Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy

Extract

Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy. By Romand Coles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

In 1859, two years after England crushed the Indian Uprising, John Stuart Mill explained why the rules of international morality do not apply to “barbarians”: “In the first place, the rules of international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives” (“A Few Words on Intervention,” in Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1962).