American democracy and Harold D. Lasswell
institutional spaces of "failure" and "success", present and past
pp. 11-29
in: Paul Smeyers, Marc Depaepe, Edwin Keiner (eds), Educational research, Berlin, Springer, 2013Abstract
In Chap. 2, Lynda Stone takes up the topic of institutional spaces in two regards, one the conception of democracy and the other in two times and exemplars of potentially democratic practices. The latter are first as a failing institution particularly targeting youth in the USA today and second as a successful institution in an innovative experiment at a psychiatric hospital in the late 1950s. Following the first setting, the central focus of the chapter is the theorising and its implementation of democratic character and institutional democratic development from political psychologist Harold Lasswell.3 The last is in the form of research and its reporting. To begin with, the first section describes three contemporary instances of institutional failure: the school discipline, the school to prison pipeline and the war on terrorism. At the least, these are a reminder that American democracy cannot be taken for granted and must be renegotiated again and again. The next sections introduce Lasswell, synthesise his text Democratic character, describe and exemplify implementation of the innovation and offer an assessment by researchers Lasswell and Robert Rubenstein. The conclusion summarises the chapter, returns to youth and schools and closes with a comment on educational research.
