Democracy and its Problems

The new year began by posing the question of democracy in stark ways. Whether in Washington or around the world, the configuration of state power and popular will confronts diverse and growing pressures. The democracy euphoria at the end of the cold war and its continuation in the democratization agenda of the Bush administration suddenly face the skepticism of history. Did we really mean what we said? Of course, cynics and realists have long raised doubts, urging that we pay greater attention to national interest than to democratic ideals. Yet at stake now is less that realpolitik trade-off of values against power, and more the understanding of democracy itself.

Russell A. Berman
Introduction

Alice Ormiston
A Tragic Desire: Rousseau and the Modern Democratic Project

Grant Havers
James Burnham's Elite Theory and the Postwar American Right

David Randall
Empiricism, the New Rhetoric, and the Public Sphere

Rahul Govind
Equality, Right, and Identity: Rethinking the Contract through Hobbes and Marx

Alexandre Lefebvre
Law and the Ordinary: Hart, Wittgenstein, Jurisprudence

Dianna Taylor
Countering Modernity: Foucault and Arendt on Race and Racism

Marcelo Hoffman
Containments of the Unpredictable in Arendt and Foucault

Reviews

Roger Chao
Liberalism: A Tyrannical Paradox?

John Grant
Late Dialectics: Marxism, History, and the Persistence of Fredric Jameson

Notes and Commentary

Elizabeth J. Perry
Rejoinder to Rebecca E. Karl's "The Flight to Rights: 1990s China and Beyond"

Rebecca E. Karl
Response to Elizabeth J. Perry