Session 5a: Democracy in Practice II

1st Global Conference

Friday 30th April – Sunday 2nd May 2010
Prague, Czech Republic

Public Opinion and Democracy: “Comfortable” Bedfellows?
Rinella Cere
Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom

This paper is going to discuss the relationship between ‘public opinion’ and democracy. The first like the second has been discussed by many philosophers as ‘desirable and necessary’ (Aristotle, Locke and Rousseau); but what of today’s understanding of public opinion which is increasingly an instrument to oppose protest and dissent and encourage social and political uniformity? It is my contention here that ‘public opinion’ with its discussion of majority views and the size of these is less about public intervention and participation in the affairs of government and more about shoring up the problems of capitalist democracies, from low electoral turnout to consumer-led politics. The discussion has also been shaped in recent years exclusively around numbers and therefore devoid of any meaningful role towards ‘informed and rational decision making’ by the public: ‘Since the early Greek democracies, people have debated about the nature of public opinion. Only recently, however, has the debate over the character of public opinion been tied (at times almost exclusively) to polling data’ data’ (Bauman and Herbst, 1994).

The Right to Democracy!
Rory O’Connell
Human Rights Centre, Queen’s University of Belfast, Ireland

This presentation examines the roots of a right to democracy in international law, and especially the growing support for such a right since the end of the Cold War. The presentation also highlights concerns about the conception of democracy as understood in international law, particularly with reference to Susan Marks’ thesis that international law protects mainly shallow forms of democratic participation.

Hard Work, Obligation and the Price of Belonging: Thinking and the Democratic Subject
Paul Reynolds
Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, United Kingdom

In this paper I want to consider what we might consider from the democratic subject as the requirements of belonging in a democratic society – what obligations we might put upon an individual in the interests of all members of a society living in a rich and fertile democracy. I start with two suppositions. First, that liberal democracies and representative political systems have a poor quality of democracy in respect of participation, political understandings and commitment to meeting obligations that might reasonably be expected by those supporting democracy. Second, that progressive and radical democratic theory spends much time with procedural and systemic terms of change in democratic systems and gives too little attention to changing the quality of democratic engagement, as if the former will by its nature enrich the latter. Starting from Plato’s Republic and the notion of philosophers as rulers, or crucially, the elevation of democratic subjects to philosophers, I want to sketch and explore what base requirements we might have for democratic subjects, what exemptions we might want to register for some of those who cannot meet these obligations and how we regard the line between those who meet base obligations or are exempt and those who do not – do we exclude, create levels of legitimate participation or simply include and adopt a liberal notion of self-improvement to meet those base requirements. In doing so, I will argue the unpopular position that progress towards democracy may well mean exploring withholding democratic participation in some forms in order to stress that democracy is ‘hard work; and not a given, and is only valuable and valued when obligations are recognised and base requirements = indeed more than base requirements – are enthusiastically met and challenged.