Liberal Democratic Tradition Research Articles

The dissociative university: Pragmatist reconstructions in democratic pedagogy

The American university is in transition, witnessing major changes to its institutional structures and processes. While the 1960s and 1970s were decades of progressive democratization in American higher education, today’s university is more aligned with the economic theory of neoliberalism. Existing at the intersection of two dominant but contradictory cultural discourses, each with its distinct version of public pedagogy, education, and identity, today’s American university can no longer clearly articulate its ethical, political, ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic essence, vision, and mission. Its identity is dissociative, inhospitable to delineation and prescription, and it as such suffers a Dissociative Identity Disorder. This article starts by articulating the two constructs of Public Pedagogy and Dissociative Identity Disorder. It then moves to an exposition in higher education of the ethical, political, ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic contradictions between the progressive liberal democratic tradition and the economic theory of neoliberalism. The article concludes by stressing that a democratic public pedagogy in higher education should take seriously the causes and underlying symptoms of cultural dissociation, one of which is a cultural quest for foundational certainty.

Immigration and Democratic Principles: On Carens’ Ethics of Immigration

AbstractCarens has done more than any other political theorist or philosopher to develop the normative perspective of prospective migrants from within the liberal democratic tradition, but he has not sufficiently engaged with the other side of the argument – in particular, with the value of political community and the principle of collective self‐determination. What is at stake for the immigrant‐receiving country that might justify its claim to control immigration? I first examine Carens’ theory of social membership and its connection to political community. I then discuss his method of ‘political theory from the ground up’ and his interpretation of democratic principles. I conclude with a discussion of the principle of collective self‐determination.

Cuba's Electoral System and the Dilemmas of the Twenty-first Century: Between the Liberal-Democratic Tradition and True Participation

We remain convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders, express their ideas, practice their faith; where the commitment to economic and social justice is realized more fully; where institutions are answerable to those they serve; and where civil society is independent and allowed to flourish.

Interpreting from the Interstices: The Role of Justice in a Liberal Democracy—Lessons from Michael Walzer and Emmanuel Levinas

Interpreting from the IntersticesThe Role of Justice in a Liberal Democracy—Lessons from Michael Walzer and Emmanuel Levinas Nicholas R. Brown (bio) 1 As anyone who is familiar with more recent theological debate can attest, the appraisal of the liberal democratic tradition has undergone a radical reevaluation in the wake of Stanley Hauerwas’s and Alasdair MacIntyre’s scathing critiques. As a result of their blistering assault, religious ethicists and philosophers now find themselves operating within a discursive milieu that is almost the photo negative of the one they previously inhabited. For what has followed After Virtue and After Christendom is a situation in which compliance with liberal democratic norms is now perceived as actively inveighing against justice rather than as an integral prerequisite to its pursuit. There are cracks, however, beginning to emerge in the MacIntyre/Hauerwas edifice. For what is becoming disputed and increasingly so among a growing chorus of religious ethicists and philosophers is whether their critical reading of liberal democracy offers the most [End Page 155] helpful or even the most biblical way to think through its own moral dimensions as well as those undergirding its relationship with justice. It is the emergence of these criticisms that forms the basis for this essay. For the thesis that I wish to advance below is that liberal democracy offers religious ethicists and philosophers alike a moral framework and vocabulary from which it is possible to comprehend and enact the normative precepts encapsulated within a biblical understanding of justice. Accordingly, some aspects of my argument will build upon the rhetorical trajectories that have been already charted by the ethicists and philosophers I mention above. What distinguishes my approach, however, is that I will proceed from a more focused examination of some of the ethical and political undercurrents found within contemporary Jewish thought. More specifically, I want to probe the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and the political philosophy of Michael Walzer, for I believe the juxtapositional methodology of interpretation which informs each of their perspectives is illustrative of an interstitial hermeneutic that helps further illuminate the moral compatibility between biblical and democratic accounts of justice. 2 By now, MacIntyre’s and Hauerwas’s critiques of the liberal democratic tradition have been so thoroughly documented, discussed, and dissected that a review of their perspectives cannot help but have a certain pleonastic quality. Probably the most significant and disturbing problem that MacIntyre and Hauerwas see belying the liberal democratic tradition stems from its conception of time and space, or more precisely, its lack thereof. For what they discover upon a more careful probing of its moral and epistemological underpinnings is a pursuit of transcendence not dissimilar to Gnostic metaphysics. In the case of liberalism, however, the existential encumbrances to be excised are not corporeal and carnal in nature, but historical and social. [End Page 156] Such conditionalities, surmise liberal theorists, are so shot through with conceptual prejudices that they comprise an interpretative straight-jacket that vitiates against the kind of objectivity necessary to engage in a nonparochial process of moral and political discernment. For it is precisely this ability “to be able to stand back from any and every situation in which one is involved, from any and every characteristic that one may possess, and to pass judgment on it from a purely universal and abstract point of view that is totally detached from all social particularity” which MacIntyre sees as constituting “the essence of moral agency” of modern liberalism (AV 31–32). Therefore, “liberalism is successful,” maintains Hauerwas, “exactly because . . . [it] provide[s] that philosophical account of society designed to deal with” the moral and political implications such a social and historical denuding portends, namely “a system of rules that will constitute procedures for resolving disputes as they pursue their various interests.”1 However, what liberalism defines as success MacIntyre and Hauerwas see as anything but. Instead, both judge its “system of rules” to be an insidious prescription for a particularly virulent form of moral nihilism and political bankruptcy. For by stripping moral and political discourse of their historical and social referents, liberalism, ironically and tragically, eviscerates itself of the very heuristic and discursive practices necessary to make those...

IN NOSTRIS EXTREMIS (TERROR AND FANATICISM IN THE WESTERN MIND)

The abolitionist John Brown. Freedom fighter? Terrorist? The choice is unsatisfying for any number of reasons, least of all for the anachronistic nomenclature and the moral obviousness of his cause. Of course Brown was right, we can easily say, to take up the fight against that “peculiar institution” of barbarous slavery. Insofar as the federal government stood in the way of historical progress, perhaps he also was justified in striking the arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859 as the first salvo of the American Civil War, demonstrating by his pitiful action that the Union would have to choose sides and fight. Yet no less clear today is the sheer difficulty of justifying such antistate violence. Since the 1970s and especially since September 11, 2001, with comparable moral obviousness, insurgent and terroristic violence have generally been condemned as threats to social stability and political coherence. The very liberal-democratic traditions that might otherwise superficially heroize someone like John Brown recoil at the disorder he personified. The truth of Brown's adventurism is clearly more complicated than the postcard version, and his crazed biblical prophetism, nasty 1856 murder spree in Kansas, and patronizing wish to play Moses to southern blacks must be read alongside successful efforts by the government and pro-slavery camp to brand him an incorrigible fanatic—a label that Brown himself and other abolitionists embraced as their own. What Brown represents, however, is an access point to the deep history of ideas about fanaticism and terrorism in the modern West, a history filled with paradoxes and ambiguities that nonetheless revolve around the basic fact—avoided with ease by contemporary pundits and prognosticators—that for the past several centuries we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Medios de comunicación y escándalos de corrupción en España: ¿denunciantes, magnificadores, cómplices?

Partiendo de la idea según la cual el periodismo es, en regímenes de tradición liberal democrática, un freno a la arbitrariedad de los que gobiernan y de que los medios de comunicación, y en especial la prensa escrita, han acometido la tarea de vigilancia de los casos de corrupción acaecidos en la España democrática, se indaga sobre los mecanismos que dificultan el ejercicio de un periodismo de denuncia de la corrupción política y se proponen orientaciones para acercar la ética periodística a la ética cívica propia de la democracia.

Gender and Multiculturalism—Dislodging the Binary between Universal Human Rights and Culture/Tradition: North/South Perspectives

Multiculturalism is a concept that has been stretched to include a variety of political conditions, mainly in countries that have liberal democratic political systems and traditions. The articles i...

Exopedagogy: On pirates, shorelines, and the educational commonwealth

In this paper, Tyson E. Lewis challenges the dominant theoretical and practical educational responses to globalization. On the level of public policy, Lewis demonstrates the limitations of both neoliberal privatization and liberal calls for rehabilitating public schooling. On the level of pedagogy, Lewis breaks with the dominant liberal democratic tradition which focuses on the cultivation of democratic dispositions for cosmopolitan citizenship. Shifting focus, Lewis posits a new location for education out of bounds of the common sense of public versus private, nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, inclusion versus exclusion, human versus civil rights. This is the space of the commonwealth whose actors cannot be identified as ‘citizens’ but are rather the anonymous multitude. In conclusion, Lewis finds a model for organizing this commonwealth in the work of Ivan Illich, whose learning networks speak to the urgent political and pedagogical need for exodus from the conceptual vocabulary that defines much of the contemporary field of educational theory.

French law on Muslim veil wearing in public schools

Combining normative analysis of a legal text with a study of a wider social and historical context, this paper tries to prove that the French Law of 15th March 2004, which forbids displaying of religious symbols, and most of all, the Muslim veil in public schools, does not represent a continuation, but a break up with a liberal-democratic tradition of protection of religious rights of the Fifth Republic. The aforementioned legislation radically changes the idea of profane, which is, religiously neutral country, as there is a value itself that is being created out of laicité - an instrumental principle of protection of the freedom of religion, whose protection requires a limitation of the religious freedom. In order to understand the motives of the French legislator, it is necessary to accompany the normative analysis of laws with an observation of a wider social context in which the mentioned problem occurs. Therefore, this paper takes into account the need for a multidisciplinary approach, that is, the need to consider both the historical perspective and the social analysis of the context of the legal prohibition. We are of belief that from a methodological aspect this paper represents a contribution to those positions in legal science which insist on the necessity of studying a wider social background of normative solutions as a prerequisite for a successful analysis of a legal text.

Life as synecdoche: Ansel Adams and the expanding liberal democratic tradition

In The rights of nature: A history of environmental ethics (1989), Roderick Nash paints a portrait of the United States' expanding liberal democratic tradition – the extension of ethics outward from self to other people to other living things and, ultimately, to the earth in its entirety. In this article, we examine the expanding liberal democratic tradition through the life of one individual, Ansel Adams, the renowned black-and-white landscape photographer. Adams captured the beauty of his country's landscapes and imbued them with meaning that evoked a strong sense of place (Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of appearance. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press) thereby influencing both the environmental movement and the politics of place. Adams' story is a synecdoche, a representation of the larger story of twentieth-century environmentalism.

How Did They Do It? Explaining Queensland Labor's Second Electoral Hegemony

Australia's entrenched liberal democratic traditions of a free media, fair and frequent elections and robust public debate might encourage outside observers to assume Australia is subject to frequent changes in government. The reality is very different: Australian politics have instead been ‘largely unchanged’ since the beginning of our bipolar party system in 1910 (Aitkin 1977, p. 1), with Australians re-electing incumbents on numerous occasions for decades on end. The obvious federal example is the 23-year dominance of the Liberal-Country Party Coalition, first elected in 1949 and re-endorsed at the following eight House of Representatives elections. Even more protracted electoral hegemonies have been found at state level, including Labor's control of Tasmania (1934–82, except for 1969–72) and New South Wales (1941–65), and the Liberals' hold on Victoria (1952–82) and South Australia (1938–65, most unusually under one Premier, Thomas Playford). It is therefore not a question of whether parties can enjoy excessively long hegemonies in Australia; it is instead one of how they achieve it.

“Tendrils of Association”: World War I Narrative and the U.S. Political Imaginary

Vincent considers the way U.S. literature of the 1920s and 1930s used the rhetorical occasion of World War I to promote revisions of U.S. liberalism and its prevailing ideologies of citizenship. Urged on by desires for a more cohesive polity, Vincent argues, numerous war novelists made use of the cultures of allegiance and collectivity fostered by war mobilization as rhetorical means by which to bridge gaps in notions of political obligation enabled by the flimsier, more local interests of laissez-faire. Borrowing from supplementary logics of valuation extrinsic to the liberal-democratic tradition—religious, masculine, statist, militarist—many war narratives advanced discourses of sacrifice and preparedness to promote broader metrics of affiliation more likely to achieve national community and the accommodation of a more managerial state. In part, this essay seeks to revise the sometimes monolithic focus on modernist or experimental writing in assessments of the postwar moment as an antiwar watershed. Vincent emphasizes war narrative's continuities with prior Progressive-Era longings for compulsory civic foundations as well as the bourgeoning culture of national security that, in some respects, grew out of the Great War's political crucible.

Nacionales y gremialistas: El “parto” de la nueva derecha política chilena, 1964 – 1973

Nacionales y gremialistas: El “parto” de la nueva derecha política chilena, 1964 – 1973

The New Mode of Public Governance and Public Accountability in Developing Countries: An Analysis with Particular Reference to Bangladesh

Public accountability is a fundamental element of good governance. All countries all over the world strive to ensure the accountability of public officials by adopting different kinds of mechanisms. Following the liberal democratic tradition, most countries in the world have relied on the legislative instruments, executive means, judicial and quasi-judicial processes, official rules, codes of conducts, official hierarchies, public hearings, interest groups, media scrutiny and so forth for ensuring public accountability. However, in recent years, the new mode of public governance has brought new dimensions to the discourse on public accountability. This new mode focuses largely on the market- and society-centered mechanisms. This article is an attempt to assess the effectiveness of these market- and society-centered mechanisms in ensuring public accountability in Bangladesh. The article has the following objectives: (a) to explore contemporary debates on the market- and society-centered mechanisms of public accountability; (b) to sketch the state of public accountability in Bangladesh; and (c) to analyze the effectiveness of the market- and society-centered mechanisms in view of the contemporary socio-economic and political dynamics of Bangladesh.

Hegel's practical philosophy: rational agency as ethical life

This fresh and original book argues that the central questions in Hegel's practical philosophy are the central questions in modern accounts of freedom: What is freedom, or what would it be to act freely? Is it possible so to act? And how important is leading a free life? Robert Pippin argues that the core of Hegel's answers is a social theory of agency, the view that agency is not exclusively a matter of the self-relation and self-determination of an individual but requires the right sort of engagement with and recognition by others. Using a detailed analysis of key Hegelian texts, he develops this interpretation to reveal the bearing of Hegel's claims on many contemporary issues, including much-discussed core problems in the liberal democratic tradition. His important study will be valuable for all readers who are interested in Hegel's philosophy and in the modern problems of agency and freedom.

Assemblages and the Multitude

The article enters a heated debate about the ideals and organization of the postmodern left. Hardt and Negri, two key figures in this debate, claim that their concept of the multitude — a revolutionary, proletarian body that organizes singularities — integrates the insights of Deleuze and Lenin. I argue, however, that Deleuze anticipated and resisted a Leninist appropriation of his political theory. This essay challenges the widely accepted assumption that Hardt and Negri carry forth Deleuze’s legacy. At the same time, the essay advocates Deleuze’s concept of left assemblages — protean political bodies working for freedom and equality — as a valuable but underappreciated contribution to the liberal-democratic tradition.

The ‘neat concept’ of sexual citizenship: a cautionary tale for human rights discourse

The growing interest in human rights discourse is a welcome development for strategic lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism and the appropriation of such a global signifier continues to move LGBT political claims into the mainstream. However, such language appropriation or strategic deployment opens debate as to its meaning and the limits of its descriptive power. For example, the popularity of citizenship discourse in the early 1990s led to an array of commentary from social and political theorists sketching the contours of epistemological meaning and potential policy outcomes. In the wake of this, queer social theorists pontificated on the meaning of ‘sexual citizenship’. Citizenship was the new black and everyone was wearing it. Citizenship was interesting because it had, and still has, purchasing power within a liberal democratic tradition. Human rights discourse is interesting for similar reasons. This article's cautionary tale addresses the twofold concern: ‘what is at stake in focusing on “human rights”?’ and how can such a strategic linguistic shift be ‘explained by political and sociological theories’? In raising these concerns, the article encourages those articulating human rights to be mindful of the potential variety of frames – readings and strategic or competing activists and academic agendas – within which this discourse might be used or, potentially, abused.

Answering the Muslim question: The Politics of Muslims in Europe

Since at least the 1990s, there has been a huge growth in interest about the Muslim presence in Western plutocracies. Part of this interest has been due to series of moral panics which have centred on the figure of the Muslim. The mobilisation of Muslims as Muslims has raised questions about national identity and belonging. Increasing interest is also due to the way in which the security threat - as posited by the „war on terror‟ - has been focused on the Muslim question as a means of reconfiguring the liberal-democratic contours of Western plutocracies. The responses to the attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, Madrid on 11 March 2004 and London on 7 July 2005 have been the most obvious examples of the way in which issues of national security have become conflated with issues of national cultural integrity. The very continuity of Western liberal-democratic traditions is being contested around the Muslim presence. This paper explores the problematisation of a Muslim presence outside Muslimistan, by interrogating the concept of a European Islam.

Plumwood, Property, Selfhood and Sustainability

In her final book, Environmental Culture as well as elsewhere, Val Plumwood advances the view that sustainability should properly be seen as emergent from an ecofeminist partnership ethic of nourishment and support between humans and nonhuman nature, and that such an ethic must replace the characteristic institutional structures and dominant conceptions of rationality found in capitalist modernity. In making this case, Plumwood impressively charts the impact and significance of the expansionist, exclusionary models of the disembodied but appropriative self found in Cartesian and Lockean thought along with the impact of private property doctrines derived from this source. However, whilst making reference to ecosocialist alternatives at the broader political level, Plumwood offers no systematic account of property that might dovetail with her wider philosophical concerns. In this paper I attempt to generate the start of such an account, drawing on Plumwood's own canon and bringing it into relationship with (1) reflections on ideas of belonging and culture drawn from a range of thinkers including Erazim Kohak, Erich Fromm, and William James, and (2) the contemporary debate over the relationship between green political thought and the liberal democratic tradition.

A Start for Mild Liberalization? Building Civil Society Through Co-operative Dynamics in China

This paper aims to understand the society-state relationship in China, by exploring this dynamics with other types of organizations, i.e. civil society organizations with economic objectives. The dynamics of co-operatives can influence and interact with civil society dynamics. In this sense, this paper presents the evolution of civil society in China by identifying the causal mechanisms of co-operatives’ development and the conditions needed for them to develop. This causal mechanisms are set within the context of one historical process evolving with path dependency. Using this theoretical framework, it further presents the empirical observation. The findings of the paper are that economic development shaped the new co-operative movement in China; this process was different from the former revolutionary communalist co-operative movement; like their counterparts from the liberal democratic tradition, new co-operatives participated in the market economy, developed in an evolutionary and peaceful way, had great respect for private property and especially, were self-motivated and voluntary in nature. The co-operative movement in China can thus be considered as a mild liberalization within civil society’s sphere. Furthermore, its spillover effect would be seen as the effect of enhancing the role of civil society as a critical dialogue partner with the state. The originality lies in its systematic analysis examining the conditions that underpin this dynamics, thus filling the academic gaps in the study of society-state relationship in another way different from the popularly-used perspective which examines the voluntary and non-profit nature of civil society organizations and excludes the economic spheres within civil society.