Melissa S. Williams

A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory

Globalization generates new structures of human interdependence and vulnerability while also posing challenges for models of democracy rooted in territorially bounded states. The diverse phenomena of globalization have stimulated two relatively new branches of political theory: theoretical accounts of the possibilities of democracy beyond the state; and comparative political theory, which aims at bringing non-Western political thought into conversation with the Western traditions that remain dominant in the political theory academy. This article links these two theoretical responses to globalization by showing how comparative political theory can contribute to the emergence of new global “publics” around the common fates that globalization forges across borders. Building on the pragmatist foundations of deliberative democratic theory, it makes a democratic case for comparative political theory as an architecture of translation that helps deliberative publics grow across boundaries of culture.

Islam, immigration and group recognition 1

Islam generally, and Muslim immigrant communities in particular, have recently been targeted for criticism by Western academics and in popular Western media. This article explores the substance of these criticisms and weighs them against the beliefs and practices of Muslim immigrants in Western liberal democracies. The article addresses three distinct questions. First, what sorts of cultural adaptations is it reasonable for liberal democratic states and societies to expect immigrants to make, and what kinds of adaptation is it unreasonable to demand? Second, how vulnerable are Islamic beliefs and practices to the criticisms commonly leveled against them in the name of liberal democracy and gender equality? Finally, how strong are the parallels between the claims for political recognition and accommodation that issue from immigrant cultural communities and the claims for recognition and inclusion that issue from groups that have historically been marginalized within liberal democratic societies? Although t...

Rehfeld's Hyper-Madisonianism

How should we think about constituency within representative democracy at the conceptual level, that is, at a higher level of abstraction than is available to us by looking at the particular constituency formations of any particular democratic system? The importance of the question is matched only by its relative neglect, and Andrew Rehfelds contribution in his provocative book, The Concept of Constituency, is to provide the first sustained inquiry into it. Rehfeld draws our attention to the fact that a system of political representation necessarily excludes citizens from direct participation in forming the laws that govern them. The definition of constituencies is the mechanism by which that exclusion is structured. Which interests are expressed, and which are silenced by the grouping of citizens for the purpose of representing them? What can make such structured exclusion legitimate, from a democratic point of view? Perhaps the highest praise I could give to this work is to characterize it as an exemplar of Madisonian political theory. Indeed, as I will elaborate below, Rehfelds defense of random nonterritorial constituencies is a sort of hyperMadisonianism Madisonianism on speed, if not Madisonianism on crack.1 What makes Rehfelds view Madisonian is its reliance on the mutual cancellation of

Book Review: In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible by Michael WalzerWalzerMichael, In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

religion” (p. 90). I confess, I don’t know what the “relevant sectarian group” is here. The Catholic Church, perhaps? If so, then it is a pretty big sectarian group, and a worryingly large number of people who fail Leiter’s test for appraisal respect. Why Tolerate Religion? is a rattling good read. Leiter’s topic is a very important one, and he certainly knows how to engage his readers, but all too often he substitutes assertion for argument, and all too often he implies that religious believers are not only stupid, but wilfully stupid. He may be right, of course, but personally I doubt it. For my money, the worrying fact is that religious belief has survived and thrived for thousands of years, and that large numbers of religious believers are not at all stupid. They are thoughtful, reflective, intelligent, informed, able, and insightful. They are (some of them) very very clever indeed. For atheists like me, this is a deeply disturbing fact. But it is a fact which Leiter must confront honestly and openly if he is ever to offer a convincing answer to his central question. As things stand, his book gives us a good read and (sometimes) a cheap laugh, but it doesn’t offer a persuasive philosophical argument against exemption, and that is a very great pity.

Beyond the Empirical-Normative Divide: The Democratic Theory of Jane Mansbridge

Jane Mansbridges intellectual career is marked by field-shifting contributions to democratic theory, feminist scholarship, political science methodology, and the empirical study of social movements and direct democracy. Her work has fundamentally challenged existing paradigms in both normative political theory and empirical political science and launched new lines of scholarly inquiry on the most basic questions of democratic equality, deliberation, collective action, and political representation. Her three best-known books— Beyond Adversary Democracy (1980), Why We Lost the ERA (1986) and Beyond Self-Interest (1990a)—have become part of the political science canon and remain staples on graduate course syllabi decades after their publication. The importance of Mansbridges work has been recognized by her colleagues through a trifecta of major APSA awards: the Gladys M. Kammerer Award (1987), the Victoria Schuck Award (1988), and, most recently, the James Madison Award and Lecture (2011).