Rousiley C. M. Maia, Tariq Choucair, Gabriella Hauber, Leonardo Santa Inês
Based on theories of deliberative democracy, this article explores the substantive content of reasons as a conceptual tool. Although most studies focus on procedural dimensions, we argue that identifying and mapping substantive reasons contributes to advancing empirical investigation in a theoretically informed and normatively relevant way. More precisely, using a typology of reasons contributes to: (i) systematically tracking agreements and disagreements on controversial political issues and better understanding the complexities of political judgments, in a more nuanced and quantifiable description; (ii) deal with some contemporary methodological challenges to understand reciprocity and reflexivity; and (iii) explore disrespectful and undemocratic commitments in argumentation. In this context, we draw implications for broadening research at a macro-level or systemic analysis. To elucidate the practical feasibility of the proposed measure, we offer examples of operationalization in different research designs and ways of engaging in rich and historically based explanations.
{"title":"Deliberative Theory for Re-Focusing the Concept, Measurement, and Analysis of Substantive Reasons in Political Discussions","authors":"Rousiley C. M. Maia, Tariq Choucair, Gabriella Hauber, Leonardo Santa Inês","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12795","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Based on theories of deliberative democracy, this article explores the substantive content of reasons as a conceptual tool. Although most studies focus on procedural dimensions, we argue that identifying and mapping substantive reasons contributes to advancing empirical investigation in a theoretically informed and normatively relevant way. More precisely, using a typology of reasons contributes to: (i) systematically tracking agreements and disagreements on controversial political issues and better understanding the complexities of political judgments, in a more nuanced and quantifiable description; (ii) deal with some contemporary methodological challenges to understand reciprocity and reflexivity; and (iii) explore disrespectful and undemocratic commitments in argumentation. In this context, we draw implications for broadening research at a macro-level or systemic analysis. To elucidate the practical feasibility of the proposed measure, we offer examples of operationalization in different research designs and ways of engaging in rich and historically based explanations.</p>","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"503-516"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12795","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical theorists, especially in the Frankfurt School tradition, claim that normative thought and critique arise from experiences of suffering and oppression. It seems intuitive that oppression sometimes makes people sad and angry in ways that motivate critique and resistance; yet, other times, it leads to debilitating experiences of depression, resignation, and self-blame. Especially, in the context of our contemporary “mental health epidemic,” it is worth asking whether and how critique and resistance could possibly spring from such experiences. This paper therefore investigates the potential for experiences of depression to disclose social injustice. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of depression, I argue that it is best understood as consciousness of one's alienation from the social world—and under the right conditions, this consciousness can become politicized and lead to critique. Critical theory, here, can play a crucial role as a form of “political therapy” that supplies the hermeneutical tools for this politicization.
{"title":"Depression, Critique, and Critical Theory as Political Therapy","authors":"Jasper Friedrich","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12797","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Critical theorists, especially in the Frankfurt School tradition, claim that normative thought and critique arise from experiences of suffering and oppression. It seems intuitive that oppression sometimes makes people sad and angry in ways that motivate critique and resistance; yet, other times, it leads to debilitating experiences of depression, resignation, and self-blame. Especially, in the context of our contemporary “mental health epidemic,” it is worth asking whether and how critique and resistance could possibly spring from such experiences. This paper therefore investigates the potential for experiences of depression to disclose social injustice. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of depression, I argue that it is best understood as consciousness of one's alienation from the social world—and under the right conditions, this consciousness can become politicized and lead to critique. Critical theory, here, can play a crucial role as a form of “political therapy” that supplies the hermeneutical tools for this politicization.</p>","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"464-475"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12797","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Racists, Fascists, and Other Dejects: Authoritarianism Reconsidered","authors":"Noëlle McAfee","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12796","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"385-393"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The State and Its People","authors":"David Owen","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12793","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 2","pages":"366-367"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144520117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Democratic erosion is an increasingly worrying phenomenon, affecting not only both young and transitional democracies but also more consolidated ones. A particularly important aspect of this process (in its contemporary incarnation) is that, because of its subtle and incrementalist character, it is difficult to perceive by citizens, who often fail to mobilize in support of democracy as they are unaware that the regime is being threatened. I aim to address this challenge in the present article, by drawing on a historical case study where a democratic citizenry is confronted with a very similar epistemic difficulty. I outline the institutional solution devised in the historical context and use its features as a basis for articulating a normative framework underlying the respective solution. I then explore some alternative institutional proposals for contemporary politics that are derived on the basis of this framework.
{"title":"The Epistemic Challenge to Democratic Resilience: A Late-Classical Athenian Institutional Solution","authors":"Alexandru Volacu","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12792","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Democratic erosion is an increasingly worrying phenomenon, affecting not only both young and transitional democracies but also more consolidated ones. A particularly important aspect of this process (in its contemporary incarnation) is that, because of its subtle and incrementalist character, it is difficult to perceive by citizens, who often fail to mobilize in support of democracy as they are unaware that the regime is being threatened. I aim to address this challenge in the present article, by drawing on a historical case study where a democratic citizenry is confronted with a very similar epistemic difficulty. I outline the institutional solution devised in the historical context and use its features as a basis for articulating a normative framework underlying the respective solution. I then explore some alternative institutional proposals for contemporary politics that are derived on the basis of this framework.</p>","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"394-403"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12792","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145102167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Sometime in 1967 or 1968, German student protest leader Rudi Dutschke coined a phrase that has become historical: In order for the youth movement to truly accomplish social change, it should undertake a “long march through the institutions”—a generational shift in the core constituencies of society, including its elites, thus reforming them from the inside.</p><p>The youth movements of the 1960s were decisive in the profound transformation of Western society from the mid-1960s and on, which included broad shifts in norms and values, the end of the 30-year post–World War II economic miracle, and the birth of new political programs. Several renowned sociological works have contributed to the analysis and characterization of these changes, their deeper meaning, and their consequences. They include, most famously, conceptualizations of the <i>post-industrial society</i> (Bell <span>1973</span>; Kumar <span>1995/2005</span>), <i>reflexive modernity</i> (Giddens <span>1990</span>; Beck <span>1992</span>), and <i>postmodernity</i> (Bauman <span>1992, 1993</span>). The period that preceded the transformation has not been as amply characterized and branded, but has been used as an important reference point to deepen the understanding of the current era, and what caused the transition between the two (Wagner <span>1994, 2008</span>; Reckwitz <span>2020, 2021</span>).</p><p>In this article, we build on these theoretical works and use a periodization of modernity that distinguishes between <i>early</i>, <i>high</i>, and <i>late modernity</i> and two transition periods in between, identified as the <i>first</i> and <i>second crises of modernity</i> (Wagner <span>1994</span>). The first crisis, in the late-19th century and early 20th century, culminated in popular struggles for civil rights and equity and was resolved by the buildup of near-universal welfare states in tandem with an expansion of industrial capitalism, the two cornerstones of high modernity, through what Habermas (<span>1987</span>: 358ff) has called the “fourth wave of juridification.” The second crisis, in the 1960s and 1970s, came about largely as a reaction to overregulation and the social conformism and normative control of the “mass society” (Giner <span>1976</span>) and the several “social pathologies” that the institutions of high modernity had produced: imperialist warfare, structural racial injustice, and capitalist exploitation of nature and humanity (Habermas <span>1987</span>: 285).</p><p>We reinterpret the “long march through the institutions” as a key process in the transition that took society out of the second crisis, and thus from high modernity to late modernity. The transition itself brought about broad and deep changes in norms and values, but it also produced some of the most distinguishing features of contemporary society, including new forms of bureaucratization, a veritable explosion of audit and evaluation, and a “hyper-defensive” (Power <span>2004</span>) pursuit o
{"title":"The Long March Through the Institutions and the Fifth Wave of Juridification","authors":"Olof Hallonsten","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12791","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sometime in 1967 or 1968, German student protest leader Rudi Dutschke coined a phrase that has become historical: In order for the youth movement to truly accomplish social change, it should undertake a “long march through the institutions”—a generational shift in the core constituencies of society, including its elites, thus reforming them from the inside.</p><p>The youth movements of the 1960s were decisive in the profound transformation of Western society from the mid-1960s and on, which included broad shifts in norms and values, the end of the 30-year post–World War II economic miracle, and the birth of new political programs. Several renowned sociological works have contributed to the analysis and characterization of these changes, their deeper meaning, and their consequences. They include, most famously, conceptualizations of the <i>post-industrial society</i> (Bell <span>1973</span>; Kumar <span>1995/2005</span>), <i>reflexive modernity</i> (Giddens <span>1990</span>; Beck <span>1992</span>), and <i>postmodernity</i> (Bauman <span>1992, 1993</span>). The period that preceded the transformation has not been as amply characterized and branded, but has been used as an important reference point to deepen the understanding of the current era, and what caused the transition between the two (Wagner <span>1994, 2008</span>; Reckwitz <span>2020, 2021</span>).</p><p>In this article, we build on these theoretical works and use a periodization of modernity that distinguishes between <i>early</i>, <i>high</i>, and <i>late modernity</i> and two transition periods in between, identified as the <i>first</i> and <i>second crises of modernity</i> (Wagner <span>1994</span>). The first crisis, in the late-19th century and early 20th century, culminated in popular struggles for civil rights and equity and was resolved by the buildup of near-universal welfare states in tandem with an expansion of industrial capitalism, the two cornerstones of high modernity, through what Habermas (<span>1987</span>: 358ff) has called the “fourth wave of juridification.” The second crisis, in the 1960s and 1970s, came about largely as a reaction to overregulation and the social conformism and normative control of the “mass society” (Giner <span>1976</span>) and the several “social pathologies” that the institutions of high modernity had produced: imperialist warfare, structural racial injustice, and capitalist exploitation of nature and humanity (Habermas <span>1987</span>: 285).</p><p>We reinterpret the “long march through the institutions” as a key process in the transition that took society out of the second crisis, and thus from high modernity to late modernity. The transition itself brought about broad and deep changes in norms and values, but it also produced some of the most distinguishing features of contemporary society, including new forms of bureaucratization, a veritable explosion of audit and evaluation, and a “hyper-defensive” (Power <span>2004</span>) pursuit o","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"484-492"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12791","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145102103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why AI Undermines Democracy and What to Do About It by Mark Coeckelbergh, Cambridge, UK: Polity. 2024. pp. 144. $22.95 (pbk). ISBN: 9781509560936. Algorithmic Institutionalism: The Changing Rules of Social and Political Life by Ricardo Mendonça, Virgilio Almeida, and Fernando Filgueiras, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2024. pp. 192. $90.00 (hbk). ISBN: 9780192870070.","authors":"Glen Billesbach","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12776","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"552-554"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145101640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Frankfurt School methodology involves a lasting commitment to immanent critique. What distinguishes immanent critique from other forms of social criticism, scholars in this tradition argue, is that social practices are to be judged according to norms and potentials already contained within their objects. This article considers critical theory's relationship to coloniality by developing a three-part challenge to the practice of immanent critique, drawing on insights of decolonial philosophers Anibal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, Maria Lugones, and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí. Immanent critics, I conclude, risk being inattentive to constitutive exclusions, reinscribing asymmetrical burdens on certain critics, and unwittingly replaying a mechanism of domination familiar from colonialism in and through their preferred method of critique. Accordingly, I argue that immanent critics should attend to relations of power that govern the practice of critique itself and offer reasons for being more pluralistic about our methods of criticism.
{"title":"Critique as Coloniality: The Decolonial Challenge to Immanent Critique","authors":"Shivani Radhakrishnan","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12790","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Frankfurt School methodology involves a lasting commitment to immanent critique. What distinguishes immanent critique from other forms of social criticism, scholars in this tradition argue, is that social practices are to be judged according to norms and potentials already contained within their objects. This article considers critical theory's relationship to coloniality by developing a three-part challenge to the practice of immanent critique, drawing on insights of decolonial philosophers Anibal Quijano, Enrique Dussel, Maria Lugones, and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí. Immanent critics, I conclude, risk being inattentive to constitutive exclusions, reinscribing asymmetrical burdens on certain critics, and unwittingly replaying a mechanism of domination familiar from colonialism in and through their preferred method of critique. Accordingly, I argue that immanent critics should attend to relations of power that govern the practice of critique itself and offer reasons for being more pluralistic about our methods of criticism.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"476-483"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145101156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identity, Knowledge, and Antipoverty Politics","authors":"Andrei Belibou","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12781","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 3","pages":"438-449"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145100954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lucidity and Its Limits: Plato and Castoriadis on Myth and the Imaginary","authors":"Jonny Thakkar","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12783","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 2","pages":"273-285"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144519891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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