This article describes the nature of ethical dilemmas in perioperative nursing practice. Using the Critical Incident Technique, common ethical dilemmas experienced by periop erative nurses are explored. The aim of the study was to elicit the ethical dilemmas that arise in perioperative nurses' practice. The study has a descriptive design and the data are critical incidents described by 48 anaesthetic nurses and 76 operating theatre nurses. An analysis of the critical incidents gave four domains of ethical dilemmas: those arising as (...) value conflicts in the intraoperative phase of surgery; those emanating from the patient's right of self- determination ; those arising in caring for patients; and those resulting from the alloca tion of scarce resources and the demands of increased effectiveness. (shrink)

This paper explores the transformation of martyrdom, a legitimate Islamic concept, into suicide terrorism. The authors argue that the original application, meaning, and glory of martyrs in Islam is violated by extremists' use of suicide terrorism that is being justified with the misappropriation of Islamic principles, narratives, and themes. That extremists are able to redefine martrydom and jihad--two terms that are hotly debated and a source of controversy in the Muslim world--creates not only tension among the West and Muslims, but (...) seeks to strip Islam of its true authenticity. The question of how to restore the fundamental values of classical Islam as well as the need to revive Islam in an effort to marginalize, if not eradicate, extremists is beginning to occur on a global scale. However, reversing the extremist ideology and strengthening moderate Islam will require a sustained effort and coordination among various Islamic groups, communities and countries to have a lasting effect in defeating suicide terrorists. (shrink)

Benhabib argues that since the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phase of global civil society which is governed by cosmopolitan norms of universal justice - norms which are difficult for some to accept as legitimate since they are in conflict with democratic ideals.

New-wave psychoneural reduction, a la Bickle and Churchland, conflicts with the way certain adaptation properties are individuated according to evolutionary biology. Such properties cannot be reduced to physical properties of the token items that have the adaptation properties. The New Wave may entail a form of individualism inconsistent with evolutionary biology. All of this causes serious trouble as well for Jaegwon Kim's thesis of the Causal Individuation of Kinds, his Weak Supervenience thesis, Alexander's Dictum, his synchronicity thesis that all psychological (...) kinds supervene on the contemporaneous physical states of the organism, Correlation Thesis, and indeed his Restricted Correlation Thesis. All these theses are strongly individualist, in the sense of entailing that ALL a thing's properties are determined by its own physical properties and relations, contrary to many properties in biology and psychology. (shrink)

The Clinton administration's revised rules regulating but not prohibiting the common practice in managed care of linking physician compensation with cost cutting and control of services demonstrates the complexity of ethical issues in managed care. As originally proposed, the federal guidelines on payment for Medicare and Medicaid services would have precluded any interrelationship between payment to physicians and delivery of services. Such a restriction would have gutted the primary mechanism in managed care plans to curb the unacceptably high cost of (...) healthcare delivery: making physicians directly responsible for cost control by placing them at direct financial risk. At first blush such a linkage seems to involve an obvious and irreconcilable conflict of interest. How can a physician be responsible for the well-being of a patient while at the same time aware that a proportion of his or her income is linked to the provision of cost-conscious care? (shrink)

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with (...) responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy. (shrink)

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with (...) responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy. (shrink)

Background:In recent years, operating theatre nurse students’ education focused on ethics, basic values and protecting and promoting the patients' dignity in perioperative practice. Health professionals are frequently confronted with ethical issues that can impact on patient’s care during surgery.Objective:The objective of this study was to present what operating theatre nursing students perceived and interpreted as undignified caring in perioperative practice.Research design:The study has a descriptive design with a hermeneutic approach. Data were collected using Flanagan’s critical incident technique.Participants and research context:Operating (...) theatre nurse students from Sweden and Norway participated and collected data in 2011, after education in ethics and dignity. Data consisting of 47 written stories and the text were analysed with hermeneutical text interpretation.Ethical considerations:The study was approved by the Karlstad University's Research Ethics Committee.Findings:The findings show careless behaviour and humiliating actions among health professionals. Health professionals commit careless acts by rendering the patient invisible, ignoring the patient’s worry and pain and treating the patient as an object. They also humiliate the patient when speaking in negative terms about the patient’s body, and certain health professionals blame the patients for the situation they are in. Health professionals lack the willingness and courage to protect the patient’s dignity in perioperative practice.Discussion:In the discussion, we have illuminated how professional ethics may be threatened by more pragmatic and utilitarian arguments contained in regulations and transplant act.Conclusion:The findings reveal that patients were exposed to unnecessary suffering; furthermore, the operating theatre nurse students suffered an inner ethical conflict due to the undignified caring situations they had witnessed. (shrink)

This book examines links between post-conflict security, peace and development in Africa, Latin America, Europe and New Zealand. Young peace researchers from the Global South as well as from Italy and New Zealand address in case studies traumas in Northern Uganda, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants in the Ivory Coast, economic and financial management of terrorism in Kenya, organised crime in Brazil, mental health issues in Colombia, macro realism in Europe and global defence reforms within the military apparatus since 1990. (...) The book reviews linkages between regional stability, development and peace in post-conflict societies while adding on to the post 2015 international agenda and discusses linkages between peace, security and development. (shrink)

I assess the force of a justification for post-conflict amnesties that is aimed at overcoming the most common objection to their conferral: that they entail retributive injustice. According to this justification, retributivists ought to consider amnesties to be justified because they are analogous to plea bargains, and because retributivists need not consider plea bargains to be unacceptable. I argue with reference to the 2001 Timor-Leste immunity scheme that amnesties conditional upon perpetrators’ not only admitting guilt and confessing but also making (...) reparations may count as plea bargains. I show that plea bargains providing sentence discounts in return for guilty pleas, allowing offenders who accept these bargains to be punished in the absence of trials, and plea bargains offering leniency in punishment in exchange for offenders pleading guilty and providing testimony or other incriminating evidence against superiors or accomplices, may be consonant with versions of retributivism that allow less than the full measure of an offender’s deserved punishment to be exacted where necessary to maximise or expand deserved punishment overall. I argue that amnesties that are also plea bargains may be considered justified by plea bargain-defending retributivists. So too may amnesties conferred in exchange for perpetrators’ admitting guilt and providing incriminating testimony or other evidence against their superiors and accomplices, some of which count as plea bargains, since they too could in some cases maximise or expand deserved punishment. (shrink)

This study investigates the significance of understanding police perspectives on community policing as a means of addressing insecurity, particularly within the context of localised and asymmetrical conflicts. It highlights the pivotal role of the police in shaping community security and the substantial impact they can have (positive or negative) in fragile environments. The study contends that the localised nature of the community policing effectively addresses security and development issues and empowering citizens. Qualitative interviews were conducted with senior police in Islamabad, (...) to assess the implementation and potential impacts of community policing in Pakistan’s Federal Capital Territory. The findings reveal how the historical foundations of police structures and operations – which date back to the colonial period – have led to the promotion of fear, mistrust and manipulation under successive regimes. Despite these challenges, the findings are promising highlighting enhanced human security through context-specific community policing. Finally, the paper argues that the movement towards community-oriented policing marks a departure from the control of elites within state systems, and encourages values such as local ownership, social cohesion, mutual engagement, accountability and agency. These developments have profound implications for global security and justice. (shrink)

This article attempts to demonstrate that the use of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is retributive in praxis to address crimes against humanity in post-conflict societies without concurrent comprehensive political restorative processes, is ineffective. This article uses the Kenyan case after the 2007/8 post-election violence (PEV) to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of a retributive justice approach toward social reconstruction. The main weakness of the ICC as an institution using lies in its narrow focus on and use of retributive justice, as (...) an essential transitional process. This article shows that such an approach, fails, though not absolutely, to efficiently offer a comprehensive process likely to promote possibilities for peace and reconciliation. Thus, the article suggests restorative justice as a necessary political strategy to foster peace and unity in Kenya. (shrink)

Researches conducted so far within the project Spinning out of control: rhetoric and violent conflict. Representations of 'self' - 'other' in the Yugoslav successor states focused on exploring the relations towards the Other in a state of conflict. Moreover: most of the author's and coauthors' contributions were oriented towards discourse analysis in the context of violence. Except for the peaceful dismemberment of Montenegro and Serbia, proclamation of independence of other Yugoslav states did not go without violence, to a greater or (...) lesser extent. The Other in these situations was predominantly the ethnic Other, and usually treated as enemy. For that reason, the greater part of our past work was oriented towards analysing media reports of the most stiking war events. Also, some of the contributions intentionally targeted media reportings of tense situations and those bearing the unpredictable outcomes, such as referenda or meetings discussing war and peace matters; or, we focused our inquiries on radical standpoints expressed by certain media or political parties - all that in order to explore the essencial forms of constructing and manifesting the Otherness on a rhetoric level. From a broader perspective, the analysed period, marked by the wars of ex - Yugoslavia in the last decade of 20th century, could be comprehended as the preiod of a state of emergency, where the old order had been brutally and radically destroyed and the new one was installed. In such a process, as it was shown, the relation towards the Other was also usually extreme and ethnically motivated. Now, after the constitution of seven new states where once former Yugoslavia was, new questions emerge. We are interested, as we were before, in the identity constructions, especially in the relations toward the Other, and Otherness in general, now in the period of transition and normalization of mutual relationships that these societies are undergoing. Along with the theories of ethnicity and identity construction, the key perspective remains discursive analysis. Our main question is What is happening with the phenomenon of Otherness in public discourse, in the peaceful times, or in the post conflict state? Do the ways of representing Others from the conflict times disappear, or do they 'freeze', that is to say, remain the same, or get manifested on some other levels and by different rhetorical tools? In short, what is happening with the Others in discourses that do not 'spin out of control'? Are the Others stable, mutable or flexible category and where are the imagological boundaries of Otherness? Who are the Others now? Are there any Others among us in ethnical sense? What is the nature of relation towards the common Yugoslav past, in other words, has the common past also become the Otherness for the people of former Yugoslavia? Are the 'refugees', 'cast-outs', 'displaced persons', 'returnees'... only the new names for the old display of Otherness? (shrink)

Rwanda witnessed devastating conflicts leading to genocidal attacks in 1994 with active participation of the police in the pogrom. Various reports implicated the police in high-handedness, torture, extra judicial killings, intimidation, rape, and other heinous crimes during the conflicts. The police force was reformed for optimal performance. This paper examines the impact of the post-conflict reconstruction of the police on internal security management in Rwanda. Findings from the study, which relied on secondary data, are that reform impacted positively on the (...) performance of the police, sharpening its skills in crime detection and prevention and leading to improved security for lives and property in Rwanda. Over-reliance on dwindling external sources and dysfunctional equipment still undermines maximum performance by the police. There should be adequate provision of advanced security devices and better funding of the police for the optimal discharge of their constitutional mandates of securing lives and property in Rwanda. (shrink)

Given UBI’s performance in poor and rural areas of India and Namibia and its transformative effects on livelihoods, one can foresee a potential for UBI supporting refugees and Internally Displaced Persons rebuild their lives in their country of origin. Furthermore, given UBI’s egalitarian rationale stemming from the idea of a more just society with a minimum level of economic security to all, UBI can be considered a key element of a state’s welfare system, the relevance of which cannot be overstated (...) for countries emerging from conflict. Additionally, the field of international aid has as of recently, for efficiency considerations, started questioning its policies focused on in-kind aid, vouchers, prescribed spending in favor of cash transfers. To test UBI’s potential in post-conflict scenarios, we propose to examine its applicability in Syria, source of today’s largest refugee population. (shrink)

Post-conflict criminal prosecutions for the worst of crimes can play a meaningful role in achieving transitional justice. This once-common view has recently been the subject of widespread criticism that is rooted in the belief that criminal prosecutions undermine reconciliation. This has lead some scholars to argue that we must either abandon criminal prosecutions post-conflict or that we ought to use them for more general transitional justice aims, like restorative justice. This article argues against abandoning criminal prosecutions post conflict and against (...) subsuming criminal justice aims under restorative or reconciliatory aims. When post-conflict criminal prosecutions are properly structured and practiced they can bolster respect for the international, regional and domestic rule of law and in that way limit conflict in a number of important ways. (shrink)

There seems to be a pervasive trend towards public apologies, forms of national introspection, and appeals to grant forgiveness. Does 'forgiveness' enable a public or political use of the term? Is it possible to forgive on behalf of others, and if so, under what conditions? These conceptual questions are related to reflections on the cultural and religious contexts of expressing forgiveness. Do forgiving words promote a willingness to look ahead and prevent a relapse into conflicting views on the poisonous past? (...) Or do they bring along aversion? Maybe the 'push' towards forgiveness is experienced as highly unfair. Archbishop Tutu's motto that "there is no future without forgiveness" is well known. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has become an important model and source of inspiration for many other countries that want to deal with their past grievances and internal conflicts. This book discusses the role of forgiveness within processes of peace building and transitional justice. (shrink)

U ovom tekstu skiciraju se dosadasnji rezultati rada na projektu Spinning out of control: rhetoric and violent conflict. Representations of 'self' - 'other' in the Yugoslav successor states, i obrazlazu smernice daljeg toka istrazivanja.

Notoriously, state-building is a key enterprise in regard of addressing the international conflicts throughout the globe. The consolidation of peace associated to it is intimately connected with the institutionalization of liberal ideas in structuring realms such as the political, the economical and the social spheres. Departing from Foucauldian concepts such as dispositif, government, discipline and biopolitics, this paper aims to critically analyze the post-conflict state-building practice. In a first moment, the paper delineates how peace was operationalized during the Cold War (...) and post-Cold War periods. In a second moment, it will present the Foucauldian conceptual tools that enables the (re)problematization of the state-building practice as a post-conflict normalizing dispositif, rather than merely a conflict-resolution tool. (shrink)

In 1994 the IRA and Loyalist paramilitary groups declared ceasefires, leading to a more relaxed attitude and cross-community contacts in Northern Ireland. The result was the establishment of a new type of church-based reconciliation group, the Church Fora, intended to improve community relations and promote peace and reconciliation within local areas. This article focuses on the ways in which Church Fora have expanded the methods of such work since 1994. It will assess their effectiveness in promoting peace and reconciliation and (...) developing community relations in Northern Ireland by placing them within the broader framework of church-based reconciliation work. Finally, by assessing how successful Church Fora have been in achieving their aims and objectives, I examine the lessons that could be learned for church-based reconciliation work being carried out within Northern Ireland. (shrink)

Recently the World Health Organization has highlighted the need to strengthen mental health systems following emergencies, including natural and manmade disasters. Mental health services need to be informed by culturally attuned evidence that is developed through research. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish rigorous ethical research practice to underpin the evidence-base for mental health services delivered during and following emergencies.

Post-conflict economies often prove daunting for foreign investors. Many of these nations are reaching out to diasporans, emigrants, and their descendants living abroad, for much-needed foreign investment capital. Little is known about why diasporans invest in their countries of origin. Recent scholarly inquiry regarding investment decision making has suggested that non-pecuniary, psychological concerns often motivate investment decisions. We develop a conceptual model identifying three types of investment return expectations — financial, emotional, and those related to social status — that may (...) drive diaspora investment interest. We contend that the psychological realities and social-status structure of the diaspora experience generate greater salience for non-pecuniary investment motivations, particularly when the origin country emerges from a period of conflict. We outline an agenda for future research and discuss the implications of our model for policies seeking to promote peace utilizing diaspora investment. (shrink)

A feminist stock-taking on ‘post-conflict’, this paper revisits a study made by the author in 1996–1997, when the women's community sector was a lively actor in the processes leading to the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998. Refusing to observe sectarian conflict lines, women's centres were re-writing official ‘community development’ policy as community empowerment and political challenge. The author draws on new interviews conducted in 2012 with feminist community activists of that earlier period of ‘frontline feminism’, associated with the Belfast (...) Women's Support Network. The women reveal how continuing poverty, discrimination, violence and unhealed trauma still characterise working-class life in the post-conflict period, and impede the integration of Protestant and Catholic communities. Official provisions for gender equality have been interpreted in gender-neutral ways, and in some cases turned against women. The demilitarisation of masculinity has been painfully slow. The women's community sector has experienced a loss of political drive as women's centres have become service providers, dependent on state funding. Feminism is renewing itself, but in fresh forms with different priorities. Will it recover a voice that ‘speaks truth to power’? (shrink)

Traditionally, transitional justice has referred to that field of theoretical scholarship that proffers recuperative strategies for political societies divided by a history of violence. Through the establishment of truth commissions, public confessionals and reparative measures, transitional justice regimes have sought to establish restorative conditions that might help reconcile historical antagonists both to each other and to the trauma of their shared past. Because of some of the theoretical lapses in this scholarship some have turned recently to the field of radical (...) democratic and ‘new pluralist’ thought – and especially to agonistic literature – to foreground a theory of post-conflict reconciliation based not on the principles of the sublimation of difference, but rather the perpetual deferral of accord. This essay works both to underscore that effort, as well as to problematize it. Through unorthodox readings of Giorgio Agamben, Jean Améry and Sheldon Wolin, the essay argues that an emphasis on messianicity as the temporal mode of political repair is ultimately less productive for what I call an agonistics of reconciliation than a more nuanced approach to what Wolin calls ‘fugitive democracy’. Where the former is allied with a problematic politics of mutual respect, the latter affirms a more germane politics of abiding resentment. In the end, a startling conclusion is drawn from reading agonistic reconciliation through Wolin: democracy may be a political experience reserved for scenes of transitional justice alone. (shrink)

The capacity-building strategy used by a US-based research organisation, the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation , to strengthen the system for the protection of human research subjects and the infrastructure of its international collaborating partner, the University of Liberia, are discussed. To conduct the much-needed biomedical and social science-based research-related activities in the future, this partnership is expected by PIRE to gradually evolve over time to strengthen the capacity of the local investigators and administrators of the University of Liberia. (...) Accordingly, a unique opportunity to share technology and resources with a post-conflict, resource-constrained country is created by this partnership. This capacity-building model to strengthen the protection of human subjects in research can also be replicated in similar resource-constrained international settings and, accordingly, our experiences and limitations are shared in this paper. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘innocent guilt’ regards cases where people feel guilty without being responsible for the wrongdoing or suffering at which the guilt is directed. The aim of this article is to develop a consistent account of innocent guilt and show how it may arise in the aftermath of conflicts. In order to do this, innocent guilt is contrasted with guilt and collective guilt, and the account is substantiated by drawing on the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Emmanuel Levinas, who (...) both consider the phenomenon of innocent guilt a necessary element in the fundamental structure of the ethical subject. These thinkers, furthermore, show a connection between guilt and possible victims of wrongdoing, rather than between guilt and personal acts of wrongdoing. Innocent guilt may thus appear in the aftermath of conflicts as an ethical and emotional response to the fact of finding oneself in a post-conflict situation still marked by suffering. It thus reveals a fundamental need to contribute to the relieving of such suffering. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although considerable attention has been given to ethical issues related to clinical research in developing countries, in particular related to HIV therapy, there has been limited focus on health systems research, despite its increasing importance in the light of current trends in development assistance. This paper examines ethical issues related to health systems research in ‘post’‐conflict situations, addressing both generic issues for developing countries and those issues specific to ‘post’‐conflict societies, citing examples from the author’s Cambodian experience. It argues (...) that the destruction of health infrastructure results in a loss of structures and processes that would otherwise protect prospective research subjects who are part of vulnerable populations. It identifies the growth of health systems research as part of a trend towards sectoral and programmatic development assistance, the emergence of ‘knowledge generation’ as a form of research linked to development, and the potential for conflict where multilateral and bilateral donors are both primary funders and users of health systems research. It also examines the position of the health system researcher in relation to the sponsors of this research, and the health system being analysed. (shrink)

Over the past decades, there has been a consistent and poignant ambiguity with regard to the role of education in the context of post-conflict and divided societies working towards building peace. Most recently, global developments, including the after-effects of the Arab Spring, the devastating wars in Syria, and the refugee crisis in Europe, have directed our attention once more to the part that education can play in building peace at many levels. In this context, it is timely to create a (...) space for a focused inquiry and scholarly debate about peace-oriented pedagogies and how they might affect the post-conflict reconstruction in divergent settings. Thus both the subject and the content of this book are important in the light of the current needs in many societies emerging from conflicted community relations. In particular, they propose a refreshing and transformative view of peace based on a humanising conception of education and dialogic pedagogy as a key avenue for peacebuilding. Through both conceptual inquiries and empirical case studies, the book will appeal to educational thinkers, researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, NGO workers, and the public in re-examining some of the key concepts identifying pivotal underlying issues in the field. Furthermore, by offering a principled, persuasive conceptual framework and by problematising implementations and interventions in practice, this book can serve to provoke more appraisals, evaluations, and constructive critiques of humanisation and dialogic pedagogy in peacebuilding education. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. _. (shrink)

This paper explores the difficulties of implementing international human rights standards in post conflict states, particularly in Islamic States, using Afghanistan as a case study. The paper will submit that imposing international human rights law with a ‘top down' approach is ineffective, using the example of the western-style Afghan constitution which contains many human rights protections, such as freedom of religion, that cannot be realized in contemporary Afghan society. It will be argued that a more transparent, consultative and long-term approach (...) to human rights implementation should be taken in post conflict situations, if ‘human rights' is to be more than a catch phrase for membership of the international community. (shrink)

Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a 10‐year cross‐sector partnership for development in Colombia, this paper makes three contributions to current discussions on new collaborative governance approaches in which business, non‐governmental organizations and development agencies jointly address development challenges. First, our study explores how partnerships can be successful in achieving longer term development while being designed as short‐term governance arrangements. Second, we shed light on how power asymmetries can shape partnership governance. Many studies have highlighted the negative aspects of (...) donor involvement in cross‐sector partnerships. We identify, however, that an interplay of formal and informal governance in partnerships can provide a positive enabling framework for partner relationships to grow and mature. Third, the case highlights that the studied partnership employed governance mechanisms that facilitate local ownership and empower small‐scale farmers, which effected (longer term) value chain relationships. In this regard, our case study helps to understand governance processes and conditions under which transformative local partnerships can emerge and sustain in post‐conflict settings. The paper adds observations on the collaborative governance content that is required for a more integrative research approach to corporate contributions to development. (shrink)

Existing literature on business and peace is in need of more examples of business practices, and at a more dissaggregated level, within conflict-sensitive regions that promote peace. This article examines whether business practices within a conflict-sensitive region, the island of Cyprus, are consistent with existing business and peace literature and how the specific business practices promote peace. In particular, the article examines in detail two business practices: Green Line Trade and cross-territorial joint ventures and promotions. Our findings suggest that existing (...) business activities in Cyprus are consistent with those proposed by the literature, but their significance in promoting peace was limited. We propose an alternative explanation for why such business practices were pursued in Cyprus at the time, drawing on studies of identity-based conflicts. And we suggest that business has a unique role to play compared with other public institutions when addressing identity conflict. Finally, we suggest that both theoretical and empirical studies of business and peace should include consideration of how business practices might help alleviate identity-related issues in conflict-sensitive regions. (shrink)

Though scholars of political science and moral philosophy have long analyzed the justifications for and against waging war as well as the ethics of warfare itself, the problem of _ending_ wars has received less attention. In the first book to apply just war theory to this phase of conflict, Eric Patterson presents a three-part view of justice in end-of-war settings involving order, justice, and reconciliation. Patterson’s case studies range from successful applications of _jus post bellum,_ such as the U.S. Civil (...) War or Kosovo, to challenges such as present-day Iraq. (shrink)

While there is an acknowledged overlap of transitional justice and jus post bellum, there has been no real attention to delineating a clear relationship between the two or addressing the significan...

ABSTRACT Radical democracy was, at its inception, a polemical alternative to the hegemony of Marxism over the political discourse of the Left. This is particularly striking in the work of two of its figureheads, Miguel Abensour and Chantal Mouffe. Whereas C. Mouffe advocates for radical democracy to break free from the rigidness and the determinacy of Marxism, M. Abensour goes back to the young Marx’s plea for a “real democracy”. It results in radical democrats locating differently the radicality of their (...) approaches. While post-Marxists emphasize the crucial and dynamic role of divisive conflicts within the political community and consequently grant the State a role as their arbitrator, “Young Marxists” emphasize a constant struggle against an abusive institutionalization of the State. As a result, they advocate for a form of political spontaneity that is complicated to reconcile with consideration of the political community’s inner conflicts. The regrouping of disparate critical works under a single label makes us shortsighted to some of its internal contradictions. (shrink)