Abstract

Carole Pateman leaves no doubt regarding the addressees of her book: “My larger aim,” she writes, “which is both more substantive and more controversial, is to show that political obligation in the liberal democratic state constitutes an insoluble problem; insoluble because political obligation cannot be given expression within the context of liberal democratic institutions” (p. 1). Further: “The term ‘liberal democracy’ is sometimes used as if it were a combination or synthesis of liberalism and democracy; it has also, and most importantly, become popularly and academically identified with ‘democracy’ itself. It is widely assumed that ‘democracy’ can be nothing other than our existing liberal democracies.