Future Of Liberal Democracy

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Description

Top scholars and practitioners from a variety of ideological perspectives consider liberal democracy and the Jeffersonian legacy, both in relation to key issues in the practice and theory of rights (human rights, individual rights) and in relation to key themes in political thought such as citizenship and participation that remain at the forefront of our debates about public life today.

Top scholars and practitioners from a variety of ideological perspectives consider liberal democracy and the Jeffersonian legacy, both in relation to key issues in the practice and theory of rights (human rights, individual rights) and in relation to key themes in political thought such as citizenship and participation that remain at the forefront of our debates about public life today.

The first section of this collection provides historical and theoretical perspectives on Jefferson's ideals and thought. The second section explores the key themes of sovereignty, citizenship, participation, and accountability. A concluding section analyzes the relevance and place of Jefferson's legacy and the fate of liberal democracy in today's world.

Contributors offer varying perspectives on questions such as: Is what is good for America good for the rest of the world? What are the constraints that exist on the global spread of democracy, liberal or otherwise?

Review:

These are powerful essays exploring the complexities of Jefferson's ideas and their relevance today as liberal democracies face an illiberal network of nations.

Any one interested in the origins of modern democratic thought and its pertinence to our world must read them. --Joyce Appleby, UCLA 'The Future of Liberal Democracy: Thomas Jefferson and the Contemporary World' offers a vigorous dialogue on what democracy means to different people. In doing so, it frames a key debate of our time, and gives Jefferson's ideals new life.

This collection will help us navigate the stormy waters to come. --Lee H. Hamilton, President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and former Chairman of the House Committee on International Relations. The Future of Liberal Democracy: Thomas Jefferson and the Contemporary World collects the seventeen papers presented at a scholarly conference in Bellagio, Italy, 2002, under the sponsorship of the International Center for Jefferson Studies, at Monticello, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

It may be read as a revisit after some fifty years to the controverted issue between American exceptionalism and the export of American democracy to the emerging new nations of the Third World, an issue that echoes forcefully in our day. The essays are a rich miscellany: Jefferson and modern nation-building; Jefferson and his philosophical contemporaries; Jefferson and citizenship and human rights everywhere.

All these efforts to analogize Jefferson to the world, while full of perplexities, are nevertheless valuable. In the end I am led to observe that the most precious liberty of all in Jefferson's canon, the liberty of religious conscience with itscorollary of separation of chuch and state, appears to have been largely 'lost in translation.' --Merril D.

Peterson