When Woodrow Wilson advanced the principle of self-determination in a series of speeches in 1918–19, his assumption seemed to be that acknowledging the claims of self-determination was a simple corollary of respect for democracy. Contemporary secessionists, and many who write and theorize about secession, share Wilson’s intuition about this. It is widely claimed that a ‘people’ has the right to...

This article shows that judicial review has a democratic justification, although it is not necessary for democratic government and its virtues are controversial and often speculative. Against critics like Waldron and Bellamy, it shows that judges, no less than legislators, can embody democratic forms of representation, accountability and participation. Hence, judicial review is not undemocratic...

This paper examines the concept of constituent power and constitutional form in Jürgen Habermas’ legal philosophy. It argues that a concept of constituent power needs to be embedded in a constitutional theory that can explain the difference between legitimate law and a mere wielding of power. Theories operating with assumptions of a pre-legal and unbound constituent power are either pre-modern ...

This essay turns to ancient sources in order to rethink the relationship between political apathy and democracy. If modern democratic theorists place political apathy entirely outside of democracy – either as a destructive limit upon the full realization of a democratic polity, or, more sanguinely, as a pragmatic necessity which tempers democracy so that it may function in a workable yet watere...

In his famous book " Democracy and its Critics " (1989), Robert A. Dahl argues that, historically speaking, there have been two transformations of democracy. These transformations have brought about different models of democratic governance and different interpretations of the concept of democracy. By the fi rst transformation Dahl refers to the the emergence of the classical model of democracy...

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. We bring a critical social science perspective to this framework through notion societal aim provide more nuanced understanding nature thresholds. start by highlighting strengths weaknesses from perspective. then focus on capitalist societies as heuristic for discussing expa...

2 See, e.g., Stephen Deane, The ISS Institute for Corporate Governance, Majority Voting in Director Elections: From the Symbolic to the Democratic, at 1 (noting that advocates who favor majority voting in director elections view the issue as a “question of democratic principle” and, if implemented, majority voting “would transform the current symbolic process, in which shareholders can withhold...