This article critically examines the competitive, adversarial nature of the Western neoliberal style of democracy. Specifically, this article focuses on Amartya Sen’s notion of a “universal democracy” as a means of addressing socio-economic inequalities through Sen’s capability approach. Sen’s capability theory has become an acclaimed and widely used theory to evaluate and understand development and inequalities. However, we employ a distinctive critique by engaging Amartya Sen through Herbert Marcuse’s analysis of one dimensionality and the adversarial nature of Western democracy. We (...) further highlight how contemporary neoliberal society employ a particular, adversarial form of public participation. Through this, we underline the various neoliberal problemata, such as Western idealism, political passivity, and a “flattening of choice,” within contemporary democracies and locate how their competitive, winner-take-all nature has become essential to contemporary, Western democratic models. Consequently, we argue that democracy, as a functional concept and form of public engagement, should be fundamentally re-examined in order to address inequalities. (shrink)

I argue that when conceiving or assessing normative ideas about how we should organize society into the kind of ecosystem we desire, it is unwise to completely ignore empirical conditions. I also demonstrate that when evaluating empirical difficulties attending a social system, it is also unwise to do so in total oblivion to the normative idea or objective informing the establishment of such a system. Each of these assessments I call an under informed single-level analysis. By contrast I advocate a (...) multi-level analysis (by which we evaluate both the normative and empirical dimensions of an idea or a social system) or, at the least, an informed single-level analysis (by which we evaluate either a normative idea or an empirical system with an implicit awareness of the content of the other level). I demonstrate that these models of analysis would never yield the same conclusions as an under informed single-level analysis. For my case studies I focus on the various models of analyses used in the debate about liberal majoritarian and consensus/communal democracies. (shrink)