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This is the second special issue of Social Research dealing with the problem of democracy. The first such issue (Vol. 63 No. 2), published before the climax of the wave of democratization, had a primarily theoretical character. This time we wished to evaluate a truly international experience of democratization, and asked our contributors to consider where we currently stand.
We wanted to know where we are in the process of democratization, and whether the process as we have come to know it will be extended to other regions of the world. There are cases where transition to some kind of multi-party democracy with constitutional rights is no longer as much an issue as the consolidation of constitutional democracy and the improvement of its quality from normative points of view. In these cases we wanted to know what institutional choices may best contribute to such results.
We posited that many of the problems and prospects of old and new democracies should be handled together, taking into account the common, global challenges (economic, demographic, ecological, technological, and military) that protagonists of democracy everywhere are forced to face, and we wanted to find out how analysts with different methodological and cultural backgrounds will deal with these common questions.
It seemed to us that it was especially worthwhile to ask about the prospects for democracy beyond the limits of the nation state on the level of local, regional, and international organizations.
Finally, we were interested in exploring the impact on political thought of democratization and of the new, global problems and prospects for democracy: What has happened to the critique of liberal democracy, and what are the directions normative theory is likely to take with respect to the problems of really existing democracies?
Our contributors, coming from different regions and having different areas of intellectual concern, were asked to address some of these questions. They were free to deal with the issues in their own way, and in many of their essays this meant that new questions assumed equal importance to the ones posed by us. We are happy that in the end a volume emerged that moves through five regions of the world, paying equal attention to theory and empirical analysis, concentrating not only on institutions but also the cultural and economic environments that influence the quality and the vitality of democratic politics.
Andrew Arato is Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of the Committee for the Study of Democracy at the New School University's Graduate Faculty. He is the author of From Neo-Marxism to Democratic Theory (1993).
Seyla Benhabib is Professor of Government and Chair of the Committee for the Degree on Social Studies at Harvard University. She is the editor of Democracy and Difference: Constituting the Boundaries of the Political (1996).
Robert Dahl is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University. His most recent publication is On Democracy(1999).
Steven Friedman is Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of The Long Journey: South Africa's Quest for a Negotiated Settlement (1993).
Evelyne Huber is the Morehead Alumni Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill.
Eiko Ikegami is Director of the Center for Studies of Social Change and Professor of Sociology at the New School University's Graduate Faculty. Her book Civility and Aesthetic Publics in Japan is forthcoming.
Mahmood Mamdani, until recently A. C. Professor of African Studies at the University of Capetown, is now Professor of Anthropology, Political Science, and International Affairs at Columbia University. His most recent book is Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (1996).
Chantal Mouffe is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in London.
Philippe C. Schmitter is Professor of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Italy.
Steven L. Solnick is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. He is the author of Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions and is currently working on a monograph of center-periphery politics in Russia and other large states.
John D. Stephens is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
