The Evolution of Political Modernity, Justice and the Present Global Configuration

Liberalism and republicanism are the dominant features of political systems and the state today across the world, along with the reformed party-state that transited from ‘real socialism’ to capitalism. While the latter appears no longer as an alternative to modernity and has evolved recently towards a more autocratic regime, the former was characterized by an expansion of those two vectors, ending however contraction in the later years of the twentieth century. In other words, authoritarian collectivism (‘real socialism’) has given up on democracy though including variably strong social policies today, while the compound liberalism-republicanism expanded towards democracy and social rights, but went in a re-oligarchy and more restricted social policy direction (poverty-combat/administration rather than universalizing social policies and rights prevails). The age of ‘social constitutionalism’ was therefore to a large extent over, while more closed political systems developed. Whereas this remains largely the same, the state has lately become more interventionist in economy dimension, with political polarization also developing at the international level, after the brief post-Cold War far-reaching hegemony of the US. This presentation aims to ask which are therefore the conceptual issues that demand a conceptualization by political sociology in order to globally make sense of contemporary modernity. A by now long line of reasoning has theorized the different phases of modernity (Hilferding and Lenin, Offe and Castells, Lash and Urry and Boltanski and Chiappelo, Wagner and Domingues). What can say about modernity and its phases, especially political modernity in view of the political issues raised above and the relations between?