"Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns.
Показать полностью… The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about "technical democracy." They show how "hybrid forums" — in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come together — reveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded. The authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and mad cow disease in the United Kingdom. The authors discuss the implications for political decision making in general and describe a "dialogic" democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy".

What is a People ?
(Alain Badiou, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Georges Didi-Huberman, Sadri Khiari, and Jacques Ranciere)

To raise the question “What is a people?” always means at the same time to make some statement, even if only implicitly, about who or what is not a people. The six interventions collected in this slender volume are no exception in this regard: while they all to a greater or lesser extent plead in favor of the people as a political category that is still valid today, they also at the same time draw a negative profile - like a chalk outline at the scene of a crime - of whoever does not constitute a people.

Книга Питера Мейра - Управляя пустотой

In the long-established democracies of Western Europe, electoral turnouts are in decline, membership is shrinking in the major parties, and those who remain loyal partisans are sapped of enthusiasm. Peter Mair’s new book weighs the impact of these changes, which together show that, after a century of democratic aspiration, electorates are deserting the political arena. Mair examines the alarming parallel development that has seen Europe’s political elites remodel themselves as a homogeneous professional class, withdrawing into state institutions that offer relative stability in a world of fickle voters. Meanwhile, non-democratic agencies and practices proliferate and gain credibility—not least among them the European Union itself, an organization contributing to the depoliticization of the member states and one whose notorious ‘democratic deficit’ reflects the deliberate intentions of its founders.
Ruling the Void offers an authoritative and chilling assessment of the prospects for popular political representation today, not only in the varied democracies of Europe but throughout the developed world.

Corien Prins, Dennis Broeders, Henk Griffioen, Anne-Greet Keizer - iGovernment

This book offers a new perspective on the future of government digitization. Th Dutch version, entitled iOverheid, was presented to the Minister of the Interior
and Kingdom Relations, Piet Hein Donner, on 15 March 2011. In it, the Scientific
Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid
– wrr), an advisory body to the Dutch Government, makes recommendations onthis important issue. The wrr’s task is to make proposals, based on broad analysis and scientific insights, for the strategic direction of Dutch policy. To this end, the
wrr submits advisory reports to the government on issues which merit special attention. The current English version of the iOverheid report draws mainly on material relating to the Dutch situation and developments – in their eu context – but the analysis and the policy perspective provided should prove valuable in other national contexts as well. After all, the Netherlands is by no means unique, neither in the high stakes involved with the success or failure of ict in government, nor in the sometimes feeble grasp that public authorities seem to have on developments in this field, especially in assessing the wider societal consequences of digitization. The central message that this book puts forward is that political attention needs to be shifted towards the intricacies of the web of information flows that is taking shape, instead of the intricacies of the individual technologies and applications that make these information flows technologically possible. The message that governments should see and act like an iGoverment instead of an eGovernment is a message that is worth testing in different national contexts.

Интересная критическая статья о теории классов Пьера Бурдьё

Лекция профессора Нью-Йоркского Университета Георгия Дерлугьяна.

Тема: «Кто убил Эдуардо Мондлане? Сквозь стереотипы капиталистической и социалистической идеологии к анализу власти, на примере партизан Мозамбика, 1960 — 2014 гг.»
Проблематика: почему партизаны Мозамбика стали марксистами в 1962 году? Как будет слово "социализм" на суахили? Как и почему одни и те же люди очень успешно удерживали власть и когда строили социализм в 1970 х годах, и когда в более недавние годы стали очень успешными капиталистами и любимцами МВФ?

Питер Мейр о кризисе парламентской демократии (отрывок из книги «Управляя пустотой»)

Сборник "Элитизм, популизм и европейская политика"

On 17-19 September 1993 the Institute of European Studies of the University of Oxford organized the first of what have become a regular series of Europaeum Conferences. Under the impetus of the initial inspiration and continuing enthusiasm of Lord Weidenfeld and Sir Ronald Grierson, the Europaeum network of academic institutions hold an annual conference on a major theme, bringing together those directly involved in taking decisions, offering advice or assessing them. The theme selected for the inaugural conference was one which continues to preoccupy democrats conscious that popular support for the European integration promoted by their leaders was flagging. The title 'Are European Elites Losing Touch with their Peoples?' posed a rhetorical question which it was the task of those preparing the papers and their discussants to explore. The revised results of our deliberations are placed before you.
Several papers presented at the 1993 conference are not reproduced here, while others have been added subsequently. Particular thanks are due to those who acted as discussants or commentators: Vernon Bogdanor, Alain Camu, Lord Clinton-Davis, John Drew, John Hemming, Timothy Garton Ash, Jacques Gerstle, David Goldey, Sir Ronald Grierson, Peter Gundelach, Peter Hartmann, Will Hutton, David Levy, Wolfgang Muller, William Paterson, Michel Vanden Abeele, Norbert Walter, Robert Worcester.