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Constitutional democracy addresses the widely held belief that liberal democracy embodies an uneasy compromise of incompatible values: those of liberal rights on the one hand, and democratic equality on the other. Liberalism is said to compromise democracy, while democracy is said to endanger the values of liberalism. It is these theses that János Kis examines and tries to refute. Making the assumption that the alleged conflict is to be resolved at the level of institutions, he outlines a new theory of constitutional democracy. A wide range of problems encountered in constitutional democracy are discussed, such as the popular vote, popular sovereignty, and non-elected justices. The volume is composed of three parts. Part One, "Public Good and Civic Virtue", revisits the debate between liberals and democrats on how to interpret the democratic vote. In Part Two, "Liberal Democracy", the author proves that on the level of principles there is no incompatibility between liberalism and democracy and that liberal theory can demonstrate that democratic values follow from fundamental liberal values. In Part Three, "Constitutional Adjudication in a Democracy", the compatibility of democracy and judicial or constitutional review is analyzed and a theory of constitutionalism is outlined. This volume appeals to scholars in political philosophy, political science, and constitutional law, but is also recommended to all those interested in liberal and democratic theory, and the transition to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Intro -- Contents -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 The problem at first sight -- 1.2 A political debate -- 1.3 A brief outline of the argument -- 2. The circumstances of politics -- 2.1 Two faces of politics -- 2.2 Insufficient compliance -- 2.3 Preliminary remarks on politics as a moral problem -- 3. Realism: the unconstrained thesis -- 3.1 Machiavelli's paradox -- 3.2 Explaining the paradox -- 3.3 From explanation towards solution -- 3.4 Hobbes's treatment of the laws of nature -- 3.5 Generalizing Machiavelli's conception -- 3.6 The thesis of realism -- 3.7 Transition to the thesis of indirect motivation -- 4. Indirect motivation: the narrow thesis -- 4.1 Hume's knave -- 4.2 Kant's "nation of devils" -- 4.3 Virtue replaced by self-interest -- 4.4 Difficulties with the classical theory -- 5. Outlines of a neo-classical theory -- 5.1 The thesis of realism constrained -- 5.2 The thesis of indirect motivation extended -- 5.3 "…to publicly let his opinion known" -- 5.4 Summary -- 6. Realism: the constrained thesis -- 6.1 The ethics of responsibility -- 6.2 A principle of accountability -- 6.3 The constraint: its content and scope -- 6.4 Institutional rules -- 6.5 Willy Brandt's resignation -- 7. Indirect motivation: the wide thesis -- 7.1 Common deliberation and strategic interaction -- 7.2 Deliberative democracy: internal limits -- 7.3 Truth and democracy -- 7.4 Deliberation in indirect motivation -- 7.5 Populism -- 7.6 The Spiegel affair -- 8. Dirty hands in politics -- 8.1 A quasi-Weberian argument -- 8.2 The "Catholic" model -- 8.3 A fresh start -- 8.4 "Democratic dirty hands" -- 8.5 The moral risks from disagreement -- 8.6 Tony Blair's war -- 9. Dirty hands and moral dilemmas -- 9.1 Moral dilemmas: the tragic account -- 9.2 The moral doubts account -- 9.3 The tragic account revisited: moral residues -- 9.4 Dirty hands.

"This book addresses the widely held belief that liberal democracy embodies an uneasy compromise of incompatible values: those of liberal rights in the one hand, and democratic equality on the other. Liberalism is said to compromise democracy, while democracy is said to endanger the values of liberalism. It is these theses that Janos Kis examines and tries to refute."--Jacket

This paper systematises the works of György Márkus into two or possibly three periods. These emphasise the underlying consistency of purpose and interpreting theoretical interests throughout the oeuvre. despite the changing and socio-political forms and language games, all three share common features. These stages move from this initial critique of Orthodox Marxism employing the intellectual rigor of analytical and a philosophical anthropology to an investigation of the internal contradictions in Marx's mature economic writings. to a final post-marxist phase after he left Hungary dominated by continual philosophical themes and a social democratic political perspective.

It is a central claim of György Márkus's philosophy of (modern) culture that the Enlightenment project ended up in deep, apparently irresolvable antinomies. But, unlike the majority of 'postmodern' thinkers, Márkus insists that the commitments of the Enlightenment cannot and should not be given up. This tension between the failure of the Enlightenment to produce a society of free and equal persons, each leading their lives autonomously, drawing on the resources of rational high culture, and the impossibility and undesirability of the abandonment of the commitments of the Enlightenment finds an expression in what Márkus calls 'the antinomies of late modernity'. This paper offers an interpretation of Márkus's conception; it identifies a certain ambiguity in Márkus's use of the term 'antinomies' (a wobbling among three different senses as 'pairs of opposites', 'conflicts of values' and 'conceptual incoherence'), and suggests that Márkus's ambition is compatible with maintaining the first two but is failed by the third one which should, therefore, be abandoned.

There is a widespread agreement in modern democracies that a state should not force its citizens to lead lives they do not endorse themselves. It is also generally agreed that state acts should not be justified by appealing to the authority of religious books. Such claims are often reformulated as holding that state action should be neutral with respect to the ideals of the good life, or that the justification of state acts should be neutral with respect to basic beliefs. But does the use of the term neutral add anything important to the original wording? Does it point to a common principle - a principle of state neutrality (PSN) - that unites such judgments? If it does, what normative work PSN is supposed to do? What is its basis? What are the things towards which it requires the acts of the relevant type to be neutral? Such questions call for a theory of neutrality. The theory of neutrality has its natural home in the liberal tradition. Liberalism had a neutralist bent since its beginnings. But a systematic account of PSN was not laid out before the 1970s and '80s when John Rawls and others restated the foundations of liberal theory. While particular neutrality judgments are widely accepted, the general conception of liberal neutrality elicited strong critical reactions. Some of the critiques took liberalism's commitment to neutrality as evidence that the liberal view of the individual, society, and politics is deeply flawed. Others attacked liberal neutrality as reflecting a mistaken interpretation of what liberalism really is about. The debate subsided in the last decade or so, without settling, however, on a standard view. State neutrality remains a controversial idea. This article tries to spell out its main tenets and to explain how they hang together. It examines the central objections, and explores revisions that may enhance the theory's defensibility.