Denouncing the persistence of nationalist reflexes in order to explain the crisis of European integration is much too simple, as is the critique of a mercantile Europe deprived of solid social and moral foundations. Yet, these interpretations, oversimplified as they are, do point to some aspects of our liberal civilisation, which are under pressure in the current trajectory of developments shaping Europe. Seen as symptoms of a widespread malaise, these perspectives should be taken seriously.

The article deals with Mohandas K. Gandhi's theory of democracy and its related civic practices. It indicates the relation between Gandhi's idea of civic duty and his idea of democracy, and argues that few would dispute that Gandhi was one of the most original and transformative thinkers of democracy. The article maintains that among his many notable contributions, Gandhi is rightly credited with emphasizing on the ideas of citizenship duty, truth in politics, genuine self-rule, and ethically enlightened democracy. In addition to advocating self-sustaining villages and communal cooperation, Gandhi developed an idea of non-liberal democracy reducing individualism, economic greed, and laissez-faire by insisting on a duty oriented and spiritually empowered participative democracy. Nearly seven decades after his death, Gandhi stands as one of the most significant and relevant non-Western theorist of democracy.

Jan Zielonka's Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a furious, worried pamphlet on the challenges that European democracies are currently facing, on the apparent rise of illiberalism. This article critically reviews the book and seeks to offer a somewhat different and perhaps more optimistic picture of the current predicaments of European politics. The main point of reference in this respect is Finland, a country whose political institutions have managed, by and large, to uphold a sense of coherence in society. A commitment to participatory, equality-based, and freedom-generating institutions can indeed be seen as a primary means to counter the decline of liberalism.

The language we use for democracy matters, the struggles over how it is defined are real, the outcomes are consequential. This is what a conceptual politics approach emphasizes, pointing to the vital role played by contestation in determining which meanings prevail and which are marginalized. Among all the meanings of democracy that exist, it is liberal democracy that stands at the center, it has effectively won conceptual and political battles resulting in its current primacy. In this sense, liberalism is much more deeply baked into contemporary discussions about democracy than some might be comfortable admitting. This is not without cause, as liberal democracy has achieved, and continues to unevenly provide, political, economic, and social goods. In the rush to dig up alternatives, it is important not to lose sight of how and why this liberal conception of democracy has come to dominate and the ways it conditions democratic possibilities.

Member-states' ideas and discourse about the European Union's (EU's) ‘liberal project’ vary over whether they envision the EU project as mainly about market, community, rights, or global action. Can these be reconciled? Perhaps, but only if the EU itself is reconceptualised as a ‘regional state’ made up of overlapping policy communities, and reformed to allow graduated membership. This could facilitate enlargement in the periphery plus closer cooperation for an inner core, with democracy enhanced by allowing all members an institutional voice in the areas in which they participate.

This article formulates the concept of democracy as a configuration to overcome the rigid universalist, liberal-proceduralist dominated conceptions of democracy that define invariant core elements and combine them with culturally individualistic features. Instead, the approach presented here focuses on the basic principles behind democracy. Lincoln's often-criticized broad definition of democracy as “government by, of, and for the people” provides the opportunity for an open, transglobal approach that focuses on the premise of political self-efficacy for all citizens and portrays democracy not as a mechanism but as a way of life. Political self-efficacy can be institutionalized in different ways, so this contribution refers to specific models of democracy (e.g., liberal, republican, or communitarian).

How can a tolerant, liberal political culture tolerate the presence of only conditionally tolerant illiberal sub-cultures while remaining true to its principles of tolerance? The problem falls within the intersection of two developments in the thinking of two of the leading anglophone philosophers of the last half-century, Bernard Williams and John Rawls. Rawls, particularly, struggled with the problem of how a liberal society might stably survive the clash of plural sub-cultures that a liberal society – unless it is oppressively coercive – must itself foster and allow to flourish. And he separately struggled with the problem of how liberal peoples might peacefully share the planet with illiberal, but “decent” peoples elsewhere. This article shows that Rawls's two solutions do not easily mix, and argues that state-approved early education must do more than merely to inform children that losing their faith will not land them in jail.

Tolerance is a key concept in contemporary political theory and practice. Clearly, it is linked to such difficult classical questions as rights, freedom, state neutrality, the role of autonomy in liberalism, the limits of toleration, etc. However, nowadays, the concept of tolerance also cuts across several important political issues: multiculturalism, pluralism, the ‘rights’ of cultures, interculturalism, reflexivity and dialogue as foundations of democracy, etc. This paper analyses the concept and explores its theoretical difficulties.

Judith Shklar’s negative brand of liberalism is sometimes thought to have little to say about the ethical character required of citizens in liberal democracies, beyond the injunction to avoid cruelty. In this article, however, we argue that Shklar’s negative liberalism prescribes four distinctively political virtues—rational empathy, a healthy apprehension of state power, self-restraining tolerance, and being a good loser—that, taken together, constitute an ethos of skeptical vigilance. We survey Shklar’s criticisms of republican and communitarian accounts of civic virtue to clarify her concerns about attempts by the liberal state to cultivate these virtues and analyze the case of passive injustice to highlight tensions between active citizenship and liberal values. We conclude with some reflections on how Shklar’s political theory attempts to persuade her readers of the importance of adopting and practicing an ethos of skeptical vigilance.

After a brief overview of Cassirer’s symbolic form argument, the discussion turns to one question: does Cassirer offer a lucid normative position in politics? My core argument is that he does not. Three arguments providing potential insights into his moral and political sensibilities are contested: the first concerns his The Myth of the State text; the second, the Bildung tradition; and third, his arguments on the contract and natural rights tradition. The latter argument, in particular, underpins the claim that Cassirer was sympathetic to liberalism. The concept of left-Kantianism is then examined in the context of the German socialist tradition.

Autonomy theories of contract are influential and have many attractions, not least their compatibility with liberal ideals. However, such theories cannot account for basic features of the common law of contract, in particular: the role of established transaction types, the doctrine of consideration and the phenomenon of contractual obligation. An exchange theory of contract can account for those features of the law. This theory’s liberal credentials can be established by connecting it to an alternative intellectual strand in the liberal tradition, sometimes known as commercial liberalism.

Excommunication – being summarily cut off from the sacraments of the Catholic Church – was the logical, if extreme, expression of Ultramontanism, and of the paternal metaphor enshrined at its heart. It was the ultimate weapon in the Church’s battle with critics who sought to undercut or challenge its chosen role as privileged mediator between the state apparatus and the people, whether this came in the form of open rebellion against said state, or in the demand for individual intellectual freedom, or both. Studying the infamous cases of nineteenth-century excommunicates, Joseph Guibord and Louis Riel (together with their predecessors, the ill–fated Patriotes) yields important insights into the nature of excommunication, both when it “worked” (from the perspective of those who imposed it) and, just as crucially, when it did not.