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2. Closing the Gap Between Citizen Participation and Mainstream Politics
- Author:
- Richard Youngs
- Publication Date:
- 12-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Over the last several years, citizen assemblies, juries, and panels have spread across Europe. Most of these have been run at the local or subnational level, a few at the national or even transnational level. Most have been called by public authorities, a smaller number created in more bottom-up fashion by civic groups. They all share a distinguishing feature: citizens are randomly selected to participate in debates about specific policies. In aggregate, these initiatives can be referred to as selection- or sortition-based participation. As this wave of sortition-based participation consolidates, attention has turned to its wider political effects. While there is generally much to celebrate about this rise in participation, there remains a widespread feeling that the practice is not yet strongly enough embedded in mainstream politics to move the needle on overall democratic quality. Indeed, experiences suggest that standard channels of decisionmaking and political debate often undercut the influence of sortition initiatives. This paper examines how sortition-based deliberation might be embedded more firmly and effectively within other democratic arenas. Its focus is not on the design and process of sortition forums themselves—many other publications have offered this level of evaluation in recent years.1 Rather, it explores options for building sortition-based forms of participation more fully into longer-standing channels of mainstream politics. If selection-based citizen participation is to have wider relevance to democratic renewal, it is important to identify the political factors that can either stifle or oxygenate its potential. This paper assesses what steps might be taken better to prevent politics from pushing sortition-based participation to the margins and what can be done to infuse politics more widely with the benefits of such participation. The first section of this paper distinguishes between two levels of embedding sortition-based participation. One relates to a relatively focused agenda of so-called institutionalization; the other to more general shifts in political dynamics. The paper then considers progress and obstacles to embedding sortition-based participation at each of these two levels—while suggesting that it is the second, wider political understanding that is especially important. The final section offers five guidelines for assessing how the gap between sortition-based participation and other sites of political activity might in the future be narrowed.
- Topic:
- Politics, Citizenship, and Participation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
3. Six Ideas for Rejuvenating European Democracy
- Author:
- Richard Youngs, Stephen Boucher, Israel Butler, Maarten De Groot, Elisa Lironi, Sophia Russack, Corina Stratulat, and Anthony Zacharzewski
- Publication Date:
- 11-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- n recent years some European states have suffered dramatic regression, while others have experienced more subtle forms of democratic erosion. Several EU governments have constricted civic liberties. There has been lively debate about how much European citizens are losing faith in core democratic values. In general, the demand for democratic participation is outstripping its supply at both the national and EU levels. In recent years some European states have suffered dramatic regression, while others have experienced more subtle forms of democratic erosion. Several EU governments have constricted civic liberties. There has been lively debate about how much European citizens are losing faith in core democratic values. In general, the demand for democratic participation is outstripping its supply at both the national and EU levels.
- Topic:
- Politics, Governance, Reform, and Democracy
- Political Geography:
- Europe and European Union
4. The Mobilization of Conservative Civil Society
- Author:
- Richard Youngs, Gareth Fowler, Arthur Larok, Pawel Marczewski, Vijayan Mj, Ghia Nodia, Natalia Shapoavlova, Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Marisa Von Bülow, and Özge Zihnioğlu
- Publication Date:
- 10-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- As the domain of civil society burgeoned in the 1990s and early 2000s—a crucial component of the global spread of democracy in the developing and postcommunist worlds—many transnational and domestic actors involved in building and supporting this expanding civil society assumed that the sector was naturally animated by organizations mobilizing for progressive causes. Some organizations focused on the needs of underrepresented groups, such as women’s empowerment, inclusion of minorities, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights; others addressed broader societal issues such as economic justice, social welfare, and antipoverty concerns. In many countries, the term “civil society” came to be associated with a relatively bounded set of organizations associated with a common agenda, one separate from or even actively opposed by conservative political forces. However, in the past ten years, this assumption and outlook are proving increasingly incorrect. In many countries in the developing and postcommunist worlds, as well as in long-established Western democracies, conservative forms of civic activism have been multiplying and gaining traction. In some cases, new conservative civic movements and groups are closely associated with illiberal political actors and appear to be an integral part of the well-chronicled global pushback against Western liberal democratic norms. In other cases, the political alliances and implications of conservative civil society are less clear. In almost all cases—other than perhaps that of the United States, where the rise of conservative activism has been the subject of considerable study—this rising world of conservative civil society has been little studied and often overlooked. This report seeks to correct this oversight and to probe more deeply into the rise of conservative civil society around the world. It does so under the rubric of Carnegie’s Civic Research Network project, an initiative that aims to explore new types of civic activism and examine the extent to which these activists and associations are redrawing the contours of global civil society. The emerging role and prominence of conservative activism is one such change to civil society that merits comparative examination. Taken as a whole, the report asks what conservative civic activism portends for global civil society. Its aim is not primarily to pass judgment on whether conservative civil society is a good or bad thing—although the contributing authors obviously have criticisms to make. Rather, it seeks mainly to understand more fully what this trend entails. Much has been written and said about anticapitalist, human rights, and global justice civil society campaigns and protests. Similar analytical depth is required in the study of conservative civil society. The report redresses the lack of analytical attention paid to the current rise of conservative civil society by offering examples of such movements and the issues that drive them. The authors examine the common traits that conservative groups share and the issues that divide them. They look at the kind of members that these groups attract and the tactics and tools they employ. And they ask how effective the emerging conservative civil society has been in reshaping the political agenda.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Politics, Political Activism, and Conservatism
- Political Geography:
- Uganda, Africa, Europe, South Asia, Turkey, Ukraine, Caucasus, Middle East, India, Poland, Brazil, South America, Georgia, North America, Thailand, Southeast Asia, and United States of America
5. Europe's Uncertain Pursuit of Middle East Reform
- Author:
- Richard Youngs
- Publication Date:
- 06-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- DELIBERATION OF DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST intensified after the attacks of 9/11, and has been further energized by the transatlantic debates that were progeny of the Iraqi conflict. More intense debate over support for political change in the Middle East has forced the United States and Europe into a closer exploration of each other's actual and intended approaches to democracy promotion in the region. Debates have centered, in particular, on preparations for June's Group of Eight (G8) and EU–U.S. summits and the United States' proposed Greater Middle East Initiative. While many in the U.S. bemoan European irresolution, others acknowledge the need for American policy to understand and harness the EU's more pervasive presence in much of the Middle East. While Europeans express dismay at the Bush administration's heavy-handed instrumentalism, they have also been forced to engage with new U.S. initiatives that appear to heed the EU's own pleas for a focus on the root causes of instability. With the U.S. and EU eyeing each other over the parapets of their Iraqi-inspired wrangles, it is an opportune moment to delineate and critically assess how Europeans have developed their democracy promotion policies in the Middle East.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, America, Europe, and Middle East