years, I have had the immense luck of enjoying the most stimulating environment, in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. I have also carried out part of my research while I was a visiting scholar at the Wissenschaftszentrum für soziale Forschung in Berlin and at the Humboldt University. I thank my colleagues Dieter Rucht, Michael Zuern and Klaus Eder for their support there.

In this volume, I have developed ideas presented in ‘State Power and the Control of Transnational Protests’ (with Herbert Reiter), in Thomas Olesen (ed.), Power and Transnational Activism, London: Routledge, 2011; ‘Movimenti sociali e stato democratico’, in A. Pizzorno (ed.), La democrazia di fronte allo stato, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2010; ‘Communications in Movements: Social Movements as Agents of Participatory Democracy, in Information, Communication and Society, 14 (6), 2010; ‘Democrazia: Sfide e opportunità’, in Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 40 (2), 2010; Democracy in Social Movements, London: Palgrave, 2009; Another Europe, London: Routledge, 2009; ‘La partecipazione nelle istituzioni: concettualizzare gli esperimenti di democrazia deliberative e partecipativa’, in Partecipazione e conflitto, 0, 2008 (with Bernard Gbikpi); The Policing of Transnational Protest: In the Aftermath of the ‘Battle of Seattle’, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006 (with Abby Peterson and Herbert Reiter); ‘E-democracy: Internet e democrazia’, special issue of the Rassegna italiana di sociologia, 47 (4), 2006; ‘Deliberation in Movement: Why and How to Study Deliberative Democracy and Social Movements’, in Acta Politica, 40, 2005; and ‘Globalization and Democracy’, in Democratization, 12, 2005.

1

Models of Democracy: An Introduction

There is a striking paradox to note about the contemporary era: from Africa to Eastern Europe, Asia to Latin America, more and more nations and groups are championing the idea of democracy; but they are doing so at just that moment when the very efficacy of democracy as a national form of political organization appears open to question. As substantial areas of human activity are progressively organized on a regional or global level, the fate of democracy, and of the independent democratic nation-state in particular, is fraught with difficulties. (Held 1998, 11)

Many recent contributions on democracy start – like David Held’s above – by mentioning a paradox. On the one hand, the number of democratic countries in the world is growing – according to Freedom House, from thirty-nine democracies in 1974 to eighty-seven countries free and democratic, and sixty partially free, in 2011 (Freedom House 2012). On the other, there is a reduction in the satisfaction of citizens with the performances of ‘really existing democracies’ (Dahl 2000). Some scholars even suggested that the third wave of democratization risks developing into economic wars and armed conflicts (see, in particular, Tilly 2004). Certainly, research on quality of democracy by Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino (2005) pointed at the low quality of many democratic regimes. The question ‘Can democracy be saved?’ became central in the recent political debate faced with a most serious financial crisis, as well as apparent institutional incapacity to address it. Not only have these developments triggered harsh societal reactions and calls for politics to come back in, but also the austerity measures to address them have accelerated the shift from a social model of democracy, with its development of the welfare state, to a neoliberal one, that trusts free-market solutions.

As we will see in this volume, to understand this paradox it is necessary to distinguish between different conceptions of democracy, both as they have been theorized and as they have been applied in real-world, existing democratic institutions. As Robert Dahl observes about the idea of democracy, ‘Ironically, the very fact that democracy has such a lengthy history has actually contributed to confusion and disagreement, for “democracy” has meant different things to different people at different times and places’ (2000, 3).

In this volume, I shall in fact contrast four models of democracy, assessing the challenges and opportunities that recent social, cultural and political changes represent for them. If we want to save democracy, we have in fact to acknowledge its contested meaning, as well as the different qualities that are stressed in different conceptions and practices of democracy. Saving democracy would mean going beyond its liberal model, broadening reflection on participation and deliberation inside and outside institutions. This would imply looking at the same time at normative theories as well as at empirical evidence on different models from the liberal one. Referring to research I carried out on social movements, but also to other scholars’ work, I aim to discuss general challenges and opportunities for democracy. In this chapter, I will start this journey first of all by introducing different conceptualizations of democracy, which will then be discussed in depth in the rest of the volume.