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Articles on Democratic theory

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Contemporary politics is no longer able to resist the pressure of economic power. David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons

Kidnapped democracy: how can citizens escape?

The financial oligarchies differ from other kidnappers by being silent about their power over institutions and policies – they don’t want to alert anyone to what they have done.
The 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong against ‘Chinese-style democracy’ laid bare democracy’s contested meanings. Studio Incendo/flickr

If democracy is failing, why do so many lay claim to it?

Uncertainty is built into democracy, but we are seeing more talk of crisis and more attempts at redefinition. So where does this leave citizens who want to have a meaningful say in how they live?
In clinging to power, Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s handpicked successor, is steering Venezuela’s once-rich democracy to autocracy. Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Is Democracy Dead or Alive? What democracy exactly are we supposed to nurture?

Democracy takes many forms, some of them democracy in name only. Confusion and misappropriation complicate the public struggle for the democracy to come, but this challenge is always unending.
While some are declaring that democracy has had its day, others see this as a time to develop more truly democratic ways of living. Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1910

Is Democracy Dead or Alive? Democracy has a future, if we rethink and remake it

Is it really time to eulogise democracy, or are we rather on the cusp of a new phase in its long and varied life?
Is populism a poison or a cure for democracy, or both, depending on the circumstances? Louis Boilly/Wikipedia Commons

Is populism democracy’s deadly cure?

We’re not sure if the cure, the populist outsider, will work and make life better. but we are willing to experiment as the old certainties of representative politics wither.
Voters might be quite rational in refusing to give the green light to those who wield power and benefit from the status quo. Mats Edenius/flickr

We frown on voters’ ambivalence about democracy, but they might just save it

Ambivalence among voters is reason to think about how democracy is working for us as a community. To keep democracy alive we need to be sceptical about the exercise of power and keep it in check.
Could a randomly selected tree make a better president than Donald Trump? Bruce Irschick/flickr

Democracy needs more trees and less Trump

If people are starting to look much worse in democratic terms, trees are starting to look much better. We are learning that plants engage in meaningful and, more to the point, truthful communication.
A polarising election issue in Western Australia, the Roe 8 project illustrates the need for better and more democratic decision-making. Gregory Roberts/AAP

What would a wise democracy look like? We, the people, would matter

One reason Perth’s Roe 8 project is the subject of passionate protests is that it’s a case of a government asserting power over people rather than exercising power with local communities.
Donald Trump’s reinvention of the royal fiat as rule-by-tweet, or ‘twiat’, is anti-democratic and needs to be resisted. Twitter

Trump, the wannabe king ruling by ‘twiat’

Donald Trump is reinventing the royal fiat by novel means: the rule-by-tweet, or ‘twiat’. This move is not an extension of popular democracy, but its enemy, and it needs to be resisted.
Just say no! Tyranny depends on mass subservience. Alek S./flickr

To resist Trump’s tyranny, just don’t comply

The origin of tyrannical power is irrelevant: whether by election, inheritance or force, if rulership is oppressive, it is tyrannical. And the way to beat it is deceptively simple: refuse to comply.
Graffiti on a wall in Sana'a, Yemen, denounces US drone strikes that have killed scores of civilians. Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

War and democracy in the age of Trump

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus once observed that Persian rulers indulged the habit of getting drunk when making important decisions. When sober and sensible next morning, their custom was to reconsider…
What do you call a democracy that depends on the exclusion of whole groups from political participation? Gaia/Wikipedia Commons

What’s in a name? How a democracy becomes an aristocracy

Democracy today contains within itself impulses towards both inclusion and exclusion. Spinoza’s thinking on aristocracy should alert us to how democratic rule by the people can be hollowed out.
Shifts in our communication infrastructures have reshaped the very possibilities of social order driven by markets and commercial exploitation. Marc Smith/flickr

The price of connection: ‘surveillance capitalism’

Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and processing – as if the social itself has become the new target of capitalism’s expansion.
Tea Party supporters have been demanding to be heard for a long time. Valerie Hinjosa/flickr

Face the facts: populism is here to stay

We are witnessing the global rise of populism. Once seen as a fringe phenomenon from another era or only certain parts of the world, populism is a mainstay of politics today across the globe.
Others might be more inspired by American democracy if the US were widely seen to be a just and tolerant society and its leading politicians were not loudmouthed xenophobes. Justin Lane/EPA

Western democracy needs humility to step beyond its own shadow

The value of democracy needs to be restated and defended, rather than presumed. In doing so, there is value in adopting a more tempered stance, one that understands its worth but also its flaws.

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