Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme (Ecpr) - Softcover

We don't just need democracy. We need just democracy. Among the countless ways in which democracies could be organised, we must not try to adopt the most democratic ones. We must go instead for those that offer the best prospect of making our societies and our world more just. This is the core of the Rawls-Machiavelli programme forcefully advocated and vividly illustrated in this book, a powerful alliance between Rawlsian thinking about social justice and Machiavellian thinking about political institutions. For example, how could our political institutions be reformed in order to better serve intergenerational justice? And how should political institutions be shaped to best fit the specific circumstances of deeply divided societies, or of multilingual countries, or of the European Union? This is the sort of question that is being addressed in this unusual combination of rigorous philosophical arguments, detailed historical accounts and bold political proposals.

Philippe Van Parijs holds doctorates in philosophy (Oxford) and the social sciences (Louvain). He is professor at the Universite of Louvain, where he has directed the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics since its creation in 1991. He has been a regular visiting professor at Harvard University and at the University of Leuven, and has held visiting positions at many other institutions around the world. His books include Evolutionary Explanation in the Social Sciences (1981), Marxism Recycled (1993), Real Freedom for All (1995), What's Wrong with a Free Lunch? (2000) and Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (2011).