POSTS BY David Abraham
26 February 2020

Class, Identity and “We the People”

The great marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm observed that the “long 19th century” repeatedly posed the question of “who is the people” while the “short 20th century” attempted to answer the question – often in the most bloody and regressive ways. It has been one of U. K. Preuss’s great contributions to grapple with and explain how constitutions have attempted to conceptualize and vindicate “the people” within a liberal and democratic order that can free us from those bloody and regressive ways. Continue reading >>
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05 April 2017

More Is Less: Multiple Citizenship, Political Participation, and Mr Erdogan

I must differ with my colleague, Peter Spiro, and those who consider dual citizenship unproblematic or even progressive and a facilitator of immigrant integration. The devaluation of citizenship that widespread dual citizenship both reflects and worsens is in fact bad for those who need democracy and seek social equality. It is also another moment in which political power has yielded to market power. At the same time, making dual citizenship illegal, or even discouraging it, is a pointless effort since even after the current nationalist-populist wave passes, human mobility is highly likely to remain at high levels. Continue reading >>
10 November 2016

A Crisis of Representation

The failure to offer a serious alternative to the current maladies of capitalism should not be construed as a constitutional crisis. Continue reading >>
29 February 2016

Immigration, Majority Rights, and Welfare State Solidarity

Liav Orgad’s new book, The Cultural Defense of Nations, could hardly have appeared at a more opportune moment. It represents a systematic effort to grapple with the core issues of national identity so much on the agenda of both the classical and new lands of immigration. It seeks to do so within the framework of liberal political and social theory while turning our sympathies toward majority cultures facing the “threat” of lost identity and dominance, a loss being brought about by both immigration and the multiculturalist policies of the past generation. Continue reading >>
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