Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Why the Constitution Needs Defending Today -- 1 Constitutional Critiques: The Reemergence of Jeffersonian Constitutional Angst -- 2 The Preamble, Then and Now: A More Perfect Union -- 3 Governing Institutions -- 4 Amendments and Interpretations -- Conclusion: Cults, Crises, Conventions, and Crossroads -- Bibliography -- Index

The present article discusses the further spreading of democracy as a key component for the Obama administration and Congress in the US. As a strategic objective, tactical instrument, and moral impulse, abandoning democracy promotion would be a grievous error for Washington if it is indeed serious about preserving and enhancing institutional liberalism and, moreover, reviving the centrality of its leadership role within a purportedly 'post-American' world. What needs to alter, however, is not so much the substance of the ultimate goal, whose validity remains the subject of broad consensus within the US and throughout the greater developed world. Rather, the role of democracy promotion, within the general contours of US foreign policy requires revisiting and refinement. As a matter of urgency, a principal feature of this revision should be the development of a Concert of Liberal Democracies (CLD) as a formally organized, well resourced, and institutionalized forum for international collaboration, consultation, and collective action. Such a concert would clarify the choices facing the world and relieve the US of its lonely responsibility of assuring global public goods, while providing the surest route to meaningful democracy promotion in the future. O. van Zijl