Just Democracy The Rals-Machiavelli Programme [Paperback]

In a series of provocative and timely essays, he explores what creating such a just democratic political system would involve in order to tackle such issues as intergenerational justice, multiculturalism and linguistic diversity.Philippe Van Parijs is one of the world's leading political philosophers. In this book, he argues that the purpose of democracy should be to promote justice - we need not just democracy (in the sense of unqualified democracy) but a just democracy. Machiavelli and Rawls must be brought together. In a series of provocative and timely essays, he explores what creating such a just democratic political system would involve in order to tackle such issues as intergenerational justice, multiculturalism and linguistic diversity. He illustrates his arguments with examples drawn from the European Union and his native Belgium.contentsList of Figures and Tables iiForeword iiiAcknowledgments vChapter 1: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme: Political Institutions asInstruments of Social Justice 1Chapter 2: Justice and Democracy: Are they Incompatible? 5Chapter 3: Contestatory Democracy versus Real Freedom 23Chapter 4: The Childrens Vote and Other Attempts to Secure IntergenerationalJustice 31Chapter 5: Should the European Union Become More Democratic? 67Chapter 6: Power-sharing versus Border-crossing inEthnically Divided Societies 79Chapter 7: Must Europe be Belgian? 99Chapter 8: Belgium Re-founded 117Chapter 9: Electoral Engineering for a Stalled Federation: A Country-WideElectoral District for Belgiums Federal Parliament 123Chapter 10: Anything (Even) Better than the Pavia Proposal? 143References 155Index 169Philippe Van Parijs holds doctorates in philosophy (Oxford) and the social sciences (Louvain). He is professor at the Universit? of Louvain, where he has directed the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics since its creation in 1991. He has been a regular visiting professor at Harvard University and at the University of Leuven, and has held visitinlC!