Democratic and Summative Political Order: The practical possibility of democratic rule in non-Western societies

The article discusses the potential for democratic rule in non-Western societies, starting from the oft-claimed inevitable connection between liberal constitutionalism and democracy. By unpacking this normative connection the article shows that behind this relationship there is a culturally specific conception of political order that is limited to the West. However, to evaluate the idea of a non-Western democracy we cannot presuppose this conception of political order. Instead, through an analysis of the political order in Russia and China, the article demonstrates that in non-Western societies the political order and the system of norms exclusively focus on the individual. This kind of a summative order of the political offers different preconditions for democracy; in a third step these will be examined as to the practical possibilities for non-Western democracy.