Benjamin Studebaker

Yet Another Attempt to Make the World a Better Place by Writing Things

Category: Politics

Equality of Political Participation versus Equality of Political Capabilities: A Fundamental Dilemma at the Heart of Democratic Theory

I’ve written a piece for Isonomia on the tension between the democratic commitment to ensuring all citizens are able to participate in politics and the worry that some citizens are more capable of participating effectively than others. It’s a bit of a history of thought piece, albeit a bit zoomed out. I discuss ancient perspectives, 18th and 19th century liberal views, Marxist critiques, and 20th century attempts to bring these different commitments together. It was a really fun piece to write, and I hope it’s fun to read. There’s no paywall. You can read it here:

https://isonomiaquarterly.com/archive/volume-1-issue-1/the-heart-of-isonomia/

Also, if you haven’t heard, I have a book out. If you want to read it, the best deal is the paperback, available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-28210-2

My First Book is Out

I’ve written a book! The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut is now out with Palgrave Macmillan. This book is not an adaptation of my PhD thesis. It’s written in plain language. If you like my blog, you’ll like the book. The paperback is the best deal, and you can find it on Amazon and on Springer’s website:

https://a.co/d/d59Zbkh

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-28210-2

The paperback should retail for no higher than $49.99. It’s never higher than $49.99 on Springer’s website, where they call it the “softcover.”

The argument of the book is provocative. Chapter 1, “The Unsolvable Problem,” argues that the American economic system is gradually subjecting Americans from many classes and backgrounds to enormous amounts of psychological stress. Chapter 2, “False Hope,” argues that none of the existing political movements in the United States are capable of responding to these economic problems. But because professionals in politics and in the media need to stay employed, they find ways to distract us from these problems and their inability to solve them. Despite all of this, Chapter 3–“Chronic Crisis”–argues that Americans remain committed to democracy as a political system. Even when we confront the system’s failures, we do not abandon it. Instead, we look for ways to revitalize it. We get excited about things like electoral reform, campaign finance reform, reforming the justice system, or devolving federal powers to state and local government. But most of the reforms we’re interested in don’t pass, and the ones that do pass do not actually enable us to solve the economic problems. Chapter 4, “Dream Eating Democracy,” examines how, over time, our understandings of liberty, equality, equity, and representation have been watered down, making it harder for us to use these terms to make meaningful critiques. Chapter 5, “No Escape,” argues that as the problem continues to go unresolved and our political discussions become more and more disconnected from it, most Americans sink into political despair. We go looking for other things to care about, and we try to hide from politics in enclaves. But the failures of the political system eventually affect every part of American culture, distorting every activity we get excited about. Chapter 6, “What If This Book is Wrong?” asks whether the book is too negative and explores whether there is any way out of the crisis.

I am really excited to talk about this book. If the argument is right, then the political professionals are failing the American people. It’s a critique that implicates every part of the political class–the left, the right, and the center. I wrote this book because I feel that people who write about politics have a duty to actually help ordinary Americans understand how and why the system fails to respond to them and meet their needs. The book is dedicated to all those who labor so that others may write.

I want to encourage people to get creative and imagine more fundamental ways of confronting our problems. I’m also interested in talking about this stuff. I would love to be convinced by somebody that there’s an easier way out of this mess than I think.

If you want to help me, there are three things you can do:

  1. Buy the paperback!
  2. Ask your library to buy the book.
  3. If you have a platform, invite me on it to talk about the book. I can request reviewer copies for people with some level of media presence. This includes podcasts! If you have a podcast, I’d love to do it.

Tell your friends!

Citizen-Eject

I have a new piece out for Sublation on the failure of liberal and left-wing conceptions of citizenship to adequately protect citizens from denationalization. Prominent recent cases include Shamima Begum in the UK and Suhayra Aden in Australia. Both liberal and left-wing accounts increasingly center individual agency, and this emphasis makes it easy for states to deny the role they’ve played in creating the conditions for terrorism and to concretize this denial in the form of denationalization. There are discussions of Althusser and especially Balibar, whose book Citizen Subject is referenced in the title. It’s available here, with no pay wall:

https://www.sublationmag.com/post/citizen-eject

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Deaths of Despair

I’ve co-authored a paper for Journal of Medical Humanities on the deaths of despair crisis. You can read it here:

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-023-09795-0

It’s an honor to have worked with Daniel George, Peter Stirling, Megan Wright, and Cindy Cain on this piece. In it, I suggest despair is rooted in what I call the Five A’s – anomie, alienation, atomization, anxiety, and absurdity. To deal with the problem at its roots, we need to deal directly with these deeper causes, both alone and in combination.

If you don’t have access to the article, try this link: https://rdcu.be/c9XET. If you have trouble getting access and you want to read it, you’re very welcome to email me about this at bmstudebaker@gmail.com.

The Function of Marianne Williamson’s Candidacy

Marianne Williamson is running against President Biden in the Democratic primaries. As I write this, she is the only declared candidate, though Biden has given every indication that he will run for a second term.

I don’t have anything against Williamson personally or against her religious views. But there is a lot of evidence that Williamson is a weak candidate who cannot mount a competitive primary campaign against Biden. In this piece, I will present this evidence to you, and I will make the case that Williamson’s candidacy creates the illusion that the primary is being contested when in fact there is no meaningful left-wing opposition to Biden within the Democratic Party. This is not to suggest that Williamson herself intends to create this illusion or has any negative intentions of any kind. Nevertheless, her decision to run allows party apparatchiks to pretend the party is ideologically diverse and welcomes internal dissent when in point of fact it does not.

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