Die Verdrangte Demokratie

Democracy seems to be no longer self-evident. A growing sense of alienation in politics determines the daily life of citizens: democratic institutions and procedures may be working properly, yet they promote non-democratic values such as technocracy, oligarchy, elitism. The repression of democracy in practice mirrors the vanishing of democracy in political philosophy. Predominant theories of democracy not only often fail to reflect the changing social and economic conditions in democratic societies adequately, they also fail to offer a conception of democratic politics that deal with the current problems. The essays in this volume address these problems, and, moreover, argue for a different understanding of human rights as a political tool in international power plays and for a notion of global justice that is embedded in political practice. The author is professor of political theory at the University of Giessen and works on (in-) justice, human rights, democracy, and resistance.