Democracy, Law and Governance

Democracy, Law and Governance details the transformation of the modes of governance of contemporary developed democracies and aims to define the conditions required for promoting public interest in their public policy. Firstly, the volume illustrates why a sound theoretical approach to the concept of law results in opening up the theory of law to the debate on governance in the social sciences. Secondly, it reconstructs the underpinnings of recent debate on governance, focusing on the pragmatist turn that has marked efforts to overcome the inadequacies of both the economic and the deliberative approaches. In fulfilling this second goal, it examines the advances yielded by the pragmatist turn as well as its limitations, and concludes by proposing a theoretical approach for dealing with them. This illuminating book applies recent research in both theory of law and theory of governance to deepen the analytic impact of the recent pragmatist revival.

Jacques Lenoble is Professor of Law, in the Centre for Legal Philosophy, Université Catholique de Louvain, His research interests are in the fields of Legal Theory, Philosophy of Law, Theory of Democracy, and Theory of Governance. He has published widely on these and related fields. Marc Maesschalck is a Professor at the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie of the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie of the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium and Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis. He researches in the areas of: Political and Moral Philosophy, Ethics, and Epistemology of Human Sciences. He has published on these and related topics.

Introduction; Part 01 Beyond Hermeneutic and Pragmatist Approaches: Toward a Genetic Approach to the Concept of Law; Chapter 1 From a Hermeneutic Critique to a Pragmatist Redefinition of the Rule of Recognition; Chapter 2 From a Positivist to a Genetic Approach to the Conventionality of Law: A Necessary Broadening of the Pragmatist Theory of Law; Part 02 Beyond Neo-institutionalist and Pragmatist Approaches to Governance: Toward a Genetic Approach to Governance; Chapter 3 The First Neo-institutionalist Approach: The New Institutional Economics; Chapter 4 The Second Neo-institutionalist Approach: Towards a Relational and Collaborative Governance Through Dialogue; Chapter 5 Political Pragmatism and Social Attention; Chapter 6 Towards a Genetic Approach to Governance; Chapter 101; Conclusion;