The shift from government to governance has become a starting point for many studies of contemporary policy-making and democracy. Practices of Freedom takes a different approach, calling into question this dominant narrative and taking the variety, hybridity and dispersion of social and political practices as its focus of analysis. Bringing together leading scholars in democratic theory and critical policy studies, it draws upon new understandings of radical democracy, practice and interpretative analysis to emphasise the productive role of actors and political conflict in the formation and reproduction of contemporary forms of democratic governance. Integrating theoretical dialogues with detailed empirical studies, this book examines spaces for democratisation, institutional design, democratic criteria and learning, whilst mobilising the frameworks of agonistic and aversive democracy, informality and decentred legitimacy in cases from youth engagement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The twenty-first century has brought a renewed interest in democratic theory and practices, creating a complicated relationship between time-honoured democratic traditions and new forms of political participation. Reflecting on this interplay between tradition and innovation, Aletta J. Norval offers fresh insights into the global complexities of the formation of democratic subjectivity, the difficult emergence and articulation of political claims, the constitution of democratic relations between citizens and the deepening of our democratic imagination. Aversive Democracy draws inspiration from a critical engagement with deliberative and post-structuralist models of democracy, whilst offering a distinctive reading inspired by contemporary work on the later Wittgenstein. This is a creative and insightful work which reorients democratic theory, elucidating the character of the commitments we engage in when we participate in democratic life together.

South Africa in Transition utilises new theoretical perspectives to describe and explain central dimensions of the democratic transition in South Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s, covering changes in the politics of gender and education, the political discourses of the ANC, NP and the white right, constructions of identity in South Africa's black townships and rural areas, the role of political violence in the transition, and accounts of the democratization process itself.

South Africa in Transition utilises new theoretical perspectives to describe and explain central dimensions of the democratic transition in South Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s, covering changes in the politics of gender and education, the political discourses of the ANC, NP and the white right, constructions of identity in South Africa's black townships and rural areas, the role of political violence in the transition, and accounts of the democratization process itself.

The shift from government to governance has become a starting point for many studies of contemporary policy-making and democracy. Practices of Freedom takes a different approach, calling into question this dominant narrative and taking the variety, hybridity and dispersion of social and political practices as its focus of analysis. Bringing together leading scholars in democratic theory and critical policy studies, it draws upon new understandings of radical democracy, practice and interpretative analysis to emphasise the productive role of actors and political conflict in the formation and reproduction of contemporary forms of democratic governance. Integrating theoretical dialogues with detailed empirical studies, this book examines spaces for democratisation, institutional design, democratic criteria and learning, whilst mobilising the frameworks of agonistic and aversive democracy, informality and decentred legitimacy in cases from youth engagement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How can recent developments in post-structuralist, post-Marxist and psychoanalytic theory actually inform ongoing empirical research? What are the appropriate methods and strategies for conducting research in discourse theory and analysis? How can concepts such as hegemony, identity, the imaginary, dislocation and empty signifiers illuminate key aspects of contemporary society and politics? This multi-focal work brings together commissioned contributions from the Essex School of Political Discourse Theory. Drawing inspiration from the works of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault and Jacques Lacan, the contributors address particular questions using a common theoretical language. The book contains a clear introductory statement of the theoretical approach used, and concludes with an assessment of the future directions of discourse theory in the social sciences. This global volume ranges geographically from Western and Eastern Europe to Latin America and South Africa, from Hong Kong to Turkey and the USA. Each chapter has been selected to address a key theme and issue in contemporary politics and to highlight central concepts and research strategies in the post-structuralist, post-Marxist and psychoanalytical traditions of thinking. David Howarth is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Essex and is currently Director of Masters Programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis in the Department of Government, Aletta J. Norval is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Essex and Director of the Doctoral Programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Yannis Stavrakakis is lecturing on the Ideology and Discourse Analysis Programme in the Department of Government at the Univesity of Essex

With the demise of apartheid in South Africa and the movement towards a post-apartheid society in South Africa, questions concerning the nature of apartheid and the identities it fostered are inevitably raised. Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse addresses these issues by revealing both their historical specificity and their implications for the full development of a democratic post-apartheid order. The analysis covers the institution of apartheid as a new form of social division, the transformationist project which characterized it during the 1970s and 1980s, and the disarticulation of that project from the mid 1980s to the present. Central to this analysis is the contention that apartheid, as a failed hegemonic project, can only be understood in its full complexity if attention is given to the specificity of the mode of social division it instituted. The book thus seeks to trace the construction and contestation of the central axes around which its political frontiers were organized. Drawing on a combination of post-Marxist and post-structuralist theorizations of social division and identity formation, Norval develops an account of apartheid discourse which avoids the twin pitfalls of essentialism and objectivism. She offers an analysis of contending visions-including the discources of the far-right, Inkatha, the new National Party and the ANC-for the future of South Africa,a nd investigates the prospects for the elaboration of non-racialism as a new political imaginary.

The twenty-first century has brought a renewed interest in democratic theory and practices, creating a complicated relationship between time-honoured democratic traditions and new forms of political participation. Reflecting on this interplay between tradition and innovation, Aletta J. Norval offers fresh insights into the global complexities of the formation of democratic subjectivity, the difficult emergence and articulation of political claims, the constitution of democratic relations between citizens and the deepening of our democratic imagination. Aversive Democracy draws inspiration from a critical engagement with deliberative and post-structuralist models of democracy, whilst offering a distinctive reading inspired by contemporary work on the later Wittgenstein. This is a creative and insightful work which reorients democratic theory, elucidating the character of the commitments we engage in when we participate in democratic life together.

This lively book examines the major issues raised by the emergence and transformation of various political identities in the contemporary world. The contributors bring together many current trends of thought-Lacanian psychoanalysis, deconstruction, neo-Hegelianism and political philosophy-that are relevant to the question of identity, as well as concrete studies of some of the more important political identities which have emerged in recent decades. A central theme of the book is the logic implicit in the Freudian category of identification and its consequences for understanding politics. The first half of the book explores the theoretical dimensions of the issue of identity formation. The second half brings these more abstract considerations to bear on a number of case studies-the structure of apartheid in South Africa, the rise of Islam, the Palestinian diaspora, the explosion of national identities in former Yugoslavia, the Greens in Germany, and the spread of Rastafarianism in Britain.