Governance, self-representation and democratic imagination

The relationship between individual and community is a classical theme in democratic theory. To search for innovations in democratic theory calls for re-thinking this relationship. In modern political theory this relationship has predominantly been referred to as the terrain of, and the challenges to, government. The theoretical set-up has mostly been centred on the oppositions between public/private and state/civil society. These oppositions have been related to discussions of the nature of politics in general and democratic politics in particular. The typical oppositions have been those between the common good versus neutrality, the instrumental versus the normative, power versus autonomy, and ‘thick’ versus ‘thin’ conceptions of individual and community.