This paper critically explores the political theology of Carl Schmitt. It argues that Schmitt’s analysis, which links the transcendence of God with the political concept of sovereignty, is both too nostalgic and too severe. In the place of Schmitt’s political theology that disdains democracy for the failures of modern liberalism, this paper instead draws on the recent collaborative works of Mic...

As James Madison aptly put it: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” In our day, certainly in the United States and to a growing extent in other developed democracies, most citizens most of the time acquire popular information from the commercial mass media. It hasn’t always been that way a...

A b s t r a c t Three prominent ‘camps’ have emerged within Internet democracy rhetoric and practice, each drawing upon different models of democracy: communitarian, liberal individualist and deliberative. Much interest has been shown in the former two camps by researchers and policy makers. This paper turns to an examination of the possible realization of the third camp’s vision – that the pub...

In her essay ‘Neoliberalism and the end of liberal democracy’, Wendy Brown suggests that critical political theory needs to ‘mourn liberal democracy’ in order to develop a transformative vision of ‘the good’. The problem, as Brown outlines it, is not only that – to varying extents and in different scales across democratic states – market rationality has hollowed out representative structures an...

The alliance of the Polish Catholic Church with Law and Justice (PiS) government has been widely reported resulted in significant benefits for Church. However, beginning mid-2016, top church leadership, including Episcopal Conference, distanced itself from condemned its use National Catholicism as legitimation rhetoric government’s malpractices fields human rights democracy. How to account this...

In the aftermath of postcommunism, Slovakia did not consolidate liberal democracy. Yet the 1998 election did eventually trigger the democratic breakthrough in Slovakia. Thus this dissertation reflects upon what ushered Slovakia into a new democratic era following the pivotal election. It casts doubt at the European Union’s leverage as being a deus ex machina for rejecting an illiberal democracy...