Towards a Global History of Voting Sovereignty, the Diffusion of Ideas, and the Enchanted Individual 英文参考文献.docVIP

Religions 2012, 3, 407–423; doi:10.3390/rel3020407 OPEN ACCESS religions ISSN 2077-1444 /journal/religions Article Towards a Global History of Voting: Sovereignty, the Diffusion of Ideas, and the Enchanted Individual David Gilmartin Department of History, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8108, USA; E-Mail: david_gilmartin@ Received: 25 April 2012; in revised form: 7 May 2012 / Accepted: 8 May 2012 / Published: 8 May 2012 Abstract: This article suggests a framework for moving toward a global history of voting and democracy that focuses less on the diffusion of European ideas (however important those ideas were) than on embedding the history of voting within a worldwide history of ideas on sovereignty. The article posits a general framework for such a history focusing on a ―conundrum of sovereignty‖ grounding legitimate rule in a space imagined as simultaneously within and outside worldly society. Rooted in a ―secular theology‖ such ideas shaped in the 19th and 20th centuries the establishment of systems of mass voting (including the secret ballot), and the sovereignty of the ―people‖ both in Europe and other parts of the world alike, in the process producing an image of the individual voter as an ―enchanted individual.‖ The article looks at developments within Europe and in India in these terms.1 Keywords: voting; democracy; sovereignty; elections; people; conundrum; Europeanization; India; secret ballot; influence; secular theology; enchanted individual Introduction The world-wide history of elections and democracy has often in recent decades been portrayed as a history of diffusion. In his Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, John Headley has written a compelling account of the power of universalizing European ideas, including democracy, as a global legacy. Europe, in Headley‘s framework, represents the critical node from whic