Democracy Archives - Page 20 of 55

Imagining a Post-Constitutional Political Culture

Amid a racial uprising and calls for “political revolution,” why pretend that our political disputes turn on the “best” reading of an eighteenth-century text, the Constitution?

October 12, 2021 • by Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn

Aziz Rana’s genealogy of American constitutional veneration overturns the conventional wisdom, not merely about the chronology, but also about the reasons for this worshipful attitude towards a document drafted in the late eighteenth century. At the same time, his forthcoming book, Rise of the Constitution, is politically explosive: for it ...

Imagining a Post-Constitutional Political Culture

Constitutional Politics

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Many American states have not only frequently amended their constitutions, but, at least as importantly, have replaced existing constitutions with presumably better, updated, ones

October 12, 2021 • by Sanford Levinson

“Veneration” is a term that James Madison used in Federalist 49, to express the kind of great respect he hoped the new Constitution he had helped write would command in the debate over ratification then raging in America. Yet as Aziz Rana reminds us, many of America’s most notable political ...

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Constitutional Politics

Why Americans Worship the Constitution

October 11, 2021 • by Aziz Rana

In the last two centuries, 220 countries have appeared on the global stage and, between them, they have produced a remarkable 900 written constitutions. The sheer numbers are telling: For the most part, societies treat their constitutions instrumentally. When these legal-political orders break down or social upheaval brings new elites and alliances ...

Europe & Central Asia

Goodbye Merkel, Hello … Who?

The German election and what’s to come

September 29, 2021 • by Nicolas Allié

One thing is clear about the 2021 German election: it is going to be consequential. Long-time chancellor and ostensible champion of democratic values, Angela Merkel, is leaving after 16 years in office. The consequences of this action are still uncertain. Germany’s electoral system is unique. Voters elect representatives to the German parliament, or Bundestag, and they cast two votes. The first is for who will represent ...

Democracy

“You Cannot Force Me to Look and Not to See”

Large-scale repression against students and the academic community in Belarus continues

September 13, 2021 • by Alaiza Pashkevich

A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not,not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.—John Locke, Second Treatise of Government Kids in ...

“You Cannot Force Me to Look and Not to See”

North America

9/10,11, and 12

The world was bigger then. Our two oceans provided us with the same illusion of protection our grandparents enjoyed

September 11, 2021 • by Ryan James Girdusky

It's not just that I am a man who was born and raised in New York City. It's not just that my family goes back generations here: my dad and his two brothers were cops who patrolled its streets, and my mom worked on the 97th floor of Tower One. ...

Europe & Central Asia

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

September 7, 2021 • by Maria Bucur and Kristen R. Ghodsee

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania. “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

North America

Backing Trump When He Is Out of Office Is…Expensive

As the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol begins its work, the Department of Justice invites Republican politicians who supported the insurrection to defend themselves

July 30, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

The ripples of the explosive Tuesday testimony that four police officers gave before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol continue to spread. Committee members are meeting this week to decide how they will proceed. Congress goes on recess during August, but ...

Backing Trump When He Is Out of Office Is…Expensive

Art & Design

How Charlie Brown Remained A “Good Man”

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz went to great lengths to avoid political controversy. But as culture became more political, he navigated that challenge with skill and grace

July 21, 2021 • by Blake Scott Ball

_____ Charlie Brown had a hard time choosing sides. This was always part of the humor of his character. It was also one of the many things he hated about himself. On New Year’s Eve 1965 Charlie Brown, the star of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, decided to change: he would be decisive, clear-cut, ...

Middle East & North Africa

20 Years of U.S. Occupation Was Brutal in Afghanistan—And So Will Be the Exit

Alongside the relief of ending the longest war in modern American history, we need to acknowledge the horrors of what we are leaving behind in Afghanistan

July 21, 2021 • by Sonali Kolhatkar

_____ When a reporter in early July asked Joe Biden a question about the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. president sniped back, saying, “I want to talk about happy things, man.” Biden revealed, perhaps unintentionally, that the situation in Afghanistan is anything but a happy topic. It might have been one ...

20 Years of U.S. Occupation Was Brutal in Afghanistan—And So Will Be the Exit

Democracy

On the Sociology of “Doing as If”

For Jeffrey Goldfarb

July 8, 2021 • by Daniel Dayan

_____ I taught with Jeff Goldfarb for many years, mostly at the New School, but also at Sciences Po, in Paris. Sometimes, as part of a curriculum, and some times for the mere pleasure of debating. It was a pleasure we pursued almost uninterruptedly for more than I0 years, inviting ourselves to each ...

Democracy

What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

July 7, 2021 • by Zeyno Ustun

_____ In the summer of 2013, I was about to start my graduate degree at The New School for Social Research. A month before I sat in Jeff Goldfarb’s contemporary sociology class, I was in Istanbul—protesting, resisting, and critically thinking with many others about our collective actions, media activism, and the ...

Democracy

Imagining a Post-Constitutional Political Culture

Amid a racial uprising and calls for “political revolution,” why pretend that our political disputes turn on the “best” reading of an eighteenth-century text, the Constitution?

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Many American states have not only frequently amended their constitutions, but, at least as importantly, have replaced existing constitutions with presumably better, updated, ones

Why Americans Worship the Constitution

Goodbye Merkel, Hello … Who?

The German election and what’s to come

“You Cannot Force Me to Look and Not to See”

Large-scale repression against students and the academic community in Belarus continues

9/10,11, and 12

The world was bigger then. Our two oceans provided us with the same illusion of protection our grandparents enjoyed

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

Backing Trump When He Is Out of Office Is…Expensive

As the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol begins its work, the Department of Justice invites Republican politicians who supported the insurrection to defend themselves

How Charlie Brown Remained A “Good Man”

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz went to great lengths to avoid political controversy. But as culture became more political, he navigated that challenge with skill and grace

20 Years of U.S. Occupation Was Brutal in Afghanistan—And So Will Be the Exit

Alongside the relief of ending the longest war in modern American history, we need to acknowledge the horrors of what we are leaving behind in Afghanistan

On the Sociology of “Doing as If”

For Jeffrey Goldfarb

What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

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