Delimiting Democratic Accountability

This article discusses the concept of accountability in relation to those holding public office in democratic states. It argues that the concept of accountability requires careful specification and that it is frequently distorted when put to the service of theoretical models and normative principles. The article develops a definition of accountability and a range of distinctions between forms of accountability, asks what forms of accountability might be appropriate to modern democratic systems and argues that some combinations of democracy and accountability can have serious negative consequences for politics. The article concludes by discussing the types of accountability that are pertinent to recent claims that international institutions should be made more democratically accountable. In each case, the common tendency to inflate the concept of accountability is associated with demands for accountability that threaten both democratic consolidation and the distinctive character of accountability itself.     

Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability and the Success of Democracy

This article explains why dissatisfaction with the performance of individual politicians in new democracies often turns into disillusionment with democracy as a political system. The demands on elections as an instrument of political accountability are much greater in new than established democracies: politicians have yet to form reputations, a condition that facilitates the entry into politics of undesirable candidates who view this period as their “one‐time opportunity to get rich.” After a repeatedly disappointing government performance, voters may rationally conclude that “all politicians are crooks” and stop discriminating among them, to which all politicians rationally respond by “acting like crooks,” even if most may be willing to perform well in office if given appropriate incentives. Such an expectation‐driven failure of accountability, which I call the “trap of pessimistic expectations,” may precipitate the breakdown of democracy. Once politicians establish reputations for good performance, however, these act as barriers to the entry into politics of low‐quality politicians. The resulting improvement in government performance reinforces voters’ belief that democracy can deliver accountability, a process that I associate with democratic consolidation. These arguments provide theoretical microfoundations for several prominent empirical associations between the economic performance of new democracies, public attitudes toward democracy, and democratic stability.     

Global Democracy: A Symposium on a New Political Hope

The idea that the values and norms of democracy can also be applied to global politics is increasingly debated in academe. The six authors participating in this symposium are all advocates of global democracy, but there are significant differences in the way they envision its implementation. Some of the contributors discuss if and how substantial changes undertaken by states, mostly in their foreign policies, may also generate positive consequences in global politics. Other contributors address the nature of the international arena and the possible reforms it should undergo starting with the reform of international organizations. The debate combines theoretical aspects with normative proposals that could also be advanced in the political arena and offers a wide range of perspectives on the attempts to achieve a more democratic global political community.     

Democratic Accountability in Decentralised Governance1

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying democratic accountability in decentralised governance, and discusses critical issues about democratic accountability from a citizen's perspective. First, the concept is discussed and adapted to make it useful for studying democratic accountability in different governance structures. Second, the article scrutinises conditions for democratic accountability in decentralised governance based on three models. Third, democratic accountability is discussed with reference to a case study of public reviewers operating in four municipalities in Sweden. The study indicates that municipal auditors and the local media have the greatest impact on municipal policy. On the whole, auditors improve local governments’ internal control and systems for steering and monitoring municipal policy, whereas the media sometimes alter the policy agenda without changing the policy. Auditors maintain and support an elitist democratic orientation of democratic accountability, and the media maintain this democratic orientation and in addition promote democratic dialogue. Viewed from a citizen's perspective, the traditional accountability system does not work satisfactorily. State inspectors and municipal auditors – two important public reviewers in the current system – could improve their work to make it more useful to citizens’ democratic control. Another way discussed to develop democratic accountability is to promote participatory policy and concrete means of accountability (e.g. on‐site visits, conducted tours and different forms of democratic dialogue). The formal way to improve democratic accountability implies more transparency, monitoring and control, which may also lead to distrust and scapegoat thinking (i.e. a surveillance society), whereas concrete modes of accountability, more associated with participatory and deliberative democracy, imply mutual responsibility and trust building. Strengthening participatory policy, active citizens, collective responsibility and democratic dialogue could be an alternative to the emerging audit society.     

Policy design without democracy? Making democratic sense of transition management

This article explores the complex relationship between democracy and long-term policy design for sustainability. At one extreme, democracy can be framed as problematic for policy planning because of the myopia fostered by some democratic institutions, such as regular elections. Alternatively, democracy can be seen as an ally of long-term policy design to the extent that it can generate public legitimacy and accountability, and potentially foster more equitable and just outcomes. Recent debates on how to ‘manage’ policy transitions to sustainability have been curiously silent on democratic matters, despite their potential implications for democracy. To explore what democracy might mean for transition management this article considers empirically how actors engaged in the Dutch Energy Transition Program make democratic sense of their activities. The analysis finds that in practice transition policies promote implicit narratives or democratic storylines on how reforms should be developed, who should participate in these, and how they should be legitimised and accountable to the public. The dominant narrative, which espouses elite theory and technocracy, privileges epistemic matters over democratic considerations. Other democratic storylines draw on representative democracy and interest group pluralism. The paper considers some possible ways to foster more productive interfaces between the governance structures of transition management, and the polycentric context of contemporary democratic systems.     

Human Rights Politics and Injustice: Transitional Justice in Argentina and South Africa

Transitional justice is about the recovery of the rule of lawand justice after mass violence. In the recent history of Argentinaand South Africa, human rights politics have played an importantrole in the transition from repression to democracy as a discourseof resistance to state repression and as a framework and methodologyfor the successor state to manage demands for justice and promotereconciliation. Post-transition, they have provided a standardfor the accountability of state institutions and evaluationof the democratic government's performance. In this article,we explore the roles of victims, survivors and relatives inthe expansion of human rights politics. We argue that victimsrepresent their suffering as embodied injustice and make theirvictim identity the focus of efforts to recover a moral contractbetween state and citizens. The expansion of human rights politicsto include social and economic rights is an expression of thelimits of transitional justice in recovering full citizenshipin the context of the neo-liberal democratic project in Argentinaand South Africa.     

Word and Deed: A Deweyan Integration of Deliberative and Participatory Democracy

This article draws on the political philosophy of John Dewey as one way to re-think the relationship between deliberative and participatory democracy. Rather than focusing on differences, Dewey's ideal of democracy allows us to bridge these two theories while still being attentive to the tensions between them. In particular, Dewey helps us conceptualize deliberative and participatory practices as distinctive yet complementary phases within a larger circuit of cooperative inquiry. To illustrate the argument, a case study of one democratic experiment that effectively combined different forms of practice is presented. In doing so, it is contended that we might be able to recover and incorporate some of the more radical features of participatory democracy into deliberative practices. Participatory theory's focus on political action and structural inequality, in addition to deliberation, as essential to citizen-centered democratic practice is specifically emphasized.     

Participatory Versus Radical Democracy in the 21st Century: Carole Pateman,Jacques Rancière,and Sheldon Wolin

What is the relationship between participatory and radical democracy and why are they relevant? This paper answers these questions by bringing into conversation the participatory theory of Pateman and the radical theories of Rancière and Wolin to see what they can learn from each other. I argue that participatory democracy demonstrates the value of attending to questions of institutional transformation, due to the ability of greater participation to both empower citizens and legitimize democratic authority structures. Radical democracy, on the other hand, calls attention to the ways in which the conditions of democratic possibility have changed in the past half century, thus making the dream of institutionalizing a participatory democracy much more difficult to realize. In doing so, I demonstrate that participatory and radical theories of democracy have much to offer to one another and to broader ongoing debates within democratic theory.     

Exploring Transnational Civil Society: A Comparative Study of Colombian,Dominican and Mexican Immigrant Organizations in the USA

ABSTRACT

European integration has added an extra dimension to the perceived crisis of contemporary democracy. Many observers argue that the allocation of decision-making powers beyond the nation state bears the risk of hollowing out the institutional mechanisms of democratic accountability. In EU governance, the Commission has emerged as a particularly active and imaginative actor promoting EU–society relations, and it has done so with the explicit desire to improve the democratic legitimacy of the EU. However, assumptions concerning the societal prerequisites of a working democracy differ with the normative theory of democracy employed. Therefore, expectations concerning the beneficial effect of institutional reforms such as the European Commission's new governance strategy, which was launched at the beginning of the century, vary according to normative standards set by different theories of democracy on the one hand and to the confidence in the malleability of society on the other. Our contribution seeks to pave a way for the systematic assessment of the democratic potential of the European Commission's consultation regime. To this purpose, two alternative theoretical conceptions that link participation to democracy will be presented. A list of criteria for both conceptions that enable us to empirically assess the democratic potential of the EU Commission's participatory strategy will then be presented.     

In Praise of Social Democracy

This article makes the case for social democracy in the context of difficult national and international economic conditions and changes in domestic politics that see a Conservative‐dominated Coalition government and the Labour party in Opposition for the first time since 1997. It rejects much current thinking in the Labour party and instead argues that traditional social democratic values, such as equality and social justice, are of contemporary relevance and can only be achieved through a strong central state committed to those values.     

公民参与式民主理论的拓展——异体问责的视角

公民参与式民主能够完善异体问责的理论和发展路径,而异体问责作为公民参与式民主的重要体现,能够为公民参与式民主的发展提供新视角。公民参与式民主理论强调公民与政府的双向互动,公民可以通过制度保证对政府管理进行监督问责,政府必须对公民监督问责做出积极回应并改善行政管理。民主模式从古希腊城邦的直接民主发展到近现代的代议制民主,20世纪中后期,随着时代的发展和科技的进步,参与式民主理论在对代议制民主的批判和重构中逐渐发展成熟。在该理论指导下的参与式民主实践逐步深入,从而加强了公民作为政府异体问责主体的地位,在具体实践中体现为宏观领域的行政民主、中观领域的电子民主、微观领域的工业民主。     

Postmodernists,pragmatists and the justification of democracy

According to current wisdom, we have entered a new ‘age of democracy’. The new global popularity of the democratic ideal appears likely to pose new challenges to democratic theory, adding yet more formulations and nuances to existing categories. Just as some key questions about democracy–such as ‘why is it a good (or the best) political system?’ and 'precisely what does it demand of us, and owe to us, as citizens?' – become daily more urgent, some worry about the RESOurces of political theory to cope with them, given the apparent shift towards scepticism and a suspicion of large-scale, encompassing claims about politics. This article focuses of four arguments from postmodernist and pragmatist writers who have given democracy a prominent part in their work. It asks whether the writers examined provide convincing justifications for the democratic ideal.     

An Examination of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and New Political Participation

The mobilisation of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on New Years Day 1994 in Mexico attracted considerable attention from those concerned with the democratic deficits of neoliberal globalisation and the increasing sense of individual powerlessness as states synchronise economic and public policy with the ideas and institutions of global capital. The paper argues that as a critical social movement the EZLN explores the meaning and practice of economic, political and social democracy. The EZLN practises a politics of radical democracy that incorporates a variety of strategies for enriching the democratic project. However, the EZLN's democratic project has little in common with the inclusive democracy project and yet the EZLN's project of radical democracy does cultivate a useful way of rethinking the site and nature of democracy in an age of globalisation when such institutions seem so increasingly inept.     

The Politics of Inclusive Agreements: towards a Critical Discourse Theory of Democracy

This article offers a critical assessment of Jürgen Habermas's discourse theory of democracy. It suggests that the main thrust of a discursive account of legitimacy is the attempt to show how the demands of maximal democratic inclusion might be reconciled with a politics of reasoned agreements. While this aim is endorsed, the thrust of the argument is that a critical theory of democracy requires that normative frameworks that bring certain substantive features of democratic life into focus should supplement Habermas's procedural approach. First, the account of maximal inclusion has to be developed in a way that clarifies the egalitarian demands of distributive justice. Secondly, the account of a politics of reasoned agreements has to be connected to a theoretical analysis of the bonds of solidarity that could underpin such a form of political engagement. These developments contribute to a critical theory that gives a more adequate account of the motivational basis of discursive democracy.     

网络民主热的冷思考

网络民主热潮的背后,折射出了现实政治的诸多困境.它的“一枝独秀”很大程度上缘于现实参与渠道的不畅通、多元民主力量的缺失以及代议机构功能不足等,它的有效治理取决于现实政治的容纳和对接,有赖于多元民主力量的壮大,以及各种民主形式之间的优势互补.     

Defending What From Whom? Debating Citizen Disengagement

This article constitutes a pointed theoretical intervention in the debate opposing Richards and Smith to Flinders on the question of citizen disengagement. Its main contention is that Richards and Smith offer a straw‐man argument against Flinders by identifying him with positions he does not hold. It thus shows that Richards and Smith falsely identify Flinders with the following positions: (a) there is no need for a major overhaul in the UK's existing democratic and governance arrangements; (b) the problem of citizen disengagement is caused by the public's insatiable demand for democratic participation; and (c) the problem with British politics is that there is too much democracy and accountability. Finally, the article closes by identifying points of genuine tension between the Richards/Smith position and that defended by Flinders.     

The failure of the participatory democracy in the Czech republic

Following the breakdown of the Soviet system, the new East European elites faced the problem of defining and building democratic institutions. This problem was not a purely institutional one, however. During the transformation process, different conceptions of democracy appear and often become critical issues for political competition. Based on the Czech case, this article aims to understand how and why one particular conception of democracy becomes dominant during a process of regime change. Personified by the two ‘Vaclavs’ in the Czech political arena (Havel and Klaus), divergent perspectives on democracy exist in the Czech Republic, having concrete consequences for the practice of politics. These conceptions (referred to here as ‘participatory’ and ‘majoritarian') dramatically differ in their perception of the role of the citizen in a liberal democracy. This article identifies and describes these two different conceptions of democracy in the present and past Czech Republic. It explores the sociological conditions of their emergence in order to understand the failure of the participatory model of democracy with respect to the alternative, majoritarian, vision of democracy.     

Shifting Dimensions of Citizen Control1

European politics is still dominated by representative and parliamentary national systems of policy making. These systems can be seen as chains of political delegation from citizens through parliamentarians and executive office holders to civil servants. In these chains, a major trend for the past thirty years, and more strongly during the second half of that period, is a strengthening of agents' accountability to the principals. But, simultaneously, citizens' ability to exercise accountability through parliamentary democracy is eroding because of a decline in political party cohesion. Concurrently, constraints external to both the constitutional chain and political parties are growing stronger.
The changes along these three dimensions lead to a situation in which democratic principals commonly decide more about less. Thus, while reforms have strengthened the constitutional parliamentary chain of governance, there is also an ongoing de-parliamentarisation of modern politics. The main motivation for this special issue is to investigate this general phenomenon through a set of focused case studies of the Nordic (here known as 'Scandinavian') countries. These analyses show important differences in how these trends have been manifest. In one country, Finland, the parliamentary chain has actually grown in strength and importance in the last decade.     

Carbon democracy

Abstract

States that depend upon oil revenues appear to be less democratic than other states. Yet oil presents a much larger problem for democracy: faced with the threats of oil depletion and catastrophic climate change, the democratic machineries that emerged to govern the age of carbon energy seem to be unable to address the processes that may end it. This article explores these multiple dimensions of carbon democracy, by examining the intersecting histories of coal, oil and democracy in the twentieth century. Following closely the methods by which fossil fuels were produced, distributed and converted into other forms of socio-technical organization, financial circulation and political power, the article traces ways in which the concentration and control of energy flows could open up democratic possibilities or close them down; how connections were engineered in the post-war period between the flow of oil and the flows of international finance, on which democratic stability was thought to depend; how these same circulations made possible the emergence of the economy and its unlimited growth as the main object of democratic politics; and how the relations among forms of energy, finance, economic knowledge, democracy and violence were transformed in the 1967–74 oil–dollar Middle East crises.     

Cooperative forms of governance: Problems of democratic accountability in complex environments

Abstract. Various schools of research in public policy (the literature on 'governance' and its continental counterparts) are converging to focus on the growth of policy styles based on cooperation and partnership in networks, instead of on vertical control by the state. This article focuses on issues of democratic accountability and responsiveness with these governance arrangements. It argues that until recently the legitimacy of governance networks was not at the forefront of theoretical developments, even though the 'democratic deficit' of governance is problematic both for normative and for pragmatic reasons. There is now increased sensitivity to this problem, but the remedies presented in the literature are unsatisfactory, and critiques of governance presuppose a somewhat idealised image of representative democracy in terms of accountability or responsiveness of decision-makers. They also fail to offer adequate solutions to some of the central legitimacy problems of policy-making in complex societies.