Hacking the representative system through deliberation? The organization of the Agora party in Brussels.

IF 1.9 3区社会学 Q2 POLITICAL SCIENCE Acta Politica Pub Date : 2023-01-01 Epub Date: 2021-11-29 DOI:10.1057/s41269-021-00226-3

Nino Junius, Didier Caluwaerts, Joke Matthieu, Silvia Erzeel

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Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a variety of deliberative practices in the organization and activities of political parties. What remains unclear, however, is how parties can promote deliberative democracy in an environment that remains predominantly representative. To investigate this tension, we study the Agora party in Brussels. Agora competed for the first time in the 2019 regional elections in Brussels with the aim of institutionalizing a permanent, randomly selected Citizen's Assembly with legislative power in the Brussels Capital Region and immediately gained a seat in the Brussels Regional Parliament. Based on an in-depth qualitative study including 20 semi-structured interviews with a broad range of party members and document analysis, we study whether and how Agora's organizational structure, i.e. its leadership and centralization, its intra-party democracy, and its organizational resources, allow it to promote deliberative democracy in a representative context. We argue that Agora experiences tensions between its deliberative ideals and its representative means and that there is a looming danger of becoming "just another part" of the system. However, it succeeds in simultaneously rejecting and competing in the representative system by adopting a stratarchical party organization.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41269-021-00226-3.

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通过审议破解代议制?布鲁塞尔集会党组织

近年来，在政党组织和活动中出现了多种形式的协商实践。然而，目前尚不清楚的是，各政党如何在一个仍以代议制为主的环境中促进协商民主。为了研究这种紧张关系，我们研究了布鲁塞尔的Agora党。2019年，阿格拉首次参加布鲁塞尔地区选举，旨在将布鲁塞尔首都大区随机选出的具有立法权的永久性公民议会制度化，并立即获得了布鲁塞尔地区议会的席位。通过对20名党员的半结构化访谈和文献分析等深入的定性研究，我们研究了Agora的组织结构，即其领导和集中、党内民主和组织资源，是否以及如何使其能够在代表性背景下促进协商民主。我们认为，Agora在其审议理想和其代表手段之间经历了紧张关系，并且存在成为“只是系统的另一部分”的迫在眉睫的危险。但是，它通过采用战略党组织，在拒绝代议制的同时，又在竞争代议制方面取得了成功。补充信息：在线版本包含补充资料，可在10.1057/s41269-021-00226-3获得。

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来源期刊

Acta Politica POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

2.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Political Science with an Edge Acta Politica is one of the few truly international political science journals with a broad scope across the discipline. In the past we have published theoretical and empirical articles, comparative and single-country studies and even some methodological notes. In times of an ever-increasing specialisation in political science, we however strongly believe a broad-ranging political science journal is as important as ever for the international scientific community. As Editors, we have a strong preference for articles that will attract a wide audience within the broader field of political science, no matter what the precise topic of the article might be. Despite this broad scope Acta Politica is very selective about the quality of the articles that it publishes. Acta Politica has always been committed to publishing articles with an ''edge''; providing new insights or new approaches in political science. At the end of the review process, we always ask the question: ''What did we learn from this article?'' Our aim is to provide an exciting read, whether you are interested in political theory or quantitative research methods. Our goal is to select those articles that bring with them a substantive theoretical background, while demonstrating how these ideas can be used in empirical research. On the other hand, we welcome empirical articles introducing new ways to incorporate or to test theoretical discussions which are highly interesting to our readers. Acta Politica follows a double blind review policy, and our acceptance rate stands at about 35 per cent, ensuring that all the articles we publish meet high academic standards. These standards are, and will remain, our ultimate criteria of judgment for inclusion in the journal. We welcome articles on a broad range of topics, and using a wide array of methods. While in the past most authors publishing in Acta Politica tended to come from Europe, we now also attract more articles from the United States, Canada and the rest of the world. Our aim is to provide authors with substantive feedback within three months of receipt of manuscript. Acta Politica is committed to publishing relevant political science research, and we invite you to share that commitment, either by subscribing to the journal or recommending it to your library, or by considering Acta Politica when choosing a journal to publish your own research. Potential authors are invited to contact the Editors at acta.politica@fsw.leidenuniv.nl with informal enquiries regarding suitability of their manuscript.