Démocraties en crise

co-authored with William J. Novak and Stephen W. Sawyer, Tocqueville Review XXXIII, no. 2 (December 2012): 7-18.

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 2017

Philosophers, sociologists and political scientists may analyse political crises by looking at the relationship between the liberal and democratic pillars of liberal-democratic regimes. Social questioning of representation (abstention, apathy and protest) is a democratic response to the failure of the liberal pillar to democratise access to political power, therefore, the crisis of liberalism. M. K. Gandhi developed an alternative theory based on intercultural perspectives and on local, ethical communities. Through Boaventura de Sousa Santos' "epistemologies of the South", this article analyses how Gandhi's work can be mobilised to foster democratisation theory. The study contends that to overcome the crises, democratisation of the liberal pillar is both paramount and achievable with a new interplay of the state and civil society.

2007

Introduction Ma recherche a tente de maintenir qu'il y a eu une transition de la democratisation de la culture a la democratie culturelle, au sujet du developpement de la politique culturelle francaise. Cette demonstration merite que nous considerions l'evolution de cette mediation culturelle a partir de l'annee 1959, lorsque le premier ministere culturel du monde a ete cree en France. Le but de cette etude etait de souligner le fait que la politisation de la culture a precise le besoin d'un dialogue inevitable qui doit etre engage entre les personnes et l'Etat au sujet des cultures. Par consequent, c'est reellement une approche qui vise a argumenter au sujet des differentes manieres politiques de mediatiser des cultures, notamment et selon notre sujet, les cultures classique et populaires. Methodologie Avec l'aide d'un corpus de rapports oraux et de faits historiques, j'ai eu la volonte de critiquer l'ideologie et les actions du gouvernement ...

esse arts + opinions, 2018

2005

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of material published in this Working Paper, the Crisis States Research Centre and LSE accept no responsibility for the veracity of claims or accuracy of information provided by contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher nor be issued to the public or circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

L’Athènes antique a porté la démocratie à un niveau supérieur à tout État précédant l’époque moderne, et était sans conteste la pionnière culturelle de son époque. Elle est à juste titre célèbre pour ses prouesses politiques et culturelles. Toutefois, on connaît moins ses extraordinaires réussites militaires, or Athènes a transformé l’art de la guerre et est devenue l’un des superpouvoirs du monde antique. L’une des raisons principales de ce succès semble être la démocratie. En effet, l'impact militaire de la démocratie athénienne était double: la performance d’orateurs et de dramaturges issus de l'élite devant un public n'y appartenant pas a engendré une culture guerrière, encourageant de plus en plus d’Athéniens à s'engager dans les forces armées et à voter pour la guerre. Cette tendance était compensée par les débats rigoureux sur la guerre qu’entretenait la démocratie athénienne, réduisant ainsi le risque de ce militarisme culturel. Ces phénomènes ont également facilité les réformes militaires, et encouragé la prise d’initiative par les généraux, les hoplites et les marins. Les politologues ont longtemps considéré la démocratie athénienne comme une source d’idées novatrices. Aujourd’hui, ils ne peuvent expliquer de manière satisfaisante les pratiques guerrières des démocraties modernes. Par conséquent, l’histoire antique peut apporter aux sciences politiques de nouvelles pistes de recherche sur la manière dont la démocratie influence les relations internationales contemporaines.

European Journal of Political Theory, 2005

2012

Democratic Multiplicity: Perceiving, Enacting and Integrating Democratic Diversity, 2022

Nelems argues that today’s democratic morbidity can be located in the ways it reproduces an individualist ontology to undemocratizing effects. Viewed through this lens, the growing backlashes against democracy appear as a symptom, not a cause of democracy’s crisis. However, the boundaries and enactments of representative democracies have long been troubled, stretched and shaped by democratizing processes and movements that reference an ontology of intra-being. Nelems proposes the “ecocycle” within the living ecosystems of tree canopies as a relational model of intra-being through which we might re-examine and re-imagine democratizing and undemocratizing processes. The ecocycle’s two “traps” of poverty and rigidity offer critical insights into the points of connect and disconnect between these processes, as well as the relationship between the lifeways they generate. In their porous, dynamic, entangled, and grounded relationality, tree canopies offer pathways by which the roots of a constellation of democracies might be deparochialized with a view to leveraging the transformative potential of other/wise democracies.

2007

We can begin by recognizing that today, on the national as well as the world stage, dealing with cultural diversity is calling into question modern political concepts like republic, nation or democracy. It is forcing us to redefine them. The phenomenon of population movements, the demand for recognition of indigenous people's rights, especially in some Latin American countries, or the conflicts arising from claims to regions' right to life and identity -as in the case of the town of Gualeguaychú in Argentina -all these challenge the logic of the nation state and its sovereignty as well as the republican principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. To borrow Etienne Balibar's phrase, these issues push back the frontiers of democracy.