A Theory of Universal Democracy empowers cultures and communities across the world to custom design democracy in consonance with their traditional values. For example, the book makes concrete proposals for Muslim countries to democratize their constitutions without accepting Western values and without violating the principles of Islamic law. More importantly, Universal Democracy further develops the idea of Free State, which the author first presented in his previous book, The Extinction of Nation-States (Kluwer, 1996). The proposed fusion of Universal Democracy and Free State is designed to revolutionize the classical theory of government and to offer a new paradigm that accommodates both universality and uniqueness. Scholars, teachers and students of international law, constitutional law, legal theory, and Islamic law will find this book a source of valuable ideas.

Democracy is often associated with Western liberal values, such as free markets, individual rights and secularism. Some scholars assert that liberal democracy is the end of history. Disputing such claims, this work presents the concept of Universal Democracy to think beyond the values of Western democracy. A Theory of Universal Democracy empowers cultures and communities across the world to custom design democracy in consonance with their traditional values. For example, the book makes concrete proposals for Muslim countries to democratize their constitutions without accepting Western values and without violating the principles of Islamic law. More importantly, Universal Democracy further develops the idea of Free State, which the author first presented in his previous book, The Extinction of Nation-States. The proposed fusion of Universal Democracy and Free State is designed to revolutionize the classical theory of government and to offer a new paradigm that accommodates both universality and uniqueness.

(unseen), $12.95. Donnelly explicates and defends an account of human rights as universal rights. Considering the competing claims of the universality, particularity, and relativity of human rights, he argues that the historical contingency and particularity of human rights is completely compatible with a conception of human rights as universal moral rights, and thus does not require the acceptance of claims of cultural relativism. The book moves between theoretical argument and historical practice. Rigorous and tightly-reasoned, material and perspectives from many disciplines are incorporated. Paper edition Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The ascendancy of neo-liberalism in different parts of the world has put social democracy on the defensive. Its adherents lack a clear rationale for their policies. Yet a justification for social democracy is implicit in the United Nations Covenants on Human Rights, ratified by most of the worlds countries. The covenants commit all nations to guarantee that their citizens shall enjoy the traditional formal rights; but they likewise pledge governments to make those rights meaningful in the real world by providing social security and cultural recognition to every person. This new book provides a systematic defence of social democracy for our contemporary global age. The authors argue that the claims to legitimation implicit in democratic theory can be honored only by social democracy; libertarian democracies are defective in failing to protect their citizens adequately against social, economic, and environmental risks that only collective action can obviate. Ultimately, social democracy provides both a fairer and more stable social order. But can social democracy survive in a world characterized by pervasive processes of globalization? This book asserts that globalization need not undermine social democracy if it is harnessed by international associations and leavened by principles of cultural respect, toleration, and enlightenment. The structures of social democracy must, in short, be adapted to the exigencies of globalization, as has already occurred in countries with the most successful social-democratic practices.

This book explores the frameworks underlying different notions of democracy, and how these influence political decisions.

This title was first published in 2000: This text contends that there are pronounced ideological (apologetic) and utopian biases in how democracy is now viewed by most academic writers, politicians and journalists. Ideological biases result from democracy being seen in formal and procedural ways as parliaments, free elections and competitive parties and pressure groups - irrespective of the standards which guide or the effects produced by these procedures. Utopian democrats reject this narrow empiricism for normative approaches and, instead of realistic norms, they offer impractical, perfectionist and counter-productive standards and goals. As the alternative to ideology and utopia, the author builds upon and draws conclusions from a realistic and normative, public philosophic tradition of writing on democratic politics. This tradition is explained and illustrated by critical responses to Walter Lippman's conception of public philosophy, Lippman's activity as a public philosopher, and the work of major democratic theorists from Alexis de Tocqueville to Giovanni Sartori.