Democracy and Apartheid: Political Theory, Comparative Politics and the Modern South African State

Using South Africa’s transition a focus, this book assesses and challenges conventional assumptions in the theory of democracy. Political philosophers treat the electoral method as a means of resolving conflict into consensus within a pre-existing political community. The author shows how the South African case demonstrates the viability of the electoral method in the absence of a community with common languages of political appraisal. Elections can transform one kind of conflict into another, and the idea of democracy itself can facilitate communication between sociologically separated groups with diverse political languages. This book turns these lessons back on Western democracies and asks whether they are not also characterized by systemic determination and sociological division.