Radical Islamic Democracy

John Dewey envisioned the “American experiment” of democracy as a moral and ethical ideal, lived out in personal habits and “in our daily walk and conversation.”1 More than mere external political forms or institutional arrangements, Deweyan democracy is a “personal way of life.”2 Democratic political organizing is typically captured in campaigns focused on single issues, but broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is more closely aligned to Deweyan radical democracy as an ethical way of life. This kind of organizing is “relational organizing” that, as Mark Warren says, brings people “together first to discuss the needs of their community and to find a common ground for action.”3 BBCO is first and foremost about organizing relationships around values to create relational power. The value-laden relationships are enacted through a political culture consisting of radically democratic social practices.This essay will turn to how various publics habituate individuals in radically democratic social practices and what political conditions are required for individuals and groups to engage in an ethical way of life free of domination and arbitrary influence. I have a particular interest in showing how the political culture of Deweyan ethical democracy is lived out in BBCO and that it not be prejudiced against sacred values commonly held dear by religious political participants. Sacred values are an important part of the political cultures of groups embattled in some of the most urgent political fights of our day. To make this case I turn first to Dewey's thought on democracy. But there are particular problematics that exist in Dewey's thinking of the political, namely with regard to stark challenges in our time regarding the role of power in democracy and the dangers white supremacy poses for radical democracy. Sheldon Wolin's democratic theory might be one potential source to address these problematics, but his notions of democratic fugitivity and his politics of tending ultimately fall short, too. My reading of Cornel West's work helps to address these shortcomings in Dewey and Wolin and in so doing come to terms with the way everyday patient work of BBCO recasts Dewey's and Wolin's theories of radical democracy. Bringing BBCO together with Dewey, Wolin, and West generates a unique theory of radical democracy that is capacious enough for political struggles involving sacred values and honest enough about white supremacy and power in democratic life.To be radical, democracy must start at the root of our associational life, asking questions about the kind of persons and power formed within groups. This ethical conception of democracy places a premium on democratic individuality and each individual's potential to political participation.4 Democracy as merely about institutional arrangements or states of affairs is too “external” for Dewey. Democratic societies arise from personal “ways of life” and “habits.”5 To say that democracy is “social” and “ethical” means that democracy exists as a form of government and in its institutions only insofar as it exists in the “dispositions and habits” of its individual members.6Democratic individuality requires individuals take responsibility for freely taken choices that are possible only in association with others.7 Dewey is concerned about cultivating a democratic society grounded in self-reliant individuality.8 The heart of the ethics of democracy is democratic individuality: a form of association that consists in “having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activity of the group to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain.”9 My sense of democratic individuality is built off of work done by Dewey, Wolin, and West, and my own contribution to this conversation will develop slowly throughout this paper as I correct and affirm aspects of radical democracy in Dewey, Wolin, and West. A recent volume on democratic individuality and William James by Stephen Bush is another noteworthy version of what I mean to call attention to: habitual character formation and formation of selfhood that is only possible in certain kinds of associational life.10 Individuality here is contrasted with individualism and forms of group life that are individualist and purport that the self is an isolatable atom from its surrounding material reality and the relationships that support its life.Democratic individuality not only emphasizes responsibility for freely taken choices in society, but also raises the challenge of self-reliance over against a culture of conformity. This social view of the self raises the possibility that one's values and interests cannot be realized or accurately recognized until one cultivates and establishes relations that are free in the sense of lacking domination and arbitrary influence over one's life.11 One way of putting this kind of responsibility in a democratic community is BBCO's term of “self-interest.”Democratic politics is fundamentally about the collective pursuit of the common good. One's self-interest is a crucial part of democratic politics because, self-interest, as Jeffrey Stout writes, “is the interest that everyone who wishes to avoid domination has in the common good.”12 Self-interest is a crucial part of democratic individuality as it requires recognizing one's responsibility for, accountability to, and participation in the broader democratic community. Democratic individuality is crucial to overcoming certain political deformations in our collective life; but such overcoming is only possible by reflecting on the values and relationships that make such a politics possible in the first place. Romand Coles looks to the Latin to highlight the relational root of self-interest (inter esse—meaning “between-being”): “at the same time that a focus on self-interest propels the cultivation of self-recognition, respect, and determination, this focus on self-interest also propels us into receptive political relationships with others.”13 Self-interest properly understood (not either selfishness nor altruistic do-gooderism) has a “real-depth” and is most accurately identified when the individual's good is identified with the community's good.14Democratic individuality requires individuals take responsibility for freely taken choices that are possible only in association with others.15 Ethical and social democracy is primarily concerned with the kinds of individuality habituated in associational life. Radical democracy needs to be grounded in what Dewey's forerunner, the protopragmatist and philosopher of democracy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, called self-reliance.16 Dewey's attention is attuned to the democratic ways of life that are habituated in groups, but also with the quality of communication present in associational life between publics. Ethical and social democracy “is not an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.”17 To think of the ethics of democracy is to first turn to the conditions of self-actualization and reasoning present in our society, and second to the quality of the social practices and the values attended to in each group. Some of these values present in BBCO are sacred values and they play an especially important role in the radically democratic social practices of BBCO.We accord sacred value to those goods we take to be inviolable, objective, and intrinsically valuable. To accord something sacred value is different than claiming it to be “the sacred.” Such values are evaluative attitudes grounded in the broader social practice of practical reasoning. Social practices are social because they are based in shared assumptions, norms, practices, and goods internal and external to the practice itself. A social practical account of evaluative attitudes claims that reasoners are held inferentially accountable to fellow reasoners and responsible for their concept use. Such a norm driven account need not baptize the status quo or tend toward conventionalism, nor is it inherently conservative. Critical revision of such norms and ideals that guide our concept-use can be radically revised only within certain limits. To be a participant in a larger tradition one needs to become familiar enough in the social practice of practical reasoning so that others can recognize your concept-use as following along in the same way as the relevant precedents. A social practical account of evaluative attitudes like sacred value grounds the practice of valuation in time and space; it allows for fallibilism and constructivism of our norms and ideals, thereby also allowing for the possibility of radical revision of norms and ideals.Robert Dworkin, Robert M. Adams, and Jeffrey Stout—of those who have explicitly addressed sacred value—have arguably written most powerfully about the topic.18 Although this is not the place to delve into the philosophical background of sacred value, it might help to offer some very brief (and in broad strokes) remarks about my social practical account of sacred value. What is unique about my contribution to this conversation on sacred value is the explicit connection between BBCO, sacred value, and radical democracy that extends and refines Dewey's and Wolin's theory of radical democracy through conversation with Cornel West. For my part, that someone identifies as Christian gives them a reason to value certain things as sacred. Christian sacred values are held to certain rational standards normatively established in the tradition. Individual Christians, as Christian, stand in certain relations of judgement as to appropriate action, attitude, and concern between other Christians and to others outside their religious and ethical community. As the tradition has developed throughout time normative standards of Christian sacred value have developed, and individual Christians have taken these norms as authoritative, incorporating and embodying these standards of value in their everyday lives.A social practical account of sacred values requires certain political conditions to avoid domination and arbitrary influence. Domination occurs when a master may arbitrarily influence our practice of reasoning at any point. In my account we owe one another justifiable reasons for our actions and concept-use, and others hold us accountable and responsible for those reasons. This conceptual frame emphasizes republican freedom, non-domination, and accountability within the discursive community.One way that Deweyan ethical democracy trains our attention to the quality of the social practices and values is by asking us to think about political culture. Democratic political cultures consist in and foster relationships grounded in habits and social practices that were first born in the life of local groups and associations.19 It is crucial to see that the political culture (the habits and social practices of a public) of radical democracy is value-based.Democratic habits are instilled in the members of a democratic community, but they are not merely rote activity. Individuals are habituated into the customs, mores, and norms of groups. Habits establish the “objective conditions which provide the resources and tools of action, together with its limitations, obstructions and traps.”20 Habits of thought and action, like social norms, discipline and shape individuals, but they are equally sites of critical revision and targets by movements for social change: “Emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes on the part of the mass of men create the conditions of which the exploiters of sentiment and opinion only take advantage.”21 Democracy as a habitual way of life has to do with what democracy looks like—the “emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes”—that each public instills in its members.The political culture of BBCO affiliates consists of democratic individuals, each a part of a larger relational fabric, enacting this ethical way of life in habits of thought and action. To speak of political culture is to say certain actions and values are permissible while others are not. This is why, as Richard Wood writes, value-language is the “first-language” of organizers and this language is carried in “specific symbols, stories, songs and institutions of the divine.”22 Those values and their “carriers” are not disconnected from democratic habits that make up the basic work of organizing accountability sessions and listening campaigns, collecting voter data, mobilizing neighbors around a specific platform during a neighborhood walk, or engaging in issue-related research.23 The habitual life of a constituency reveals the deep connection between collective values and self-interest, political culture and democratic individuality.The political culture holds the broader narrative of who we are, what we care most for, and what we are willing to sacrifice for those sacred values or do in public to protect them. Paying attention to political culture helps us see how value-work pervades democratic habits and practices. Too often we fail to notice the role values play in BBCO, and instead only focus on political issues. This leads to a vision of democracy as merely a state of affairs or institutional arrangement and not as an ethical way of life.Take the example of how the Gamaliel affiliate, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) organized a collective response to the police shooting of a young unarmed Black man in the summer of 2018. On July 26, a police officer fatally shot Daniel Hambrick in the back as he was fleeing for his life after the police illegitimately stopped him to supposedly investigate a stolen vehicle charge. By the time of Daniel Hambrick's murder, NOAH was already engaged in a number of research actions on police activity and practices in Nashville, but they had not taken public, confrontational action. Mike, the white middle-aged lead organizer for NOAH, recounts how NOAH's tactics shifted after a video was released detailing Hambrick's brutal murder. “We had to do something,” he explained: “This was here, this was our city.”24 Alexandrea, a Black organizer for NOAH, agreed: “With this particular situation it was a case where, ‘enough is enough’ and it was time to make a response.”25 Soon after the video was released NOAH held a press conference issuing a public statement with three primary demands: 1) The immediate termination of the Chief of Police; 2) Mayoral endorsement of the Community Oversight Board, a citizen-led effort to establish a police oversight board; 3) Expedite deployment of body and dash cameras throughout the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD).In order for NOAH to issue the public statement a quorum of its sixty-one member institutions had to adopt the statement. A board meeting was called to discuss the demands. For Mike, this sort of discussion was truly unique after a horrendous shooting: “Where else in the city was that discussion going on—particularly with white and Black groups in the same meeting? Where was this kind of representation?”26 That meeting, for Mike, was NOAH living out a democratic political culture, expressing its values in dialogue, discussion, negotiation, and contestation. Alexandrea recalled a particularly important moment: “In the past NOAH has always done a good job of responding strategically. But I remember one point brought up during that meeting was that we can't keep making strategic plans while people lay dead in the street.”27NOAH's statement was not successful in removing the chief of police, but perhaps it is best to see this action's purpose as that of ratcheting up the political pressure on police chief, while leveraging their values and self-interest in the public arena. NOAH as a group decided that the shooting of Daniel Hambrick violated a value they held sacred, that of Black life, and as Alexandrea said, “Enough is enough.” The violation of their sacred value clarified their self-interest. The political culture of NOAH—enacted in this example through habits and practices like debate, discussion, disagreement, and negotiation—allowed the group to act in a publicly powerful way. They acted because a sacred value within their political culture had been violated.Examples like NOAH illustrate that the ethical life of radical democracy inside publics is just as important as the quality of democracy in the broader political context. In The Public and its Problems Dewey argues that ethical and social democracy is grounded in a theory of publics making judgments about and taking action on interests that concern them. Publics are groups formed around “the perception of consequences which are projected in important ways beyond the persons and associations directly concerned in them.”28 Two crucial points follow from Dewey's concept of “public” that are relevant for our conversation on radical democracy and BBCO. The paragraphs that follow offer a different—although related—account of radical democracy in BBCO than the consociationalism that Luke Bretherton has recently offered.29First, radical democracy as I envision it claims that there is something fundamental to democracy's spirit in face-to-face encounter. Dewey, for his part, was certainly clear that publics consist not only of “face-to-face relationships” and “immediate contiguity.” There are ethical lessons for democracy that cannot be captured except in the kinds of community found most prototypically in groups like BBCO affiliates. “There is no substitute for the vitality and depth of close and direct intercourse and attachment,” Dewey teaches us.30 The local community is the “home” of ethical and social democracy.31This is clearly borne out in the fact that BBCO starts with local institutions and a practice called relational meetings—a one-on-one meeting that establishes a public relationship, provides clarity on mutual self-interest and the values that might ground and sustain participation in the BBCO affiliate. The first step in organizing is to engage in relational meetings. After enough relational meetings a connection can be formed between individuals and their institutions based on values and issues (indirectly or directly experienced), thus laying the groundwork for a new public to emerge.32It is often said that BBCO has difficulty scaling up and cannot match modern state politics. The critique seems to be that BBCO is too local and cannot address political problems at the regional, national, or global level. There is some merit to this claim: some BBCO national networks seem allergic to sharing power; some BBCO networks have vested too much in the veritable claim that all politics is local. But BBCO has seen its organizing strategy win at the state level in harsh political conditions.33 Doubling down on the lesson that relational meetings drive organizing, other BBCO networks are building national strategies and taking the social practice of radical democracy as an ethical way of life to federal levels.34 More needs to be written on the theory of subsidiarity and BBCO organizing, but if such a subsidiary model is further incorporated the BBCO networks will remain democratic only insofar as they habituate members into the social practice of radical democracy within and between its various publics are more than local relationships and instead those who are concerned with the and consequences and of certain A democratic public consists of and accountable individuals who engage in democratic habits and practices grounded in values and interests by the of “public” Public to actions that only concern those directly those who are by and consequences of between persons in the into publics insofar as they to care for and protect their interests and values that are directly and by and More needs to be said on radically democratic especially in regard to what the and but I have the I to turn to Wolin's and West's to Deweyan ethical Wolin claims that Dewey's ethical democracy, for all of its moral and ethical democracy. Dewey's democracy is on its of modern Wolin Dewey's focus on and democracy to a of Wolin “is to democratic action while it of so that it with the form in the of In the Dewey's most crucial and ways of questions about To Wolin, Deweyan radical democracy of that the and of that cannot be down to of or Radical democracy needs to be of its that a correct of will a political culture and with democracy. of a account of radically democratic political culture, Wolin to of modern and power while his version of democracy as an of on the of the West not as as Wolin in claiming Dewey's a version of democracy. For Dewey, West there is a crucial between the and But Dewey's in the power of through a to an and of Dewey is one of the most democratic in the in the but his democratic community is and Dewey's of are and Dewey not how his on radically democratic political cultures are formed and by social norms and modern of power that and democratic individuality and community. to Dewey's and his in democratic West to religious and in his version of radical democracy is and democracy as it is on the of the political is different from democratic politics. The political is the of the where, Wolin is relevant and the a of powerful political is the activity of between organized and for to the public resources to political is and Wolin “In the political is In Wolin's larger it is the political as by the that he is democracy and what it means to be the As I will come to radical democracy as it is practice in BBCO particular challenges for Wolin's account of fugitivity and his politics of challenges to the very heart of Wolin's conception of radical the of established on the of the political and the of what Wolin a politics of has to and Wolin's conception of fugitivity by own between democratic and Black Black fugitivity is a within Black political us and belongs in the tradition. This is because of of the different and of the to the of and the and way that has for thereby the and the practices of democratic politics. The between democratic and Black fugitivity can be but of can be found in life and which him a than Wolin to democratic “the or Black who democratic practices as their status as is and as their political them to state I work to Wolin's sense of fugitivity and a politics of tending in order to come to terms with radical democracy as it is in BBCO. Wolin and Dewey provide crucial into radical democracy, but need to turn to West's work to the depth of white supremacy and power in our modern it helps to Wolin's view out in of to Wolin, a focus on politics the political has political from modern and forms of power. power as it is in the state is primarily The modern state political life, so that politics is merely opinion and through mass communication like and the are more like (not political at the of a reality built on an politics by What was the public is by interests and the free and so society is other aspects of life are to be the of and of modern modern power has been by a of power that state power power is and and thus might be in the Wolin in “is a new form of power that the domination of the state by its to the of society while at the same time the of society are Wolin come to call this of political life, and at the of is the of a truly democratic political culture. As Wolin writes, between democratic and an that has into another is a that is not a of and It is a in which culture, politics and tend toward a a In all other social and political relationships are and by relationships that are of their material and The is a form of political power that is that its power while through thought of community, or is politics the and by a political the of a politics of of democracy, our The and of to arbitrarily establish the of the of modern The power of democracy is the alternative political vision in the of the This out of time and out of with power. It is a of that is to past and present democracy to play a new political It is to than democracy and democratic that lead to “the of in its own As we will come to I Wolin's sense of fugitivity with the and patient work of radical democracy in of in a helps my vision of radical democracy. The of our political are by and for and In this political are more like not only their but their and Wolin's democracy the by democracy as grounded in a and a democratic political politics of tending is crucial to the democratic political culture at the heart of Wolin's democracy. Wolin to make explicit the of and in a politics of attention to and care for and Wolin writes, and so requires to between within the same Wolin tending to as to democracy because it discussion and dialogue, and do not remain because democracy is for the

John Dewey and David Graeber: Elements of Radical Democracy in Pragmatist and Anarchist Thinking

Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, one the most innovative Islamic thinkers of the last century, is renowned for his academic contributions to Islamic economics, jurisprudence, philosophy, politics, and theology, and for his activism against Saddam's tyrannical Ba'athist regime which ultimately cost him his life on 8 April 1980. Despite his pre-eminence, Sadr's political thought has been understudied and his conception of the 'Islamic state' is widely misunderstood. This article seeks to help fill this gap by analysing the key texts in which Sadr expounds his views on the Islamic state, placing each text in its politico-historical context. In the process, the article critiques the current literature, arguing that Sadr's thought is neither authoritarian nor liberal-democratic, but rather it is a type of constitutional democracy meriting the description 'Islamic democracy'.

This article examines the conceptualization of the 'Islamic state' by one reputable Arab Islamist scholar, Muhammad Abu Zahra. It contends that he fails to provide internally consistent answers to four key questions. First, does the Islamic state presently exist, or is it yet to be established; and if the latter is the case then by whom and how? Second, was the historic caliphate which allegedly extended from the death of the Prophet until the Ottoman caliphate’s dissolution an 'Islamic state'? Third, is the 'Islamic state' universal in scope, or can there be several Islamic states at the same time? Fourth, what is the relationship between the 'Islamic state' and Islamic unity; and can the latter be achieved outside the context of the 'Islamic state'? I argue that Abu Zahra’s conceptualization of the 'Islamic state' is heavily influenced by 'modern'/European ideas about the nation-state; as a sovereign entity with the authority to impose its writ over its citizens and territory. I conclude that the 'Islamic state' is a stillborn idea being a hybrid of two highly incompatible sets of genes: the Islamic tradition, which does not conceive the Umma in territorial terms, and the 'modern'/ European notion of the territorial state.

This study formulates and aims to examine how the concept of democracy in Islam?; how is the synonym of the word democracy in the Qur'an and the debate of its interpretation? The research in this article is a qualitative descriptive literature study using the Hans-Georg Gadamer analysis approach, where text or discourse is influenced by bildung, census communis, universal considerations, and the subjective tastes of readers or interpreters. The results of this study are (1) democracy in Islam is related to the principle of deliberation for consensus which contains the values of justice, equal rights, trust, freedom, responsibility, tolerance and moderation. Then (2) the word shura becomes synonymous with the word democracy in the Qur'an because it is considered to have values that are in harmony, and not contradictory. The word shura in one perspective is considered not synonymous with democracy, but only means deliberation. This view is influenced by the desire to implement an Islamic caliphate system or an Islamic state, so that for them they consider democracy to be a kufr system. In another perspective, the word shura is synonymous with democracy, because it considers democratic values to be contained in the principle of deliberation. This interpretation is influenced by socio-historical interpreters who are moderate, tolerant, and wise in determining a meaning.

This study formulates and aims to examine how the concept of democracy in Islam?; how is the synonym of the word democracy in the Qur'an and the debate of its interpretation? The research in this article is a qualitative descriptive literature study using the Hans-Georg Gadamer analysis approach, where text or discourse is influenced by bildung, census communis, universal considerations, and the subjective tastes of readers or interpreters. The results of this study are (1) democracy in Islam is related to the principle of deliberation for consensus which contains the values of justice, equal rights, trust, freedom, responsibility, tolerance and moderation. Then (2) the word shura becomes synonymous with the word democracy in the Qur'an because it is considered to have values that are in harmony, and not contradictory. The word shura in one perspective is considered not synonymous with democracy, but only means deliberation. This view is influenced by the desire to implement an Islamic caliphate system or an Islamic state, so that for them they consider democracy to be a kufr system. In another perspective, the word shura is synonymous with democracy, because it considers democratic values to be contained in the principle of deliberation. This interpretation is influenced by socio-historical interpreters who are moderate, tolerant, and wise in determining a meaning.

For several decades now, a steady flow of scholarly contributions from both intellectual history and political theory has been reasserting Benjamin Constant as a theorist of liberal democracy. Constant’s visionary understanding of liberal democracy is usually conflated with his understanding of limited popular sovereignty. In this article, I reconstruct Constant’s positive conception of popular sovereignty, i.e. his conception of what popular sovereignty means within its limits and take it as the starting point of an analysis of Constant’s understanding of democracy. I argue that Constant’s understanding of popular sovereignty as ‘the assent of all’ leads to a distinction between ‘governmental authority’ and ‘sovereign power’. The latter is exercised by the individual members of the political community and has features that align with contemporary aggregative and contestatory approaches to democracy. Even though according to this analysis, Constant’s conception of democracy allows for both pluralism and dynamism, those are operative against the background of a more fundamental conservatism: Constant’s understanding of sovereign power is predicated on an institutional status quo.

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy.

This research aims to find the possible compatibility between Islam and democracy which has always been a polemic in the Muslim world. To achieve this, researchers explore the debate about Islam and democracy among the academics and Islamists. This research uses qualitative methods by collecting data through interviews with a number of informants and documentation studies. The findings of this research conclude that the concept of Islamic democracy can be a bridge to the debate about Islamic compatibility with democracy. Some derivations that cover this concept are shura (consultation), ijma '(consensus), bai'at (pledge of allegiance), and ijtihad (interpretive justification). Islamic democracy with some of its derivatives do not necessarily represent Islam but reflects particular Islamic options. Therefore, the compatibility of Islam and democracy through the concept of Islamic democracy is not comprehensively Islamic but Islamic and not comprehensively democratic but is democratic. This concept plays as the distinctive character for Muslim society when they develop democracy.

The philosophical background to Marx and Engels' concept of democracy has not been seriously analysed by the research community thus far. Rather than focusing on one aspect of Marx and Engels' understanding of democracy, this article attempts to clarify the overall development of this concept in their political theory. By providing supporting textual evidence in order to generate a precise understanding of the value-laden meaning of their use of the term ‘democracy’, it for the first time links democracy with the materialist character of their philosophy. In their thinking, autonomy obtains a materialistic character, meaning it is strongly connected to the conditions of society's reproduction and thus to the question of property. Democracy for Marx and Engels was a moment of social practice, the social form taken by the most important social relationship, capital, and is therefore, like other social forms, a process. At the end of the paper, I differentiate my understanding of what Marx and Engels bring to the discussion on democracy from other interpretations that either reject the Marxian approach to democracy or misunderstand its materialist character, as Negri does, even though he claims to be following the Marxian path.

Radical Democracy and the Politics of Representation Lisa Disch (bio) Lars Tønder and Lasse Thomassen, ed. 2005. Radical Democracy: Politics Between Abundance and Lack. Manchester: Manchester University Press. This superb edited collection provides a sustained exploration of the intellectual origins, principal arguments, and political project of “radical” democratic theory—a body of work that the editors distinguish from liberal, Marxist, or communitarian democratic thought by the fact that it holds “difference” (in the Derridean sense of that which exceeds or eludes conceptualization) to take “primacy…over identity” (3). The volume stages a debate between what emerge over the course of its pages as two schools of radical democratic thought, schools which the editors contend are premised on rival ontologies. The first, inspired by the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, subscribes to an “ontological imaginary of lack” that is principally inherited from Lacan. The second, inspired by William E. Connolly, subscribes to an “ontological imaginary of abundance” that is principally inherited from Deleuze (2). The framing contention of the volume is that the political differences between these two schools derive from their rival ontological underpinnings. When it comes to politics, radical democrats of lack pursue both a critical and a positive project. Their critical project targets discourses (such as nationalism) that construct a holistic and naturalized fiction to suppress “the inherent contingency and historicity of its identity” (6). Their positive project, hegemony, seeks to build a transformative political subject by articulating “different constituencies into a [contestable] whole” (6). It is this persistent concern with identity that distinguishes the democrats of lack from those of abundance who, Nathan Widder explains, press “individuals and collectives to overcome the assumption that some form of identity is necessary for their subjectivity” (34). Tønder and Thomassen elaborate three points on which the politics inspired by the ontology of abundance differs from that inspired by lack: 1) it meets “ethical injunctions and moral commands” with a spirit of “enchantment”; 2) it nurtures components of contemporary society that can break out of such hegemonic formations as capitalism and heteronormativity; 3) it actively fosters minoritarian forms of life that “although operating below the radar of existing social codes, may contribute to the deepening of democratic government” (7). Although ultimately unpersuaded to view “lack” and “abundance” as distinct ontologies, I came away from this volume with an enriched appreciation for radical democratic theory, with a keen understanding of the leading debates in that field of inquiry, and with a new set of arguments to account for my own position. I was mildly disappointed by one feature of the collection: that the essays grouped under the heading “The Politics of Radical Democracy” remained at such an abstract level. Not one deals with radical democratic politics in practice, thus perpetuating an existing imbalance in this field that has always been long on theory and short on either contemporary empirical or historical cases. This may be a simple omission, or a predilection of scholars trained in political theory. It may also be, as Aletta Norval suggests (more on this below), an effect of the architecture of radical democratic theory itself. In addition, some readers may be bothered by the absence of any sustained treatment of the work written and/or inspired by two theorists who have surely done much to elaborate a politics from an ontology of abundance, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. These are small criticisms, however. It is rare for an edited volume to achieve the intellectual coherence and consistently high quality that this one does. Because of the clarity of its chapters (all written by leading radical democratic theorists, and including closing remarks by William E. Connolly and Ernesto Laclau), this volume will be accessible and illuminating to graduate students new to the field of radical democracy. Yet, because each of the chapters makes an original contribution to the conversation among radical democratic scholars, it is a compelling and enriching read for experts as well. One of the most noteworthy features of this collection (or perhaps it is not at all remarkable given how radical democracy prizes conflict) is that several of the contributors refute its framing contentions. For example, Oliver Marchart contends that there is...

Democratic theory is an established subfield of political theory that is primarily concerned with examining the definition and meaning of the concept of democracy, as well as the moral foundations, obligations, challenges, and overall desirability of democratic governance. Generally speaking, a commitment to democracy as an object of study and deliberation is what unites democratic theorists across a variety of academic disciplines and methodological orientations. When this commitment takes the form of a discussion of the moral foundations and desirability of democracy, normative theory results. When theorists concern themselves with the ways in which actual democracies function, their theories are empirical. Finally, when democratic theorists interrogate or formulate the meaning of the concept of democracy, their work is conceptual or semantic in orientation. Democratic theories typically operate at multiple levels of orientation. For example, definitions of democracy as well as normative arguments about when and why democracy is morally desirable are often rooted in empirical observations concerning the ways in which democracies have actually been known to function. In addition to a basic commitment to democracy as an object of study, most theorists agree that the concept democracy denotes some form or process of collective self-rule. The etymology of the word traces back to the Greek terms demos (the people, the many) and kratos (to rule). Yet beyond this basic meaning, a vast horizon of contestation opens up. Important questions arise: who constitutes the people and what obligations do individuals have in a democracy? What values are most important for a democracy and which ones make it desirable or undesirable as a form of government? How is democratic rule to be organized and exercised? What institutions should be used and how? Once instituted, does democracy require precise social, economic, or cultural conditions to survive in the long term? And why is it that democratic government is preferable to, say, aristocracy or oligarchy? These questions are not new. In fact, democratic theory traces its roots back to ancient Greece and the emergence of the first democratic governments in Western history. Ever since, philosophers, politicians, artists, and citizens have thought and written extensively about democracy. Yet democratic theory did not arise as an institutionalized academic or intellectual discipline until the 20th century. The works cited here privilege Anglo-American, western European, and, more generally, institutional variants of democratic theory, and, therefore, they do not exhaust the full range of thought on the subject.

What do citizens and political leaders have in mind when they think about democracy? This article deals with the relationship between different conceptions of democracy and the level of support for democracy among both ordinary citizens and political elites in two post-Soviet countries, Russia and Ukraine.Data collected through personal interviews in 1992 and 1995 reveal that the mass and elite in these post-socialist countries hold different conceptions of democracy. The elite tend to emphasize law and order and the rule of law, whereas the citizens stress freedoms in their understanding of democracy. Involvement in politics, especially in a political party, has a significant influence on the meaning of democracy as well as on the consistency among attitudes reflecting support for democratic principles. Different conceptions of democracy are also found to affect the perceived extent to which the current regime fits with the individual's idea of what a democracy should be like.

Political marketing management is often criticized for devaluing democratic processes. However, no literature exists which outlines different concepts of democracies and systematically juxtaposes them with political marketing management in its varied conceptual and practical facets. In this article, we outline three different perspectives, i.e. a selling-oriented, an instrumentally-oriented, and a relational political marketing management, and analyse their compatibility with two different concepts of democracy, specifically competitive elitism and deliberative democracy. We discuss implications of political marketing vis-à-vis the theory of democracy as well as necessary further research. We find that while certain political marketing management perspectives are associated with different theories of democracy, the current normal paradigm of marketing theory shows the least overlap with democratic theories.

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere