In Rethinking Democracy, Carol Gould points out the dearth of philosophical attention given to the question of what character traits people need to participate effectively in a democracy. Gould calls this constellation of traits the democratic personality. She provides one of the few serious analyses of the subject, identifying the following list of traits as significant for a democratic personality: initiative, a disposition to reciprocity, tolerance, flexibility and open-mindedness, commitment and responsibility, and a cluster of traits traditionally associated with women such as supportiveness, sharing, communicativeness, cooperativeness and a concern for community (Gould 1988, 289-294). I find that philosophical work of this kind, in conversation
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the current Venezuelan crisis has old roots. What’s happening, as Lander puts it, is “the terminal crisis of the oil based extractivist model and clientelistic rentier state that has characterized Venezuelan society since the second decade of the last century” (2017, 1). A cursory look at Venezuelan history will reveal the nefarious effects of overdependence on oil exports given the cyclical nature of oil booms and crashes. Today’s crisis is related to oil, too, as Lander explains:
[I]n 2013 and 2014 the two main pillars that sustained the Bolivarian process, Chavez´s extraordinary charismatic leadership and historically high oil prices were no longer there. Chávez died in March 2013. A year later the average price of Venezuelan oil exports had collapsed from over a hundred dollars a barrel to less than twenty five dollars. Thus the deep structural terminal crisis of the oil rentier state and society that had been in a certain sense postponed for a few years reemerged with greater, even dramatic
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the current Venezuelan crisis has old roots. What’s happening, as Lander puts it, is “the terminal crisis of the oil based extractivist model and clientelistic rentier state that has characterized Venezuelan society since the second decade of the last century” (2017, 1). A cursory look at Venezuelan history will reveal the nefarious effects of overdependence on oil exports given the cyclical nature of oil booms and crashes. Today’s crisis is related to oil, too, as Lander explains:
[I]n 2013 and 2014 the two main pillars that sustained the Bolivarian process, Chavez´s extraordinary charismatic leadership and historically high oil prices were no longer there. Chávez died in March 2013. A year later the average price of Venezuelan oil exports had collapsed from over a hundred dollars a barrel to less than twenty five dollars. Thus the deep structural terminal crisis of the oil rentier state and society that had been in a certain sense postponed for a few years reemerged with greater, even dramatic