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Chapter 1 - The Urgency of Community?

Neoliberalism and the Legitimation Crisis of Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2026

Christian J. Emden
Affiliation:
Rice University, Houston
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Summary

Appeals to “community” and to “the common” have become increasingly frequent in political thought. In this chapter, I focus on some of the reasons for the appearance of such appeals in the landscape of contemporary political thought. This chapter also highlights some of the uncanny intellectual links across the entire political spectrum, from European post-Marxist and American communitarian philosophers to the public intellectuals of the neofascist “New Right.” These links emerge and play out in a broader intellectual field that is shaped both by the political economy of Western Europe and North America after 1945 and by the failure to address the obvious shortcomings and negative effects of this political economy. Against this broader background, current appeals to community in political thought can be seen as a response to the lived experience of neoliberal capitalism, which has led to a legitimation crisis of liberal constitutional democracy. But I am also going to suggest that appeals to community invariably tend to drift into an antidemocratic direction.

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