Overview

This book addressees a timely and fundamental problematic: the gap between the aims that people attempt to realize democratically and the law and administrative practices that actually result. The chapters explain the realities that administration poses for democratic theory. Topics include the political value of accountability, the antinomic character of political values, the relation between ultimate ends and the intermediate ends that are sought by constitutions, and a reconsideration of the meaning of the rule of law itself. The essays are inspired by the demystifying realism of Max Weber and Hans Kelsen, including explications of their views on law, constitutions, and the rule of law. The book will be of interest to social and political theorists, philosophers of law, and legal theorists, and for discussions of democratic theory, the administrative state, constitutionalism, and justice, as well as to readers of Weber and Kelsen.

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9781032420158

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A very important contribution. The contestation over value and essence of democracy is here to stay for the foreseeable future, both domestically, notably in the West, and internationally in terms of what makes world order. The proposed book's theme speaks to most fundamental themes in the study of politics, government, and international affairs: What is democracy? How do we defend democracy? What's the relation between law and democracy' What does rule of law really mean? Thus it deals with topics and questions that are central to any political science curriculum. -Robert Schuett, University of Durham, U. K. Turner and Mazur's approach to the topic of democracy is original and, to my mind, persuasive; it departs insistently from theories that rest on idealized and normative notions of democracy. Instead of proceeding in this philosophical vein, the authors ground their alternative approach in political contingencies. The argument is conducted at a very high intellectual level. Connecting the authors' arguments to those of Max Weber and Hans Kelsen adds a history of ideas dimension to the book's theoretical heft. -Peter Baehr, author of The Unmasking Style in Social Theory

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