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The epic of gilgamesh1/31/2023 ![]() The third will examines analysis of “old” political movements, which have tried and failed to carry forward the goal of human solidarity, as well as the implications for present-day political practice. The first section of this chapter concentrates on his criticisms of political democracy, while the second focuses on his suggestions for institutional reform. He wants to recover the potential inherent in the democratic ideal by exploring ways in which democracy can be extended and revivified, making bureaucracy serve people rather than control them. It is dominated by elites competing for endorsement by a largely uninformed and passive electorate. His central criticism of the nature of existing democracy is that it does not live up to its promise of giving real power to people. Although political democracy is a tremendous step forward in human freedom from authoritarian forms of rule, he is convinced that it needs to be enriched and extended by greater participation. principle to the economic sphere, thereby ensuring that the “secret rule” of those who exert economic power is replaced by a more transparent and responsive form of self-government. Democracy, in his view, is a system that creates “the economic, political, and cultural conditions for the full development of the individual.”1 However, as a democratic socialist he wants to see the deepening of democracy in the political sphere and the extension of the democratic. Read moreĭemocracy, for Fromm, is the framework within which social freedom could develop, or, rather, it ought to be. Ultimately, macrolevel, cross-cultural research connecting these various concepts must be undertaken. Finally, tolerance, policy, culture, and freedom are all important components of democracy. ![]() Much additional work in mapping these relationships is necessary. Through its relationship with political culture and with public policy, political tolerance affects the amount and distribution of freedom in society. Tolerance is one of several determinants of individual-level political freedom. Tolerance has rarely been treated as an independent variable. Tolerance attitudes contribute to the political culture, but a variety of definitional, theoretical, and operational problems must be worked out if the culture concept is to have scientific utility. Additional effort ought to be devoted to conceptualizing public policy and examining the processes linking opinion and policy. There may be some linkage between the tolerance beliefs of the mass public and public policy, but, if so, it is surely indirect and mitigated by a series of factors. More attention must be given to contextual influences on the attitude-behavior relationship. Tolerance attitudes are surely connected to political behavior. Further inquiry into the structures of these beliefs is necessary. In particular, we argue the following: Political tolerance ought to be conceptualized as a multidimensional system of beliefs. In this article we identify several ways in which inquiry into political tolerance might be broadened beyond its typically descriptive focus. In so doing, he invites us to reconsider not only our understanding of Reconstruction but also the nature and origins of democracy more broadly. Behrend shows how freedpeople set up a political system rooted in egalitarian values wherein local communities rather than powerful individuals held power and ordinary people exercised unprecedented influence in governance. Justin Behrend argues that freed-people created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy.Reconstructing Democracy tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people who lived in the Natchez District, a region of the Deep South where black political mobilization was very successful. African American slaves in the fight for their emancipation and their many efforts to secure their freedom and citizenship, yet they have given surprisingly little attention to the system of governance that freedpeople helped to fashion. Within a few short years after emancipation, not only were black men voting but they had elected thousands of ex-slaves to political offices. Former slaves, with no prior experience in electoral politics and with few economic resources or little significant social standing, created a sweeping political movement that transformed the South after the Civil War.
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