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Rearticulating critical theory with a contemporary focus, this book investigates how the conditions of democratic statehood have changed at key historical intervals since 1945. It argues that a sociological approach is needed to address conceptual deficits and explain how the mechanisms of democratic statehood can be updated today.
List of contents
Introduction
1 Reconsidering the theoretical preconditions of modern democratic statehood: on mediated unity and overarching legal-political form
2 Mediated unity in question: on the relation between law, politics, and other social systems in modern societies
3 Functional differentiation
and mediated unity in question: looming constitutional conflicts between the de-centralist logic of FD and the bio-political steering of austerity and global governance
4 Dilemmas of contemporary statehood: on the sociological paradoxes of weak dialectical formalism and embedded neo-liberalism
5 Re-thinking inclusion beyond unity and mediation beyond discretionary steering: on social systems and societal constitutions
Conclusion: democratic state, capitalist society, or dysfunctional differentiation?
Index
About the author
Darrow Schecter is Professor in Critical Theory and Modern European History at the University of Sussex
Summary
Rearticulating critical theory with a contemporary focus, this book investigates how the conditions of democratic statehood have changed at key historical intervals since 1945. It argues that a sociological approach is needed to address conceptual deficits and explain how the mechanisms of democratic statehood can be updated today. -- .
