Although democratic innovations are spread all over the world, there is little research on the institutional outcomes of implementing such innovations in governmental organisations. To remedy this, it is important to focus on cases where DIs have been implemented and formally connected to the policymaking process over a longer period. Reykjavik provides such a case. Drawing on observations and interviews with key stakeholders over a period of three years, this study analyses how the institutional logic of DIs influenced the local (...) government in Reykjavik. The study presents two conclusions: First, it is clear that one equilibrium has not been replaced by another. Second, there is no peaceful co-existence between the two, but instead the outcome is an organisation in ‘a state of flux’. There are several factors contributing to this outcome, but three stand out: a populist power-shift, dissatisfaction with theworking of the implemented DIs and deliberative ambiguity. In the final part of the article, the institutional outcome is discussed in relation to overall consequences for the political system. (shrink)

Although the international community repetitively pledged considerable amounts of adaptation finance to the global South, only little has been provided so far. Different instruments have been proposed to generate more funding and this paper aims at identifying those that are most suitable to raise adaptation finance in a just way. The instrument assessment is based on the following main criteria: fairness, effectiveness and feasibility. The criteria are applied to four instruments: contributions from domestic budgets, international carbon taxes collected at the (...) national level, border tax adjustments as well as selling emissions allowances in domestic trading schemes. Domestic emission trading schemes and border tax adjustments achieve the best-or rather, the least bad-results. Two further findings are that instruments are unable make agents pay for past excessive emissions and that all instruments generate rather small amounts of funding. As a consequence of the latter, adaptation finance will continue to be highly insufficient in all likelihood. (shrink)

Vittorio Hösle’s reply helpfully clarifies his ethical position but raises three questions from a value-pluralist point of view. First, is the Kantian starting point he proposes a monist position that undercuts the value pluralism to which he says he is committed? Second, in what sense does he accept the central pluralist idea of the incommensurability of values? In particular, what kind of constraint does he believe this places on the rank ordering of values? The formulations he offers are ambiguous between (...) allowing contextual ordering, which is widely endorsed by pluralists, and permitting a comprehensive order that applies in all cases, which most pluralists would reject. Third, Hösle’s commitment to the cause of progress is admirable, but how can this be squared with pluralism? Here, I return to the broad approaches to the problem of pluralist ranking that I identified in my original reply to Hösle. (shrink)

This paper argues that social and political problems currently addressed by local governments through new forms of digital participation can be considered wicked problems, because they cannot be tackled through factual information alone. Addressing such problems means connecting diverse citizens’ values to empirically based and logically based arguments. The paper addresses the question of which role citizens’ personal narratives and emotions play in digital participation and how narratives and emotions articulate personal and social values. This line of inquiry is illustrated (...) by two examples of digital participation on the local and regional level of democracy. The examples show that citizens’ narratives and emotional expressions articulate diverse values and value conflicts. Finally, the paper develops some preliminary ideas about how online argument mapping tools could be combined with value mapping. (shrink)

In my reply to George Crowder’s criticism of my essay on the Soviet Revolution in the last issue of Analyse & Kritik, I discuss two problems: the nature of a reasonable value pluralism and the relation between ethics and philosophy of history. Concerning the first, I insist on the necessity of an objective rank ordering of values; with regard to the second, I side with Kant, who builds philosophy of history on ethics, and reject the Marxist idea that ethics is (...) itself grounded in philosophy of history. (shrink)

The increasingly wide spread use of RCM, rational choice modeling, and RCT, rational choice theory, in disciplines like economics, law, ethics, psychology, sociology, political science, management facilitates interdisciplinary exchange. This is a great achievement. Yet it nurtures the hope that a unified account of rational active choice making might arise from ‘reason’ in terms of intuitively appealing axioms. Such ‘rationalist’ characterizations of rational choice neglect real human practices and empirical accounts of those practices. This is theoretically misleading and practically dangerous. (...) Searching for a wide reflective equilibrium, WRE, on RCT in evidence-oriented ways can explicate ‘rational’ without rationalism. (shrink)

This paper asks how the intensity of individual local eParticipation affects users’ perception of democratically valuable effects. Drawing on participatory and deliberative theory literature we extract four participatory effects- internal political efficacy, common good orientation, tolerance, and legitimacy. Furthermore, the paper examines which cognitive factors may moderate the relationship between intensity of participation and perception of participatory effects. Drawing on online survey data from 670 citizens engaged in public budgeting online consultations on the local level, the conducted path analysis shows (...) that intensity of participation seems to foster the perception of common good orientation and tolerance. The other perceptions of participatory effects were not influenced by participation intensity. Findings on moderating factors indicate that the beneficial effects of online participation were not distributed unequally among participants. In conclusion, the research presents evidence for an optimistic view on local eParticipation that is able to promote democratically valuable user experiences. (shrink)

The term ‘cooperation’ is widely used in social and political and biological and economic theory. Perhaps for this reason, the term takes on a variety of meanings and it is not always clear in many settings what aspect of an interaction is being described. This paper has the modest aim of sorting through some of this variety of meanings; and exploring, against that background, when and why cooperation might be of value, or be required, or constitute a virtue.

This paper is concerned with the question of whether and how social class and status affect prosocial behavior among status groups.We conducted dictator games in which both host-country citizens as well as asylum seekers make monetary donations towards their respective in- and out-groups. As a novelty, we varied the number of recipients in the dictator game. Our results indicate that host-country citizens donate significantly more than asylum seekers and that asylum seekers receive significantly higher donations than host-country citizens. Donations vary (...) only marginally with the number of recipients. These findings and answers to a follow-up questionnaire show that prosocial behavior among status groups, and in particular prosocial behavior from high-status towards low-status actors, might be instances of impure altruism, i.e., motivated by a warm glow of giving or a purchase of moral satisfaction. (shrink)