Suchergebnisse

In reply to Nederman I argue that in the Middle Ages monarchy and republicanism were not mutually exclusive, and that hierarchy and organicism were not specifically Christian ideas, and should not, therefore, be seen as the Christian element in republican thought. One should not assume that Christianity or any other historical ideology has an essential core of unchanging characteristics.

Contrary to a prevailing wisdom, the Christian ethos was at least as sympathetic to republicanism as it was to monarchy, especially to the primacy of the public welfare but also to corporate decision making. This can be seen in the early church, especially in the writings of St. Cyprian, in the medieval civic-communal movement, in conciliar constitutionalism, and in political Calvinism. Significant aspects of Rousseau's thought may be seen as a restatement of a Christian political dynamic.

Communes and communal thought are an essential part of the history of democracy. By recognizing this we can re-discover the connection between democracy and local, small-scale self-government, and see that democracy has a communitarian as well as a liberal foundation.

Alternatives to the traditional account of the origins of European democracy are considered. Benjamin Constant's (1988) interpretation of democracy as the means of realizing liberty ignores the significance of communalism & its integration into theories of democracy. A historical overview of communes & democracy from classical Athens (Greece) to medieval & Renaissance Europe is presented; specifically, the notion of communes in modern political theory, the theories of medieval philosophers Marsilius of Padua & Bartolus concerning popular sovereignty, & the role of Florence, Italy, in the development of Renaissance democracy are discussed. In addition, the development of communal democracy in ethnotribal communities, eg, England, & the importance of subsidiarity in distributing jurisdiction to different levels of government are explored. It is concluded that shifting power from the individual to the community ultimately enhances the power & freedom of all individuals. J. W. Parker

There were fundamental differences in political philosophy and culture between Islamic and western-Christian or European civilization in the period up to c.1500, notably concerning the nature of the political community, of religious law and of the mode of political discourse. Europe proved open to Greco–Roman influences and thus developed, as Islam did not, a notion of the legitimate secular state.

It is obvious that today the facts of international relations do notfitinto any general framework of which people are aware (perhaps they never have). As descriptions, concepts such as state, sovereignty, federation seem more than ever stabs in the dark. In prescriptive political theory, we are even more at sea. Old prescriptive certainties such as nationhood must be conceded to be at best the most provisional of guides to action. The interface between domestic sovereignty and international organisations (and what a wilderness of phenomena that term is supposed to describe) needs to be comprehended anew. This is urgent if we are to make sense of, and have a sense of direction through, the problems of the European Community, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, not to mention a host of problematic multi-ethnic polities as diverse as India and Iraq. Wherever we look in the world today, the relationship between 'state', 'nation' and 'community' seems to be in crisis: from the Balkans to Canada, from Scotland to Kurdistan. This no more has the appearance of an aberration from some historical norm than does the tie between state and nation in previous European history. It makes more sense to regard both as shifting patterns of collective human consciousnesses. The idea that there is something 'out there', 'given', that preordains human beings to live in nations, and nations t o form states, was certainly a myth; and as a myth had a certain real force. The problem today is, first, that the myth is reviving in some places at just the time when it is being swept aside in others (in parts of the European Community, for example); and, secondly, that the idea of imprescriptible national rights seems to be a postulate of democracy whenever the majority in a territory embrace it, and at the same time a recipe for carnage and the vilest known abrogation of all other human rights. The revival of this nationalist idea around 1990 has also to be set beside the real feelings of belonging that arise amongst groups other than nations; which, whenever they do have such a feeling of corporate identity, we may describe by the general term 'communities'.