Reimagining Democracy through Comparative Democratic Theory

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel seeks to respond to our current period of democratic backsliding and retrenchment with an exercise in comparative democratic theory that deepens dialogue between African, Indian, Chinese, and North American Indigenous traditions of political philosophy.
Since the late twentieth century, electoral democracy has become both globally normative and increasingly fragile. Democratic theorists have responded to both of these trends, suggesting improvements to electoral democracy and proposing radical democratic alternatives (such as those inspired by Athenian institutions). However, these critiques have generally drawn on resources from within the western political tradition, neglecting insights emerging from elsewhere – including from diverse forms of indigenous democratic practice that pre-date or coexist with electoral regimes.
This panel creates space for an exercise in comparative democratic theory that starts from three assumptions: that hegemonic models of party- and electoral-democracy that are standard in mainstream political science need renovation and perhaps fundamental reimagination; that mainstream democratic theory limits our imagination when it engages primarily with text, ideas, and institutions originating in Europe and amongst settler colonists; and that political theorists everywhere stand to learn from pluralizing our comparative engagement with traditions of thought and practices of popular politics.
Each participant critiques a hegemonic form of democracy, including majoritarian and electoral models, and proposes an alternative: meritocratic democracy informed by Confucian thought; non-electoral deliberative practices inspired by North American Indigenous institutions; radical democratic representation with roots in Ghanian political thought; and a constructive program of Gandhian anti-party democracy.
In this way, the panel helps us reimagine democracy through deep and substantive engagement with multiple traditions and an exercise in democratic theory that compares thinkers and practices across diverse regions and traditions of thought.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Representation and Party Politics in India, 1940-75 - Tejas Parasher, University of California, Los Angeles

• The Democratic Legitimacy of Unelected Indigenous Governments - Daniel Sherwin, Carleton University; Daniel Hutton Ferris, Newcastle University

• Radicalising Democratic Representation - Ẹniọlá Ànúolúwapọ́ Ṣóyẹmí, University of Oxford

• Meritocratic Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Political Theory - Elena Ziliotti, Delft University of Technology

Chair

• Melissa S. Williams University of Toronto

Discussants

• Melissa S. Williams University of Toronto

• Kathy Walker UBC