Demokrati utan demos - utveckling eller avveckling?

Abstract

Democracy without a demos – progress or degeneration?

The modern national state with its liberal democracy is challenged both at the national and at the international level. The development of a federal EU-model implies centralization of decisions and also revisions in parts of democratic ideology; a model of social group representation, consociationalism, is expanding. At the national level, immigration is one factor that stimulates ideas of multiculturalism. In both these challenging views, nationalism and the national state is seen as a solution to be abandoned or revised. A further influencing factor is a common disdain for nationalism among liberal philosophers. But there are also arguments for a liberal nationalism criticizing the political, economic and philosophical accusations against nationalism. The article analyzes such ideas, pro and con, that are suggesting revisions of the traditional democratic order to create a post-national state or a multicultural state. The conclusion is that the liberal national state is not morally defect, disabled or dangerous.