Democracy and Nations

This issue of Telos turns to the topic of democracy and nations: how does democracy operate today, what is its relationship to nations and nation-states, and do national traditions have any relevant bearing on the status of democracies? “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”: do Lincoln’s words have any significance beyond nostalgia? The pressures on democracy are extraordinary, trapped as it is between cosmopolitan models of international governance and the temptations of parochial populism. Can a substantive democracy that guarantees rights still function within the constraints of a traditionalist nation? Yet the converse is also relevant: can a substantive democracy based on the rule of the people do without a national self-understanding?

Russell A. Berman
Introduction

Alain de Benoist
The Current Crisis of Democracy

Raf Geenens
The Emergence of Supranational Politics: A New Breath of Life for the Nation-State?

Ronald Olufemi Badru
The Ontology of Political Decisionism, Negative Statecraft, and the Nigerian State: Exploring Moral Altruism in Politics

Franklin Hugh Adler
Israel's Mizrahim: "Other" Victims of Zionism or a Bridge to Regional Reconciliation?

Yaacov Yadgar
A Post-Secular Look at Tradition: Toward a Definition of "Traditionism"

Pekka Sulkunen
Autonomy against Intimacy: On the Problem of Governing Lifestyle-Related Risks

Somogy Varga
The Paradox of Authenticity

Rusmir Mahmutćehajić
On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar: The Poet, the Road, and the Word

Pedro Blas González
Czesław Miłosz: Old-World Values Confront Late-Modern Nihilism

Reviews

Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo
Inverted Totalitarianism

Joseph W. Bendersky
Victimized Memory and Gendered Reality among the Ruins

David Ost
Class, Nation, and the Katyn Massacre