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A focus on the issues of class has provided much of the content of twentieth-century debates on democracy, with liberal democrats seeking to discount class differences and social democrats trying to find ways to eliminate them. Within this framework, attention has historically been given to such questions as the substantive conditions necessary to fulfill the promise of political equality, the appropriate scope of democratic decisionmaking, and the tension between an individualist politics of rights and a more collectivist notion of the common good. While these questions remain important, the context of the debate has shifted significantly during the past decade as perceptions of what differences should count for politics have changed. The preoccupation with class has weakened as other group differences have moved to the forefront of the agenda of democratic politics in the face of continuing second-class citizenship for women worldwide, the persistence of racial conflict in the U.S., and the emergence of ethnic hostilities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Tracing the author's own intellectual and political development during this period of change, the essays in this collection share two important common themes. On the one hand, they argue that we must give up on the yearning for undifferentiated unity as the basis for democratic politics. On the other hand, they point to the dangers of forgetting the continued salience of class and of abandoning all aspirations towards universality, which could lead to an individualist politics of self-interest or the reinforcement of merely local identities in which people can speak only to their immediate groups. Inspired by a vision of democracy through difference, Anne Phillips calls for a "politics of democratic engagement" that neither denies nor capitulates to the particularity of group identity but promotes the construction of broader community and solidarity through the active involvement of people trying to sort out their differences themselves.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Fraternity
• 2 So What's Wrong with the Individual?
• 3 Universal Pretensions in Political Thought
• 4 Citizenship and Feminist Theory
• 5 Democracy and Difference
• 6 Must Feminists Give up on Liberal Democracy?
• 7 The Promise of Democracy
• 8 Pluralism, Solidarity and Change
• Index

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CHOICE Review

Phillips, in this interesting collection of articles written between 1984-93, reflects on her transition from socialist feminism to a radical democratic pluralist feminism. She weaves her way through contemporary Anglo-American debates on democracy relying on feminists (Fraser, Gilligan, Young, Mendus, Pateman), antifoundationalists (Rorty, Walzer), and more mainstream theorists (Dahl, Rawls, MacIntyre, and Sandel). These theorists are confronted in terms of the insights they offer and limitations they pose for radicalizing the democratic project. Phillips does not see democracy as presently realized; the underrepresentation and marginalization of women and racial and ethnic minority groups challenge political equality. She is suspicious of consociationalism (elite accommodation of difference) and traditional forms of pluralism that do not understand the systematic political exclusion of women and minorities. Instead she calls for active and equal participation of all citizens, the unfulfilled promise of democracy. Her unwillingness to fully endorse postmodernism with its relativist implications, and her reluctance to jettison socialist insights regarding how economic powerlessness threatens democratic equality, makes this a timely reflection. General through faculty. E. Stavro-Pearce; Trent University

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Anne Phillips is Professor of Politics and Government at the City of London Polytechnic and author of several books, including Engendering Democracy (Penn State, 1991).