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Political Theory

February 27, 2023

🦋 Actualised democracy and the challenge of becoming the democratic citizens it needs

Fathali M. Moghaddam Fathali M. Moghaddam puts forward a picture of 'actualised democracy' aimed at the equal participation of every person in all public decision-making. For it to succeed, today’s citizens need upskilling into 'democratic citizens' Read more
February 20, 2023

🦋 We must not sacrifice the essence of democracy on the altar of limitless conceptual pluralism

Anastasia Deligiaouri Anastasia Deligiaouri argues that we should be wary of allowing incompatible concepts – such as 'illiberal democracy' – to dilute democracy’s essence. Rather, we must unravel and expunge the demons that lurk in democracies. By so doing, we will ensure this pluralism does not serve or fulfil autocratic desires Read more
February 9, 2023

🦋 Democracy’s 'things' should be added to the data mountain of democracy

Hilary Gopnik A community’s material things can be active participants in the democratic process. Hilary Gopnik argues that the inclusion of materiality in Jean-Paul Gagnon’s science of democracy will broaden the range of the inquiry and deepen the texture recovered Read more
January 23, 2023

🦋 Making the case for administrative democracy

Stephen P. Turner Stephen Turner argues that for democracy to prevail, we must transform the vague idea of 'the will of the people' into legal procedure. This issue is more important than ever in situations where bureaucracies, such as those of the United States, are suffocating democratic action Read more
December 27, 2022

🦋 Democracy’s total texture and the search for its narrative truth

Simone Belko Simone Belko invites us to imagine research into democracy as an 'artful science'. Without mediation by experts or representatives, but only through open civic intelligence, we can together determine the total texture of democracy from the bottom up. This self-referential poetics has the potential to define democracy in still untold ways Read more
December 21, 2022

To achieve organisational change, think outside the box

Igor Ahedo Gurrutxaga Igor Ahedo Gurrutxaga uses a puzzle to achieve organisational change in public institutions. Solving the puzzle seems difficult, because it requires us to think outside the box. Yet the answer can serve as a metaphor for the need to change an organisation’s attitude Read more
December 19, 2022

🦋 We must rethink our understanding of democratic trends

Alex Prior The ‘total texture’ of democracy exists, and we can observe it, argues Alex Prior. This is possible through a conceptualisation of this ‘texture’ as fractal: being complex and self-referential at every scale. Through this perspective, we can problematise long-standing – but nevertheless incomplete – analogies of democracy and democratisation Read more
December 15, 2022

♟️ Varieties of constitutional models and authoritarian political order

Julian G. Waller The lure of typology is irresistible for social scientists, yet commonly used schemas classifying authoritarian politics still miss key variation. Our frameworks often rely on organisational assumptions set one level of abstraction too high. Julian G. Waller demonstrates how a closer look at constitutional structure can confront this problem Read more

The Loop

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THE EUROPEAN CONSORTIUM FOR POLITICAL RESEARCH
Advancing Political Science
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