Civil Society Pluralism And Universalism

The idea of civil society has long been central to the Western liberal-democratic tradition, where it has been seen as a crucial site for the development and pursuit of basic liberal values such as individual freedom, social pluralism, and democratic citizenship. This book considers how a host of other ethical traditions define civil society. Unlike most studies of the subject, which focus on a particular region or tradition, it considers a range of ethical traditions rarely addressed in one volume: libertarianism, critical theory, feminism, liberal egalitarianism, natural law, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Confucianism. It considers the extent to which these traditions agree or disagree on how to define civil society's limits and how to evaluate its benefits and harms. A variety of distinguished advocates and interpreters of these traditions present in-depth explorations of how these various traditions think of ethical pluralism within societies, asking how a society should respond to diversity among its members. Together they produce a work rich with original insights on a wide range of subjects about which little has been written to date. An excellent starting point for a comparative ethics of civil society, this book concludes that while the concept of civil society originated in the liberal tradition, it is quickly becoming an important focus for a truly cross-cultural dialogue. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Michael Banner, Hasan Hanafi, Loren E. Lomasky, Richard Madsen, Michael A. Mosher, Michael Pakaluk, Anne Philips, Adam B. Seligman, Suzanne Last Stone, and Michael Walzer.

Contents Luigi Ferrajoli: Past and Future of the State under Law u Mauro Zamboni: oRechtsstaato: What is it that Swedish development assistance, organisatons oexporto? u Hans Gribnau: Legal Principles and Legislative Instrumentalism u Maria Jose Falcon y Tella: Justified Illegality: The Question of Civil Disobedience u Hideo Sasakura: How should we discuss the Right of Resistance today? u K. Papageorgiou: Nations, persons, rights and responsibilities u M.N.S. Sellers: The Right to Secede u Stephan Kirste: Constitution and Time u Nicholas Aroney: Towards a General Theory of the Formation and Amendment of Federal Constitutions: A Comparative Study u Adriaan Anderson: Prosecuting Crime in a Constitutional State: The Recent South African Experience u Luis Villar-Borda: The Role of the Constitutional Court in the Advance of Law in a Developing Country u Marcela Forero: Colombia: a Multisovereignty State u Samuli Hurri: What of Tomorrow's Citizenship? Universal and Politics in Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas u Marcelo Campos Galuppo: Constitutional Hermeneutics and Pluralism u Francoise Michaut: Pluralism in Law in Robert Cover's Writings u E. A. Huppes-Cluysenaer: Informal Rules do not Exist u Niels F. van Manen: The legal recognition of distinct communities u Peter Koller: Law and Virtue u Carl Lebeck: Coercion, co-ordination and normativity - towards a refined distinction between positive and negative rights u Sheldon Wein: Moral Pluralism and the Rule of Law.

John Gray has become one of our liveliest and most influential political philosophers. This current volume is a sequel to his Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy. The earlier book ended on a sceptical note, both in respect of what a post-liberal political philosophy might look like, and with respect to the claims of political philosophy itself. John Gray's new book gives post-liberal theory a more definite content. It does so by considering particular thinkers in the history of political thought, by criticizing the conventional wisdom, liberal and socialist, of the Western academic class, and most directly by specifying what remains of value in liberalism. The upshot of this line of thought is that we need not regret the failure of foundationalist liberalism, since we have all we need in the historic inheritance of the institutions of civil society. It is to the practice of liberty that these institutions encompass, rather than to empty liberal theory, that we should repair.

How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying conflicts over culture? This book brings unparalleled clarity to the contemporary debate over this question. Maintaining that cultures are themselves torn by conflicts about their own boundaries, Seyla Benhabib challenges the assumption shared by many theorists and activists that cultures are clearly defined wholes. She argues that much debate--including that of "strong" multiculturalism, which sees cultures as distinct pieces of a mosaic--is dominated by this faulty belief, one with grave consequences for how we think injustices among groups should be redressed and human diversity achieved. Benhabib masterfully presents an alternative approach, developing an understanding of cultures as continually creating, re-creating, and renegotiating the imagined boundaries between "us" and "them." Drawing on contemporary cultural politics from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, Benhabib develops a double-track model of deliberative democracy that permits maximum cultural contestation within the official public sphere as well as in and through social movements and the institutions of civil society. Agreeing with political liberals that constitutional and legal universalism should be preserved at the level of polity, she nonetheless contends that such a model is necessary to resolve multicultural conflicts. Analyzing in detail the transformation of citizenship practices in European Union countries, Benhabib concludes that flexible citizenship, certain kinds of legal pluralism and models of institutional powersharing are quite compatible with deliberative democracy, as long as they are in accord with egalitarian reciprocity, voluntary self-ascription, and freedom of exit and association. The Claims of Culture offers invaluable insight to all those, whether students or scholars, lawyers or policymakers, who strive to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of cultural politics in the twenty-first century.

This is one of the first books to explore the nexus between civil society, religion, and global governance, their impact on human security and well-being, and significance for current debates in international politics. The contributors examine salient aspects of the secular state whose monopoly on, and control of, institutional violence has reified its use of power to such an extent that the modernistic separation of church and state is being called into question, as institutional limits are sought to the abuse of that power. The volume is clearly divided into six key sections: human security and human rights the politics of civil religion the ethics of civil development civil society and global governance cross-cultural perspectives on institutional development for civil society international civil society. Within these sections the illuminating case studies span a wide geographical extent from Central and Eastern Europe to Egypt, to Latin America, Iran, Bangladesh, Australia, the Pacific and East and Southeast Asia. Civil Society, Religion and Global Governance will be of strong interest to students, policy makers and researchers in the fields of human rights, religion, political science and sociology.

" Writing the story of democracy might seem like writing a story of success. In more and more countries all over the world democracy has been established as the leading form of government. However, democracy also has a less positive and optimistic side. Political scandals and corruption continue to shatter people's trust in its promises and institutions. This brings us to the topic of active democratic citizenship and civil society. Since the late 1980s these topics have continued to rise in importance in the fields of social and political sciences, and their influence has yet to reach a peak. In comparison, civil society and citizenship remain relatively new topics for adult education, dating to the beginning of the 1990s. We also see that the respective national discourses within the different European countries differ immensely. Whereas the discourse on adult education and active democratic citizenship is quite lively in Great Britain or in Poland, in Germany there is only very little interest. ""Civil Society, Citizenship and Learning"", the second volume of the Bochum Studies in International Adult Education, presents a variety of different perspectives on the topics of citizenship and civil society. The goal of this book is to give an overview of the European discourse on citizenship and civil society as well as on the discourse in some selected countries. Agnieszka Bron ist Professorin am Institut für Pädagogik der Universität Bochum. "