ABSTRACT
Few questions more clearly preoccupy our era than that of how to facilitate civil, free, and democratic interaction among the citizens of multicultural societies. In recent years, the importance of the challenge of democratic civility, has become globally apparent. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is witnessed to a transformation of international politics more fundamental than any since the end of the Second World War. The collapse of European communism, the break-up of the Soviet Union, programs of economic restructuration, and efforts to advance human rights and the rule of law throughout the world-these and other developments seemed to mark a new era in global politics, characterized by widespread demands for civic rights and democratic participation. The enduring tension between debate and civil privacy is inevitable in our world, and is another reason some among us feel democratic civility must be defended. Recently, however, some political theorists have taken their colleagues to task for this putatively irrealist bias.
