Abstract: Sometimes it is best to let ideas marinate a while. A bath of swirling contexts draws out certain latent qualities and implications, while preserving the shelf life and improving the intellectual digestion of the items in question. Such, I think, is the case with Ian Shapiro's Politics against Domination, the focus of the symposium composing the bulk of this issue.1 Having hosted a symposium back in 2002 on Shapiro's Democratic Justice, which first laid out his theory of nondomination as applied primarily to civil institutions, The Good Society seemed an appropriate venue for a deep reflection on his long-awaited treatment of formal political institutions and their potential to be reformed along nondominative ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The argument of Ian Shapiro's book, Politics against Domination, is pretty straightforward. Our goal in politics should be "escaping, combating, or reducing domination, understood as the illicit use of power that threatens people's basic interests" (172). This is the appropriate goal because reducing domination is possible; we can learn how to do it better; it really matters to all people; and it permits human beings to pursue other good things. Domination can emerge anywhere, but politics and the state deserve special attention because politics means power, and power is a "natural monopoly" that crystallizes into states.States can easily dominate but can also prevent domination. The reigning American theory of how ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In Politics against Domination Ian Shapiro continues his career-long pursuit of a political theory that speaks from and to the real world. He makes a case for and models "an adaptive approach to combating domination that takes account of political reality without capitulating to it" (182). Substantively, the heart of the argument is that majoritarian politics has the capacity to check domination by democratic governments and social domination within democracies by "multiplying cleavages, reducing stakes, and institutionalizing uncertainty of outcomes" (175).In my remarks, I focus on the strengths of that approach generally and raise a concern about the ability of the approach to decide which challenges to ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ian Shapiro's Politics against Domination is concerned with mechanisms for limiting political domination. He characterizes domination as "the avoidable and illegitimate exercise of power that compromises people's basic interests"1 and he defends as the best resistance to its political exercise majority rule based on competition between two large catch-all parties. While he appeals to Locke's defense of majority rule, his main arguments are eliminative. Majority rule best defends against political domination because nothing else works at all. The bulk of his book is directed, first, at considering important features of a politics of nondomination and, second, at arguing against the idea that these features are best ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Some years ago I wrote about the problem of tyranny of the majority and proposed a definition of tyranny/nontyranny that has some similarities and at least one difference from Ian Shapiro's definition of domination in Politics against Domination.Shapiro's definition of domination is "the avoidable and illegitimate exercise of power that compromises people's basic interest."1 The point about it being avoidable is that political actors could have behaved differently.My definition was the choice of a policy "when that policy imposes severe deprivations even though an alternative policy would not have imposed severe deprivations on anyone."2 Severe deprivations were defined as the denial of essential interests. I ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In his impressive book, Politics against Domination, Ian Shapiro advances the overarching goal of "escaping, combating or reducing domination understood as the illicit use of power that threatens basic interests" (5). He gives particular attention to power and the state because, in his view, politics is all about power, and political power is the natural monopoly of states. On these grounds he takes a Schumpeterian view of democracy as being, "nothing more nor less than the competitive struggle for the people's votes." Democracy is the form of state that best protects or furthers nondomination. "The state should concern itself with public life in order to make sure that people enjoy the benefits of ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In one way or another, Brooke Ackerly, Harry Boyte, and Peter Levine all take me to task for writing a book that is centrally focused on public institutions. This, they think, narrows my focus in ways that blinds me to many sites of domination. Ackerly takes issue with my focus on political institutions to the detriment of attending to "the rage and resistance of groups who continue to experience oppression through democratic politics," Boyte complains that my account involves a "radical shrinking" of the idea of democracy that incorporates widespread "forms of cultural and social domination," and Levine objects to my view as being preoccupied "almost exclusively" with "how the federal government of the United ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In The Urban Commons, Daniel O'Brien leverages the growing quantity of available data in order to reimagine the modern commons. The book serves simultaneously as a practical and theoretical guide to the nascent field of urban informatics. Through case studies reflecting the hands-on practicalities of his ideas, O'Brien situates this growing field within the broader commons literature. Specifically, O'Brien develops the concept of custodianship, and develops a division of labor model in which a range of civic actors play distinct roles in the ongoing maintenance of a commons. Integrating the theoretical and practical is a daunting task, but O'Brien manages to seamlessly these perspectives together throughout his ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: A driving motivation of the founders of The Good Society, a recent editorial of this journal reminds us, is the need to re-examine existing institutions on their own terms but also in relation to prevailing political-economic controversies (Throntveit, 2017). Trade wars and immigration walls have become defining features of contemporary capitalism, positioning them as central to the concerns of civic studies scholars. Widely occurring in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, the walling against migrants has metastasized into a war on global trade, freedom, and the other foundations of the good society. The predominant view, on whose wings many political parties have soared to power—including Donald Trump's ... Read More PubDate: 2020-09-12T00:00:00-05:00
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