Private organizations are facing organizational field pressures which need to be addressed from an economic and ethical point of view in order to be sustainable in the long term. The present research study analyzes the role of the Pharmaceutical Industry as a provider of a social good and its responsibility towards its organizational field and stakeholder network. On the one hand it is argued that the mentioned industry should be profitable in order to make investments in research and development; while on the other hand, the industry must demonstrate engagement in the social sphere because of the good it commercializes, human health care. The Role of Organizational Policies, Codes and Structure will also be studied in order to deepen the understanding of the organization strategy towards Corporate Responsibility Practices. This research project presents a case study of AstraZeneca Sweden Corporate Responsibility practices. In this study an Analytical Framework is developed based on institutional theory, the stakeholders' model, deliberative democracy model and business ethics. The mentioned framework will contribute to the understanding of AstraZeneca's Corporate Responsibility practices. The role of the company towards the demands from the outside world that causes the organization to respond and act will be addressed as well as the role of Policies, Codes and Organizational Structure in the Corporate Responsibility practice of the organization. We argue that the managerial response should be based upon a deliberative engagement method, in which all the interest parties are included in the decision making process. The study is supported by two interviews which were conducted with key actors and extensive secondary data.

Deliberative democracy has been promoted as a way improving legitimacy and political equality in policy debates. This dissertation seeks to understand how deliberation takes place within the intersection of two unique spaces: dialogue among members of regional civil society groups and communication in online fora. The motivation for this research is based on the notion that existing forms of decision-making have contributed to political inequality, a major issue in areas such as the Caribbean. Accordingly I examine the online discussions of three different civil society groups in the Caribbean. I looked at how certain variables in these fora were related to three of the main dimensions of deliberation, the use of reasoned arguments, reciprocity and reflection. With regard to reasoned arguments I examined how diversity among members, the participation of the moderator and the topic and scope of the conversation were pertinent to a discussion in a regional and multi-national setting. For reciprocity I looked at how variables related to time and the posting structure of a conversation were relevant in an online forum. Finally I looked at the strategies that were employed by participants as part of the communication process in an online forum and how these were related to processes of reflection. To address these questions I used a combination of content analysis and conversation analysis of email conversations and interviews with participants. One set of contributions from this dissertation is methodological through the development of a codebook and the novel application of conversation analysis to online deliberation. Also, the results are significant and can contribute to our understanding of deliberation in a context for which there has been little previous research. For example, I showed that national and occupational diversity can contribute to an increase in the proportion of reasoned arguments used in a conversation as does the presence of the moderator. However, these factors along with the scope and topic of a thread vary in their degree of influence on the use of reasoned arguments by the civil society group in question. I also showed that there are specific communication strategies that participants employ such as preference organization or speaker selection that are related to different forms of reflection evident in a conversation. Finally I observed that the posting structure of a conversation specifically the distribution of emails that participants send becomes less equal as reciprocity increases. This does not augur well for a deliberative ideal that envisions both reciprocity and equal participation. Furthermore, when considering deliberation as a whole, the results indicate that its different parts are not always correlated with each other. None of the lists has more than one significant correlation between the three dimensions of deliberation. In fact, reciprocity and the use of reasoned arguments were never significantly correlated in any of the lists. Together these results point to another main finding of this dissertation which is deliberation as a whole is difficult to observe in practice. Nevertheless I suggest that separately the results for each dimension can be useful from both a design perspective and for policy-makers in general. For example, encouraging the sharing of information and a more active moderator, having the opportunity to discuss regional issues could all help to promote a greater use of reasoned arguments overall. Experimenting with different ways in which group members can get to know each other might help to reduce the disparity between participation and reciprocity. Also encouraging participants to reply inline where possible, creating easier access to the message archives and having a system for collating threads and discussions online could all promote better reflection in the lists. Finally the list might benefit from having members go through an exercise of determining whether or not and in what way decision-making should be part of their discussions. With regard to policy-makers I note that several members reported benefits for policy-makers who themselves were members of the lists. This could stem from listening and learning from the discussions of other members or actually contributing to discussions. The groups also showed the potential to collate many different policy positions around a specific problem, thus assisting policy makers in understanding issues at a regional level.

This thesis examines the concept of civil disobedience, and the role the latter can play in a democratic society. It aims to offer a moral justification for civil disobedience that departs from consequentialist or deontological considerations, and focuses instead on virtue ethics. By drawing attention to the notion of civic virtues, the thesis suggests that, under some circumstances, an act of civil disobedience is the very act displaying a virtuous disposition in the citizen who disobeys. Such disposition is interpreted in light of a duty each individual has to respect her fellow citizens as autonomous agents. This grounds, in turn, a moral obligation to respect the law. The central claim of the thesis is that the obligation towards the law is fulfilled not only through acts of obedience but also, under different circumstances, through acts of disobedience. The status of non-violence as a necessary component of civil disobedience is questioned, and it is argued that a degree of force or violence may be permissible in civil disobedience, when it is compatible with the duty to respect others’ autonomy. Subsequently, the thesis offers an analysis of ‘reasonableness’ as a civic virtue, and by comparing three different approaches to the issue of reasonable disagreement among democratic citizens, it defends the deliberative approach as the most suited for treating fellow citizens as autonomous agents. The last two chapters focus on the importance, for an act of civil disobedience, of the agent’s willingness to accept the legal consequences of her law-breaking behaviour. It is argued that a civil disobedient has an obligation to face the prospect of being punished for the breach of the law. However, in considering the behaviour of a virtuous civil disobedient who appears at her criminal trial, it is also claimed that she should plead not guilty and aim to persuade her fellow citizens that she does not deserve to be punished, because what she did does not constitute a criminal wrong. In doing so, this thesis depicts civil disobedience not as a merely permissible form of behaviour, but as a morally praiseworthy conduct within a democratic community.

This dissertation seeks to understand how issue publics contribute to citizen competence and the functioning of democracy. In the first part of the dissertation, a new measurement was constructed by theoretically and empirically analyzing the attributes of issue public members. Through the hypotheses testing, the new measure was more reliable in identifying issue public members compared to previous measurement strategies. Employing the new measure, results show that issue public members with concern about a specific issue, exercised their issue-specificity in seeking information (i.e., issue-based selectivity) with exposure to both attitude-consistent and counter-attitudinal perspectives. Issue public membership also had significant effects on issue-specific knowledge, and generating rationales for their own and other's oppositional viewpoints. These direct effects were mediated by issue-based selectivity. The relationships highlight the importance of issue publics in contributing to the deliberative democracy. In addition, issue publics play a significant role in contributing to the participatory democracy in that issue public members have greater intentions to participate in issue-related activities than nonmembers. However, while issue publics come close to solve the deliberative-participatory paradox, it was found that their information selectivity and argument generation were unbalanced in a way of favoring pro-attitudinal perspectives over counter-attitudinal perspectives. The second part of the dissertation examined conditional factors--accuracy and directional goals in affecting information selectivity and processing. The findings show that directional goals influenced participants to apply either the strategies of selective approach or selective avoidance to seek information depending on the issue. Accuracy goals exerted a main effect on the issue that is relatively less controversial and less obtrusive. They also interacted with issue public membership in influencing the less controversial and less obtrusive issue. Argument generation was not affected by accuracy or directional goals. Overall, through conceptualizing citizens as members of different issue publics, individuals are more competent then we thought. Their intrinsic interest in an issue serves as a strong factor affecting their information selectivity, information processing, and political actions. Despite finding an optimistic role for issue publics in the democratic process, their limitations also should be recognized. The implications for the deliberative and participatory democracy are discussed.

This thesis develops the Triangle Model, to offer a general framework through which the work of J&uuml / rgen Habermas could be better understood and assessed. Accordingly, it is argued that, it is possible to derive a triangle in Habermas&rsquo / s thought, formed by the concerns of publicness, communication, and democracy. Each corner of the triangle corresponds to a major concern and focus of Habermas&rsquo / s project chronologically. The Triangle Model provides an overview of continuities and discontinuities in Habermas&rsquo / s work. The main discontinuity found is between the first and the second corners of the triangle, namely between publicness and communication. It is argued that this rapture stems from an interpretive turn, composed of three points: the influence of Hegelian philosophy of human interaction, the concomitant criticism of Kantian foundationalism, and the incorporation of Arendt&rsquo / s communicative concept of power. This study also emphasises that there are points indicating continuity, or unity in Habermas&rsquo / s thought. First, an intersubjective theory of truth is employed in all three concerns or corners of the triangle. Second, in all these concerns, Habermas searches for an answer to the same question: &ldquo / how to produce legitimate norms&rdquo / . The principle of publicity and the authority of the better argument voiced in the first corner of the triangle -publicness-, the discourse ethics of the second corner, and the deliberative politics of the third corner are formulated and adapted by Habermas in order to find the ways of producing legitimate norms. In this context, it is argued that the deliberative politics is based on publicness and communication / or publicness and communication are indispensable for deliberative politics.

In the 20th century, Critical Theory has been very influential on every discipline of social sciences including international relations. According to Critical IR Theory, traditional theories are problem solving and try to explain repetition and recurrence, rather than change / however, the main subject matter of an IR theory should be the change itself. The idea of change is also constitutive of Habermasian political thought. J&uuml / rgen Habermas, as a critical theorist, has developed the model of Deliberative Democracy to provoke a change in the political life of the Western countries towards a more ethical politics. According to Habermas, such a change will eliminate the legitimacy crisis occurred in Western democracies. Therefore, Habermas aims at strengthening the moral basis of democratic understanding in order to make masses participate actively in decision making processes. According to him, rational consensus must be at the centre of democracy, and it can be reached, only if every part of the deliberation has the opportunity to express their arguments equally. Once the idea of rational consensus becomes a regulative rule of democracy, it is possible to change the nature of politics, including international politics

本文從理論的基礎出發，試圖要反駁當下審議民主實踐，忽略了審議民主所「應該」強調的，並不是將審議民主視為是取得決策的一種工具或方法，而是必須將審議民主視為是一套有別於自由民主的思想。審議民主「應該」關注的，不是決策的正當性，而是如何深化民主。為此，本文回頭去找尋審議民主被提出的起點，並重新描繪審議民主轉向的核心價值是深化民主，而不是作出決策。這迫使理論必須從重新思考，如何從藉由「審議」取得決策正當性，往深化民主的方向移動，而且也同時讓審議民主理論所觸及的範圍，從「審議」形式的決策本身，擴及到一個完整不間斷的民主過程。 　　一旦確認審議民主是「深化民主」的「過程」，那麼充當實踐的配套措施（即本文所稱的「中介畛域」的適當運作），也應該由此理論基礎所引導。為此，本文從深化民主過程所需的理論概念中，推導出可進一步落實中介畛域的實踐要件，分別是開放性、連貫性、互為主體性和累積性。另一方面，為了防堵民主實踐上可能出現的困境，所以也針對「網路的巴爾幹化」、「論述失敗」與「易受主流意識操弄」三個困境，提出相對應的「有效性」、「簡易性」及「動態的脈絡化」三個要件。事實上，本文所提的七個要件，「共同」構成了本文所理解的審議民主在實踐時，其「理論」面向上所應具備的內涵，這些內涵非專屬於本文所檢視的辯論百科，而是適用於各種形式的審議民主程序。 　　最後，本文更進一步將上述七個要件細分成十四個細項。這十四個細項是試圖對應理論所指引的七個要件，並進而回應理論上所要求的「深化民主過程」的核心價值。或者說，這些細項可被當成是審議民主實踐機制設置上的最基本要求，雖然確保這十四個細項的審議民主實踐機制，無法保證最後的結果一定能達到理想境界，但我們至少可以相信，依循這些細項的機制，是試圖往深化民主──而不是取得決策正當性──的方向前進。當然，這十四個細項不是為了窮盡可能性或成為標準答案，而是在筆者能力範圍內所能提出的具體檢視方式，而提出這些具體的檢視方式，也分別有著實踐與理論上的各別意涵。 　　在實踐上，這十四個細項的提出是為了要指出，審議民主「理論」不應該一直停留在理論的層次，我們探索審議民主理論的最終目的之一，就是要實踐它，因此，從實踐層次來進行探究，並指出可能的實踐方式確有其必要性。另一方面，從理論上來看，本文所提的檢視細項不僅是為了要提供未來研究參考，更重要的是，這種實踐層次的闡明是為了凸顯出，未來的審議民主理論必須在理論與實踐之間找到明確的連結。換言之，應如何在實務的層次上施作審議民主是重要的，讓施作結果得以對理論進行回饋與修正也是重要的，但唯有理論與實踐之間能夠不斷地互相進行補充、修正，審議民主理論才有可能為民主作出真正貢獻，而本文正是試圖經由審議民主，與已被實作的辯論百科，為這種連結作出描繪。 / This paper tries to illustrate that deliberative democracy is not a decision-making method but a kind of thoughts. The core element of deliberative democracy is not about the legitimacy of policies but the process of deepening democracy. It means that deliberative democracy theory should widen its possible contribution from only a decision-making method to a complete process of deepening democracy. When we regard deliberative democracy as a process, then we should develop accompanying measures (so-called “intermediate realm” in this paper) for the real-life practice. For achieving this purpose, this paper infers four elements, that is, openness, coherence, inter-subjectiveness and cumulativeness, from theoretical foundations on the one side. For avoiding three another predicaments of democratic practice, that is , cyberbalkanization, discourse failure and the dominating ideology, this paper also proposes three accompanying elements, that is, effectiveness, simpleness and dynamic contextualization on the other hand. All these seven elements, applying to all kinds of deliberative democracy practice apart from Debatepedia which we take as an example in this paper, constitute the content of intermediate realm for deliberative democracy practice. This paper in a further step divides these seven elements into fourteen items in order to respond to the core value of deliberative democracy, i.e. deepening democracy. In other words, these items are the basic requirement for real-life deliberative democracy practice. These fourteen items have no intention to include all possibilities of democratic practice but merely to provide some concrete examination methods in my sphere. These examination methods have their practical and theoretical meaning at the same time. In practice, these fourteen items means deliberative democracy theory should not stay as a theory is. If democracy theory is an ideal for our better life, we then should realize it and, that is more important, develop some methods to realize it. In terms of theory, this paper reveals the close relationship between deliberative democracy theory and its practice. That means it is important to know how to realize deliberative democracy, it is also important to know how to improve democracy theory. But these two situations can only be done when we can find a valid connection between them. This paper takes Debatepedia as an example to describe how this kind of connection could be possible.

The overarching theme of this thesis concerns the possibility of balancing the values of unity and pluralism in education in developed nation states characterized by an increasing pluralism when it comes to the beliefs and values of its citizens. The author suggests that democracy has a normative basis in the principle of reciprocity which can be supported in an overlapping consensus by reasonable persons who differ in their moral, religious and philosophical beliefs. It is argued that this basis mandates a deliberative kind of democracy and that certain implications follow for how to understand the relation between democracy and individual rights, between democracy and religious belief and speech, and between rationality and deliberation, among other things. The author proceeds to discuss three educational issues in relation to the principle of reciprocity and its implications: 1. The legitimacy and content of a mandatory citizenship education, 2. Children’s rights to develop personal autonomy, 3. The opportunity for parents and children to choose which school children attend. These issues are important in relation to the question of how to balance unity and pluralism in education in that they concern the promotion of certain common beliefs, values and dispositions among citizens or the creation of a system of choice between schools with different profiles. The purpose of the discussion is to construct a theoretical position which balances the values of unity and pluralism in education, by giving diversity its due (contra communitarianism) while upholding a measure of unity (contra libertarianism and radical multiculturalism) which is located in the democratic and autonomy- promoting purposes of education rather than (exclusively) in its economic/vocational purposes (contra neo-liberalism). The discussions make use of political philosophy, educational philosophy and empirical research carried out by other researchers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-170).

xiv, 310 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Considerable interest has emerged recently within U.S. policy scholarship toward deliberative democracy and its potential viability as a form of alternative democratic governance in resolving persistent policy dilemmas. Despite these claims, the deliberative scholarship is an empirically understudied field. Instead, deliberative theory is usually normatively articulated as an alternative and preferable form of governance. Secondly and to a lesser extent, deliberative scholars assert that deliberative governance can work and does exist. In these cases, often extensive deliberative claims are made but not carefully tested according to explicitly identified deliberative criteria and measures. This dissertation contributes to the systematic testing of deliberative theory that has only recently begun. Theoretically, this dissertation fits within the gulf between ideal and non-ideal deliberative scholarship. This dissertation draws from multiple sources, such as interviews, direct observation, meeting minutes, and secondary sources, to systematically evaluate and then comparatively assesses the evidence in four untested exemplar deliberative cases that took place within seemingly intractable policy issues. These cases are Oregon health care reform (OHCR) surrounding the Health Services Commission (HSC), watershed restoration and management in Oregon surrounding the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB), and the New Community Meetings in Lane County and the greater Eugene-Springfield metro area surrounding the issues of "gay rights" and sustainable development (NCMI/II). These cases exhibit significant variation along explanatory and outcomes variables. Overall, the findings in this dissertation suggest that at times ideal deliberative scholars establish criteria and measures that are impractical or even unnecessary for robust deliberation. The evidence in these cases suggests that non-ideal deliberative standards appear capable of yielding deliberative outcomes that are perceived by participant stakeholders in adequate terms. / Committee in charge: Gerald Berk, Chairperson, Political Science; Ronald Mitchell, Member, Political Science; Priscilla Southwell, Member, Political Science; Richard Margerum, Outside Member, Planning Public Policy & Mgmt