Post‐Democracy,Press, Politics and Power

Transnational media corporations now wield enormous power and influence. Never has this been displayed so starkly and so shockingly as in the revelations that emerged during the Leveson Inquiry into the culture and ethics of the press in the UK. This paper considers the implications of the relationship between media elites and political elites for democratic culture and media reform. The paper argues that the culture of press–politician mutual interest in which media executives and party leaders collude will continue as long as the solutions proffered focus on the ethical constraints of professional journalists rather than wider structural issues relating to plurality of ownership and control and funding of news in the public interest.     

Post-Marxism, Democracy and the Future of Radical Politics

This paper takes issue with the suggestion that the work of post-Marxists, largely informed by a 'post-modern' perspective, should be viewed with suspicion by those concerned with advancing a radical democratic agenda. I argue that such a reading fails to penetrate beneath the surface of the post-Marxist engagement with liberal theory, seeing their willingness to concede the necessity for a mediation between 'particular' and 'universal', individual and community as a sign of their happiness to rest within the presuppositions of classical liberal theory. In fact, the opposite is the case: only by treating seriously the question of 'mediation' can left radical demands for greater democratisation, increased equality and autonomy make sense within a modern, industrialised context. By extension, it is exploring the forms and modalities of mediation that left radical demands can become politically relevant.     

Debating Opportunities, Outcomes and Democracy: Young and Phillips on Equality

Within recent egalitarian theory, the ideal of equal opportunity holds considerable sway. Liberal egalitarians increasingly concentrate on refining this ideal, as do a number of Marxist theorists. At the same time many radical critics are unhappy with various aspects of this hegemony of equality of opportunity, and this article examines the reasons for their unhappiness, as well as two possible solutions. The first would be to reject equal opportunities in favour of another conception of equality, or to argue that the ideal can only play a limited role within an egalitarian project. Another would be to try to radicalise the idea of equal opportunities: to argue that equality of opportunity can be a transformative ideal if it is interpreted sufficiently broadly or deeply. We can identify Anne Phillips with the first approach, and Iris Young with the second. On the question of whether equality of opportunity can provide an overarching normative framework for egalitarian politics, Young's response is in the positive, whereas Phillips' is in the negative. The article critically addresses this dilemma, and concludes by siding with Phillips, by arguing that equality of opportunity is not capable of standing in as an overarching normative principle for egalitarian politics.