March 2008

John Markoff

University Professor of Sociology, History, and Political Science
University of Pittsburgh

"A Moving Target: Democracy"

Thursday, March 27, 2008
4:15 pm - C103 Hesburgh Center

Abstract

It is widely appreciated that achieving consensus on a definition of “democracy” has proven elusive and that the institutions that have been taken to be essential to democracy have changed radically since the word “democrat” began to be widely used toward the end of the eighteenth century. Democratic ideas and democratic practice engender conflict that transforms institutions rather than just reproduces them. I contend that democracy’s transformative character rests on a half-dozen key attributes: it is an actor’s concept, not merely an analyst’s; it can arouse strong feelings; it is a complex of not-always-compatible ideas; state claims to democracy empower dissent; democratic citizenship involves a dynamic mixture of inclusion and exclusion; and the democratic histories of national states have been intertwined with global domination.

In this talk, I will more specifically focus on two processes that in conjunction generate a great deal of social dynamism. First, democracy’s inclusionary claims that stir the heart have been contradicted by a complex structure of exclusions, among which I will stress distinctions in rights of participation among citizens, distinctions in rights between citizens and non-citizens, and distinctions in resources among legally equal citizens. And second, democratic practice has been especially fertile soil for the development of social movements. Taken together, democracy has been and will continue to be an invitation for movements to form and to struggle to shift the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and in so doing to expand or constrict democracy itself, and to continually redefine it.

Biography

John Markoff is professor of sociology, history and political science as well as research professor in the University Center for International Studies (UCIS) at the University of Pittsburgh.

His research concerns the history of democratization, considered as a multi-continental process across several centuries in which elite powerholders and grass-roots movements have played major parts. In the past he has written about the French Revolution and Latin American politics. More recently, he has explored a broader geographic and temporal perspective. His current projects focus on: 1) the ways in which social movements and democratization have become profoundly intertwined; 2) transnational aspects of democratization, including the implications of globalization for the future of democracy; and 3) the ways in which the meaning of democracy has altered in social struggles.

His books include: The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) and Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change (Pine Forge Press, 1996).