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This paper attempts to evaluate Bruce Ackerman?s theory of dualist democracy. He distinguishes two different decisions that may be made in a democracy. The first is a decision by the people themselves, which is designated as higher lawmaking that embodies the general will of the people; the second is a decision by government, which is designated as normal politics. The objective of Ackerman?s two-track theory of democracy is to resolve the tension between self-government and the rule law in American constitutionalism. I attempt to demonstrate that Ackerman?s idea of dualist democracy is a virtue-centric, populist, republicanism. His synthesis relies on the premise of the priority of self-government over the rule of law. It constitutes a solid alternative to the recent neo-Roman republicanism of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, which emphasizes law-centric republican constitutionalism. The relevance of dualist democracy is explored via a contextualized analysis of the virtue-centric republicanism from Hannah Arendt to J. G. A. Pocock and Hanna Pitkin. Ackerman?s interpretation of the Federalist Paper as the main intellectual resource of his project is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that today’s democratic society is marked by a post-totalitarian ideology, according to which any radical political project of emancipatory character can culminate only in some form of totalitarian control and domination. This is tantamount to blackmail insofar as it holds that even if the ideals or goals of radical egalitarian projects are just, attempts to realize these will only result in misery, suffering and terror on a mass scale. This blackmail banishes the hope for a greater good by foreclosing the possibility of radical politics from the beginning. To illustrate the ideological hold of this blackmail, I revisit George Orwell’s uncompromising vision ot totalitarianism as offered in his novel 1984. However, instead of reading the novel as a depiction of a world of complete control and domination, I read it as a depiction of the inner desire for the control and domination offered by totalitarianism. Psychologically, at least, the totalitarian conditions that Orwell’s protagonist finds himself in are not as far removed from those inhabited by today’s post-totalitarian subject as we might think. It is in the paranoid motives of Orwell’s protagonist that we can discover the inner motives that make us susceptible to today’s blackmail of totalitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the pursuit of sovereign power by the Bush administration, particularly as it is related to the War on Terrorism and designations of enemy and unlawful combatants, in which claims of sovereign authority seek to constitute political authority through demonological discourse, exceptional circumstances, and decisionist proclamations. Through a discursive analysis of the words of the War on Terrorism, the paper argues that the work of Carl Schmitt provides a conceptual frame for interpeting the antagonisms the Bush administration strategically cultivates and their valences. As well, Michael Rogin’s critique of political demonology and countersubversion works to situate contemporary counterterrorism into historical currents that offer further grounds for resisting the terms of counterterrorism and its dictates. The paper explores the mirroring of the foe that is the hallmark of the countersubversive imagination, and turns to Michel Foucault to interrogate forms of power less tied to sovereignty. The paper concludes by thinking Rogin and Foucault together on the topic of surveillance; just as ?political repression went underground, intimidating by its invisibility? in Rogin’s history, Foucault saw in the adoption of (often covert) surveillance technologies in institutional, public, and private settings a form of power that worked best by being most anonymous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]