Violence And Democracy

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Violence and Democracy
In this provocative book, John Keane calls for a fresh understanding of the vexed relationship between democracy and violence. Taking issue with the common-sense view that ‘human nature’ is violent, Keane shows why mature democracies do not wage war upon each other, and why they are unusually sensitive to violence. He argues that weneed to think more discriminatingly about the origins of violence, its consequences, its uses and remedies. He probes the disputed meanings of the term violence, and asks why violence is the greatest enemy of democracy, and why today’s global ‘triangle of violence’ is tempting politicians to invoke undemocratic emergency powers. Throughout, Keane gives prominence to ethical questions, such as thecircumstances in which violence can be justified, and argues that violent behaviour and means of violence can and should be ‘democratised’ – made publicly accountable to others, so encouraging efforts to erase surplus violence from the world. John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster. Born in Australia and educated at the universities of Adelaide, Toronto and Cambridge,he is a frequent contributor to radio programmes and newspapers and magazines around the world. Among his books are The Media and Democracy (1991), which has been translated into more than twenty languages; the prize-winning biography Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995); Civil Society: Old ´ Images, New Visions (1998); a biography of power, Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (1999); andGlobal Civil Society? (2003). He was recently Karl Deutsch Professor of Political Science at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and a Fellow of the influential London based think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research. He is currently writing a full-scale history of democracy – the first for over a century.

c o n t e m p o r a ry p o l i t i c a l t h e o ry
Series Editor Ian ShapiroEditorial Board Russell Hardin Stephen Holmes Jeffrey Isaac John Keane Elizabeth Kiss Susan Okin Phillipe Van Parijs Philip Pettit As the twenty-first century begins, major new political challenges have arisen at the same time as some of the most enduring dilemmas of political association remain unresolved. The collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War reflect a victory for democratic and liberalvalues, yet in many of the Western countries that nurtured those values there are severe problems of urban decay, class and racial conflict, and failing political legitimacy. Enduring global injustice and inequality seem compounded by environmental problems, disease, the oppression of women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and the relentless growth of the world’s population. In suchcircumstances, the need for creative thinking about the fundamentals of human political association is manifest. This new series in contemporary political theory is needed to foster such systematic normative reflection. The series proceeds in the belief that the time is ripe for a reassertion of the importance of problem-driven political theory. It is concerned, that is, with works that are motivated bythe impulse to understand, think critically about, and address the problems in the world, rather than issues that are thrown up primarily in academic debate. Books in the series may be interdisciplinary in character, ranging over issues conventionally dealt with in philosophy, law, history and the human sciences. The range of materials and the methods of proceeding should be dictated by theproblem at hand, not the conventional debates or disciplinary divisions of academia. Other books in the series Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds.) ´ Democracy’s Value Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds.) ´ Democracy’s Edges Brooke A. Ackerly Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism Clarissa Rile Hayward De-Facing Power John Kane The Politics of Moral Capital Ayelet Shachar...