This work presents an approach to the study of comparative politics that builds on the assumption that political actors and institutions operate within constructed communities of meaning, which in turn interface with other such communities.

This work presents an approach to the study of comparative politics that builds on the assumption that political actors and institutions operate within constructed communities of meaning, which in turn interface with other such communities.

Taking the possibility of change in ethnic identity into account, this book shows and dismantles the theoretical logics linking ethnic diversity to negative outcomes and processes such as democratic destabilisation, clientelism, riots and state collapse. Even more importantly, it changes the questions we can ask about the relationship between ethnicity, politics and economics.

This work presents an approach to the study of comparative politics that builds on the assumption that political actors and institutions operate within constructed communities of meaning, which in turn interface with other such communities.

Publisher Description

This volume explores the nature and possibilities of constructivism through an engagement and examination of the foremost constructivist positions, Rawls and O'Neill.

This volume traces the roots of the constructivist turn in the distinct (and competing) traditions of Continental and Anglo-American Western political thought. Divided into three thematic parts, these 13 newly commissioned essays develop the constructivist turn as a central concept. They advance the insight that there can be no democratic politics without representation; constituencies or groups exist as agents of democratic politics only insofar as they are represented.