Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building

Dryzek, John S.

doi:10.1177/0010414009332129

Cited by 406 publications

(479 citation statements)

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“…Participation through deliberative practices has taken many forms in the various spheres of social life, shaped by two theoretical strands of democratic theory: "deliberative democracy" and "participatory democracy". The deliberative approach, developed since 1980, is based on communication as a process that allows citizens to participate in the construction of the common good (Habermas, 1996;Cohen, 1997;Gutmann and Thompson, 2004;Dryzek, 2009). The latter is the so called "participatory" approach, whose origins date back to the intensification of globalization processes which led to a reformulation of several aspects of nation states, including decision-making processes (Santos, 2002).…”

Section: Civil Society's Involvement In Healthcare Systems: Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen participation and discontent in three Southern European health systems

Serapioni

Matos

2014

Social Science & Medicine

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a b s t r a c tParticipation has featured in political agendas in recent decades and the domain of healthcare has not been indifferent to its appeal. Although emerging later than in other European regions, the involvement of civil society in healthcare decision-making procedures has proved one of the biggest challenges facing Southern European health systems. The health systems of the countries considered in this analysis e Italy, Portugal and Spain e underwent reforms that brought citizen participation to the forefront of the health system. Through national laws or health plans, each of these countries has recognised the need to promote participation in order to 'give a voice' to citizens in the health sector. Accordingly, a range of significant activities have been implemented in the region, although they have been developed unequally within national territories, at different paces and involving the mobilisation of different actors. This article focuses on the most relevant experiences of citizen participation designed and implemented in the three selected countries, describing their key features and potential, as well as the main critical issues and contradictions that have emerged over time. Particular emphasis is given to the impact of the current financial crisis on Southern European national health systems, especially in terms of participatory methods, the way in which citizen participation is progressing and civil society's reaction to these important changes.

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Section: Civil Society's Involvement In Healthcare Systems: Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen participation and discontent in three Southern European health systems

Serapioni

Matos

2014

Social Science & Medicine

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“…Dryzek has already suggested that a deliberative systems approach is suitable for analysing democratic transitions (Dryzek 2009). In what follows, we give shape and substance to this suggestion by outlining a framework for describing both the spaces where deliberation occurs and how those spaces relate to each other, aswell as for evaluating the extent to which inclusive and reasoned deliberation determines the outcomes of the transition process.…”

Section: Assessing Democratic Quality Deliberativelymentioning

confidence: 99%

Deliberative democratization: a framework for systemic analysis

O'Flynn

Curato

2015

Policy Studies

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In the transition literature, 'free and fair elections' is often treated as the most important indicator of democratic quality. In this paper, however, we argue that 'free deliberation among equals' is in many respects a more telling measure. On the face of it, this argument might strike one as implausible. After all, the decisive moment in many transitions is the signing of a pact between elements in the government and opposition who are more concerned to protect their own interests than to explain themselves to others. Yet while pacts may not be particularly deliberative, they still occasion a great deal of deliberation across society as a whole. We argue that the different sites where deliberation occurs can be understood as forming a deliberative system. To give substance to this idea, we then outline a systemic framework that may be used to describe and evaluate the deliberative capacity of transitional regimes. Finally, we turn to the cases of Venezuela and Poland to illustrate the empirical application of this approach. Both transitions were founded on a pact. Yet differences in the nature of those pacts and the broader deliberative systems in which they were located tell us a lot about where those countries are today. The comparative study of democratic transitions is one of the most vibrant areas of academic study in politics. The reasons why are obvious enough. The huge social and political upheavals that lead to the collapse of authoritarian regimes need to be explained. We need to know more about the conditions under which transitions to democracy are likely to occur and about the conditions under which democratic deepening is likely to take hold. These questions are not merely academic but have crucial policy implications. The international community spends billions of dollars every year on democracy promotion across the globe.Yet while lives are put at risk in both wars and popular demonstrations waged in the name of democracy, the fact remains that many transition countries fail to make the democratic grade.Despite the best efforts of the democracy promotion community to devise more effective policies, many countries seem to be stuck in what Thomas Carothers terms a 'grey zone'.They display some of the attributes of democratic political life, including opposition parties, civil associations and periodic elections, but they are also marked by persistent abuses of the rule of law, widespread corruption, low levels of public participation between elections, poor institutional performance by the state, and low levels of trust in government (Carothers 2002, 9-10; see also Rose and Chin 2001).Granted, assessing a transition's democratic quality is notoriously difficult. In no small part, what makes it so difficult is the fact that 'transition' and 'democracy' can be defined in different ways. Consequently, scholars can have very different, and sometimes competing, ideas about which factors are important in assessing how far a country has or has not come (Diamond et al. 2014, 87-98). In this ar...

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“…Both groups thought that their focus so far had been too local and that they would benefit from leveraging higher-level institutions. These conclusions, drawn from the groups' use of Scale Perspectives, signified a different role for the tool than was initially intended-rather than being merely a tool for the collection and secondary analysis of societal perspectives on scale dynamics, the tool could function as a direct way to empower societal actors in their participation in governance across multiple levels and time frames (Dryzek, 2009;Ostrom, 2009). …”

Section: Scale Perspectives Versionmentioning

confidence: 99%