A conventional story is often told about democracy. It is a story that begins somewhere in the West, some millennia ago. From there, or so this telling goes, democracy spread across the continents; traversing from the familiar epicenters of Western civilization—Athens, London, Washington, Versailles—to the exotic and sometimes alien cultural landscapes in the East. The idea that such a model of democracy, based on an essentially Western set of ideals and practices, could one day become universal was perhaps unthinkable to most democrats before the twentieth century. However, today there is very little doubt that democracy on a global scale is both assured and desirable. But there should be no confusion here: this story of democratization, and the projection of democracy’s global future, is one premised on “the export of democratic institutions, developed within a particular cultural context in the West,” that has as its culmination “the end of history” and the triumph of Western liberal democracy in all corners of the globe (Lamont et al. 2015: 1).
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Non-Western Theories of Democracy
Mark Chou and Emily Beausoleil
Editorial
Jean-Paul Gagnon
political theorists committed to the democratization of the workplace to ground themselves in specifics. Instead of working through metaphor and analogy which risks treating workplaces or firms as more or less the same, Frega argues we should first take
Editorial
Research Article
Jean-Paul Gagnon and Selen A. Ercan
toward new worlds and new ways of life” today. Robin Rodd's article on Uruguay's “state-driven democratization” follows from the above. Rodd explains how the political party Frente Amplio is reinvigorating Battlismo – an early twentieth
Reflecting on Fifty Years of Democratic Theory
Carole Pateman in Conversation with Graham Smith
Carole Pateman and Graham Smith
't know. I went there in 2015 and got the impression that participatory budgeting had already probably peaked. Smith: We seem to be getting back to your earlier point that we don't spend enough time thinking about what it means to democratize the
A Radical Democratic Lens to Rejuvenating European Union Democracy Support
Thinking about the Political with a Capital P
Nathan Vandeputte
fact such support should be abolished, and if not, whether such support itself must or could be democratized through including—rather than excluding—more plural perspectives of democracy ( Koelble and Lipuma 2008 ; Kurki 2013 ; Rutazibwa 2014
In Democratic Theory
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2022
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 31–51 (21 total)
What Is Democratic Theory?
Rikki Dean, Jean-Paul Gagnon, and Hans Asenbaum
rather than politics that is at the vanguard of democratization ( Boswell 2016 ; Dean 2017 ; Warren 2009 ). In addition, there are increasing attempts to democratize the provision of community and public services, as documented by scholars of
The Rise of Despotic Majoritarianism
Benjamin Abrams
institutions, a balance of powers, and an independent judiciary. Such a model has been widely exported and promoted by Western powers for almost a century and persists as the backbone of global democratization discourse ( Dryzek and Holmes 2002 ; Huntington
Opportunity in the Crisis of Democracy
Jean-Paul Gagnon and George Vasilev
action to address the very deficiencies crippling existing democratic practice. In today’s world, such deficiencies include citizen disengagement, de-democratization and regression toward authoritarianism, far right populism, accountability deficits among
Beyond Deliberative Systems
Pluralizing the Debate
Hans Asenbaum
interconnection between and democratization of economic, societal, and political configurations. They rethink the very principles that current societies are built on and suggest moving from current competition to collaborative commoning. The poststructuralist
Book Reviews
Dominik Austrup, Marion Repetti, Andreas Avgousti, Th. W. Bottelier, and Antonin Lacelle-Webster
discussion on how these new trends threaten or transform democracies. In her conclusions, Dimova emphasizes the democratization of the access to political debate in the Media Age, and the globalization of democratic systems, but also their complexification