Democracy

Roland Axtmann is Professor of Politics and Head of the Department of Politics and IR at the University of Wales Swansea. Author of Balancing Democracy (Continuum, 2001) and Liberal Democracy into the 21st Century (Manchester University Press, 1996) and editor of Understanding Democratic Politics: An Introduction (Sage, 2003) and Globalization and Europe: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Continuum, 1998).

Democracy: Problems and Perspectives provides a critical review of the scholarly and political debates about democratic thought and of arguments about democratic practice. On the basis of an interpretation of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy, the book presents democracy as a regime type in which citizens, who are united to give law, rule themselves and where such self-rule is exercised by citizens who embrace local and global patriotism. In the course of developing this idea of democracy, the book addresses issues such as human rights and their relationship to democracy; the policy of the global promotion of human rights and democracy; sovereignty and the nation-state; popular sovereignty and multicultural citizenship; and cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan democracy.The book will stimulate controversial discussions about the varieties of democratic imaginations and visions, past and present as well as the future of democracy in the current stage of globalisation.
Key Features:
*Presents a broad range of thinkers, theoretical and political positions and arguments
*Clearly links theory and practice
*Uses case studies to elucidate the theories discussed
*Covers a broad range of theories of democracy

Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Kant's Republicanism and the Cosmopolitan Persuasion; Kant's Republicanism and the 'Moral Personality' of States; The Sovereign Equality of States, Peaceful Coexistence and the International Constitution; Kant's Cosmopolitanism; Cicero's Republicanism and Stoic Cosmopolitanism: Kant in Comparison; John Rawls and Ju¿rgen Habermas: Alternative Ways of Understanding Kant's Cosmopolitanism; 2. The Languages of Human Rights and the Liberal Dialect; The Many Voices of the Human Rights Discourse; Human Rights as the New Standard of Civilisation; Human Rights and Democracy: Liberal Perspectives; 3. The Globalisation of Democracy: The Right to Democratic Governance; The Entitlement to Democratic Governance in International Law and International Politics; The Ideology of Democracy Promotion; Excursus: Prerequisites and Causes of Democratisation; 4. Sovereignty and Democracy; Conceptual Distinctions; The Politics of the Sovereignty Discourse; 'Domestic Sovereignty' as 'Popular Sovereignty'; 5. Liberal Democracy between Multiculturalism and Globalisation; From 'Demos' to 'Demoi': Multiculturalism and Democracy; Globalisation and Democracy; Bibliography; Index.