Daniel Little
rising tide of radical populism; defense of liberal democracy; social democracy
In a recent post I addressed the issue of the rise of mass intolerance and hate from the point of view of the public -- the processes through which sizable numbers of members of society come to be more intolerant in their attitudes and behaviors. This involves looking at the problem as being analogous to …
Continue reading "Ideologies and organizations as causes of political extremism"
Richard Hofstadter opened his 1963 Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford with these prescient words: Although American political life has rarely been touched by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds. Today this fact is most evident on the extreme right wing, which …
Several earlier posts have focused on the theory of deliberative democracy (link, link, link). The notion is that political decision-making can be improved by finding mechanisms for permitting citizens to have extended opportunities for discussion and debate over policies and goals. The idea appeals to liberal democratic theorists in the tradition of Rousseau -- the …
Continue reading "Deliberative democracy and the age of social media"
We would like to think that it is possible for a society to embody basic institutions that work to preserve and enhance the wellbeing of all members of society in a fair way. We want social institutions to be beneficent (producing good outcomes for everyone), and we want them to be fair (treating all individuals and groups with equal …
Continue reading "Basic social institutions and democratic equality"
Suppose a country had come to the brink of financial catastrophe because the two parties in its legislature were unable to find compromises in the public interest. Suppose further that the discourse in that country had evolved towards a highly toxic and hateful stream of anathemas by one party against the other. And suppose that …
American conservatives for the past several decades have shown a remarkable hostility to poor people in our country. The recent effort to slash the SNAP food stamp program in the House (link); the astounding refusal of 26 Republican governors to expand Medicaid coverage in their states -- depriving millions of poor people from access to …
How can we design practical, effective, and fair institutions for making the basic decisions that are needed within a democratic government? This is, of course, one of the oldest questions in democratic theory; but it is also a recent concern of Jon Elster's. Under this rubric we can investigate, for example, the ways a legislature …
Is there anything still of interest in the political ideas of anarchism? Can anarchist thinking help contribute to solutions for the conundrums we face in light of some of the failures of electoral democracy we can see; some of the rampant abuses of corporate power that we experience; and the continuing exercise of authoritarian rule …
Jack Knight and Jim Johnson engage in a particular kind of political theory in their recent The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism. They want to consider "democracies" as existing social systems embodying particular instances of various kinds of institutions. They want to know how those institutions are likely to emerge, and they want to …
If anything seems self-evident about recent American politics, it is the fact that our discourse and policy debates have become more polarized. Commentators and politicians seem to have moved to more extreme positions over time so that bipartisanship and compromise are all but impossible. As for rational, honest and fact-based debate about policies like taxes, …
Understanding Society 