Abstract

This book provides an interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between compromise and democracy. Compromises have played a significant role in our representative democracies and yet the nature of the relationship between compromise and democracy has generally raised tricky theoretical questions and generated ambiguous evaluations. This book focuses on the relationship between compromise and liberal democracies from both a cultural and institutional perspective and addresses new and lesser-explored aspects of the relationship. It explores a variety of topics including: compromise and in-commensurable values, antagonist paradigms, compromise and majority decisions, compromise and publicity, compromise and post-conflict societies, compromise and anti-system political parties, and compromise and the understanding of political representation. Compromises in Democracy offers an original perspective on the topic by assembling contributions from the fields of philosophy, sociology, political theory, political science and history of ideas.