Suchergebnisse

A review and application of Degenerations of Democracy, by Craig Calhoun, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, and Charles Taylor (hereafter, CGT); Liberalism and Its Discontents, by Francis Fukuyama; and How Democracies Live, by Stein Ringen. A strengthened liberal democratic culture is essential for the health and vitality of democracy. This culture is made up of three components: a cluster of liberal values (rule of law, freedom, equality, and reason), a democratic governing system grounded in popular sovereignty, and a collective experience of shared respect for liberal values and democratic institutions. Has this culture lost its strength? Is the collective experience and belief in democratic legitimacy disappearing? Are liberal values increasingly contested? All of the theorists under review address these questions. And for all, the answer is "yes, but…." They make strikingly similar arguments about the sources of this culture's strength, the causes of its current weakness, and how it can be strengthened. The general thrust of these books is this: a strong liberal democracy rests on three cultural foundations: the strength of social bonds, the level of deliberative civil discourse, and the level of economic equality. The main challenge to this threefold foundation's strength is neoliberalism, which all authors agree has led to liberal democracy's decline. I draw on this argument as a guide to assess the strength of liberal democracy in a small population living in rural Alpine County, California. I find that although it is relatively small and isolated, the drivers of democratic decline have found their way into this tiny community. Some aspects of liberal democratic culture have remained strong (voter turnout and volunteerism are high, and many citizens serve in elected office and on government committees); others, however, have weak roots that were never cultivated and continue to weaken further (equality, inclusion, open debate). Finally, I suggest that to strengthen liberal democracy, citizens must participate in it and leaders must work for the good of the entire community, not just the few.

Germany's growing weight on the world stage is indisputable, and its foreign policy is exceptional among powerful states. This article argues that while the original vision of cooperative security and multilateralism guiding German policy was shaped by occupation, division, and weakness, it has shown astonishing resilience, even as Germany has regained sovereignty, unity, and power. For a weak and divided Federal Republic, a vision that eschewed the exercise of power ensured survival; for a strong united Germany, a vision that minimizes the role of power is revolutionary and controversial. I argue that this revolutionary policy is now the most effective one to meet the challenges of a transformed world marked by new and unconventional threats and risks—a world in which traditional measures of power have lost much of their usefulness in securing the national interest. Ironically, however, while the policy vision that downplays the role of power persists, Germany's material power has grown. Germany's renewed power position makes it an influential actor in an international system where perceptions of power still matter. And the old policy vision makes German foreign policy the most appropriate for solving new global problems whose solution defies power politics. This paradoxical combination of power and vision in Germany's postunification foreign policy has introduced a new and effective form of "normative power" in global politics.

What follows is a fictitious scenario, a "thought experiment," meant to project a particular future for Germany if certain assumptions hold. Scenarios are hypotheses that rest on a set of assumptions and one or two "wild cards." They can reveal forces of change that might be otherwise hidden, discard those that are not plausible, and describe the future of trends that are relatively certain. Indeed, scenarios create a particular future in the same way that counterfactual methods create a different past. Counterfactual methods predict how events would have unfolded had a few elements of the story been changed, with a focus on varying conditions that seem important and that can be manipulated. For instance, to explore the effects of military factors on the likelihood of war, one might ask: "how would pre 1914 diplomacy have evolved if the leaders of Europe had not believed that conquest was easy?" Or to explore the importance of broad social and political factors in causing Nazi aggression: "How might the 1930s have unfolded had Hitler died in 1932?" The greater the impact of the posited changes, the more important the actual factors that were manipulated. Assuming that the structure of explanation and prediction are the same, scenario writing pursues a similar method. But, instead of seeking alternative explanations for the past, scenarios project relative certainties and then manipulate the important but uncertain factors, to create a plausible story about the future.

German unification presents conceptual puzzles of which comparativists dream. Has this monumental change, which boils down to full German sovereignty, growth of German power, and the emergence of new domestic political interests, altered Germany's relationship to Europe? Is Germany withdrawing from or dominating European institutions? Does the new Germany still tread its well-worn postwar path of the model "European"? The questions are important for our understanding of the sources of policy change and continuity as well as the process of regional integration in general and the course of European integration in particular. In which issue areas has Germany's postunification policy broken with the past? Is the break caused by changes in domestic politics or the increase in the power of a unified and fully sovereign Germany? Have policy changes impeded or enhanced the speed and character of European unification? Are important continuities evident? If both policy continuity and change are present, why the variation? These are the questions Jeffrey Anderson tackles in this timely and important volume.

In 1991 Germany extended unilateral diplomatic recognition to Croatia and Slovenia in direct contravention of the preferences of its EC partners. In the context of Germany's postwar history of multilateralism in foreign policy, this was an unprecedented decision. As a case of defection from international cooperation, it requires explanation. This article explains how the German preference for recognition was formed and why Germany acted unilaterally when its partners had moved to adjust their policies to coordinate them with Germany's preferences. Defection from cooperation in this case is best explained as a two-level game: the source of Germany's preference for diplomatic recognition of these republics is traced to domestic political factors; its unilateral action is traced to regime weaknesses leading to negotiating failures in a changing post—cold war international environment.