The rapidly changing political environment in our Western liberal democracies poses a big challenge not only to elected representatives but also to scholars. In this dissertation thesis I describe and clarify the main principles and ideas of the three currently most dominant, debated and promising democratic theories, namely participatory democracy, deliberative democracy and Mouffe's agonistic pluralism. Their criticisms and the most important polemics are included as well. The first theory introduced in dissertation's theoretical part is participatory democracy, which is heavily neglected in the Slovak academia. It is presented especially through the prism of Carole Pateman's, C.B. Macpherson's and Benjamin Barber's writings. Their ideas on civic engagement in public life appear to be noteworthy again, especially in the light of the changing conditions of democratic citizenship - particularly in regards to the EU-wide decline in voter turnout, increasing income inequality, downgrade of social solidarity and cooperation, growing intolerance or dissatisfaction with representative democracy and its institutions. This theory has been verified on the example of the European Citizens' Initiatives (ECI), which are deemed to be one of most promising political tools adjusting EU's democratic deficit....

In some of the most established and supposedly immutable liberal democracies, diverse social groups are losing con fi dence not only in established democratic institutions, but in the idea of liberal representative democracy itself. Meanwhile, an illiberal and anti-egalitarian transformation of democracy evolves at an apparently unstoppable pace. This democratic fatigue syndrome , the present article suggests, is qualitatively di ff erent from the crises of Democracy which have been debated for some considerable time. Focusing on mature democracies underpinned by the ideational tradition of European Enlightenment, the article theorizes this Syndrome and the striking transformation of democracy in terms of a dialectic process in which the very norm that once gave birth to the democratic project - the modernist idea of the autonomous subject - metamorphoses into its gravedigger, or at least into the driver of its radical reformulation. The article further develops aspects of my existing work on second-order emancipation and simulative democracy . Taking a theoretical rather than empirical approach, it aims to provide a conceptual framework for more empirically oriented analyses of changing forms of political articulation and participation.

203 12 Dissertation Summary Dissertation title: Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected Countries Name and Surname: Karel Sál Field of Study: Political Science Place of Work: Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague Dissertation Supervisor: PhDr. Petr Jüptner, Ph.D. No. of Pages: 203 No. of Appendixes: 30 Year of Defense: 2016 Keywords: internet voting; remote internet voting; electoral turnout; crisis of democracy; theory of participation; rational choice theory; Estonia; Switzerland; France; Norway; Spain. Abstract: The dissertation thesis named Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected States reflects the phenomenon of the last decade - incorporation of new media into the political process. Internet voting is one of the discussed and suggested solutions of the so-called crisis of democracy, which could possibly stop the negative trend of diminishing voter turnout in advanced western democracies. The entire academic debate can be summarized into one question: It is possible, that the way of ballot casting can affect the voter turnout in that scale, that we can recognize a significant-positive...

[pt] A censura à arte fez-se presente nos diversos momentos históricos do Brasil, até ser formalmente extinta pela Constituição de 1988. A proibição de censura prévia, porém, não impediu que obras de arte fossem submetidas ao crivo dos Poderes constituídos, instados a manifestar-se acerca dos limites da liberdade de expressão artística. Em setembro de 2017, ocorreu um “estopim” administrativo, judiciário e midiático com a ocorrência de quatro casos de censura em apenas um mês, que tomaram notoriedade em todo o país, especialmente a exposição Queermuseu e a performance La Bête. Esses casos são considerados como o marco inicial do período estudado neste trabalho. A partir desses quatro episódios, a tônica do debate público e da atuação dos Poderes constituídos mudou de foco, representando indício de uma possível mudança estrutural do comportamento das instituições e do público no que toca à liberdade de expressão artística e à censura no Brasil. Com intuito de analisar essa mudança, foram feitos estudos de caso de doze obras de arte que sofreram ao menos um ato de censura entre setembro de 2017 e março de 2020, quando ocorreu o fechamento dos espaços culturais devido à pandemia de COVID-19. O trabalho abordará as peculiaridades da censura no período estudado, que tem por característica negar a si mesma. Também serão abordadas as ferramentas jurídicas e administrativas disponíveis aos artistas e ao público para impugnar os atos censórios emanados dos Poderes constituídos. / [en] Artistic censorship has been constant in brazilian history, until its formal extincion after 1988 Constitution. Although previous censorship is prohibited, works of art have been submited to the constitutional Powers, since then, in order to determine the limits of artistic freedom of expression. In september 2017, four episodes of censorship occurred in the same month and became notorious all over Brazil, specially the Queermuseu exhibition and the performance La Bête. This cases are the starting point to this research. This four episodes unleashed a conservative turning point in the behaviour of the institutions and the public debate concerning freedom of speech. In order to analyze this change, case studies will be carried out, comparing the most notorious episodes of the period. The time frame has been restricted from the cases Queermuseu and La Bête, that took place in september, 2017, until the closure of cultural spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, in march 2020. This paper approaches the peculiarities of censorship in this time frame, featuring the tendency to deny itself. Also, this research will expose some of the legal and administrative tools available to the artists and the citizens to fight censorship by constituted Powers.

This thesis re-evaluates a positive reply given by the majority of existing secondary literature on the question of whether J. L. Fischer was a democrat and a theorist of democracy. On the other hand, some features of the author's work can cast doubts on his political orientation, and the existing secondary literature does not provide a clear disapproval of these doubts. The core of this thesis then lies in forging a newly designed interpretation of the author's compositional philosophy foregoing the Second World War. We are using the existential "bloody disjunction" of the author as our interpretational key with the hope that it can allow us to explain even the most difficult parts of J. L. Fischer's work constructively to the "uninformed reader". We are recognizing the specificity of this work as an author's-actor's creative expression. Therefore its internal expressional structure should not be reduced solely to the theoretical component without attention paid to the strong philosophical, artistic, and charismatic ambitions of the creator. This thesis interprets indicated components of Fischer's philosophy and his existential fight, which, even though manifested through breaches of argumentation, is at the same time giving to the compositional philosophy a whole new level of coherency. The...