other enter into and shape ideas of democracy, representation, and nation.
This section should be understood as a gesture, but just that, towards decen-
tering what has come to be known as Anglo-American theory. ThisHandbook
of political theory is published in Oxford and written in the English language,
but one modest objective, nonetheless, is to highlight the speciWcity ofallwork
in political theory, and the way the questions addressed reXect particular
histories and locations.
The chapters in Part V, ‘‘State and People,’’ combine historical analysis of
the shifting understandings of state and people with normative explorations
of democracy, constitutionalism, and representation. As the essays indicate,
the last decades have been a time of very considerable innovation. For
much of the twentieth century, democracy was conceptualized as a matter
of universal suVrage (sometimes quaintly equated with one man one vote),
competitive party elections, and the rule of law. The outstanding problems
were not thought to be theoretical, but centered on how to spread this
conception more widely; and much of the work on democracy (often com-
parative, or dealing with the conditions for democratization) was carried out
by political scientists rather than theorists. This picture has since
changed radically, with a complex of concerns about the nature and limits
of constitutionalism, the exclusions practised under the name of democracy,
and the possibilities of wider and deeper practices of popular control. As
reXects the breadth of these debates, this is one of the largest sections in
theHandbook.
Part VI, ‘‘Justice, Equality, and Freedom,’’ evokes the combination of
concerns that runs through the work of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and
the liberal egalitarian tradition: the idea, for example, that justice is a
matter of treating people as equals rather than treating them equally; or
that egalitarians must recognize individuals as responsible agents, account-
able for their own choices. The chapters in this section reXect that legacy,
but also problematize it by reference to arguments drawn from the
feminist literature and work on recognition. They include essays on the
relationship between equality and impartiality, and the relationship be-
tween treating people as equals and recognizing them as diVerent; and
address the questions about individual responsibility that became central
to the literature on justice and equality through the last decades. The
literature on historical injustice goes back further, but has drawn new
sustenance from debates on reparations for slavery and the treatment of
indigenous peoples.
32 john s. dryzek, bonniehonig&annephillips