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To Constrain or Tame: Aristotle and Machiavelli on DemagogyGraham, Sebastian R 05 1900 (has links)
What defines demagogues and what sort of threat do they pose to democracy? Contemporary politics has recently witnessed a rise in demagogic leaders around the globe. Following this trend, many notable scholars have sought to better define the ancient term and to provide politics with advice on how to handle them. However, demagogy is hard to define, and research is divided over what truly makes for a demagogue. Scholars tend to either focus on the intention, the tools, or the effects of leaders to categorize demagogy. While they might disagree over which aspect of demagogy is most salient, they are more unanimous in their claims regarding the threat that demagogy poses to democracy. Before we outright condemn demagogy, I argue that we should better understand the phenomenon and its relationship to democracy. This dissertation turns to Machiavelli and Aristotle in order to better grasp and better define the phenomenon of demagogy. I first build a concept of demagogy through Aristotle's Politics and then use that concept to detect a similar phenomenon within the work of Machiavelli. In many ways Aristotle and Machiavelli affirm the claims of contemporary scholars, especially regarding the threat that demagogy poses to democracy. According to both thinkers, demagogy involves the use of factions, class enmities, and the corruption of law. Possibly more troubling, both show how the methods of demagogy remain an ever-present possibility to democratic rule. Nevertheless, Aristotle and Machiavelli disagree with contemporary scholarship on how to address the problem of demagogy. Rather than seek out ways to constrain the demagogue, the two philosophers dedicate themselves to providing an education to demagogues. Even more surprisingly, this dissertation argues that both have covertly tried to persuade others to adopt the methods of demagogy for the sake of better preserving democracy and perhaps even to improve upon it.
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When data crimes are real crimes: voter surveillance and the Cambridge Analytica conflictGordon, Jesse 28 August 2019 (has links)
This thesis asks what conditions elevated the Cambridge Analytica (CA) conflict
into a sustained and global political issue? Was this a privacy conflict and if so, how was
it framed as such? This work demonstrates that the public outcry to CA formed out of
three underlying structural conditions: The rise of the alt-right as an ideology,
surveillance capitalism, and a growing and unregulated voter analytics industry. A
network of actors seized the momentum of this conflict to drive the message that voter
surveillance is a threat to democratic elections. These actors humanized the CA conflict
and created a catalyst for a large scale public outrage to these previously ignored
structures. Their focus on democratic threat also allowed this conflict to transcend the
typical contours of a privacy conflict and demonstrate that the consequences of CA are
societal, rather than personal. Despite the democratic threat of voter surveillance, Canada
and the United States have yet to address the wider implications of voter surveillance
adequately. Thus, how these systems are used will be a question of central importance in
upcoming elections. / Graduate
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