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When the Wind Blows: Planning for Nuclear War in the 1980s
Read more: When the Wind Blows: Planning for Nuclear War in the 1980sJim Gledhill on the organisation of civil defence in Scotland amidst Cold War tensions.
The US and UK as embedded democracies
Benjamin M. Studebaker evaluates the realistic chances of anti-democratic revolution in the United States and the United Kingdom
Intergenerational justice: can liberal democracies govern for the future?
Is it possible to attain democratic legitimacy regarding long-term policies when the majority of people still vote for politicians that privilege short-term preferences?
Kelsenians, war and peace are calling (yet again)
by Robert Schuett I often get asked: ‘What would Hans Kelsen say about the state of democracy and world politics today?’ ‘How do we make sense of Carl Schmitt’s comeback in the twenty-first century?’ And ‘considering President Vladimir Putin’s war…
A Sociologist and a Philosopher Attempt to Learn from COVID
Edward Avery-Natale, interviewed by Colin C. Smith My childhood friend Dr. Edward Avery-Natale is a professor of contemporary sociology, while I am a lecturer in ancient philosophy. Although Ed studies the modern world and I the ancient, we are often…
Democracy, Workers’ Councils, and Political Thought: What Can We Learn from Events?
When I first grappled with the questions that would in time turn into my Edinburgh University Press book Visions of Council Democracy: Castoriadis, Lefort, Arendt...
Spinoza and democracy in peril
By Dan Taylor In October 2020, in the days leading up to the US Presidential Election, over 130 leading historians of fascism signed an open letter. They warned that democracy today is deeply imperilled. It is either ‘withering or in…
The world of Spinoza’s Theological–Political Treatise
By Dan Taylor Baruch Spinoza’s Theological–Political Treatise, published anonymously in 1670, quickly turned Europe upside-down. Dismissed by one contemporary as a book ‘forged in hell by the Devil himself’, it argued that for societies to endure conflict and flourish, they…
Post-Politicisation and the Return of the Political
Erik Swyngedouw and Japhy Wilson explore the parallax gap between struggles for democracy against a backdrop of growing political disaffection.
The Political and/or Politics
By Jean-Luc Nancy “As an opening, a quick overview: if our politics [la politique] is no longer simply and strictly that of sovereign states, then it is no longer ‘politics’ as we have known it for a very long time…