New technologies of democracy: how the information and communication technologies are shaping new cultures of radical democratic politics.

What characterises contemporary democratic political struggles? According to the post-Marxist theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, it is their sheer unknowability, the fact that there can be no certainties, no fixed grounding. Drawing a distinction between the 'certainties' of classical Marxism (i. e. base/superstructure) and the more 'diffuse' nature of modem democratic demands (such as sexual and gender equality, environmentalism and the peace movements), the emergence of a post-Marxist perspective has endeavoured to engage the widening imaginaries of present-day democratic politics. In this thesis the central post-Marxist category of radical democracy, defined literally as the 'multiplication of public spaces of antagonism, is interrogated in relation to new modes and ideas of contemporary political struggle, particularly those associated with the expansion of the ICTs and networks. Arguing for the need to consider politics beyond the somewhat outmoded and uninspiring description of the 'new social movements', this thesis critically investigates the emerging practices of politics and activism enabled by the technologies like the Internet, using the ideas of post-Marxism as a basis for generating new theories of radical democracy. Looking in particular at the practices of Tactical Media and Culture Jamming, together with new methods of interaction and consumption, such as peer-to-peer file sharing and open publishing on the Internet, this study demonstrates how radical democracy contains as yet unthoughtout critical potentials through which to examine the ICTs in relation to these nascent cultures of politics. These emerging political cultures, this thesis suggests, entail the articulation of other ways of conceiving democracy, the political and politics more appropriate to the increasingly networked nature of contemporary society

Collective Decision Making using Attractive and Repulsive Forces in Markovian Opinion Dynamics

In this paper, we model a decision-making process involving a set of interacting agents. We use Markovian opinion dynamics, where each agent switches between decisions according to a continuous time Markov chain. Existing opinion dynamics models are extended by introducing attractive and repulsive forces that act within and between groups of agents, respectively. Such an extension enables the resemblance of behaviours emerging in networks where agents make decisions that depend both on their own preferences and the decisions of specific groups of surrounding agents. The considered modeling problem and the contributions in this paper are inspired by the interaction among road users (RUs) at traffic junctions, where each RU has to decide whether to go or to yield

Decision Modeling in Markovian Multi-Agent Systems

In this paper, we model a decision-making process involving a set of interacting agents. We use Markovian opinion dynamics, where each agent switches between decisions according to a continuous time Markov chain. Existing opinion dynamics models are extended by introducing attractive and repulsive forces that act within and between groups of agents, respectively. Such an extension enables the resemblance of behaviours emerging in networks where agents make decisions that depend both on their own preferences and the decisions of specific groups of surrounding agents. The considered modeling problem and the contributions in this paper are inspired by the interaction among road users (RUs) at traffic junctions, where each RU has to decide whether to go or to yield

Decision Modeling in Markovian Multi-Agent Systems

In this paper, we model a decision-making process involving a set of interacting agents. We use Markovian opinion dynamics, where each agent switches between decisions according to a continuous time Markov chain. Existing opinion dynamics models are extended by introducing attractive and repulsive forces that act within and between groups of agents, respectively. Such an extension enables the resemblance of behaviours emerging in networks where agents make decisions that depend both on their own preferences and the decisions of specific groups of surrounding agents. The considered modeling problem and the contributions in this paper are inspired by the interaction among road users (RUs) at traffic junctions, where each RU has to decide whether to go or to yield

Dynamic Social Balance and Convergent Appraisals via Homophily and Influence Mechanisms

Social balance theory describes allowable and forbidden configurations of the topologies of signed directed social appraisal networks. In this paper, we propose two discrete-time dynamical systems that explain how an appraisal network \textcolor{blue}{converges to} social balance from an initially unbalanced configuration. These two models are based on two different socio-psychological mechanisms respectively: the homophily mechanism and the influence mechanism. Our main theoretical contribution is a comprehensive analysis for both models in three steps. First, we establish the well-posedness and bounded evolution of the interpersonal appraisals. Second, we fully characterize the set of equilibrium points; for both models, each equilibrium network is composed by an arbitrary number of complete subgraphs satisfying structural balance. Third, we establish the equivalence among three distinct properties: non-vanishing appraisals, convergence to all-to-all appraisal networks, and finite-time achievement of social balance. In addition to theoretical analysis, Monte Carlo validations illustrates how the non-vanishing appraisal condition holds for generic initial conditions in both models. Moreover, numerical comparison between the two models indicate that the homophily-based model might be a more universal explanation for the formation of social balance. Finally, adopting the homophily-based model, we present numerical results on the mediation and globalization of local conflicts, the competition for allies, and the asymptotic formation of a single versus two factions

Instituting Dissensus: The Democratisation of Cultural Institutions in the 21st Century

In a time characterised by the increasing erosion of democratic institutions, processes of depoliticisation, and the imposition of a consensual order, this PhD thesis explores different modes of engagement with cultural institutions, focusing specifically on instituting practices as a model for the reinvention of democratic politics. Building on contemporary political philosophy, post-structuralist theory, and cultural studies, it begins by analysing both dissensus, as the democratic principle that entails the never-ending redefinition of the members of the society (meaning, whose voice is heard and recognised as a legitimate partner in the debate), and antagonism, as the founding moment and constitutive element that grounds the social (in the form of the exclusions that have been eventually naturalised). It demonstrates that dissensus is an inherently aesthetico-political phenomenon that has very distinct performative and spatial characteristics, since it involves the staging of equality, the introduction of new radical imaginaries, and the recalibration of the aesthetic register. Although dissensus is considered a fleeting moment, a rapturous incident, and a disruptive event with no ‘proper’ place, I set out to conceptualise the possibility of instituting dissensus, claiming antagonism, and channeling them towards the democratisation of cultural institutions. This entails the attempt to envisage an open, dynamic, and self-reflective model of a “dissensual institutionality” that can safeguard the continuous inscription of a multiplicity of social demands. Drawing on my ethnographic research in Europe and the U.S., this theoretical construct is then tested out through a series of under-researched empirical cases. The examined case studies include attempts of decentering and deterritorialising hegemonic machines and mega-institutions (such as documenta 14 in Athens, which foregrounded decolonial narratives and dissident histories from the periphery); endeavours of inventing new flexible organisational arrangements (such as alter-institutions in Athens, Paris, and Bochum that introduced novel parliamentary formats and decision-making processes); and, finally, modes of critical engagement with solidified institutional structures that set out to seize, reform, or even dismantle them (such as artistic activist initiatives in the U.S. that center-staged questions of toxic philanthropy, museum sponsorship, and labour rights). My investigation of ‘instituting dissensus’ ends by drawing some useful conclusions on the possibilities and limitations of the respective strategies, methodologies, and practices that take place within, at the threshold of, or outside institutional structures, in the attempt to enact new egalitarian political imaginaries.Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, The Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, The Onassis Foundatio

Narrative and Belonging: The Politics of Ambiguity, The Jewish State, and the Thought of Edward Said and Hannah Arendt

At the core of this thesis, I examine the difficulties of giving an account of oneself in modern associational life. By integrating the theory and political activism of both Edward Said and Hannah Arendt, I follow the Zionist response to European antisemitism and the Palestinian responses to Jewish settler colonialism. Both parties struggle against their ambiguous presence within local and regional hegemonic social taxonomy, and within the world order. Contemporarily, this struggle takes place in the protracted conflict between Israeli and local Arab groups, which has been managed through violence and objectification, as opposed to allowing the dynamism and reconfiguration of political subjectivities. In their later writings, Arendt and Said respond to the violence and resentment that arises from the form of the nation-state by prescribing, and arguably practicing, an understanding of politics where the “other” is constitutive of the “self.” By seeing this relation of alternity as the contemporary heir to diasporic Judaism and Jewish cosmopolitanism, I argue that this project holds the historical traction to reinvigorate the future beyond static and growing violence and dispossession