COURSE DESCRIPTION

In the past and in the present, democratic order, and its prioritization of values such as equality, political participation and an orientation to the common, has been subject to much discussion both by its proponents and critics. But what is democracy? Does equality, one of democracy’s constitutive values, lie in tension with the value of liberty, and can that tension pose a challenge to the sustenance of democracy? What are the kinds of challenge, internal and external, that can afflict democratic orders, and does that matter, in the face of alternatives like authoritarianism and oligarchy? Keeping in mind the aforementioned, the course will interrogate how the values of a democratic order relate to other themes that are significant for discussions of political community — namely, justice, freedom, diversity, conflict, and coercion. This will be done by focusing on concepts like political membership, deliberation and representation, and via consideration of the place of associational activity, including political parties, for sustaining democratic political community. The course materials will engage these issues from diverse methodological perspectives with a view to reckoning with complexities of democracy.

The course is not envisioned as a defence of democracy.  Rather, it aims to flesh out the normative commitments associated with democracy, mainly to know, acknowledge and thresh those commitments.  Whether one wants to criticize democracy or defend it, it is important to know the values that constitute democracy, and it is a sound familiarity with those values that the course intends to enable.

The hope is that the course can enable access to conceptual resources for understanding, unravelling and theorising phenomena conventionally labeled as ‘empirical.’ Methodologically, the course rejects the separability of (i) fact and value, and (ii) of the normative and the empirical. Practices that constitute empirical phenomena are not random; and they can be coherently understood by an analysis of the values that they are guided by.  Values (and value-based commitments) and concepts have shared significance for the comprehension of social and political life which spans the domains of both theory (the alleged realm of value) and practice (the alleged realm of fact).

The course outline indicates session-wise readings; these readings, as well as some details of the evaluation pattern, are subject to alteration.  Students will be informed well in time about any changes.