125 research outputs found

    American Transcendentalism Contra Contemporary Political Philosophy: Applications of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Liberal Democratic Capitalism, Platonism, Islamism, Technology, and the end of History

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    I construct Thomas Carlyle\u27s political philosophy in the contexts of twentieth-century and contemporary political philosophy by dialoging and contrasting Carlyle with the work of John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jacques Ellul, and Sayyid Qutb, among others. I also focus my attention on Carlyle as a philosopher who is an intermediary between ancient Platonism and nineteenth-century American Transcendentalism. Carlyle\u27s Sartor Resartus is a Platonic text that provided a foundational inspiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and American Transcendentalism writ-large. Despite Carlyle being a chief source of inspiration for American Transcendentalism, his political theory did not inspire the development of a widely adopted political ideology to compete alongside other prominent twentieth-century ideologies such as liberalism, Marxism, fascism, and Islamism. It is in this context that Carlyle is also relevant in the philosophical inquiry of the end of history, or the ascertaining of the last stage of human political development. I argue that this is because Carlyle\u27s philosophical account of transcendentalism in Sartor Resartus can be constructed as post-liberalism, an ideology that reforms liberalism by seeking to stem its facilitation of increasing levels of economic inequality and increasing levels of political conflict on the bases of race, class, religion, etc. I apply Carlyle\u27s philosophy to build on literature that theorizes about post-liberalism by authors such as Patrick Deneen, John Milbank, and Adrian Pabst, who argue that liberalism is on a hazardous trajectory and there is a need to conceive of post-liberalism as an alternative to the trend of increasing authoritarianism

    Handbook of Direct Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989

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    Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the political history of Central and Eastern Europe has been mainly the story of arise, consolidation, transformation and struggles of new democratic regimes and societies. The handbook offers an instructive approach to that history focusing on the relevance of practices and institutions of direct democracy. It collects 20 political analyses of direct democracy in 20 Central and Eastern European countries after 1989

    Reforming political party organization in the XXIst century. On the Transformative Effect of Network Parties on Modern Representative Democracy

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    This thesis contributes to a better understanding of current political parties, critically engaging with their merits through the lens of the Network Society. It draws on five case studies in order to flesh out the nuances of the network party type. I review the genealogy of party types, advancing the existing literature on a broad range of party types, from the mass party to the catch-all party, as well as filling in the gaps related to network party type. Firstly, I argue that the crucial novelties brought on by network parties are explicit in the following characteristics: A vision of expert-citizen democracy and "strong" participation, a desideratum of openness and transparency, an alignment to "disintermediation" and the revision of the concept of representation, and an organizational vision of permeable intra-party democracy. Drawing on the five case studies, I then identify sub-types of network parties: the procedural, the plebiscitary and the municipalist.Esta tesis contribuye comprender mejor los partidos políticos actuales y analiza críticamente sus méritos a través de la óptica de la network society. Se basa en cinco estudios de caso para establecer y definir los matices de cada tipo de network party. Asimismo, revisa la genealogía de los tipos de partidos y avanza en la literatura existente sobre una amplia gama de tipos de partidos, desde los mass parties hasta los catch-all parties, y se completan algunas lagunas relacionadas con los tipos de network parties. En primer lugar, se sostiene que las novedades cruciales que aportan los network parties se hacen explícitas en las siguientes características: una visión de la democracia experto-ciudadano y de la participación "fuerte", un desiderátum de apertura y transparencia, una alineación con la "desintermediación" y la revisión del concepto de representación y una visión organizativa de la democracia intrapartidaria permeable. A partir de los cinco estudios de caso, se identifican, a continuación, varios subtipos de network parties: los procedimentales, los plebiscitarios y los municipalistas.Aquesta tesi contribueix a comprendre més bé els partits polítics actuals i analitza críticament els seus mèrits a través de l'òptica de la network society. Es basa en cinc estudis de cas per establir i definir els matisos de cada tipus de network party. Així mateix, revisa la genealogia dels tipus de partits i avança en la literatura existent sobre una àmplia gamma de tipus de partits, des dels mass-parties fins als catch-all parties, i es completen les mancances relacionades amb els tipus de network parties. En primer lloc, se sosté que les novetats crucials que aporten els network parties es fan explícites en les característiques següents: una visió de la democràcia expert-ciutadà i de la participació "forta", un desideràtum d'obertura i transparència, una alineació amb la "desintermediació" i la revisió del concepte de representació i una visió organitzativa de la democràcia intrapartidària permeable. A partir dels cinc estudis de cas, s'identifiquen, a continuació, diferents subtipus de network parties: els procedimentals, els plebiscitaris i els municipalistes.Societat de la informació i el coneixemen

    Handbook of Direct Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989

    Get PDF
    Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the political history of Central and Eastern Europe has been mainly the story of arise, consolidation, transformation and struggles of new democratic regimes and societies. The handbook offers an instructive approach to that history focusing on the relevance of practices and institutions of direct democracy. It collects 20 political analyses of direct democracy in 20 Central and Eastern European countries after 1989

    Security and efficiency of collateral in decentralized finance

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    Decentralized Finance (DeFi) promises to be a new contender for a radically new financial system. Its foundations are censorship-resistant, non-custodial, and transparent financial protocols. Securing these protocols is achieved by combining cryptographic primitives with economic incentives instead of relying on trusted intermediaries. In DeFi, financial collateral is the central incentive measure providing repercussions against "misbehaving” agents. However, requiring collateral introduces security and efficiency concerns. (i) Securing DeFi protocols using price-volatile and complex assets requires careful risk management. (ii) Efficiency of capital is diminished since locking assets is an opportunity cost and restricts access to DeFi to agents with sufficient funds. We tackle these issues by developing new protocols to optimize collateral requirements in existing DeFi protocols safely. Our contributions are threefold. First, we provide a risk-based classification of collateral applied in DeFi protocols. Specifically, the classification serves as the starting point to develop a model capturing the security property of financial collateral with unique risks in DeFi. Second, we present two protocols that can be integrated into existing DeFi protocols. Promise transforms suitable DeFi protocols into a subscription mechanism lowering the initial capital locking requirements thus tackling the capital efficiency of collateral. Balance is a protocol to reduce collateral in DeFi protocols safely. Balance is similar to a credit scoring system where “well-behaving” agents enjoy a lowered collateral. As such, Balance can be used both to tailor security of protocols by required per-agent collateral requirements instead of per-protocol requirements and, at the same time, increase capital efficiency of collateral. We demonstrate the practical applicability of Promise and Balance by decreasing collateral in the XCLAIM cross-chain communication protocol by up to 10% under conservative assumptions. Third, we discuss the practical security of financial collateral. We outline new types of attacks on DeFi protocols secured by collateral through trustless coordination of rational agents and so-called flash loans with the example of the popular Maker protocol. We conclude by noting the perils of constructing collateralized DeFi protocols and outlining strands of future work to increase their security and efficiency.Open Acces

    The Future of Self-Governing, Thriving Democracies

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    This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating giving citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves. Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It re-vitalizes and re-infuses the ‘democratic spirit’ going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavour by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education, and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens’ perspectives, aspirations, and preferences

    Solidarity: The Unfulfilled Project of Polish Democracy

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    This book is a collection of essays which span three decades, capping research into the Polish Solidarity movement and its impact on social change. The major one reports on the author’s 1981 study on the formation of the Solidarity movement and trade union, one of two research projects on Solidarity carried out at the time. The idea of debating (deliberative) democracy fostered by Solidarity proved an unfulfilled utopia. It was abandoned by the new political elite and by Poles, who used freedom to develop individual, ambitious and aggressive career paths in order to attain West-European living standards. While Polish religiosity and the Catholic Church, led by Pope John Paul II, vitally promoted peaceable resistance to communism, now the Church has morphed into an anti-democratic political and cultural actor

    Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age

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    Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age is about why ordinary people in a democratizing state oppose democracy and how they leverage both traditional and social media to do so. Aim Sinpeng focuses on the people behind popular, large-scale antidemocratic movements that helped bring down democracy in 2006 and 2014 in Thailand. The yellow shirts (PAD—People’s Alliance for Democracy) that are the focus of the book are antidemocratic movements grown out of democratic periods in Thailand, but became the catalyst for the country’s democratic breakdown. Why, when, and how supporters of these movements mobilize offline and online to bring down democracy are some of the key questions that Sinpeng answers. While the book primarily uses a qualitative methodological approach, it also uses several quantitative tools to analyze social media data in the later chapters. This is one of few studies in the field of regime transition that focuses on antidemocratic mobilization and takes the role of social media seriously

    Politics in Digital Society

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    Electronic voting in the classical and quantum settings: modelling, design and analysis

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    This thesis explores the cryptographic field of electronic voting both in the classical and quantum regime. In the classical setting, we look at the problem of self-tallying elections, while in the quantum setting we initiate the formal study of quantum voting according to the principles of modern cryptography. The concept of a self-tallying election (STE) scheme was first introduced by Kiayias and Yung [PKC 2002] and captures electronic voting schemes in which the tallying authorities are the voters of the election themselves. This type of electronic voting is particularly compatible with and suitable for (but not only) Blockchain governance, where governance is expected to be maintained in a fully distributed manner. In this thesis, we formalize the requirements for secure STE schemes in the Universal Composability (UC) framework. Our model captures the standard voting properties of eligibility, fairness, vote-privacy, and one voter-one vote. We present E-cclesia, a new family of STE schemes, and prove that it securely UC realizes the STE functionality. We propose E-cclesia 1.0 , the first concrete instantiation of E-cclesia using RSA accumulators in combination with a novel time-lock encryption scheme, name Astrolabous, that surpasses the limitations of previous ones. In addition, we provide a concrete security definition of TLE schemes and we formally abstract the concept of TLE into an ideal functionality following the real/ideal paradigm introduced by Canetti [IEEE FOCS 2001]. On top of that, we show that a protocol that uses a pair of TLE algorithms that satisfy these properties UC realises our ideal TLE functionality. Finally, we provide a novel TLE construction and we show that it satisfies our security definition making our whole argumentation of a fully-fledged E-cclesia protocol sound. All practical e-voting constructions rely on computational assumption to satisfy various properties such as privacy and verifiability. A milestone work published by Shor [IEEE SFCS 1994] indicates that well known mathematical problems can be solved efficiently if we have at our disposal a quantum computer. Recent advances indicate that quantum computers will soon be a reality. Motivated by this ever more realistic threat for existing classical cryptographic protocols, researchers have developed several schemes to resist quantum attacks. In particular, several e-voting schemes relying on the properties of quantum mechanics have been proposed for electronic voting. However, each of these proposals comes with a different and often not well-articulated corruption model, has different objectives, and is accompanied by security claims that are never formalized and justified only against specific attacks. To address this, we propose the first formal security definitions for quantum e-voting protocols. With these at hand, we systematize and evaluate the security of previously proposed quantum e-voting protocols; we examine the claims of these works concerning privacy, correctness and verifiability, and if they are correctly attributed to the proposed protocols. In all non-trivial cases, we identify specific quantum attacks that violate these properties. We argue that the cause of these failures lies in the absence of formal security models and references to the existing cryptographic literature
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