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Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it. A gigantic polling apparatus has developed to help leaders anticipate and respond to popular whims. Democratic politicians adopt the mind-set of marketing executives. Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.
Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay.
Where both administrations and their respective critics get into trouble is when they try to hide political judgments by invoking science to justify or crticize decisions that are ultimately grounded in values. A perfect example is the debate over the so-called "emergency contraception" which is inherently political as a battleground for the US abortion wars. Combatants on all sides of the debate invoke science as justification for their political positions.
So long as we live in a democracy rather than a technocracy, such debates are to be expected. Bringing the values at stake out into the open will not only help to depoliticize science, but will also help to improve the practice of democracy.
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All judgments that involve "drawing a line" between one thing and another are inherently political judgments, in the sense that trade-offs between competing values are unavoidably involved.
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If democracy is to work, political representatives must not only be formally installed in government posts but must in some sense gain control of large-scale bureaucracies that constitute the modern state. (p. 4)
A commitment to the orderly transition of governmental control via elections necessarily means that those in charge will change (p. 109):
Any commitment to democratic values necessarily means accepting a measure of instability in the top governing levels.
India’s awkward attempts to control its citizens’ activities online are shifting further and further away from the liberal democratic principles that inform the US-India relationship, and towards the cliché of “Asian democracy”, where individual freedoms and rights are secondary to societal cohesion.
the real 'problem for democracies in a crisis is not that no one knows what to do, it's that no one knows how to get other people to do what they are told.'
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One of the primary ethical dilemmas was the idea of building my academic career on the backs of extremely poor people.
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Foreign consultants get paid very well in Kabul — often $250,000 per year — and I find that unconscionable.
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Walter Lippmann was one of the greatest American political writers of the last century. Here are a few excerpts from his 1955 book The Public Philosophy that remind us that the politicization of information is far from a new concern. He also emphasizes not just the importance of open debate in response, but that there is no viable alternative in democratic systems.
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On the transformation of the complex to the simple in public discourse:
. . . when the decision is critical and urgent, the public will not be told the whole truth. What can be told to the great public it will not hear in the complicated and qualified concreteness that is needed for a practical decision. When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into the absolute. Even when there is no deliberate distortion by censorship and propaganda, which is unlikely in time of war, the public opinion of masses cannot be counted upon to apprehend regularly and promptly the reality of things. There is an inherent tendency in opinion to feed upon rumors excited by our own wishes and fears. [p. 27]
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The antidote to concerns about "frivolity" and "mischief" in public debates is not to try to silence or demagogue one's opponents, but rather to invite them to participate in a "genuine debate." Today, on many topics genuine debate seems to be more often avoided than engaged.
As a self-styled “guardian” of what he called “the uniquely European heritage of an idea of democracy”, Derrida did more, I think, than any thinker in recent years to take credible steps in this laborious movement beyond Eurocentrism and anti-Eurocentrism. In the absence of a story of world history, the idea of democracy will no longer be thought through in terms of the history-ending realization of the ideal form of social life, nor even in terms of a regulative idea in the Kantian sense. What needs to be secured today, and what Derrida gave us to think, is the idea of democracy as something that entails a more open-ended history of emancipation and progress: of democracy as something that, in its concept, always “remains to be thought and to come”*.
. Scientific principles of rationality have certain democratic virtues that many of their rivals lack. One of the virtues of scientific rationality is that it privileges principles that — as we in fact just noted — everyone appeals to most of the time — just because we are built that way. Of course the fact that people can’t help but use methods like observation and logic doesn’t prove that those methods are always more reliable than others, or even reliable at all. (Just as the fact that people thought the earth was flat doesn’t mean it was). But it does mean that principles which privilege these methods — which give them more weight than others, no matter what the question — have an obvious virtue: they recommend methods that aren’t secret or the province of a few. They recommend methods that everyone can and does use. Indeed, it is this very virtue of scientific methods that was so celebrated in the Enlightenment. Prioritizing scientific methods is liberating precisely because it frees one from appeals to authority, from the thought that something is true because some person, religious tradition, or political party, says so.
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even science has its first principles. These principles — call them epistemic principles — tell us what methods and sources to trust. They are fundamental (“first”) precisely because you can’t defend them without relying on them. (Try giving a good argument for why logic is reliable that doesn’t use logic.) As some of the comments on that post reveal, the fact that it is difficult to defend first epistemic principles is what causes many people to think that even science is based on faith. Defending the principles of science by relying on them seems like no defense at all. So, some conclude, reasons run out and faith takes over.
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This reaction is understandable. But it rests on a mistake. It is right that we can’t give epistemic reasons — evidence — for those fundamental principles that tell us what evidence to trust. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give reasons for those principles at all.
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In fact, the last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.
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The well-worn observation that real democracies almost never fight each other is historically correct, but it's also true that democracies have always been perfectly willing to fight non-democracies. In fact, democracy can heighten conflict by amplifying ethnic and nationalist forces, pushing leaders to appease belligerent sentiment in order to stay in power. Thomas Paine and Immanuel Kant both believed that selfish autocrats caused wars, whereas the common people, who bear the costs, would be loath to fight. But try telling that to the leaders of authoritarian China, who are struggling to hold in check, not inflame, a popular undercurrent of nationalism against Japanese and American historical enemies. Public opinion in tentatively democratic Egypt is far more hostile toward Israel than the authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarak ever was (though being hostile and actually going to war are quite different things).
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The Economist has a great letter this week from Marc Ginzberg of Rye, NY:
SIR – The process in Congress that led to the deal to raise America’s debt ceiling was not “ludicrously irresponsible” (“Time for a double dip?”, August 6th). Extreme views were passionately expressed, policy positions maintained and pressure from party leaders withstood. But there were no shootings, no riots, no bribery, not even an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Right-wingers opposed to the deal either believed in the correctness of their position or they reflected the ideas of their constituents and want to be re-elected; what is wrong with that? If I had been a dictator, I would have imposed a very different conclusion on the debt-ceiling fracas; so, it seems, would you. But although you may regret the terms that the compromise reached, do not regret the process.
Well said!
If scholars of science and technology draw on deliberative democrats’ normative account of legitimacy, but reject the principles for legitimate rule prescribed by the same theory, how do we know that deliberative expert practices are more legitimate than those they seek to counter?
In short, shouldn't experts in the interface of science and society be bound by the same criteria of legitimacy that they apply to other types of expertise? The answer would seem to be "yes," but this is not how it works in practice.
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I am a co-author along with A Democracy Paradox in Studies of Science and Technology," (it can also be found here in PDF) and it takes a close look at claims made by scholars who study science and technology that the governance of science and technology ought to be grounded in deliberation among experts and the general public. Political legitimacy, it is argued, derives from such deliberation. However, such claims are themselves almost universally grounded not in deliberation, but authority. Hence the "democracy paradox."
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Only when specifying and adhering to internally consistent criteria of legitimacy, will students of science and technology be able to make a convincing case for more deliberative governance of science and technology.
For my part (not speaking for my co-authors), appeals to deliberative democracy by science studies scholars can not evade the paradox. Instead, we must look to other conceptions of democracy to understand the legitimate roles of science and expertise in governance.
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Are you a different person when interacting or thinking in one language as opposed to in another?
Not that much different, I'm the same person in either language after all. It's like an asymptote—the curve comes awfully close to the line... But the two do not become one. -
the storehouse that is language (with its deeper structures that change only very slowly) necessarily affects and constrains the growth of the culture that is contained within.
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The word “accountability” ranks right up there with “freedom,” “justice,” and “democracy” – words commonly used and thought to be understood by all. But that is wrong. It is a term that is complex and misunderstood, and subject to abuse in political discourse. But more importantly, because there is a lack of clarity, there are many different approaches used by politicians and public administrators to pursue it.
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The first report, Public Accountability: Performance Measurement, the Extended State..., by Melvin Dubnick and H. George Fredrickson, is an academic piece filled with numerous concepts of accountability.
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“Accountability is both a word and a bundle of concepts. As a word, accountability is notoriously ambiguous . . . “and as a concept, it has been around for centuries. It is basically social in nature; it must involve two or more individuals for it to come into place.
Accountability is typically associated with actions taken ‘after the fact’ . . to fix responsibility for perceived human errors (e.g., the response to Hurricane Katrina). But Dubnick and Fredrickson note that these after-the-fact approaches to accountability are often premised on before-the-fact expectations and assumptions about the behavior of individuals, groups, and even nations. These premises often lead to preventative accountability approaches such as internal controls, ethics training, performance reports, financial reports, etc. The question is: do they work and are they worth the cost?
The authors observe: “According to proponents of accountability-centered reforms, enhanced accountability will (among other things) result in greater transparency and openness in a world threatened by the powerful forces of hierarchy and bureaucratization. . . accountability will bring formal and precise measures of performance to government so the public can know how well their government is meeting public expectations.” But Dubnick and Fredrickson aren’t so sure about how valid this is. - 2 more annotation(s)...
Experts have always posed a problem for democracies. Plato scorned democracy, rating it the worst form of government short of tyranny, largely because it gave power to the ignorant many rather than to knowledgeable experts (philosophers, as he saw it). But, if, as we insist, the people must ultimately decide, the question remains: How can we, non-experts, take account of expert opinion when it is relevant to decisions about public policy?
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we need to reflect on the logic of appeals to the authority of experts. First of all, such appeals require a decision about who the experts on a given topic are. Until there is agreement about this, expert opinion can have no persuasive role in our discussions.
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Another requirement is that there be a consensus among the experts about points relevant to our discussion. Precisely because we are not experts, we are in no position to adjudicate disputes among those who are.
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A cloud development zone being constructed in the Chinese city of Chongqing has drawn scrutiny for an alleged plan to offer uncensored Internet access, but only for foreign businesses.
The city's Cloud Computing Special Zone will be home to a handful of state-of-the-art data centers and is designed to attract investment from multinational companies and boost China's status as a center for cloud computing.
To attract business, the Chongqing municipal government will provide the site with unrestricted access to the Internet, meaning companies located there won't be restricted by China's pervasive Web filtering system, according to Chinese media reports.
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That has sparked an uproar among some Chinese Internet users, because the unfiltered Web access will be available only to foreign companies, according to the reports. People commenting on social-networking sites have slammed the zone as a throwback to the days of "No dogs and no Chinese allowed,"a reference to how local Chinese were prohibited in the early 20th century from entering certain foreigner communities.
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Chongqing Economic and Information Technology Commission, which is overseeing development of the cloud zone, declined to comment on whether the media reports about Web access were accurate. A spokeswoman said the commission continues to "push forward" with the project.
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people keep assuming that the forces of globalization and capitalism will somehow politically transform China into a democracy. Surely the need for foreign businesses to work in China would force the Chinese government to do away with things like internet censorship? Hmm, not so much. The city of Chongqing has gotten around this problem by building a development zone with unrestricted internet access–for foreign businesses, that is.
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The state-of-the-art data centers, meant to make Chongqing a big player in the cloud computing game, might attract business, but the locals certainly aren’t too happy about it [via IT World]:
That has sparked an uproar among some Chinese Internet users, because the unfiltered Web access will be available only to foreign companies, according to the reports. People commenting on social-networking sites have slammed the zone as a throwback to the days of “No dogs and no Chinese allowed,”a reference to how local Chinese were prohibited in the early 20th century from entering certain foreigner communities
how would it really play out if all of the countries in the world became democracies? According Professor Mark Harrison from the University of Warwick, it might mean more war.
Harrison explains that as large superpowers like the USSR have fragmented into smaller democracies wars become more likely for the simple reason that there are more countries that might come in conflict with one another. Also, it is cheaper now than it ever has been to fight a war.
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Harrison explains the crux of his argument in the abstract to his paper The Frequency of Wars:
Wars are increasingly frequent, and the trend has been steadily upward since 1870. The main tradition of Western political and philosophical thought suggests that extensive economic globalization and democratization over this period should have reduced appetites for war far below their current level.
Contradictions abound. Governments across the region have been identified as the problem, and yet the state is being called upon to address a social and political agenda that has not yet been fully defined. We are seeing the birth of a more democratic spirit among the region’s peoples, but a corresponding sense of democratic responsibility remains underdeveloped.
No matter how influential new media have been, they cannot replace the need for a region-wide “manifesto for change” that all who seek freedom can embrace. Any such manifesto must address the two elephants in the room – Palestine and the price of oil – as well as the extent to which regional water and energy resources, now rapidly depleting, should be shared.
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Cyber-activism has its limits; it cannot, in the end, deliver either democracy or prosperity. Communication may be instant, but, with no coherent animating ideology, the revolution proceeds in slow motion. The battle being fought for the soul of the Middle East cannot be won online, nor can it be subdued through the cynical manipulation of trust and fear. The quality of freedom in the Middle East, as elsewhere, will depend on its supporters’ commitment to liberal and democratic values.
The other statute is one the church supports, although not all its parishioners agree: it enforces the Coptic Church’s near-total ban on divorce, even while Egyptian laws on Muslim divorce have grown increasingly liberal.
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The other statute is one the church supports, although not all its parishioners agree: it enforces the Coptic Church’s near-total ban on divorce, even while Egyptian laws on Muslim divorce have grown increasingly liberal.
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Often, Christians who want to divorce convert to Islam — and try, after the divorce, to convert back.
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The Arab Spring initially appeared to open a welcoming door to the dwindling number of Christian Arabs who, after years of feeling marginalized, eagerly joined the call for democracy and rule of law. But now many Christians here say they fear that the fall of the police state has allowed long-simmering tensions to explode, potentially threatening the character of Egypt, and the region.
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Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the 80 million Egyptians, say the revolution has plunged them into uncharted territory. Suppressed or marginalized for six decades here, Islamists entering politics have rushed to defend an article of the Egyptian Constitution that declares Egypt a Muslim country that derives its laws from Islam. Christians and liberals say privately they abhor the provision, which was first added as a populist gesture by President Anwar el-Sadat. But the article is so popular among Muslims — and the meaning so vague — that even many liberals and Christians entering politics are reluctant to speak out against it, asking at most for slight modifications.
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