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Democracy Against Itself
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Book Synopsis Democracy Against Itself by : Jean-François Revel
Download or read book Democracy Against Itself written by Jean-François Revel and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For while admittedly imperfect, democracy is still the only self-correcting system, while totalitarian societies are always forced to the catastrophic end of their own logic. Yet despite this worldwide rejection of utopian illusions, the victory of democracy is by no means historically inevitable. Vigorous alternatives remain, particularly in the Third World, where Islamic fundamentalism offers perhaps the most serious contemporary challenge to democratic values. In order to ensure its success, Revel argues, we must identify our interests with the flourishing of democratic principles. Thus, our foreign aid must place political reforms ahead of economic development, and we must establish a right to intervene in the internal affairs of nondemocratic regimes, respecting only those that are rooted in popular sovereignty. But even under democratic governments, we are unlikely ever to construct a world that is much better than ourselves.
Book Synopsis Democracy Against Itself by : Mark Chou
Download or read book Democracy Against Itself written by Mark Chou and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-18 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some democracies self-destruct? Using the collapse of democracy in ancient Athens and the Weimar Republic, as well as the uncertain fate of democratic rule in the United States and China today as illustrative examples, Mark Chou examines the conditions and characteristics of democracy that make it prone to self-destruct. In drawing out the political lessons from these past collapses, he explains how a democracy can, simply by being democratic, sow the seeds of its own destruction.
Book Synopsis Democracy Despite Itself by : Danny Oppenheimer
Download or read book Democracy Despite Itself written by Danny Oppenheimer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why democracy is the most effective form of government despite irrational (and sometime oblivious) voters and flawed (and sometimes inept) politicians. Voters often make irrational decisions based on inaccurate and irrelevant information. Politicians are often inept, corrupt, or out of touch with the will of the people. Elections can be determined by the design of the ballot and the gerrymandered borders of a district. And yet, despite voters who choose candidates according to the boxer–brief dichotomy and politicians who struggle to put together a coherent sentence, democracy works exceptionally well: citizens of democracies are healthier, happier, and freer than citizens of other countries. In Democracy Despite Itself, Danny Oppenheimer, a psychologist, and Mike Edwards, a political scientist, explore this paradox: How can democracy lead to such successful outcomes when the defining characteristic of democracy—elections—is so flawed? Oppenheimer and Edwards argue that democracy works because regular elections, no matter how flawed, produce a variety of unintuitive, positive consequences. The brilliance of democracy, write Oppenheimer and Edwards, does not lie in the people's ability to pick superior leaders. It lies in the many ways that it subtly encourages the flawed people and their flawed leaders to work toward building a better society.
Book Synopsis Government Against Itself by : Daniel DiSalvo
Download or read book Government Against Itself written by Daniel DiSalvo and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Daniel DiSalvo contends that the power of public sector unions is too often inimical to the public interest"--
Book Synopsis Responsible Parties by : Frances Rosenbluth
Download or read book Responsible Parties written by Frances Rosenbluth and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide, and how to restore confidence in democratic politics In recent decades, democracies across the world have adopted measures to increase popular involvement in political decisions. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates; ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly; many places now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more specific parties rather than two dominant ones.Yet voters keep getting angrier.There is a steady erosion of trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating most recently in major populist victories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that devolving power to the grass roots is part of the problem. Efforts to decentralize political decision-making have made governments and especially political parties less effective and less able to address constituents’ long-term interests. They argue that to restore confidence in governance, we must restructure our political systems to restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party.
Book Synopsis Against Democracy by : Jason Brennan
Download or read book Against Democracy written by Jason Brennan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutions Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out. A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines. Featuring a new preface that situates the book within the current political climate and discusses other alternatives beyond epistocracy, Against Democracy is a challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable.
Book Synopsis Democracy on Trial by : Jean Bethke Elshtain
Download or read book Democracy on Trial written by Jean Bethke Elshtain and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 1993-11-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is democracy as we know it in danger? More and more we confront one another as aggrieved groups rather than as free citizens. Deepening cynicism, the growth of corrosive individualism, statism, and the loss of civil society are warning signs that democracy may be incapable of satisfying the yearnings it itself unleashes - yearnings for freedom, fairness, and equality. In her 1993 CBC Massey Lectures, political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain delves into these complex issues to evaluate democracy's chances for survival.
Book Synopsis Laboratories Against Democracy by : Jacob Grumbach
Download or read book Laboratories Against Democracy written by Jacob Grumbach and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the price Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy. Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments into the engines of American policymaking. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. The consequences don’t stop there, however. Drawing on a wealth of new data on state policy, public opinion, money in politics, and democratic performance, Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself. Required reading for this precarious moment in our politics, Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today’s state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time—or accelerating them.
Book Synopsis Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone by : Astra Taylor
Download or read book Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone written by Astra Taylor and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is democracy really? What do we mean when we use the term? And can it ever truly exist?Astra Taylor, hailed as a “New Civil Rights Leader” by the Los Angeles Times, provides surprising answers. There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money compaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise. The problems lie deeper than any one election cycle. As Astra Taylor demonstrates, real democracy—fully inclusive and completely egalitarian—has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, weaving together history, theory, the stories of individuals, and interviews with such leading thinkers as Cornel West and Wendy Brown, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term. Is democracy a means or an end, a process or a set of desired outcomes? What if those outcomes, whatever they may be—peace, prosperity, equality, liberty, an engaged citizenry—can be achieved by non-democratic means? In what areas of life should democratic principles apply? If democracy means rule by the people, what does it mean to rule and who counts as the people? Democracy's inherent paradoxes often go unnamed and unrecognized. Exploring such questions, Democracy May Not Exist offers a better understanding of what is possible, what we want, why democracy is so hard to realize, and why it is worth striving for.
Book Synopsis Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction by : Harvey C. Mansfield
Download or read book Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction written by Harvey C. Mansfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-13 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one has ever described American democracy with more accurate insight or more profoundly than Alexis de Tocqueville. After meeting with Americans on extensive travels in the United States, and intense study of documents and authorities, he authored the landmark Democracy in America, publishing its two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Ever since, this book has been the best source for every serious attempt to understand America and democracy itself. Yet Tocqueville himself remains a mystery behind the elegance of his style. Now one of our leading authorities on Tocqueville explains him in this splendid new entry in Oxford's acclaimed Very Short Introduction series. Harvey Mansfield addresses his subject as a thinker, clearly and incisively exploring Tocqueville's writings--not only his masterpiece, but also his secret Recollections, intended for posterity alone, and his unfinished work on his native France, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville was a liberal, Mansfield writes, but not of the usual sort. The many elements of his life found expression in his thought: his aristocratic ancestry, his ventures in politics, his voyages abroad, his hopes and fears for America, and his disappointment with France. All his writings show a passion for political liberty and insistence on human greatness. Perhaps most important, he saw liberty not in theories, but in the practice of self-government in America. Ever an opponent of abstraction, he offered an analysis that forces us to consider what we actually do in our politics--suggesting that theory itself may be an enemy of freedom. And that, Mansfield writes, makes him a vitally important thinker for today. Translator of an authoritative edition of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield here offers the fruit of decades of research and reflection in a clear, insightful, and marvelously compact introduction.
Book Synopsis Against Elections by : David Van Reybrouck
Download or read book Against Elections written by David Van Reybrouck and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small book with great weight and urgency to it, this is both a history of democracy and a clarion call for change. "Without drastic adjustment, this system cannot last much longer," writes Van Reybrouck, regarded today as one of Europe's most astute thinkers. "If you look at the decline in voter turnout and party membership, and at the way politicians are held in contempt, if you look at how difficult it is to form governments, how little they can do and how harshly they are punished for it, if you look at how quickly populism, technocracy and anti-parliamentarianism are rising, if you look at how more and more citizens are longing for participation and how quickly that desire can tip over into frustration, then you realize we are up to our necks." Not so very long ago, the great battles of democracy were fought for the right to vote. Now, Van Reybrouck writes, "it's all about the right to speak, but in essence it's the same battle, the battle for political emancipation and for democratic participation. We must decolonize democracy. We must democratize democracy." As history, Van Reybrouck makes the compelling argument that modern democracy was designed as much to preserve the rights of the powerful and keep the masses in line, as to give the populace a voice. As change-agent, Against Elections makes the argument that there are forms of government, what he terms sortitive or deliberative democracy, that are beginning to be practiced around the world, and can be the remedy we seek. In Iceland, for example, deliberative democracy was used to write the new constitution. A group of people were chosen by lot, educated in the subject at hand, and then were able to decide what was best, arguably, far better than politicians would have. A fascinating, and workable idea has led to a timely book to remind us that our system of government is a flexible instrument, one that the people have the power to change.
Book Synopsis The People Vs. Democracy by : Yascha Mounk
Download or read book The People Vs. Democracy written by Yascha Mounk and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uiteenzetting over de opkomst van het populisme en het gevaar daarvan voor de democratie.
Book Synopsis Democracy Against Domination by : K. Sabeel Rahman
Download or read book Democracy Against Domination written by K. Sabeel Rahman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008, the collapse of the US financial system plunged the economy into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In its aftermath, the financial crisis pushed to the forefront fundamental moral and institutional questions about how we govern the modern economy. What are the values that economic policy ought to prioritize? What institutions do we trust to govern complex economic dynamics? Much of popular and academic debate revolves around two competing approaches to these fundamental questions: laissez-faire defenses of self-correcting and welfare-enhancing markets on the one hand, and managerialist turns to the role of insulated, expert regulation in mitigating risks and promoting growth on the other. In Democracy Against Domination, K. Sabeel Rahman offers an alternative vision for how we should govern the modern economy in a democratic society. Drawing on a rich tradition of economic reform rooted in the thought and reform politics of early twentieth century progressives like John Dewey and Louis Brandeis, Rahman argues that the fundamental moral challenge of economic governance today is two-fold: first, to counteract the threats of economic domination whether in the form of corporate power or inequitable markets; and second, to do so by expanding the capacity of citizens themselves to exercise real political power in economic policymaking. This normative framework in turn suggests a very different way of understanding and addressing major economic governance issues of the post-crisis era, from the challenge of too-big-to-fail financial firms, to the dangers of regulatory capture and regulatory reform.
Book Synopsis How Democracies Die by : Steven Levitsky
Download or read book How Democracies Die written by Steven Levitsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Book Synopsis Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus by : Danielle Allen
Download or read book Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus written by Danielle Allen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-02-16 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in crisis -- Pandemic resilience -- Federalism is an asset -- A transformed peace: an agenda for healing our social contract.
Book Synopsis Democracy and Tradition by : Jeffrey Stout
Download or read book Democracy and Tradition written by Jeffrey Stout and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do religious arguments have a public role in the post-9/11 world? Can we hold democracy together despite fractures over moral issues? Are there moral limits on the struggle against terror? Asking how the citizens of modern democracy can reason with one another, this book carves out a controversial position between those who view religious voices as an anathema to democracy and those who believe democratic society is a moral wasteland because such voices are not heard. Drawing inspiration from Whitman, Dewey, and Ellison, Jeffrey Stout sketches the proper role of religious discourse in a democracy. He discusses the fate of virtue, the legacy of racism, the moral issues implicated in the war on terrorism, and the objectivity of ethical norms. Against those who see no place for religious reasoning in the democratic arena, Stout champions a space for religious voices. But against increasingly vocal antiliberal thinkers, he argues that modern democracy can provide a moral vision and has made possible such moral achievements as civil rights precisely because it allows a multitude of claims to be heard. Stout's distinctive pragmatism reconfigures the disputed area where religious thought, political theory, and philosophy meet. Charting a path beyond the current impasse between secular liberalism and the new traditionalism, Democracy and Tradition asks whether we have the moral strength to continue as a democratic people as it invigorates us to retrieve our democratic virtues from very real threats to their practice.
Book Synopsis Democracy in America (Complete) by : Alexis de Tocqueville
Download or read book Democracy in America (Complete) written by Alexis de Tocqueville and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 1320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader. It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings. The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.
