Andrew Arato

In the first essay, Habermas himself succinctly presents the centerpiece of his theory: his proceduralist paradigm of law. The following essays comprise elaborations, criticisms, and further explorations by others of the most salient issues addressed in his theory. The distinguished group of contributors—internationally prominent scholars in the fields of law, philosophy, and social theory—includes many who have been closely identified with Habermas as well as some of his best-known critics. The final essay is a thorough and lengthy reply by Habermas, which not only engages the most important arguments raised in the preceding essays but also further elaborates and refines some of his own key contributions in _Between Facts and Norms_. This volume will be essential reading for philosophers, legal scholars, and political and social theorists concerned with understanding the work of one of the leading philosophers of our age. These provocative, in-depth debates between Jürgen Habermas and a wide range of his critics relate to the philosopher's contribution to legal and democratic theory in his recently published _Between Facts and Norms_. Drawing upon his discourse theory, Habermas has elaborated a novel and powerful account of law that purports to bridge the gap between democracy and rights, by conceiving law to be at once self-imposed and binding.

This book focuses on Andrew Arato’s democratic theory and its relevance to contemporary issues such as processes of democratization, civil society, constitution-making, and the modern Executive. Andrew Arato is -both globally and disciplinarily- a prominent thinker in the fields of democratic theory, constitutional law, and comparative politics, influencing several generations of scholars. This is the first volume to systematically address his democratic theory. Including contributions from leading scholars such as Dick Howard, Ulrich Preuss, Hubertus Buchstein, Janos Kis, Uri Ram, Leonardo Avritzer, Carlos de la Torre, and Nicolás Lynch, this book is organized around three major areas of Arato´s influence on contemporary political and social thought. The first section offers a comprehensive view of Arato’s scholarship from his early work on critical theory and Western Marxism to his current research on constitution-making and its application. The second section shifts its focus from the previous, comprehensive approach, to a much more specific one: Arato´s widespread influence on the study of civil society in democratization processes in Latin America. The third section includes a previously unpublished work, ‘A conceptual history of dictatorship (and its rivals,)’ one of the few systematic interrogations on the meaning of a political form of fundamental relevance in the contemporary world. Critical Theory and Democracy will be of interest to critical and social theorists, and all Arato scholars.

How is it possible, that after the exhilarating start of democratic transitions in the late 1980s and 1990s, today authoritarian–populist options seem to be emerging in many new, as well as old democracies? Why does populism, that in most of its historical varieties has been anti-institutional and anti-procedural, turn to constitution making and constitutional rhetorics as one of its main arenas of contestation? The answers to these questions are related. In the following, in the form of six theses, I start with what I mean by ‘populism’. Next, I wish to point to the two deficits of liberal democracy that provides the context for the rise of populist politics. These deficits according to me have been intensified in many of the new democracies. I continue by stressing populisms own deficits as the reason for turning to the constituent power. I end with a consideration of what liberal democrats can do to address the causes of the populist temptation.

Thirty or even fifty years ago, the apology on the Left for the Soviet Union was direct. Today no one can read what the Webbs wrote in the '30s or what Sartre wrote in the early ‘50s without laughing, though we should recall the seriousness of the crimes they managed to represent — and, for the relevant audience, successfully. We have come a long way from all that, or so it seems. Actually, left-wing writing these days on the whole is still apologetic — even if in indirect forms. Of the two major types of exercises in mystification, the one postulates an essential parallelism between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as forms of domination, as centers of imperial systems, in one recent version as “exterminist” social formations.

The article has several theses. First we propose that there is a new method of constitution-making today, the two-stage, post-sovereign one perfected in South Africa. Second, we admit the path-dependent nature, and difficult pre-conditions, of this method. Third, we maintain that even when the full method is unlikely in a given context, its legitimating principles nevertheless can play a role through international dissemination. We explore that possibility in the context of the projected comprehensive reform of Turkey, and the constitutional revolution in Egypt. It is our belief that in these contexts one can learn both from successes of the new method and also from its failures typified by the Hungarian case that we briefly present. We are unfortunately not optimistic about the success of the new method especially where actors maintain their strong belief in the constituent power of the popular sovereign. This is likely to be the case in revolutions, but can happen in reform or even during the last state of the post-sovereign method itself.