American Democracy and Democracy Promotion

As America inaugurates its 43rd president it enters a period of reflection. The danger is that an emphasis on voting procedure will silence a long-standing and ultimately more significant criticism of American democracy and its policy of democracy promotion. The separation of economics from politics and the promotion of so-called 'market democracy' does a disservice to the wider democratic project and is potentially self-defeating. This article reviews three books to argue that America's declining international reputation can be traced to its own democratic shortcomings. It explores the possibility of a popular working-class movement to address these failings and examines the implication this may have on the liberal international order.
Books reviewed:
John B. Judis, Paradox Of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests And The Betrayal Of Public Trust
Michael Zweig, The working class majority: America's best kept secret
Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers, America's forgotten majority: why the white working class still matters     

The Political Agent and Radical Democracy

Liberal democracy suffers from an internal contradiction stemming from its ideological roots and rending it from within. On the one hand its goal is to generate a system of laws and rules that maximize individual rights and liberties; on the other hand, some of its fundamental assumptions pertaining to the Subject restrict the political and social agent's existential experience to a limited threshold of speech and action. The central assumption of this article is that the main meeting point of the critics of modernity, Apel and Habermas primarily, and the post-structuralists, Foucault and Deleuze, in regard to the Subject, rehabilitates liberal discourse and creates an opening for a political theory that maximizes the freedom of the individual as a structured, anti-essentialist Subject. I will show that the expansion of the concept of the self in the two streams sheds new light on the concepts of political control and liberty, and in this way extends the normative discussion of all aspects of the political agent's status in a modern democracy.     

试论演说家与雅典民主政治的互动

演说家是古希腊城邦社会中一股不可忽视的政治力量,在实行民主政治的雅典尤其如此。作为那个时代的知识精英和政治精英,他们与希腊城邦民主制度之间存在着一种特殊的相互依存的关系:他们既是城邦制度的产儿,也推动着它的不断发展;既享有体制内的"特殊话语权",但也受到它的严格制约;特别值得注意的是,他们在努力维护公民权力的同时,客观上也在消解着体制本身。     

欧洲社会民主主义的起源及早期演变

欧洲的社会民主主义与社会主义是同源的,社会民主主义是社会主义运动内部改良派和修正主义观点不断发展和系统化的体现,其发展变化主要根源于西欧国家变化的社会现实和历史条件.社会民主主义在变化的现实面前不断地调整和变革,从而作为欧洲社会民主党的主流意识形态和一种政治学说而保存至今,从欧洲社会民主主义的起源上可以窥见端倪.     

议会制度的起源和一个国家的诞生冰岛阿尔庭古议会及其影响

飞机在这个世界上距北极最近的首都城市雷克雅未克着陆,就好像降落到了月球。初访冰岛的游客无法不怀着一种探秘的心情。给我们开车的司机是一位身体健硕、肤色白里透红的老人,