How institutions foster and hinder political participation of the underrepresented

This controversial new look at democracy in a multicultural society considers the ideals of political inclusion and exclusion, and recommends ways to engage in democratic politics in a more inclusive way. Processes of debate and decision making often marginalize individuals and groups because the norms of political discussion are biased against some forms of expression. Inclusion and Democracy broadens our understanding of democratic communication by reflecting on the positive political functions of narrative, rhetorically situated appeals, and public protest. It reconstructs concepts of civil society and public sphere as enacting such plural forms of communication among debating citizens in large-scale societies. Iris Marion Young thoroughly discusses class, race, and gender bias in democratic processes, and argues that the scope of a polity should extend as wide as the scope of social and economic interactions that raise issues of justice. Today this implies the need for global democratic institutions. Young also contends that due to processes of residential segregation and the design of municipal jurisdictions, metropolitan governments which preserve significant local autonomy may be necessary to promote political equality. This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

Rainer Baubock is the world's leading theorist of transnational citizenship. He opens this volume with a question that is crucial to our thinking on citizenship in the twenty-first century: who has a claim to be included in a democratic political community? Baubock's answer addresses the majortheoretical and practical issues of the forms of citizenship and access to citizenship in different types of polity, the specification and justification of rights of non-citizen immigrants as well as non-resident citizens, and the conditions under which norms governing citizenship can legitimatelyvary. This argument is challenged and developed in responses by Joseph Carens, David Miller, Iseult Honohan, Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, David Owen and Peter J. Spiro. In the concluding chapter, Baubock replies to his critics.

The issue of political participation has been central to American politics since the founding of the United States. The Politics of Democratic Inclusion addresses the ways traditionally underrepresented groups have and have not achieved political incorporation, representation, and influence?or "democratic inclusion"?in American politics. Each chapter provides a "state of the discipline" essay that addresses the politics of diversity from a range of perspectives and in a variety of institutional arenas. Taken together, the essays in The Politics of Democratic Inclusion evaluate and advance our understanding of the ways in which the structure, processes, rules, and context of the American political order encourage, mediate, and hamper the representation and incorporation of traditionally disadvantaged groups.

Assessing the limits of pluralism, this book examines different types of political inclusion and exclusion and their distinctive dimensions and dynamics. Why are particular social groups excluded from equal participation in political processes? How do these groups become more fully included as equal participants? Often, the critical issue is not whether a group is included but how it is included. Collectively, these essays elucidate a wide range of inclusion or exclusion: voting participation, representation in legislative assemblies, representation of group interests in processes of policy formation and implementation, and participation in discursive processes of policy framing. Covering broad territory—from African Americans to Asian Americans, the transgendered to the disabled, and Latinos to Native Americans—this volume examines in depth the give and take between how policies shape political configuration and how politics shape policy. At a more fundamental level, Ericson and his contributors raise some traditional and some not-so-traditional issues about the nature of democratic politics in settings with a multitude of group identities.

The politics of inclusion is about more than hate, exclusion, and discrimination. It is a window into the moral character of contemporary liberal democracies. The Struggle for Inclusion introduces a new method to the study of public opinion: to probe, step by step, how far non-Muslim majorities are willing to be inclusive, where they draw the line, and why they draw it there and not elsewhere. Those committed to liberal democratic values and their concerns are the focus, not those advocating exclusion and intolerance. Notwithstanding the turbulence and violence of the last decade over issues of immigration and of Muslims in the West, the results of this study demonstrate that the largest number of citizens in contemporary liberal democracies are more open to inclusion of Muslims than has been recognized. Not less important, the book reveals limits on inclusion that follow from the friction between liberal democratic values. This pioneering work thus brings to light both pathways to progress and polarization traps.

At a time of growing concern over the fate of contemporary democracy this book shows how vast differences between countries in forms of political conduct, and taken for granted assumptions, determine what democracies actually accomplish. In Democratic Practice, Robert M. Fishman elucidates why some democracies include the economically underprivileged, and cultural others within the circles of political relevance that set policies and the political agenda, whereas others exclude them. On the basis of in-depth research on Portugal and Spain, Fishman develops a theoretically innovative explanation for the breadth of democratic inclusion and draws out large implications for democracies everywhere. Democratic Practice examines the record of two countries that began the worldwide turn to democracy in the 1970s, showing how and why basic assumptions about what democracy is, and how political actors should treat one another, diverged. The book offers detailed empirical evidence on how an inclusive approach to democratic politics provides major benefits not only for the poor and excluded but also for others, drawing large lessons for contemporary democracies.

The Inclusion of the Other contains Habermas's most recent work in political theory and political philosophy. Here Habermas picks up some of the central themes of Between Facts and Norms and elaborates them in relation to current political debates. One of the distinctive features of Habermas's work has been its approach to the problem of political legitimacy through a sustained reflection on the dual legitimating and regulating function of modern legal systems. Extending his discourse theory of normative validity to the legal-political domain, Habermas has defended a proceduralist conception of deliberative democracy in which the burden of legitimating state power is borne by informal and legally institutionalized processes of political deliberation. Its guiding intuition is the radical democratic idea that there is an internal relation between the rule of law and popular sovereignty. In these essays he brings this discursive and proceduralist analysis of political legitimacy to bear on such urgent contemporary issues as the enduring legacy of the welfare state, the future of the nation state, and the prospects of a global politics of human rights. This book will be essential reading for students and academics in sociology and social theory, politics and political theory, philosophy and the social sciences generally.

Political and social expectations are often stymied and distorted by individual and communal identities—creating vastly incongruent and unrelated lived experiences, often within the same context. Democratic Education as Inclusion explores how the existence and enactments of diversity continue to present ubiquitous epicenters of misreading, misrecognition, and missed opportunities for peaceful co-existence—whether in established, or nascent democracies. Nuraan Davids and Yusef Waghid study how the public sphere has never held the same meaning to all individuals or groups. As such, there are deep implications for differentiated experiences of citizenship, between those who are included in the center of the sphere, and those who are excluded on the margins. This book explains the dyadic relationship between inclusion and exclusion and how it is not limited to the public sphere, or to broader conceptions of democratic citizenship. It is as apparent in educational settings, presenting under-explored complexities not only for teaching and learning, but for the life experiences of participants in teaching-learning. Often the foundational norms put into place during educational initiations become the primary determinants of how young people conceive of themselves as citizens, and how they conceive of themselves in relation to others.

Participation in America represents the largest study ever conducted of the ways in which citizens participate in American political life. Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie addresses the question of who participates in the American democratic process, how, and with what effects. They distinguish four kinds of political participation: voting, campaigning, communal activity, and interaction with a public official to achieve a personal goal. Using a national sample survey and interviews with leaders in 64 communities, the authors investigate the correlation between socioeconomic status and political participation. Recipient of the Kammerer Award (1972), Participation in America provides fundamental information about the nature of American democracy.