The politics of the millennium

Flanagan, Thomas

doi:10.1080/09546559508427310

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 4 publications

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“…Knopff is concerned with the way that the rhetoric of rights tempts citizens to succumb to the “theocratic temptation” of “monism” where “rights, in effect, are an expression of the oneness of the people, an agreement by that people as to what is shared by all, and is thus so fundamental as to constitute the horizon, rather than the subject, of politics” (Knopff, 1998: 699). Monism is, in the words of Thomas Flanagan, the “belief in a society without significant conflicts of interests—a society without war (external conflict) or class struggle (internal conflict), without hierarchy and oppression, without poverty and inequality” (1995: 171).…”

Section: Knopff the Straw “Moral Rights Skeptic”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Populism and Juristocracy: The Republicanism of Rainer Knopff

Sigalet

2021

Can J Pol Sci

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Rainer Knopff's scholarship on Canadian constitutionalism has offered some of the most trenchant criticism of the exercise of judicial review under the Charter, yet his theory has largely been misunderstood (as has that of his frequent co-author F. L. Morton). This article exposes two prominent critiques of Knopff's constitutional writings as straw man arguments and provides a republican account of his constitutional theory. The first straw man argument is that Knopff supports a majoritarian or populist conception of direct democracy. This claim is belied by Knopff's embrace of representative democracy and institutions structured to encourage reflexive deliberation. The second straw man argument is that Knopff is a moral rights skeptic. Knopff's rights skepticism is a legal skepticism about the determinacy of many rights that is merely a function of his inclusive legal positivism. The article concludes by reflecting on the republican lessons that Knopff's constitutional scholarship continues to offer, including how holding legislatures responsible for settling reasonable disagreements about legally indeterminate Charter rights might help counteract the twin threats of populism and juristocracy.

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Section: Knopff the Straw “Moral Rights Skeptic”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Populism and Juristocracy: The Republicanism of Rainer Knopff

Sigalet

2021

Can J Pol Sci

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The “Army of Shrouds”: “Suicide” Attacks in Ethno-national Conflicts

Hatina

2014

Martyrdom in Modern Islam

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Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy

Knopff

1998

Can J Pol Sci

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In Canada as elsewhere, representative democracy is under attack by both populists and rights advocates. The populist challenge comes mainly from Preston Manning's wing of the Reform party. The rights-based challenge is grounded on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These two challenges are different in obvious ways, but from the point of view of representative government—and ultimately of liberal democratic constitutionalism—what they have in common outweighs their differences. What they have in common is the appeal to a mystical being or icon beyond ordinary politics. In effect, the People or Rights become what God was to pre-liberal theocratic politics: a transpolitical trump on ordinary political division, a way of placing opponents “beyond the pale,” a demand for unattainable purity in public life and policy. While bills of rights and populism appear to flow, respectively, from the liberalism and the democracy of liberal democracy, they are, in fact, vehicles for precisely the kind of politics liberal democracy was designed to overcome. Representative government, not populism or entrenched rights, was at the heart of the “new science of politics” designed to make liberal democracy possible. Representative institutions, properly arranged in a system of checks and balances, were a way of blending liberalism with democracy, giving each its due, but indirectly, so that neither would be taken to self-destructive extremes. Populism and the judicialized politics of rights threaten to dissolve this salutary blend, at the cost of liberal democratic constitutionalism.

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The politics of the millennium

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

Between Populism and Juristocracy: The Republicanism of Rainer Knopff

Between Populism and Juristocracy: The Republicanism of Rainer Knopff

The “Army of Shrouds”: “Suicide” Attacks in Ethno-national Conflicts

Populism and the Politics of Rights: The Dual Attack on Representative Democracy

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