Papers by Albena Azmanova
Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory, Aug 8, 2022
Capitalism on Edge aims to redraw the terms of analysis of the so-called democratic capitalism an... more Capitalism on Edge aims to redraw the terms of analysis of the so-called democratic capitalism and sketches a political agenda for emancipating society of its grip. This symposium reflects critically on Azmanova’s book and challenges her arguments on methodological, thematic, and substantive grounds. Azar Dakwar introduces the book’s claims and wonders about the nature of the anti-capitalistic agency Azmanova’s ascribes to the precariat. David Ingram worries about Azmanova’s deposing of “economic democracy” and the impact of which on the prospect of radical change she advocates. William Callison casts doubt over the empirical plausibility of Azmanova’s vision of crisis-free transition out of democratic capitalism. Eilat Maoz interrogates Azmanova’s emancipatory project from the historical standpoint of (de)colonization and global imperialism. In her reply to these criticisms, Azmanova accepts some and parries others, while bringing their points closer to her anti-capitalist vision.
Political Judgment and the Vocation of Critical Theory
Columbia University Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2012
Law and Critique, Jan 11, 2013
Taking inspiration from a distinction Kant drew between the way power is organised, and the manne... more Taking inspiration from a distinction Kant drew between the way power is organised, and the manner in which it is exercised, this analysis directs attention to the consolidation of an autocratic style of politics in Europe. The coexistence between an autocratic style of rule and preserved democratic organisation of power, which prevents a legitimation crisis, is explained in terms of an altered legitimacy relationship (or social contract) between public authority and citizens. This ultimately allows a discrepancy to emerge between public authority's increased capacity for policy action and reduced social responsibility for the consequences of that action.
Routledge eBooks, Nov 15, 2013
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
From Critique of Power to a Critical Theory of Judgment
Columbia University Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2012
Philosophy & Social Criticism, May 1, 2011
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
International Political Sociology, Dec 1, 2011
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
The European Union And Sustainable Development Internal And External Dimensions
... The EU's Institutional and Procedural Approach to Sustainability 105 Klaus Bosselman... more ... The EU's Institutional and Procedural Approach to Sustainability 105 Klaus Bosselmann Part 2 From Policy to Practice Achievements and Challenges for National Sustainable Development Strategies in the EU: A Governance Perspective 129 Ingeborg Niestroy EU Sustainable ...
1989 and the European Social Model
Philosophy & Social Criticism, Oct 19, 2009
The post-communist revolutions of 1989 triggered parallel transformation in the ideological lands... more The post-communist revolutions of 1989 triggered parallel transformation in the ideological landscape on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. The geo-political opening after the end of the Cold War made global integration a highly salient factor in political mobilization, opting out to replace the capital-versus-labor dynamics of conflict that had shaped the ideological families of Europe during the 20th century. This has resulted in splitting the traditional constituencies of the Left and the Right and reorganizing them along new fault-lines: those shaped by attitudes to globalization and EU enlargement (in the West) and by attitudes to EU accession and global economic competition (in the East). Thus, an ideational convergence between East and West is taking place in Europe, radically altering the structure of political competition in the early 21st century. As the new political cleavage cuts across, rather than runs along, the left—right ideological continuum, it is eroding the societal alliances that had supported the post-war European Social Model. The emerging structure of political competition enables substantive changes in the European Social Model in the direction of deepening labor commodification, thus defeating the emancipatory potential that earlier labor-market policies had contained.
Social Science Research Network, Sep 1, 2011
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
Contemporary Politics, Jun 1, 2004
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
Social Research: An International Quarterly, 2016
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
Open Access: Relational, structural and systemic forms of power: the ‘right to justification’ confronting three types of domination
Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2020
Critical theory and social transformation. GerardDelantyLondon: Routledge, 2020
Constellations, Feb 25, 2022
Theory and Event, Oct 1, 2020
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
Judgment, Criticism, Innovation
Columbia University Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2012
The Critical Consensus Model
Columbia University Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2012
This is a chapter in Azmanova, The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment (Co... more This is a chapter in Azmanova, The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment (Columbia University Press 2012).
Philosophical Liberalism and Critical Theory in Dispute
Columbia University Press eBooks, Apr 3, 2012
Ethics & Global Politics, Nov 29, 2019
I briefly review the main parameters of the conceptual framework David Ingram builds, and then pr... more I briefly review the main parameters of the conceptual framework David Ingram builds, and then proceed to test its heuristic power by examining its capacity to address three types of domination (relational, structural and systemic) typical of contemporary capitalism.
Constellations, Sep 1, 2014
Uploads
Papers by Albena Azmanova
I propose to see the particular social technology that alters the parameters of political judgment in terms of interaction between three elements: 1) the social basis of political interest articulation; 2) collective perceptions of relevant public goods (the demand side of political mobilisation); 3) the patterned policy response of political actors (the supply side of political mobilisation).
The dynamics of interaction between these three elements are incurring (within a constitutive, rather than causal, logic) long-term changes in the normative and cognitive frameworks of post-industrial societies. These changes ultimately direct (enable and constrain) the articulation of justice claims within a socially meaningful framework of valid political reason-formation.
• This Chapter develops the first comprehensive methodology for critical social theory;
• it articulates a three-dimensional model of domination and attendant notions of emancipatory practice and radical politics;
• offers a theory of the internal transformation of capitalism, later applied in an account of the historical forms of capitalism from the 19th-century liberal form to our contemporary post-neoliberal, 'precarity capitalism'.
While the diagnosis of our political-economic illness has been established, remedies are hard to come. What can we do to restore our broken democracy? Which modes of political participation are likely to have an impact? And what are the loci of political innovation in the wake of the crisis? It is with these questions that Reclaiming Democracy engages. We argue that the managerial approach to solving the crisis violates ‘a right to politics’, that is, a right that our collective life be guided by meaningful politics: by discussion of and decision among genuinely alternative principles and policies. The contributors to this volume are united in their commitment to explore how and where this right can be affirmed in a way that resuscitates democracy in the wake of the crisis. Mixing theoretical reflection and empirical analysis the book offers fresh insights into democracy’s current conundrum and makes concrete proposals about how ‘the right to politics’ can be protected.
Tracing the evolution of two major traditions in political philosophy—critical theory and philosophical liberalism—and the way they confront the judgment paradox, Azmanova critiques prevailing models of deliberative democracy and their preference for ideal theory over political applicability. Instead, she replaces the reliance on normative models of democracy with an account of the dynamics of reasoned judgment produced in democratic practices of open dialogues. Combining Hannah Arendt's study of judgment with Pierre Bourdieu's social critique of power relations, and incorporating elements of political epistemology from Kant, Wittgenstein, H. L. A. Hart, Max Weber, and American philosophical pragmatism, Azmanova centers her inquiry on the way participants in moral conflicts attribute meaning to their grievances of injustice. She then demonstrates the emancipatory potential of the model of critical deliberative judgment she forges and its capacity to guide policy making.
This model's critical force yields from its capacity to disclose the common structural sources of injustice behind conflicting claims to justice. Moving beyond the conflict between universalist and pluralist positions, Azmanova grounds the question of "what is justice?" in the empirical reality of "who suffers?" in order to discern attainable possibilities for a less unjust world.