Browsing by Subject "Democracy."
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Dialogism and democracy(Bilkent University, 2003) Koçan, GürcanThis thesis examines the notion of democracy not as a straightforward political process for decision-making, but as a type of dialogue. One of the main reasons for choosing this particular approach is to reveal the conditions of genuine democratic politics. A politics built on the image of people who can express themselves without fear and are free of obligation of sameness. Therefore, this thesis excavates the assumptions and complex relations of values by virtue of which democracy can be produced, reproduced and validated. It approaches Bakhtin’s idea of dialogue as an important but neglected concept in democratic studies and explores what dialogue is for Bakhtin, showing how his general theory of language and meaning not only implicates particular concepts of democracy such as addresser/ruler and addressee/ruled, but also reveals the conditions of freedom that is necessary to produce the momentum towards the enabling practices of political life. With respect to these, it discusses how Bakhtin’s idea of dialogue anticipates normative concerns that are central to contemporary democratic theory: Is it possible to establish a balance between unity and diversity or between the universal and the particular in a way that promotes recognition of differences as an instrument of democratic rule? Or, is it possible to prevent the inevitable tension between constituting a regulatory framework for political participation (which inevitably posits some fixity and exclusion) and celebrating heteroglossia? In order to address these issues, this thesis considers politics not only as a united body, but also a heteroglossic and multivoiced body.Item Open Access Explorations of self-selective social choice functions(Bilkent University, 1999) Ünel, BülentIn this study, we analyze self-selective social choice functions focusing on whether one can escape dictatoriality. Two ways are examined: In the first attempt, the set of social choice functions is restricted to tops only. With this restriction, selfselectivity turns out to be equivalent to dictatoriality. In the second, the set of prefence profiles restricted to single-peaked ones. Here we show that there are some self-selective social choice functions which are not dictatorial.Item Open Access The making and the crisis of Turkish social democracy: Roots, discourses and strategies(Bilkent University, 1999) Kahraman, Hasan BülentThe making and the crisis of social democracy in Turkey has a structural and historical context. It is also an agent of Turkish political modernisation which is an authoritarian one. In this sense it is interrelated with the constitutive ideology and the parameters of Turkey's hegemonic state discourse, namely Kemalism. The condition faced by Turkish social democracy is an outcome of the crisis of modernity started in the 1980s and in the 1990s, under such influences as postmodernism and globalisation. In order to reach the deep causes of the crisis the analysis develops both on the vertical and horizontal axis, the first encompassing the internal and the latter encircling the external conditions. As the main cause of the crisis is assumed to be the nationalist, parochial character of Turkish social democracy, and its inability in getting adopted to the new emerging conditions, the thesis, as a conclusion, develops a prospective approach drawing on the recent theories that has helped the upheaval of this political ideology in West-European countries.Item Open Access Second Republic debates in Turkey(Bilkent University, 1993) Arıkan, Ekin BurakThis study aims at analyzing the Second Republic debat es in Turkey in the early 1990s which are import ant in det er mi ni ng the contours of its democratization process. The crux of the following study is to analyze the Second Republic debates in Turkey and to situate them in democr at i c theory. The Second Republic debates can be approached from the viewpoints of two different currents of ideas embracing Rousseauean and Lockean elements, fhe conceptual difference between a republic and a democr acy is also analyzed in this thesis. The different views presented by the two groups (pro versus anti-Second Republicans) are situated within democratic theory as well as analyzed under four main headings; political, economic, fiscal and social. The proSecond Republicans display a more Lockean issue ori ent ed understanding, where the anti-Second Republicans are more Rousseauean emphasizing the need to preserve the existing egalitarian political culture in Turkey.Item Open Access The transformation of western European social democracy and its reflections on Turkish center-left(Bilkent University, 1999) Evcan, SinanThis master’s thesis is a general overview of the practical and ideological implications of the post-1980 transformation of Western European social democratic parties with specific reference to Britain, Germany and Sweden and the reflections of this transformation on Turkish center-left parties. Within this framework, the roots and developmental trend of Western European Social Democracy have been narrated throughout the first chapter of this study to clarify which social democratic principles and policies have changed during the most recent transformation of these parties. In the following chapters, which concentrate on the post-1980 period, the reasons for the electoral erosion of the Northwestern European social democratic parties during the 1980’s and the way they transformed themselves during the 1990’s to stop the decline have been analysed with reference to societal and economic changes on the one hand and to the strategical and structural changes of the parties on the other. The implications of these changes in terms of the shift in the equality principle and the changing function of pragmatism have been highlighted to draw a main profile of the social democratic transformation often referred to as the “Third Way”. The last part of my study focuses on the common and divergent patterns of the Turkish and Western European center-left, both past and present, and compares the current situation of the so-called social democratic parties in Turkey with those of Western Europe presently being conquered by a la mode Third Way currents.