Just democracy : the Rawls-Machiavelli programme / Philippe Van Parijs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parijs, Philippe van, 1951-

Series:

ECPR Press essays

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rawls, John, 1921-2002.

Rawls, John.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527.

Machiavelli, Niccolò.

Democracy.

Social justice.

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Physical Description:

ix, 174 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : ECPR Press, 2011.

Summary:

"We don't just need democracy. We need just democracy. Among the countless ways in which democracies could be organized, we must not try to adopt the most democratic ones. We must go instead for those that offer the best prospect of making our societies and our world more just. This is the core of the Rawls-Machiavelli programme forcefully advocated and vividly illustrated in this book, a powerful alliance between Rawlsian thinking about social justice and Machiavellian thinking about political institutions. For example, how could our political institutions be reformed in order to better serve intergenerational justice? And how should political institutions be shaped to as to best fit the specific circumstances of deeply divided societies, or of multilingual countries, or of the European Union? This is the sort of question that is being addressed in this unusual combination of rigorous philosophical arguments, detailed historical accounts and bold political proposals."--Publisher's description.

Contents:

The Rawls-Machiavelli programme: political institutions as instruments of social justice

Justice and democracy: are they incompatible?

Contestatory democracy versus real freedom

The children's vote and other attempts to secure intergenerational justice

Should the European Union become more democratic?

Power-sharing versus border-crossing in ethnically divided societies

Must Europe be Belgian?

Belgium re-founded

Electoral engineering for a stalled federation: a country-wide electoral district for Belgium's federal parliament

Anything (even) better than the Pavia proposal?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-167) and index.

ISBN:

1907301143

9781907301148

OCLC:

755222430

Publisher Number:

99961558505