Jean L. Cohen

Changing Paradigms of Citizenship and the Exclusiveness of the Demos

Three distinct components of the citizenship principle have been identified in the literature: a political principle of democracy, a juridical status of legal personhood and a form of membership and political identity. The modern paradigm of citizenship was based on the assumption that these components would neatly map onto one another on the terrain of the democratic welfare state. Globalization, new forms of transnational migration, the partial disaggregation of state sovereignty and the development of human rights regimes have rendered this model anachronistic. Only if the various elements of the citizenship principle are disaggregated and reinstitutionalized on independent levels of governance, some national, some supranational, will the exclusiveness constitutive of the ideal of citizenship be tempered with the demands of justice.

Sociedade Civil e Globalização: Repensando Categorias*

The discourse of civil society has gone global. Once again theorists of democracy are placing their bets on civil society to generate solidarity, publicity, civicness, awareness of new forms of injustice, and democracy vis-a-vis the new world order. Yet too many analysts are naively optimistic or ideological about global civil societys democratizing role. In order to visualize the proper role of civil society in the global context, careful systematic analysis is needed concerning the ways in which globalization has transformed the key parameters of civil society and how such changes recursively affect how civil society impacts national, regional, transnational, and supranational bodies. There can be no vital democracy without civil society, but civil society cannot replace constitutional democracy or the rule of law at any level of government.

Civil Society And Social Theory

Social movements in the East and the West, the North and the South have come to rely on various interesting, albeit eclectic syntheses inherited from the history of the concept of civil society. They presuppose (in different corn-binations) something like the Gramscian tripartite framework of civil society, state and economy, while preserving key aspects of the Marxian critique of bourgeois society. But they have also integrated liberal claims on behalf of individual riglxic, the stress of Hegel, Tocqueville and others on societal plurality, the emphasis of Durkheiin on the component of social solidarity, and the defense of the public sphere and political participation stressed by Habermas and Arendt.2

Max Weber and the Dynamics of Rationalized Domination

The forms of domination, and the possibilities for freedom in modern industrial society were the major concerns of both Marx and Weber. Both rejected a mechanistic notion of progress, according to which economic development is automatically accompanied by cultural, moral and human development. Both recognized the central contradiction implied by the process of industrialization — the contradiction between an unprecedented increase of productive power, and the corresponding increase of domination and cultural impoverishment. However, Marx and Weber differed radically in their assessments of modern society. A fundamental belief in the possibility of the overcoming of capitalism structured Marxs approach to given manifestations of capitalist domination.

The Self-Institution of Society and Representative Government: Can the Circle be Squared?:

This article discusses the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, an important political thinker and theorist of democracy. Castoriadis developed not one but two theories of democracy based on two distinct understandings of autonomy. The first is compatible with the key features of representative government; the second is not. Unfortunately, Castoriadis models his interpretation of the idea of popular sovereignty on the second view, thereby concluding, like Rousseau before him, that it is incompatible with representative government. This article discusses both approaches and presents a reinterpretation of political representation and of the idea of popular sovereignty in order to show how they can be made compatible. I argue that the discourse of popular sovereignty and the modern principles of representative government entail one another.

Freedom of Religion, Inc.: Whose Sovereignty?

Proliferating demands by the religious for exemptions from general valid law in the US and elsewhere should give us pause. Freedom of religion is the slogan, ‘accommodation’ the key claim.1 We seem to be in multicultural territory. ‘Accommodation’ implies that at issue is the protection of religious minorities from unduly burdensome laws passed by secularist or religious majorities. But I argue that the multicultural minority rights frame cannot get at the deep structure of the most contentious demands for accommodation by courts and legislatures, nor help us thematize the fundamental challenge they pose to liberal constitutional democracy.

Repensando a privacidade: autonomia, identidade e a controvérsia sobre o aborto

In a dialogue with feminist criticism to public-private dichotomies, the author defines limits and outlines of the right to privacy, considered as a core aspect of autonomy and the right to the body. Communitarianism and feminist streams that advocate overcoming boundaries between what is public and private are criticized for their inability to guarantee respect for individuals autonomous decisions, especially regarding their bodies, their affective lives, and relevant aspects of their identities. Guarantee of privacy is seen as necessary to ascertain individual identities and protect individuals from majority values and practices within the communities they are part of. The right to abortion constitutes the right to privacy, thus defined.

Political religion vs non-establishment: Reflections on 21st-century political theology: Part 1

This article defends the principle of non-establishment against 21st-century projects of political religion, constitutional theocracy and political theology. It is divided into two parts. The first part, published in special issue 39.4–5 of Philosophy and Social Criticism, proceeds by constructing an ideal type of political secularism, and then discussing the innovative American model of constitutional dualism regarding religion that combined constitutional protection for the freedom of religious conscience and exercise with the principle of non-establishment. It then critically assesses the integrationist approach –disguised as a concern for pluralism and fairness – as an alternative to this framework. The integrationist approach challenges ‘separation’ and political secularism in a subtle attack on the non-establishment principle, aimed at drastically narrowing its scope. Successes of this approach in recent Supreme Court jurisprudence and politics, have triggered a response by liberal egalitarians. I address this response – the equal liberty model – in this second part, arguing that although on the right track, it fails to find a middle ground between political secularism and integration. Instead, by abandoning the discourse of separation, it plays into populist integrationist hands without delivering on the promise of providing a coherent standard for deciding cases. The article proposes a third approach, one that does not throw out the non-establishment baby with the strict separationist bathwater and that wholeheartedly endorses political secularism, a sine qua non for 21st-century constitutional democracy. Equal liberty properly construed can help provide criteria for determining when an accommodation, a regulation or no regulation of religion by the state is appropriate. But it must be supplemented by other values – democratic and civil republican. The article concludes with a typology of the forms of regulation that are warranted under the conditions of the contemporary regulatory state, now the target and prize of politicized religion.

Political religion vs non-establishment

This article defends the principle of non-establishment against 21st-century projects of political religion, constitutional theocracy and political theology. It is divided into two parts, which will appear in two consecutive issues of Philosophy & Social Criticism, 39(4–5) and 39(6). Part 1 proceeds by constructing an ideal type of political secularism, and then discussing the innovative American model of constitutional dualism regarding religion that combined constitutional protection for the freedom of religious conscience and exercise with the principle of non-establishment. The article analyses the strengths and limits of the ‘separation– accommodation’ frame that became hegemonic in 1st amendment jurisprudence from the 1940s to the 1990s. It challenges the standard caricature of the American model as strictly separationist and privatizing. It then critically assesses two contemporary alternatives to that frame: the integrationist approach and the equal liberty approach. The first, disguised as a concern for pluralism and fairness, challenges ‘separation’ and political secularism in a subtle attack on the non-establishment principle, aimed at drastically narrowing its scope. Successes of this approach in recent Supreme Court jurisprudence and politics have triggered a response by liberal egalitarians. The author addresses this response – the equal liberty model – in part 2, which will appear in Philosophy & Social Criticism 39(6), arguing that although on the right track, it fails to find a middle ground between political secularism and integration.

The Peace Movement and Western European Sovereignty

The Western European peace movements represent an important new phase of the struggle for social and political democratization. As in the case of the ecology movement and movements for urban autonomy, here too the public thematization of issues traditionally left to the administrative arbitrariness of the state, corporate boards and-or the automatic mechanisms of the market goes hand in hand with the self-constitution of democratic forms of association capable of exerting pressure on various levels of government and administration. The importance of this trend in social movements on a structural level lies in the challenge posed to the historically new degree of irresponsible (non-accountable) administrative intervention into social and economic processes.