User:MarwanSafarJalani/sandbox

Class Assignments:

WEEK 4 Assignment: Article Evaluation

Quotation Criticisms:

” Deliberative democracy is compatible with both representative democracyand direct democracy.”

This is different from the argument that we made in class: that deliberative democracy should be separate from representative democracy.

“practitioners and theorists use the term to encompass representative bodies whose members authentically deliberate on legislation without unequal distributions of power, while others use the term exclusively to refer to decision-making directly by lay citizens, as in direct democracy.” While this sentence accounts for the different roles that theorists had in mind for representative democracy: the entry should include the different theories of deliberative democracy and should highlight the differences between electoral and deliberative democracies"

The entry undermines the flaws and the critics of representative democracies. It does not detail the criticism of representative government that led to the establishement of the delibrative government doctine.

“If political decisions are made by deliberation but not by the people themselves or their elected representatives, then there is no democratic element; this deliberative process is called elite deliberation”

o  This makes two assumptions: the first is that it reveals the elite and the elected represerntaives are not the same class of individuals. The second is that it dismantles elite delibration from its democratic element (Given that the elite is not democratically elected). In class, we have talked about the elite in terms of the elected intellectuals.

o  Critics of delibration are absented: the assumption of the informed populace is not challenged.

“The political philosopher Charles Blattberg has criticized deliberative democracy on four grounds: (i) the rules for deliberation that deliberative theorists affirm interfere with, rather than facilitate, good practical reasoning; (ii) deliberative democracy is ideologically biased in favor of liberalism as well as republican over parliamentary democratic systems; (iii) deliberative democrats assert a too-sharp division between just and rational deliberation on the one hand and self-interested and coercive bargaining or negotiation on the other; and (iv) deliberative democrats encourage an adversarial relationship between state and society, one that undermines solidarity between citizens.”

This criticism does not take into account the non-ratioonal assumptions that deliberative democracy is built on: the myth of the informed decision-maker.

General Comments:

We have not used the term authentic deliberation in our class discussion: delibration is already assumed to be authentic. What is the difference between unauthentic and authentic delibration? This is a question that the article does not tackle/answer.

Criticism to deliberative democracy is underrepresented and reduced to one paragraph (That’s not cited although the scholar criticizing it, Charles Blattberg, was mentioned).

The article, moreover, does not provide evidence and reasoning for the self-screening of democratic decision makers often assumed by deliberative democracy. Thus, the article also fails to challenge this assumption.

Differences between the article and our discussion:

In our discussion, we did not detail on what happens when there is no consensus despite deliberation. The article says that decision makers would use a form of majority rule in this case (But neither the name of the scholar nor the citation are provided for this claim)

The article also specifies two types of deliberative democracy: populist and elitist, and the former includes the participation of ordinary citizens. This difference dismantles a fundamental assumption that we made in class, that deliberation requires the exchange of ideas by informed ordinary citizens.

The article shows that in populist deliberative democracy, citizens may use deliberation to distill public opinion but they are not able to create binding laws

Citations:

Cohen’s outline of deliberative democracy and the rights that it assumes is not properly cited.

Essay by James Fearon (17) is not properly cited.

“Consensus-based decision making similar to deliberative democracy is characteristic of the hunter gather band societies thought to predominate in pre-historical times. As some of these societies became more complex with developments like division of labour, community-based decision making was displaced by various forms of authoritarian rule. “

==> Not properly cited nor relevant to the topic.

Most citations are missing or empty.

Some of the for the references did not work:

·        Steenhuis, Quinten. (2004) "The Deliberative Opinion Poll: Promises and Challenges". Carnegie Mellon University. Unpublished thesis. Available Online

Most of the present links are from reliable sources: online publications and books.

Talk Page:

-      Addressed the issue that the author assumed that voting is an element of deliberative democracy.

-      Importance of section headings: they are not thematic, but organized by author.

-      Touched on clarifying the various justifications of the two sides of the conflict: deliberative and represerntative democracies.

-      Touched on the inadequency of tackling the criticism of Deliberative Democracy in the Social Choice aspect.

-      One commentator argued that the information provided in the last edition of the When the People Speak claimed that deliberative democracy is a form of direct democracy and not compatible in any way with representative democracy.

-      That the term Competitive democracy was used to replace the democracy where decision making process is done by elected represerntaitives.

Rating:

-      Article is part of the WikiProject Politics, Philosophy and Sociology as mid-importance and C-class.

WEEK 5 Assignment: ADD TO AN ARTICLE:

Link to the article: Deliberative democracy

According to Fishkin, this process attempts to indirectly filter the mass public opinion because representatives are better equipped with the knowledge of the common good than ordinary citizens.

WEEK 6 Assignment: Choosing your Wikipedia Article:

Possible articles:

1) Deliberation: Link to the Article.

2) Democratic Confederalism: Link to the Article

3) Popular Assembly: Link to the Article.

What I might improve:

Deliberation:

- Adding historical examples of when deliberation worked or did not work.

- Tackling questions like how does persuasion and oratory play a role in this dialogue? How important is it to reach consensus in the desicion making process? What are the alternatives of consensus?

- How does Socrates's notion of Phronsis differ from the modern notion of deliberation in the eyes of theorists such as Foucault and Arednt.

Democratic Confederalism:

- Exapand on Bookchin's philosophy based on primary texts

- Add details about how the Rojava experiment adapts Ocalan's adoption of Bookchin's theory and how it falls short becuase of its temporal and spacial contexts.

- Add literature about the possibility of the expansion of Democratic confederalism and how it could be geographically limited.

How does he expect his version to be decided? is it home grown? Is it decentralized? How influenced is it by Bookchin and Ocalan? Who invented the constitution? Did they vote on the constitution? Was it woman? How did they reach? How did come with the ordering: Preamble: rights coming second. ==> Did Ocalan have anything about it.

Focus on the writing of hte history and the philosophy

Talk to Adam, Sixtine and Alex.

Popular Assembly:

- Detailing about the technicalities of deliberation within popular assemblies

- Detailing about ancient and modern examples from Rome, Greece, the European Union, Bolivia, New England and Syria.

ARTICLE EVALUATION (SI):

- The content seems really excellent and thorough to me. I would consider revising the order of your sections to put the theory (and indeed the section titled just "Democratic Confederalism") at the top, and then putting the history afterwards. But I can also see why that might be confusing. Perhaps you might be able to write a brief summary of the topic as a new first section, and then begin with the Kurds as you have? I also think that the section about Ocalan might be a good link between the history of the region and the theory, and could be used higher up in the article.

- In the section about Democratic Confederalism, I'd maybe like to see more direct citation to the important passages from Bookchin, etc. I assume there is some variety in the theory of democratic confederalism, so it might be worth providing citations to a couple of the key thinkers on the topic. The paragraph which begins... "The democratic decision-making process lies on the voluntary public participation of citizens..." should come earlier, I think. It seems really central.

- I think the section on the Kurds could focus more on the contemporary history of Kurdistan, which would fit with the section about the PKK, though I don't see a problem with all the detail you've provided.

- Might you want to add a bit about the current political reality about Kurdistan? Though I'm not sure if that's really all that relevant.

- Otherwise, I think it's really thorough and excellent.

Motivations:

Inspired by the decolonization movement in hte 1970s (PKK)

Not regarding the Kurdish question as a a question of statehood or ethnicity but rather democracy and revolution.

Rejecting hte idea of a nation state becuase the latter originated in feudalism and capitalism which are both rejected by democratic confederalism. Liberation of the people necessitates the opposition of capitalist moderntiy. Nation-states are a manifestation of the latter. Calling for a spearate state serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist elite and not the freedom of the people. Democratic confederalism is the democratisation of the Middle East that Kurdish parties around hte region advanced due to the democratic deficit in the Middle East.

Democratic Confederalism:

- It is a non-state democratizastion process, or a democracy without a state.

- Based on public consensus and administration, which is something that differs from statehood where states administer hte decision making process instead of consulting the populatioon.

- Direct elections and voluntary participation as opposed to the use of coercon in states.

- Open to political groups and factions.

Milticultural, anti-monopolistic and consensus-oriented

- Both ecology and femnism are central pillars

PARTICIPATION AND THE DIVERSITY OF THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE:

- Each political nad social group will be organized into central and regional and local groups that will be able to deal with concrete sitations and reach solutions for far-reaching social problems.

- Orienting hte state towards centralism in order to pursue the interests of power monopolies.

BLOG:

March (25):

Levinson's criticism of the formation and the politics of the American Constitution including the electoral college system, the life-long position of the Supreme Court justices, the disproportional representation of citizens in the Senate and the bias of representation to small states raises important questions: Does the American Constitution's neglect of certain democratic and deliberative elements of governance a cause for the size of the country? Is the Icelandic experiment explained by Landemore impossible in the United States because it is unscalable? or is the fact that the an Icelandic citizen is more educated on average than an American citizen make Icelandic citzens more qualified to rule themseslves deloiberatively? How can democratic constitutional making include the uneducated and disadvantaged part of the society, specifically in the online Egyptian constitutional making experiment?

April (1):

In No Production Without Representation, Landemore highlights the importance of deliberative decision-making in the context of firms and large-scale companies. In making the analogy with the state, she outlines three conditions where workers should be given the voice in decision-making: Sustained subjection to laws backed by coercion, the absence of easy and meaningful exit, substantial investment of the self in the joint endeavor of the firm. When compared to the case of the African-American cooperatives, however, Landemore's cognitive diversity is challenged. Do minorities desreve to have their own deliberative spaces that should be uplifted when they join a deliberative space with the majority? Landemore's analogy also raise an important question about the particiaption of workers in decision making. Most of what the state enforces directly involves the interest of the citizens. But in the case of the firm, can workers participate in making decisions about the trajectory of the firm without them having a stake in the deicison?

Democratic Confederalism (FINAL WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE STARTS HERE)

Historical and Political Context

History of the Kurdish Question:

The earliest record of the Kurdish population referred to them as the mountain people because they occupied a mountainous area that comprised 450,000 square kilometers surrounded by the settlement areas of the Persians, Azeris, Arabs and Anatolian Turks. The first to call the mountainous land of the Kurds "Kurdistan" were the Seljuks of the Middle Ages who used the word in their official communiqués. The term was later adopted by the Ottoman sultans.

The spread of Islam into what is not called Kurdistan coincided with the development of feudalist structures in the region. The later urbanization of the region introduced division of labor and private property. This evolved a Kurdish aristocracy (The Ayybids: 1175 – 1250 AD) that developed into a powerful dynasty in the Middle East.

The millet system of the Ottoman Empire created religious hierarchy independent of ethnic identity. Therefore, ethnic identities were repressed when they overlapped with the Muslim identity. As the Ottoman Empire sought to centralize its rule, ethnic hierarchies became prevalent in the history of the Turkish state discourse. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish rebellion of 1925 occurred in between the old Ottoman order and the new Turkish nationalist republican project. This, along with the English-French Sykes Picot agreement divided Kurdistan between the newly formed Turkish republic, the French Mandate in Syria, the Iraqi Kingdom and the Iranian throne.

According to Öcalan, the politics of exclusion from the hegemonic powers in these four countries excluded the Kurds, deprived them of developing an ethnic and cultural identity and established self-denial of the Kurdish origins and cultures. For many Kurds, being committed to the Kurdish identity meant being deprived of the economic and social relations that developed in these states during the early 20^th century.  While Arabs blurred the lines of the Kurdish identity under the Muslim identification, the Iranians considered Kurds a subgroup of the Persians. The Turkish State formally denied Kurdishness as an element of the Turkish society and reconstituted their rebellion as a rival to the republic.

The Kurdish identification with a distinct nationalism evolved relatively late in the second half of the 20^th century. The prospect of the Kurdish nation occurred within the boundaries of the traditional Kurdish sultanates under one kingdom. But the modern states formally controlling Kurdistan refused to relinquish the territories to the Kurds as those territories are rich with water and oil resources.

The Kurdish Workers' Party:

In 1973, the pillars of the party were established by a group of six Kurdish and Turkish revolutionaries, including Abdullah Öcalan, on the premise that Kurdistan was a classic colony and its people have been deprived of the right to self-determination. The movement gained youth support of the rural Kurdish areas and the party was formally established in 1978 in small village in Diarbakir by Abdullah Öcalan and Sakine Cansiz. It faced backlash by the Turkish security forces in the aftermath of the Turkish military coup of 1980 where more than 650,000 people were arrested and thousands disappeared.

The PKK moved back to the mountainous areas of Kurdistan and to other Middle Eastern countries, namely Syria and Iraq. After establishing a base in Damascus, the PKK initiated a guerrilla warfare which was joined by thousands of young Syrian Kurds against the Turkish state. The PKK proclaimed the armed resistance officially in 1984. By the mid-nineties, however, the Turkish military achieved victories against the PKK which issued ceasefires with the hope of achieving a political solution within Turkey.

After Turkey threatened to go to war against Syria in the late 1990s, the latter broke up the PKK camps and expelled Öcalan. While the forces on the ground sought military solution, leaders outside the country were advocating for a civil society solution. Öcalan was abducted by the CIA and the Mossad from the Greek Consulate in Nairobi and brought back to Turkey in 1999. After his abduction, Öcalan called for a ceasefire in 1999 which led to the withdrawal of most of the PPK guerillas outside the boundaries of the borders of Turkey. More than five hundred of them were then murdered by Turkish forces.

In prison, Öcalan was sentenced to solitary confinement where he engaged in Marxist theory and studied the teachings of Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein and Michel Foucault. Combined with his studies of Sumerian mythology, religion, philosophy and physics, he developed models of what he called Democratic Confederalism and autonomy. His studies were essential for the next paradigm shift in the ideology of the PKK and later in the establishment of democratic confederalism after the revolution in Rojava.

Platform

Political Participation of Citizens:

Öcalan defines Democratic Confederalism as a system of democratic self-organization of the society that ensures the direct participation of all societal groups and cultural identities in the decision-making process through local meetings, general conventions and councils. This model of democratic organization opposes the nation-state model where citizenry elect representative elites that monopolize the decision-making process. For Öcalan, the nation-state inherited the bourgeoisie and the power of capital from the feudalist society and legitimized them with the appearance of a participatory democracy.

While being open to different political groups and factions, democratic confederalism is “flexible, multicultural and consensus oriented.” Participation in the decision-making process is voluntary and takes place through deliberation as opposed to initial consent and electoral decrees. The supervision of the societal participation is done by multi-structured central coordination councils that are comprised of assemblies, congresses, commissions and local councils. These central, local and regional councils are meant to formulate horizontal and vertical systems to reach appropriate far-reaching solutions to social problems.

The democratic confederalist system ensures the autonomy of the community, that is citizens are part of a bottom-up structure that ensures their self governance by participating in decentralized units. It differs from federalism in that it does not presume the legitimacy of the nation-sate in forming its quasi-statism. Democratic Confederalism’s rejection of the nation-state highlights its inclusivity of other ethnicities, religions and political communities. It is a system that is open to Kurds, but that does not seek to establish a Kurdish nation-state. Otherwise, the establishment of a Kurdish nation-state would subject other ethnic and social groups to the same repression that Kurds have long suffered from under feudalism and capitalist nation-states.

Feminist Approach:

Democratic Confederalism deems feminism a central pillar. For Öcalan, the achievement of freedom and equality for women means the establishement of freedom and equality for the society. Thus, democratization of women is central to the democratization of the society. A democratic nation ensures the participation of women, and democratic confederalim would not be democratic without the freedom and involvement of women. Therefore, it is important for women to establish their own political parties, non-governmental organizations and institutions that ensure their freedom, education and full participation in democratic politics.

Kurdish YPG fighters in Rojava include women

Öcalan developed his thought on the basis of the communalist and egalitarian natural society ensuring gender equality. For Öcalan, this social order is disturbed by the manifestations of division of labor that give rise to a state order. The communal society disappears here because of the occurrence of patriarchy whose consequences are the rise of state centralism, capitalism and nationalism. The commodification and assimilation of populations isolate them form one another and place them under the mercy of the political elites in nation-states. A way to combat that is through rebuilding the connection between people through councils that ensure an active version of citizenship as a base for what he calls “capitalist modernity”.

Bookchin's Influence on Democratic Confederalism

ADAM'S PART GOES HERE

Bookchin’s advances the idea of democratic confederalism through what he calls "libertarian municipalism." He rejects the notion of politics as a tool to align with the state and the conception of citizens as taxpayers or constituents. Instead, politics is the participation of citizens in the direct democracy through engagement in popular assemblies in their municipalities, neighborhood assemblies, town meetings and civic confederations. This creates a bottom-up structure through the confederation of assemblies and and a larger network that could challenge the state, the corporations and market economy. The full realization of this type of confederalism lies on ideas of democratic deliberation such as the rational discourse and the exercise of practical reason through empowered citizenship that realizes the importance of shared and participatory activity. This requires that governments open their politics for flat opposition and confrontation by the citizenry.