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New Directions in Democratic Theory

Democratic theory is enjoying something of a revival. Indeed, writing about democracy is now more vital-exciting, even-than it has been for a long time. The books here under review provide very good examples.’ Why has this come about? No doubt many (often related) reasons could be advanced, but some stand out. To an extent it is part of the general undermining of value-free political science and the revival of political philosophy, of which the re-animation of Anglo-American democratic theory over the last two decades has been both a manifestation and a cause. Underlying this were the traumas of American politics in the 1960s and 1970s and the effect these had on the study of politics. Other important factors have been the ‘crisis of capitalism’ and the growth of the ‘post-industrial society’; the importance and nature of developments in modern Marxist theory, and the opening up of questions about the nature and role of the democratic state in all this. Closely associated has been a renewal of interest in questions about the possibility, nature and means of achieving democratic systems where the state has been abolished or drastically modified (often, but not always, involving the Marxist vision of the classless, stateless society). An aspect or consequence of these developments has been the re-emergence of fundamental questions of the sort addressed by traditional theories of democracy. Such questions have for too long been neglected because for too long their answers have been taken for granted. As Stephen Elkin says in his first contribution in The Democratic State