Restricted Democracy, Mass Democracy and the Crisis of the New Republic

2021 ◽  
pp. 224-246
Keyword(s):  
New Republic ◽  
Mass Democracy

Popular Politics and Electioneering between the Wars

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Mass Democracy

Disruption and rowdyism at political meetingswas a feature of Victorian and Edwardian electioneering. The advent of mass democracy, and the rise of Communism in Europe, ensured that such behaviour came to be portrayed as evidence of political extremism and a threat to political stability. As a result, Labour candidates, keen to position their party as one capable of governing for the nation as a whole, distanced themselves from popular electoral traditions now synonymous with a confrontational, and unacceptable, politics of class. Heckling, rowdyism and disruption came, by the 1930s, to be associated primarily with the Communist Party.

The Portrait of Huxley in Mallock's "New Republic"

1956 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
J. Max Patrick
Keyword(s):  
New Republic

The Guardian of the Constitution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Mass Democracy ◽  
The Guardian

Chapter 5 analyzes Schmitt’s theory of dictatorship. Schmitt’s theory of dictatorship was part of his broader criticism of positivism and its inability to effectively respond to the instabilities mass democracy wrought on the state and constitution. Positive laws, including constitutional amendment procedures, could themselves become threats to the fundamental commitments of public order. The suspension of positive laws might be justified. Schmitt argued dictatorship was a necessary final bulwark against this sort of revolutionary threat. The dictator, as guardian of last resort capable of acting outside positive law, could become necessary for a state to survive internal enemies. Yet, although dictatorship could suspend positive law, Schmitt argued it did not suspend the fundamental public order of the state and constitution—a distinction positivism was unable to recognize. This chapter concludes with an analysis of Schmitt’s discussion of the role of the president as guardian of the constitution.

The Challenge of Mass Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Mass Democracy

Chapter 1 analyzes Schmitt’s assessment of democratic movements in Weimar and the gravity of their effects on the state and constitution. It emphasizes that the focus of Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar was mass democracy rather than liberalism. Schmitt warned that the combination of mass democracy, the interpenetration of state and society, and the emergence of total movements opposed to liberal democracy, namely the Nazis and the Communists, were destabilizing the Weimar state and constitution. Weimar, Schmitt argued, had been designed according to nineteenth century principles of legitimacy and understandings of the people. Under the pressure of mass democracy, the state was buckling and cannibalizing itself and its constitution. Despite this, Schmitt argued, Weimar jurists’ theoretical commitments left them largely unable to recognize the scope of what was occurring. Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar democracy was intended to raise awareness of how parliamentary democracy could be turned against the state and constitution.

Wilde’s New Republic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marylu Hill
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Classical Training ◽  
Picture Of Dorian Gray ◽  
New Republic ◽  
Dorian Gray ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Philosophical Questions

As a result of his classical training in the Honours School of Literæ Humaniores at Oxford, Oscar Wilde drew frequently on the works of Plato for inspiration, especially the Republic. The idea of a New Republic and its philosophy resonated profoundly with Wilde—so much so that the philosophical questions raised in Plato’s Republic become the central problems of The Picture of Dorian Gray. This chapter maps the parallels between the Republic and Dorian Gray, with specific focus on several of Plato’s most striking images from the Republic. In particular, the depiction of Lord Henry suggests not only the philosophical soul gone corrupt, but also the ‘drone’ who seduces the oligarchic young man into a life of ‘unprincipled freedom’, according to Plato’s definition of democracy. By invoking the Socratic lens, Wilde critiques Lord Henry’s anti-philosophy of the ‘New Hedonism’ and contrasts it with the Socratic eros.

A New Republic of Women’s Letters

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-533
Author(s):  
Michelle Levy
Keyword(s):  
New Republic
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