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Perspectives on Democracy

The year 2024 is the biggest election year in history, with over half of world’s population going to the polls. At the same time, democracy around the world is facing a variety of serious challenges and threats, ranging from populism and polarisation to direct military offensive. This series aims to shine a light on democracy from different historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives, with an eye firmly on its future. By doing so, we hope to contribute to democratic thinking and practice in this crucial moment.

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Democracy and Future Generations: A Philosophical Minefield

Democracy and future generations have a thorny relationship. On the one hand, democratic countries provide better for the well-being of future generations than autocracies...
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Taming and Tolerating Uncertainty

Democracy is existential to its core, and the social question is key to its survival. Since large-scale transformations of society—including migration, climate change, war,...
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Democracy is Autonomy

Why Democracy? In a year of election ballots filled with questionable candidates, social media fights over which convention scored points for the best celebrity cameo,...
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Cavell and the Grammar of Politics

Stanley Cavell’s writings on skepticism in The Claim of Reason offer a lens through which to interpret the surprising connections between language and politics....
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The Hammer and the Orchestra: Democratic Production from Kant to Angela Davis

Many philosophers, from Kant and Marx to Rawls and Angela Davis, take the nature of the economy to be central to the justification of...
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Reviving Electoral Democracy

It sometimes seems that we approach the theory and practice of democracy with one hand clasped firmly behind our back. Although reams of ink...
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Reconsidering Truth and Politics

In 2016 the sociologist Arlie Hochschild published Strangers in Their Own Land. The book appeared in the final days of that year’s presidential election...
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New Series: Perspectives on Democracy

In 2024, more than half of humanity will go to the polls, making this the biggest election year in history. Elections are taking place in...