Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;In this work I attempt to explore and correct a misconception of democracy. Standard accounts of democracy adopt a functional/normative approach and focus upon ether the institutional mechanisms for the fair and peaceful resolution of conflicts, or upon the moral opportunities of citizenship which the Liberal Democratic State provides, or upon the intrinsic benefits of political participation. The adoption of these perspectives leads to an account of democracy in which the citizen is seen as the holder of nominal political power. That this obstructs our understanding of democracy can be seen by asking what would be required in order to further democratise political agency, independently of extending democratic practice into non-expressly political life-spheres. The answer to this question requires a conception of the citizen as exercising effective political power; and only from this point can we construct the institutions within which such power is to be exercised. The task is that of elaborating a concept of democracy which is centred on the citizen as the holder and exerciser of effective political power; i.e. one grounded on a 'rich' conception of citizenship. ;The attempt to elaborate a bottom-up theory of democracy, grounded on a conception of the citizen as the holder and exerciser of effective political power, represents a radical challenge to the pluralist conception of the Liberal Democratic State. That challenge, however, need not be external to liberalism. I argue that the eunomic strain of utopian thought, as represented by Thomas More's Utopia, offers a competing liberal conception of the State. The analysis of the Utopia is set within the context of More's life and leads to the identification of the 'utopian project' as the attempt to stimulate the desire for political reform by extending the bounds of plausibility with respect to political possibilities. I conclude with the attempt to defend utopianism against both its liberal pluralist and its Marxian critics and argue that there is a need for a utopian element within Marxian socialism