Conclusion

This unconventional conclusion considers the broad struggle for ethical democracy in the contemporary world. The chapter draws on the work of Jurgen Habermas to argue that constructing ethical democracy will require re-anchoring democratic life within society. Contemporary democratic dilemmas arise due to the gargantuan growth of the ‘Systems’ of Politics and the Economy. Absent adequate structures of accountability to hold these Systems in service to society, they dominate and ‘colonize’ society, pathologically distorting human communities via excessive pressures rooted in money and power. Existing social theory suggests that social movements and the legal system hold the key to reversing this distortion. But this assumption underestimates how social movements and the legal system are themselves colonized and distorted. The struggle for ethical democracy must draw not only on social movements and the law, but also on: i) moral/ethical anchoring in secular and religious traditions; and ii) alliances with individual reformists in the Systems whose worldviews and commitments have been shaped by such ethical anchoring. By ‘bootstrapping’ democracy to raise the capacity of human communities to hold the political and economic systems in service to society, we can gradually move toward something closer to ethical democracy.

Democracy · Environmental ethics · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics