ABSTRACT
Consider a signature proposition of this book: “Democracy and SER are mutually constitutive. Social and economic rights that are in some sense constitutionally binding are of the essence of democracy.” Thus do we proclaim (Klare, this volume). You might not fi nd that to be much of a provocation, so attuned is the political discourse of our day to constructions of the democratic ideal in which fundamental personal rights appear as defi - nitional or axiomatic. 1 Not so tame, though, is such a pronouncement when issuing from us, the authors of this book. For it is also thematic in this book to envisage, as the preferred form of a constitutionally anchored political practice, something insistently and decidedly left-critical in spirit – “advanced” democracy as sketched by Karl Klare (ibid.) – that it seems would be decidedly on guard against any form of institutional confi nement or “pedagogical guardianship” (see Habermas 1996 : 278) of the politics of the people. And how, then, do we make that fi t with the idea of rights not alterable by ordinary parliamentary processes (Klare, this volume: 4) to which the politics of the people are required (in the very name of democracy, no less!) to submit? The piquancy in our position is not to be missed. It is, in fact, or so I shall be suggesting, a key to our undertaking in this book.
An historic confl ict of political dispositions
