Category: Does Democracy Still Matter?

Democracy is rarely so successful as when skeptics can openly question whether it is working and when critics can freely debate antidemocratic alternatives. Like science, democracy works best when its own processes are subject to the same practical evaluation it would give everything else. So democracy evolves like science does: basic methods of free inquiry, …

Although the neoconservatives’ moment in Washington may have passed and alliances are slowly being rebuilt, many of the underlying forces that plagued the transatlantic relationship after 2001 have deep roots going beyond both the War on Terror and its neoconservative architects. Considering U.S. foreign policy during this election year, we see a world still struggling …

What does it say about the United States today that this fellowship of the arts and sciences and philosophy is called to affirm knowledge as a public good? What have we come to when the self-evident has to be argued as if—500 years into the Enlightenment and 230-some years into the life of this republic—it …

Traditionally, philosophy and religion exhausted the subject of moral values. In times past, lawmakers striving to establish proper rules for society sought philosophical or theological justifications for their theories. Both philosophy and religion believed in foundational kinds of moral values—the sort of values that ought to be valid for all societies, since, it was held, …

Is democracy the gift of Western civilization? Some commentators, among them enthusiasts of the Bernard Lewis–Samuel Huntington thesis of a “clash of civilizations,” proudly answer yes. Others, anxious to avoid such a clash, say no. One way to support a negative answer is to question the construct of Western civilization itself. In a world becoming …

Like many of the other tools in the toolbox of democratic societies, the value of citizen participation in political decision-making is best judged in terms of the consequences of its deployment in specific circumstances. In some cases, for example, with certain California ballot initiatives, it is arguable that citizen participation has resulted in hasty and …

A saying popular in anarchist circles holds that “Elections are the means by which we choose the sauce with which we will be basted.” Anarchists have a deep problem with claims of representation made by political leaders. Quite simply, no one can truly represent anyone other than themselves, except in some “best guess” approximation of …