The Future of the State: Philosophy and Politics

Description

The state has been a dominant political form, and the preferred model of political unity , for at least the last two centuries. However, many today speak of its crisis, which stems from two main factors: the state’s changing role in the globalizing international system and the state’s complex relation to democracy, a key normative concept of contemporary politics. Authoritarian leaders use the state to successfully reaffirm sovereignty, despite international integration; democratic movements abound but often serve only to reinforce the regimes they contest. Is there an alternative? Do we need to reconceive the phenomenon of state, with a view to the future? These are the questions that an international group of scholars explores and answers in this groundbreaking book, drawing on the history of political thought, continental philosophy, and contemporary political examples. They engage the dialectical tradition broadly understood, including phenomenological transcendentalism, the political philosophy of French public law, and German twentieth-century political philosophy beyond Weber. The result brings the state into a critical political philosophy, providing a realistic model of what a good democratic state could and should be like. The Future of the State Contents Acknowledgments Introduction I. THE IDEA OF STATE 1 The Categories of the State 2 The State in the International Legal Order 3 Sovereign State and Democracy in French Constitutional Theory II. CRITIQUE OF THE STATE AND THE STATE OF THE CRITIQUE 4 State Power and Social Transformation 5 Lindsey’s “Concealed State” and the Left Strategy 6 Toward a Critical “State Theory” for the Twenty-First Century III. SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST STATE 7 Lenin and the Transitional-Revolutionary State 8 The March of God or the Žižekian Theory of the State 9 Democratic Corpses and Communist Specters: Between the Liberal Democratic and Post-Socialist State IV. EX PLURIBUS UNUM 10 Civitas Paradoxa or a Dialectical Theory of State Index Biographies