TUTORIAL 2
THE IDEAS BEHIND ANGLO-AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Lecture: The Political Ideas of English, American, and European Democracies
A commitment to Democracy has come to be a shared assumption in most of the developed and developing world. However that commitment is bought at the price of a diversity of views as to what democracy consists in.
Democracy is
First world democracy is often thought of as a relatively uniform governmental system with local variations. There are in fact major differences in the ideas that underpinned the emergence of these governments. Some political scientists think these are less important than the ways in which the different governments have now to operate in the context of similar social and economic environments and can be thought of as systemically similar. Others consider that the different underpinning ideas have an deep and continuing influence on the political culture. What do you think?
Some features of the different democratic ideas
English: Unified, Historical, Anglican, Gradualist, balanced, hierarchical, positive,
American: Federal, Presentist, Non-conformist, Fixed, division of powers, meritocratic
French: Unitary, Secular, Populist, egalitarian.
Questions for discussion:
1.If popular sovereignty is central to democracy how do the various democracies inhibit the operation of popular will and are they right to do so?
2.Can England be a democracy when all its citizens remain subjects of a monarch?
3.How do their attitudes towards founding and history affect the different democracies?
Reading Primary:
You may be interested to know that there is a single site from which texts on philosophy on the Internet can be discovered. EpitemeLinks.com maintain it. If you are following one of the Philosophy programmes or Political Theory, it is invaluable. http://epistemelinks.com/Main/MainText.asp
Lyman Tower Sergeant Contemporary Political Ideologies 9th edition Wadsworth 1993 Chapter 3 "The principles of Democracy"
R.A.Dahl On Democracy Yale Up 1998 Part 3 especially "Actual Democracy"
ENGLAND:
Selections from Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (pp.117-121, 149-154, 194, in Penguin ed.) http://www.knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/works/burke/reflections/reflections.html
Quotations and a biography of Burke are available at: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Burke.htm
A critical article on Burke by Joseph Baldacchino, President of the National Humanities Institute from Modern Age, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring 1983) is available at http://www.nhinet.org/burke.htm
AMERICA:
Declaration of Independence (1776), The American Constitution of 1787 . These and other related documents can all be found at the Avalon project at Yale http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/constpap.htm
Federalist 1 and 10
The Bill of Rights (1791)
These can be found at the same Website towards the foot of the index page
FRANCE: Selection from Rousseau The Social Contract: Bk I, chs 5-9 & Bk II Chs 1-4
(pp 173-189 in the Everyman edition.)Or see a simliar selection at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Rousseau-soccon.html
lots of Rousseau links at: http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Quad/5889/rousseau.htm
Selection from Abbe Sieyes What is the Third Estate? Available at:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sieyes.html
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