Original scientific paper

POLITICAL EDUCATION AND MODELS OF DEMOCRACY

Vladimir Vujčić ; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

In this paper, the author argues that political education is indispensable to democracy and dependent on models of democracy. In analysing normative models of democracy, his focus is on the process of creating political will because it is during this process where the role of citizens themselves becomes prominent. The analysis has demonstrated that there are various ways in which citizens can become engaged in the process of creating political will, and that these various ways in fact determine the distinctiveness of each model of democracy. The author shows that strategic political action, as instrumental political action, is characteristic of the classical liberal model, whilst value-rational, ethically laden, action is characteristic of the classical republican model of democracy.
The problem with both these models is that the key motives for
citizen political engagement – interests in the liberal model, and the
common good in the republican model – are in a way exogenous to
the political process itself. The development of the third model, the
theory of deliberative democracy, seeks to overcome these exogenous qualities of interests and the common good in relation to the political process and thus reassert the role of politics in constituting interests and the common good. Thus, the deliberative model of democracy has the potential for constituting and transforming interests and conceptions of the common good. In this model, politics assumes its distinctive function of organising society, resolving conflicts and achieving consensus. In the deliberative model of democracy, political education is provided with new outlines and dimension. These are based on the premises of social cooperation and the notion of the person as capable of acting justly and participate in the public sphere for the purpose of resolving shared problems.

Keywords

political education; models of democracy; liberal model of democracy; republican model of democracy; deliberative model of democracy

Hrčak ID:

20985

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/20985

Publication date:

18.2.2006.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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