Decentring the West: Counter-Hegemonic Representations of Democracy

Abstract

The global debate about democracy between the West and the non-West is one of the defining conflicts of our time. The legitimacy of the western monopoly to define what democracy means in political practice is vigorously challenged by non-western leaders in many parts of the world. These attempts to decentre the West by exposing the Eurocentric nature of democracy promotion have to be taken seriously despite their underlying instrumental motives, because what makes them possible in the first place are genuine grassroots concerns about democracy dysfunctions and western unilateralism. This panel will mostly bring in insights from post-structuralist theory of hegemony and postcolonial studies to study counter-hegemonic conceptualisations of democracy around the world, but mainly focusing on Russia and Latin America. In terms of theoretical contribution, the panel will explore the linkages between and comparative advantages of poststructuralism and postcolonialism, and the possibility to combine the two approaches in a common postimperial perspective.

Title	Details
Democracy, Discourse and Political Projects in Brazil	View Paper Details
Democracy as Popular Sovereignty: Is a Non-exclusionary Alternative Possible?	View Paper Details
On the Path of Democratic Consolidation: Expanding the Demos in Third Wave Democracies – The Cases of Turkey and Brazil	View Paper Details
Locating International Democracy	View Paper Details
The Regional and the Universal: The Democratic Discourse in the Russian Federation and Latin America	View Paper Details