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Its preoccupation with ontology presents radical democracy with a thorny dilemma: how to combine commitment and affirmation with a distinctive emphasis on contingency and contestability. The article addresses this dilemma by engaging with three different perspectives. Ernesto Laclau's work shows the intrinsic constraints of ontology and the inadequacy of a simple distinction between ontology and ethico-political decision. Simon Critchley opposes tying radical politics to ontological prefiguration and argues for a particular ethico-political orientation. But ethics and politics come entwined with ontological assumptions, and the ethical direction of politics can be as restrictive as its ontological framing. William Connolly weds ontology and ethics to a sharp awareness of their contestability. But his approach does not reach deep enough. It is not alive to the contestability of the very recognition of contestability. To enhance openness and reflexivity, projects of radical democracy should combine a dimension of substantive, detailed accounts with a reflexive commitment to contestability, which disrupts, questions and renews the thicker descriptions in the name of democracy and truth.

"Recently, theorists have sought to justify transnational democracy by means of the all-affected principle, which claims that people have a right to participate in political decision-making that affects them. I argue that this principle is neither logically valid nor feasible as a way of determining the boundaries of democratic communities. First, specifying what it means to be affected is itself a highly political issue, since it must rest on some disputable theory of interests; and the principle does not solve the problem of how to legitimately constitute the demos, since such acts, too, are decisions which affect people. Furthermore, applying the principle comes at too high a cost: either political boundaries must be redrawn for each issue at stake or we must ensure that democratic politics only has consequences within an enclosed community and that it affects its members equally. Secondly, I discuss three possible replacements for the all-affected principle: (a) applying the all-affected principle to second-order rules, not to decisions; (b) drawing boundaries so as to maximise everyone's autonomy; (c) including everyone who is subject to the law. I conclude by exploring whether (c) would support transnational democracy to the extent that a global legal order is emerging."

"On most accounts of global democracy, human rights are ascribed a central function. Still, their conceptual role in global democracy is often unclear. Two recent attempts to remedy this deficiency have been made by James Bohman and Michael Goodhart. What is interesting about their proposals is that they make the case that under the present circumstances of politics, global democracy is best conceptualized in terms of human rights. Although the article is sympathetic to this 'human rights approach', it defends the thesis that human rights are not enough for global democracy. It argues that insofar as we hold on to the general idea of democracy as a normative ideal of self-determination (self-rule) that is, of people determining their own lives and ruling over themselves, the concept of democracy accommodates two necessary conditions, namely, political bindingness and political equality. Further, it argues that neither Bohman's nor Goodhart's accounts fulfills these conditions and that one explanation for this could be traced to a lack of clarity concerning the distinction between democracy as normative ideal and democracy as decision method or rules (for example, institutions, laws and norms) for regulating social interactions. This ambiguity has implications for both Goodhart and Bohman. In Goodhart's work it manifests itself as a vagueness concerning the difference between political agency and democratic agency; in Bohman's work it becomes unclear whether he contributes a normative democratic theory or a theory of democratization. Although this article develops both a conceptual and a normative argument against their proposals, the aim is not to find fault with them but to point to questions that are in need of further elaboration to make them more convincing."

"Taking up the test case of radical anti-globalization protest, this essay addresses Ernesto Laclau's theory of the democratic demand, reading it against Lacan's and Freud's conceptions of demand. I argue, largely drawing from Lacan's conception of enjoyment that a theory of the democratic demand must take into account the risk that a subject's enjoyment in positing a demand can overwhelm the potential political of the demand itself. In response to this risk, I argue that a theory of democracy should shift from a demand-driven politics centred around enjoying a specific subject position tied to 'resistance' towards a desire-driven politics that productively incorporates the 'no' as a means of articulating collective political aspirations."

"The paper argues that there are aspects of Asian culture and politics which sit comfortably with Western notions of liberalism and other aspects which do not. However, for the aspects which do not, these have a lot to do with politicians using aspects of the Asian political tradition, like acceptance of hierarchy and respect for authority, to consolidate their own position when their power base lacks political legitimacy. Before making an assessment of the political systems in Asia, one also has to look at specificities and the particular historical, geographical and sociological context each country is grounded in. This paper has a special focus on South and East Asia and thus makes use of a comparative approach, whilst trying to answer its research question."

The expansion of women's formal political representation ranks among the most significant trends in international politics of the last 100 years. Though women made steady political progress, substantial country-level variation exists in patterns of growth

This paper discusses the meaning of 'the West' in Chinese and Japanese political discourse. It argues that for Japanese and Chinese political thinkers, the West does not exist in the West. Rather, the West is sometimes at the periphery and, at other times, at the centre. For them, 'the Chinese' is about the epistemology of all-under-heaven. There is no such concept as 'Other' in this epistemology. As a result, modern Western thinkers depend on opposing the concrete, historical, yet backward Other to pretend to be universal, while Chinese and Japanese thinkers concentrate on self-rectification to compete for the best representative of 'the Chinese' in world politics. 'The Chinese' is no more than an epistemological frame that divides the world into the centre and the periphery. In modern times, the Japanese have accepted Japan as being at the periphery of world politics, while the West is at the centre. To practise self-rectification is to simulate the West. The West is therefore not the geographical West, but at the centre of Japanese selfhood. Self-knowledge produced through Othering and that through self-rectification are so different that the universal West could not make sense of the all-under-heaven way of conceptualizing the West.

The books under review, though offering important advances in understanding their particular issue areas of global governance, together reproduce a number of liberal political-economic silences that obscure key power relations, a process made visible through resistance. These silences privilege the formal public-private sphere of civil society over both alternative expressions of social agency and the continuing importance of state sovereignty, leading to false claims of wider participation, partnership and empowerment in global politics and also unexpected social and environmental consequences. Hajnal, P. I. (2007) The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role and Documentation. Aldershot: Ashgate. Mattli, W. and Woods, N. (eds) (2009) The Politics of Global Regulation. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Hall, R. B. (2008) Central Banking as Global Governance: Constructing Financial Credibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singh, J. P. (2008) Negotiation and the Global Information Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

International Relations scholars and policy-makers are increasingly paying greater attention to a new category of fragile and failed states across Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Latin America and the Middle East. While effective policy responses are necessary to strengthen these politically fractured, economically collapsing and socially divided states, the category itself appears to be more politically and ideologically charged and less critically understood in the context of international relations. There is a general tendency to avoid examining how political and economic policies and military actions by the West contributed to the degeneration of these states. This article seeks to re-examine the causes of state fragility and failure, and critically reviews the current US strategies to rebuild the failed states of Afghanistan and Iraq. It argues that the US-led statebuilding strategies in both countries are based on a wrong diagnosis of the political and social problems, and the solutions offered are also ill-conceived. The article also contends that the Western liberal vision of the state, premised on the Weberian notion, commands less relevance to the fragile and failed states in the non-Western world.

Although history has shown us that the church plays a role in the political liberalization of non-democratic countries, the nature of the church's role and how it participates in politics has yet to be fully revealed. By revisiting the Polish Church's historic role in the collapse of communism, I argue that we have overestimated the church's effect on political liberalization in that case, which has led us to neglect or be prematurely disappointed in its role in the remaining communist countries such as in Cuba. Drawing from the Polish case, I conclude that the church's moral, self-limiting, and transnational character needs to be recognized and incorporated into a general theory of democratization. It is this aspect of the church that has helped it to remain active within remaining communist societies, and provide the moral support that is an integral part of political liberalization processes.

Over two decades have passed since the 'third wave' of democratization began to roll across sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s. The introduction to this collection provides an overall assessment of the (lack of) progress made in democratization processes in Africa from 1990 to 2010. It highlights seven areas of progress and setbacks: increasingly illegitimate, but ongoing military intervention; regular elections and occasional transfers of power, but realities of democratic rollback and hybrid regimes; democratic institutionalization, but ongoing presidentialism and endemic corruption; the institutionalization of political parties, but widespread ethnic voting and the rise of an exclusionary (and often violent) politics of belonging; increasingly dense civil societies, but local realities of incivility, violence and insecurity; new political freedoms and economic growth, but extensive political controls and uneven development; and the donor community's mixed commitment to, and at times perverse impact on, democracy promotion

Despite its increasing importance in contemporary political philosophy and its central role in international human rights law, there has been significant resistance among political theorists and philosophers to the idea that there is a moral human right to democracy. In John Rawls's late political philosophy of international justice and in the views of many who are sympathetic to his position, the idea that there is a moral human right to democracy is vigorously rejected.1 Other major recent treatments of human rights have either rejected the human right to democracy or shied away from making arguments one way or the other.2 One key concern animating the opposition to a moral human right to democracy is that the assertion of such a right in international society conflicts with the rights of peoples to collective self-determination. Some peoples, it is asserted, reject democracy or the equality on which it is founded, and because of this rejection, the recognition of a human right to democracy imposes on them a set of norms alien to their political cultures. Another concern, articulated in popular writings, is that new democracies often violate the basic moral rights of citizens. This worry about a tyranny of the majority suggests a strong conflict between democracy and other basic rights.

"This article explores the literature on democratization to account for the proscription of political parties in democratizing states. A survey of 22 party bans in 12 European states identifies two distinct classes of proscription derived from the 'degree of democratization' present in a banning state. I identify features of 'new' and 'incomplete' democracies that help explain proscription. Case studies on Germany, Austria, Russia, Latvia and Greece illustrate the impact of 'modes of transition', heightened uncertainty, political tensions and instability on 'new democracy bans', and the impact of illiberalism, limited checks on executive power and circumscribed political participation on 'incomplete democracy bans'."

"This article argues that recent de-democratization in Iran can be best understood by analysing the interplay of domestic Iranian politics and two external developments. These were the colour revolutions in several post-communist states and the hostile US policies toward Iran after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Together they generated a political climate in Iran conducive to hardliner attempts to discredit and neutralize the reformist opposition. The regime tried to delegitimize the opposition by portraying it as being in the service of foreign elements and claiming it was seeking to foment a popular uprising. The consequences were twofold. On the one hand, the regime's identification of civic and political activism as threats to national security greatly reduced the manoeuvrability of the reformist opposition and contributed to their marginalization. These developments point to the limits and unintended consequences of democracy promotion in Iran. On the other hand, the post-electoral protests of 2009 exposed the limits of conspiracy discourse in silencing mass discontent. This article argues that the regime's attempt to portray the unrest as a foreign conspiracy failed to convince a large segment of the population."

The "aestheticisation of politics", a term coined by Walter Benjamin, refers to a critique of various modes of politics considered to be irrational in leftist, critical theory. The critique ties aestheticised politics to fascism and capitalism, thereby pr

This note explores new ways of thinking about the history of political thought in twentieth-century Europe. It argues that more attention ought to be paid to the interaction between political thought or imagination on the one hand and, on the other, actua

KOLKATA, May 7 (IPS) - Mamata Bannerjee, six-time member of Parliament from West Bengal, bucks the stereotype of women political leaders in India. Neither heir to a political dynasty nor blessed with a political godfather, she has picked her way through

Today there is a widespread recognition of the erosion of political community on the territorial basis of the nation-state. Instead, alternative framings of "being" political or of engaging in politics have argued for a more radical post-territorial space

In The divided west and in On the political Jrgen Habermas and Chantal Mouffe transpose their political philosophies into the realm of contemporary international politics and put forward two different models for a more equitable order. Habermas defends a

Around the turn of the century, political philosophy became one of the most lively areas of philosophical study in China. An important trend of development is represented by the shift from macro-political philosophy to micro-political philosophy. A carefu