Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Democracy and Development Beyond Liberalism

Sat, September 1, 2:00 to 3:30pm, Hynes, 200

Abstract

Under the pressure of growing inequality, irreconcilable pluralism, mass migrations, and new forms of warfare, the heyday of liberal democracy may be drawing to a close. Liberal institutions have also rarely been successfully transplanted in non-western nations. Moving beyond liberalism as the normative underpinning of institution building may be an imperative for the developing world, as well as a healthy exercise for western countries. Democratic, prosperous, and well-documented, Classical Athens offers a fecund ground to study what values and institutions sustained the provision of public goods before liberalism. This paper focuses on Athens' legal order, and analyzes the practice of decentralized enforcement of laws and norms in the absence of a police force. I delineate the profile of a new research agenda that focuses on the differences, rather than on the similarities between ancient and modern institutions in order to contribute to a more robust theory of development and a more fine-grained approach to institution building in developing countries today.

Author