Democratic Moments

Xavier Márquez is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Political Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of A Stranger’s Knowledge: Statesmanship, Philosophy and Law in Plato’s Statesman (2012) and of Non-democratic Politics: Authoritarianism, Dictatorship, and Democratization (2016).

This is an ambitious and exciting collection that begins to fill an enormous gap in political theory literature. Where much existing work in the field is content to present democracy - and "democratic moments"- as historically or paradigmatically Western, this volume breaks bold new ground in truly situating discussion of democracy across time and space. From this perspective there emerges a more creative, and certainly more accurate, picture of what democracy is, what it might be, and how it has been thought about in the course of human history - including not only work from the ancient Greeks and Romans but also hugely influential writers such as the Abbé Sieyes, Sun Yat-sen, and al-Farabi.

• Introduction, Xavier Márquez, Victoria, (University of Wellington, New Zealand)1. Herodotus’s Political Ecologies, Joel Alden Schlosser, (Bryn Mawr College, USA)2. Protagoras’s Cooperative Know-how, James Kierstead, (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)3. Aristotle on Democracy and Democracies, Kevin M. Cherry, (University of Richmond, UK)4. Cicero, On the Republic, W. Jeffrey Tatum, (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)5. Democracy without Elections: Popular Rule according to Alfarabi, Alexander Orwin, (Louisiana State University, USA)6. Consent and Popular Sovereignty in Medieval Political Thought: Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis, Takashi Shogimen, (University of Otago, New Zealand)7. Machiavelli’s Democratic Turn, Catherine H. Zuckert, (University of Notre Dame, USA)8. James Harrington and the Rule of King People, J. C. Davis, (University of East Anglia, UK)9. Baruch Spinoza: Radical Republican, Emma Cohen de Lara and Nathan Cooper, (Amsterdam University College, Netherlands)10. Thomas Paine and Democratic Contempt, Mario Feit, (Georgia State University, USA)11. Alexander Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow: The Defence of Natural Rights and the Right to Self-defence Andrew Kahn, (Oxford University, UK)12. Of Postmen and Democracy: Sieyès’s Theory of Representation, Lucia Rubinelli, (London School of Economics, UK)13. ‘Morals and Enlightenment’: Bolivar’s Virtuous Democracy in the Angostura Address, Guillermo Aveledo, (Universidad Metropolitana, Venezuela)14. The Puzzle of Political Leadership in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Ryan K. Balot and Zhichao Tong,(University of Toronto, Canada)15. ‘Family Selfishness’ and the Corruption of Public Virtue: Harriet Taylor Mill’s Enfranchisement of Women, Katherine Smits, (University of Auckland, New Zealand)16. Lenin: Soviet Democracy in 1917, Paul Blackledge, (London South Bank University, UK)17. Democracy in the Revolutionary thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Rosemary H. T. O’Kane, (Keele University, UK)18. Max Weber’s Charismatic Democracy, Xavier Márquez, (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)19. An Alternative Democracy: Dissent in Gandhi’s Great Trial of 1922 Anuradha Veeravalli, (Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla)20. Sun Yat-sen: People’s Democracy and Chinese Democracy Theresa Man Ling Lee, (University of Guelph, Canada)21. Hobson on Democracy and the Humanized Economy, Colin Tyler, (University of Hull, UK)22. A New Reading on Authority and Guardianship (wilayah): Ayatollah Muhammad Mahdi Shamsuddin, Hamid Mavani, (Claremont School of Theology, USA) Conclusion, Xavier Marquez, (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)