Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy [Paperback]

Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy is a thought-provoking collection of chapters on current democratic theory. The authors start with a recognition of familiar critiques of liberal and deliberative democracy theories, and draw upon pragmatist frameworks to explore themes of agonistic discourse, coercion, deception, hegemony, and the radical situatedness of persons and political causes. This is an exciting resource for those who would seriously consider the forms and processes of democracy in the twenty-first century.The book presents a variety of philosophical and socio-political perspectives related to the relationship between persuasion and compulsion in democracy. It meets the need of the present time, in America and in Europe, to re-read and discuss the basic assumptions of democracy and the role of individual within it in the context of institutional persuasions that can become factual compulsions for other institution and, first of all, individuals.This collection of essays focuses on the roles that coercion and persuasion should play in contemporary democratic political systems or societies. A number of the authors advocate new approaches to this question, offering various critiques of the dominant classical liberalism views of political justification, freedom, tolerance and the political subject. A major concern is with the conversational character of democracy. Given the problematic and ambiguous status of the many differences present in contemporary society, the authors seek to alert us to the danger, that an emphasis on reasonable consensus will conceal exclusion in practice of some contending positions. The voices of vulnerable peoples can be unconsciously or even deliberately silenced by various institutional processes and operating procedures and a strong media influence can change the tenor of conversations and even lead to deception. To counter these factors, a number of the essays, in differing ways, urge the fostering of local community conversl³!