INVESTIGADORES
SOCOLOFF Ivana Claudia
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Urban partnerships in Buenos Aires. The new panacea for democracy?
Autor/es:
SOCOLOFF, IVANA
Lugar:
Dakar
Reunión:
Workshop; South-South APISA-CLACSO-CODESRIA-Summer Institute; 2009
Institución organizadora:
Council for the Development of Social Science Research (CODESRIA, África)
Resumen:
Robert Dahl, a well-known political scientist who has dedicated his life to the study of democracy, has early posed questions on the possibility of having a democratic system where inequalities are the rule. In fact, he started his popular study of New Haven -Who governs? (1961)- wondering about this. One can read there: ?In a popular system where nearly every adult may vote but where knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials, and other resources are unequally distributed, who actually governs?? In another work, Democracy and Its Critics (1989), Dahl makes his view about democracy clear. For him, no modern country meets the ideal of democracy, which is as a theoretical utopia . Instead, he calls politically advanced countries polyarchies. Polyarchies have elected officials, free and fair elections, inclusive suffrage, rights to run for office, freedom of expression, alternative information and associational autonomy. For Dahl, those institutions are a major advance in that they create multiple centers of political power. In this respect, by saying democracy is a ?utopia?, the author refuses to use the term to qualify existing regimes. And by doing so, he renounces ?in a way- to fight for providing existing democracies with true egalitarian sense.