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A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity
Goal 16 of the UN sustainable development goals, which calls on the global community to “build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels,” can be conceptualized as aiming at fostering communicative action, a concept developed by Jürgen Habermas to describe a mode for coordinati...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10410671/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37565076 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.965428 |
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author | Sabet, Michael |
author_facet | Sabet, Michael |
author_sort | Sabet, Michael |
collection | PubMed |
description | Goal 16 of the UN sustainable development goals, which calls on the global community to “build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels,” can be conceptualized as aiming at fostering communicative action, a concept developed by Jürgen Habermas to describe a mode for coordinating society grounded in deliberation. However, Habermas simultaneously provides an account of the structural transformation of the public sphere that suggests a hard limit on the capacity of mainstream capitalist liberal democracies to foster genuine communicative action in the relationships between institutions, individuals and communities. This paper therefore argues for the critical role of prefigurative politics, in which communities strive to internally embody desired socio-political forms rather than focusing on changing the wider socio-political order, as a vital resource for generating examples to inform institutional progress. The prefigurative example of the Baha'i community demonstrates norms and practices that may illustrate a path out of the dynamic Habermas identifies of system colonizing lifeworld, by fostering and protecting communicative action as the mode of social coordination. The form of communicative action found in the Baha'i community is situated in a context of a telic-organic model of relationships between individuals, communities and institutions. The paper contrasts the conceptual underpinnings of this model with individualistic conceptions of human nature that are argued to undermine liberal democracy's capacity for communicative action. At the core of communicative action within a Baha'i context is a distinctive model of deliberation, known within the community as “consultation”. The paper argues that rational-critical consultation can offer a vital nuance to Habermas' ideal of communicative action as rational-critical debate in the public sphere. The formal democratic structures and processes of the Bahá'í community are also explored as an institutional example that arguably meets the challenge of Goal 16. The paper concludes with initial reflections on a process by which the prefigurative example of a Baha'i model might be brought to bear on institutional performance in wider society. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10410671 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104106712023-08-10 A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity Sabet, Michael Front Sociol Sociology Goal 16 of the UN sustainable development goals, which calls on the global community to “build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels,” can be conceptualized as aiming at fostering communicative action, a concept developed by Jürgen Habermas to describe a mode for coordinating society grounded in deliberation. However, Habermas simultaneously provides an account of the structural transformation of the public sphere that suggests a hard limit on the capacity of mainstream capitalist liberal democracies to foster genuine communicative action in the relationships between institutions, individuals and communities. This paper therefore argues for the critical role of prefigurative politics, in which communities strive to internally embody desired socio-political forms rather than focusing on changing the wider socio-political order, as a vital resource for generating examples to inform institutional progress. The prefigurative example of the Baha'i community demonstrates norms and practices that may illustrate a path out of the dynamic Habermas identifies of system colonizing lifeworld, by fostering and protecting communicative action as the mode of social coordination. The form of communicative action found in the Baha'i community is situated in a context of a telic-organic model of relationships between individuals, communities and institutions. The paper contrasts the conceptual underpinnings of this model with individualistic conceptions of human nature that are argued to undermine liberal democracy's capacity for communicative action. At the core of communicative action within a Baha'i context is a distinctive model of deliberation, known within the community as “consultation”. The paper argues that rational-critical consultation can offer a vital nuance to Habermas' ideal of communicative action as rational-critical debate in the public sphere. The formal democratic structures and processes of the Bahá'í community are also explored as an institutional example that arguably meets the challenge of Goal 16. The paper concludes with initial reflections on a process by which the prefigurative example of a Baha'i model might be brought to bear on institutional performance in wider society. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC10410671/ /pubmed/37565076 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.965428 Text en Copyright © 2023 Sabet. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Sociology Sabet, Michael A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
title | A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
title_full | A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
title_fullStr | A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
title_full_unstemmed | A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
title_short | A democracy built on communicative action: Bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
title_sort | democracy built on communicative action: bahá'í political practice as a prefigurative resource for institutional effectiveness, accountability, and inclusivity |
topic | Sociology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10410671/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37565076 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.965428 |
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