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Rich Democracies Poor People
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Book Synopsis Rich Democracies, Poor People by : David Brady
Download or read book Rich Democracies, Poor People written by David Brady and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty is not simply the result of an individual's characteristics, behaviors or abilities. Rather, as David Brady demonstrates, poverty is the result of politics. In Rich Democracies, Poor People, Brady investigates why poverty is so entrenched in some affluent democracies whereas it is a solvable problem in others. Drawing on over thirty years of data from eighteen countries, Brady argues that cross-national and historical variations in poverty are principally driven by differences in the generosity of the welfare state. An explicit challenge to mainstream views of poverty as an inescapable outcome of individual failings or a society's labor markets and demography, this book offers institutionalized power relations theory as an alternative explanation.
Book Synopsis Rich Democracies by : Harold L. Wilensky
Download or read book Rich Democracies written by Harold L. Wilensky and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-07 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on data covering the past 50 years and more than 400 interviews with top decision-makers, Wilensky provides a richly detailed account of the common problems modern governments confront and their contrasting styles of conflict resolution.
Book Synopsis A World of Insecurity by : Pranab Bardhan
Download or read book A World of Insecurity written by Pranab Bardhan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ambitious account of the corrosion of liberal democracy in rich and poor countries alike, arguing that antidemocratic sentiment reflects fear of material and cultural loss, not a critique of liberalism’s failure to deliver equality, and suggesting possible ways out. The retreat of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century has been impossible to ignore. From Wisconsin to Warsaw, Budapest to Bangalore, the public is turning against pluralism and liberal institutions and instead professing unapologetic nationalism and majoritarianism. Critics of inequality argue that this is a predictable response to failures of capitalism and liberalism, but Pranab Bardhan, a development economist, sees things differently. The problem is not inequality but insecurity—financial and cultural. Bardhan notes that antidemocratic movements have taken root globally in a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic groups. In the United States, older, less-educated, rural populations have withdrawn from democracy. But in India, the prevailing Hindu Nationalists enjoy the support of educated, aspirational urban youth. And in Europe, antidemocratic populists firmly back the welfare state (but for nonimmigrants). What is consistent among antidemocrats is fear of losing what they have. That could be money but is most often national pride and culture and the comfort of tradition. A World of Insecurity argues for context-sensitive responses. Some, like universal basic income schemes, are better suited to poor countries. Others, like worker empowerment and international coordination, have broader appeal. But improving material security won’t be enough to sustain democracy. Nor, Bardhan writes, should we be tempted by the ultimately hollow lure of China’s authoritarian model. He urges liberals to adopt at least a grudging respect for fellow citizens’ local attachments. By affirming civic forms of community pride, we might hope to temper cultural anxieties before they become pathological.
Book Synopsis Do the Poor Count? by : Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson
Download or read book Do the Poor Count? written by Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America’s flirtation with neoliberal economic restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s (the so-called Washington Consensus strategy) had the effect of increasing income inequality throughout the region. The aim of this economic policy was in part to create the conditions for stable democracy by ensuring efficient economic use of resources, both human and capital, but the widening gap between rich and poor threatened to undermine political stability. At the heart of the dilemma faced by these new democracies is the question of accountability: Are all citizens equally capable of holding the government accountable if it does not represent their interests? In this book, Michelle Taylor-Robinson investigates both the formal institutions of democracy (such as electoral rules and the design of the legislative and executive branches) and informal institutions (such as the nomination procedures of political parties and patron-client relationships) to see what incentives legislators have to pay attention to the needs of poor people and thereby adequately represent their interests.
Book Synopsis Democracy in Decline? by : Larry Diamond
Download or read book Democracy in Decline? written by Larry Diamond and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-10 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Is Democracy in Decline? is a short book that takes up the fascinating question on whether this once-revolutionary form of government--the bedrock of Western liberalism--is fast disappearing. Has the growth of corporate capitalism, mass economic inequality, and endemic corruption reversed the spread of democracy worldwide? In this incisive collection, leading thinkers address this disturbing and critically important issue. Published as part of the National Endowment for Democracy's 25th anniversary--and drawn from articles forthcoming in the Journal of Democracy--this collection includes seven essays from a stellar group of democracy scholars: Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Thomas Carothers, Marc Plattner, Larry Diamond, Philippe Schmitter, Steven Levitsky, Ivan Krastev, and Lucan Way. Written in a thought-provoking style from seven different perspectives, this book provides an eye-opening look at how the very foundation of Western political culture may be imperiled"--
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 The Price of Democracy by : Julia Cagé
Download or read book The Price of Democracy written by Julia Cagé and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why and how systems of political financing and representation in Europe and North America give outsized influence to the wealthy and undermine democracy, and what we can do about it. One person, one vote. In theory, everyone in a democracy has equal power to decide elections. But it’s hardly news that, in reality, political outcomes are heavily determined by the logic of one dollar, one vote. We take the political power of money for granted. But does it have to be this way? In The Price of Democracy, Julia Cagé combines economic and historical analysis with political theory to show how profoundly our systems in North America and Europe, from think tanks and the media to election campaigns, are shaped by money. She proposes fundamental reforms to bring democracy back into line with its egalitarian promise. Cagé shows how different countries have tried to develop legislation to curb the power of private money and to develop public systems to fund campaigns and parties. But these attempts have been incoherent and unsystematic. She demonstrates that it is possible to learn from these experiments in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to design a better system that would increase political participation and trust. This would involve setting a strict cap on private donations and creating a public voucher system to give each voter an equal amount to spend in support of political parties. More radically, Cagé argues that a significant fraction of seats in parliamentary assemblies should be set aside for representatives from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. At a time of widespread political disenchantment, The Price of Democracy is a bracing reminder of the problems we face and an inspirational guide to the potential for reform.
Download or read book Entrenchment written by Paul Starr and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the foundations of democratic societies and the ongoing struggle over the power of concentrated wealth Much of our politics today, Paul Starr writes, is a struggle over entrenchment—efforts to bring about change in ways that opponents will find difficult to undo. That is why the stakes of contemporary politics are so high. In this wide-ranging book, Starr examines how changes at the foundations of society become hard to reverse—yet sometimes are overturned. Overcoming aristocratic power was the formative problem for eighteenth-century revolutions. Overcoming slavery was the central problem for early American democracy. Controlling the power of concentrated wealth has been an ongoing struggle in the world’s capitalist democracies. The battles continue today in the troubled democracies of our time, with the rise of both oligarchy and populist nationalism and the danger that illiberal forces will entrench themselves in power. Entrenchment raises fundamental questions about the origins of our institutions and urgent questions about the future.
Book Synopsis Voice and Inequality by : Carew Boulding
Download or read book Voice and Inequality written by Carew Boulding and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first large-scale study of political participation in eighteen Latin American democracies, focusing on the political participation of the region's poorest citizens. Political regimes in Latin America have a long history of excluding poor people from politics. Today, the region's democracies survive in contexts that are still marked by deep poverty and some of the world's most severe socioeconomic inequalities. Keeping socioeconomic inequality from spilling over into political inequality is one of the core challenges facing these young democracies. In Voice and Inequality, Carew Boulding and Claudio Holzner offer the first large-scale empirical analysis of political participation in Latin America. They find that in recent years, most (but not all) countries in the region have achieved near equality of participation across wealth groups, and in some cases poor people participate more than wealthier individuals. How can this be, given the long history of excluding poor people from the political arena in Latin America? Boulding and Holzner argue that key institutions of democracy, namely civil society, political parties, and competitive elections, have an enormous impact on whether or not poor people turn out to vote, protest, and contact government officials. Far from being politically inert, under certain conditions the poorest citizens can act and speak for themselves with an intensity that far exceeds their modest socioeconomic resources. When voluntary organizations thrive in poor communities and when political parties focus their mobilization efforts on poor individuals, they respond with high levels of political activism. Poor people's activism also benefits from strong parties, robust electoral competition and well-functioning democratic institutions. Where electoral competition is robust and where the power of incumbents is constrained, the authors find higher levels of participation by poor individuals and more political equality. Precisely because the individual resource constraints that poor people face are daunting obstacles to political activism, Voice and Inequality focuses on the features of democratic politics that create opportunities for participation that have the strongest impact on poor people's political behavior. Ultimately, Voice and Inequality provides important insights about how the elusive goal of political equality can be achieved even in contexts of elevated poverty and inequality.
Download or read book Edge of Chaos written by Dambisa Moyo and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an internationally acclaimed economist, a provocative call to jump-start economic growth by aggressively overhauling liberal democracy Around the world, people who are angry at stagnant wages and growing inequality have rebelled against established governments and turned to political extremes. Liberal democracy, history's greatest engine of growth, now struggles to overcome unprecedented economic headwinds--from aging populations to scarce resources to unsustainable debt burdens. Hobbled by short-term thinking and ideological dogma, democracies risk falling prey to nationalism and protectionism that will deliver declining living standards. In Edge of Chaos, Dambisa Moyo shows why economic growth is essential to global stability, and why liberal democracies are failing to produce it today. Rather than turning away from democracy, she argues, we must fundamentally reform it. Edge of Chaos presents a radical blueprint for change in order to galvanize growth and ensure the survival of democracy in the twenty-first century.
Book Synopsis Elite Parties, Poor Voters by : Tariq Thachil
Download or read book Elite Parties, Poor Voters written by Tariq Thachil and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do poor people often vote against their material interests? This puzzle has been famously studied within wealthy Western democracies, yet the fact that the poor voter paradox also routinely manifests within poor countries has remained unexplored. This book studies how this paradox emerged in India, the world's largest democracy. Tariq Thachil shows how arguments from studies of wealthy democracies (such as moral values voting) and the global south (such as patronage or ethnic appeals) cannot explain why poor voters in poor countries support parties that represent elite policy interests. He instead draws on extensive survey data and fieldwork to document a novel strategy through which elite parties can recruit the poor, while retaining the rich. He shows how these parties can win over disadvantaged voters by privately providing them with basic social services via grassroots affiliates. Such outsourcing permits the party itself to continue to represent the policy interests of their privileged base.
Book Synopsis Sustaining Civil Society by : Philip Oxhorn
Download or read book Sustaining Civil Society written by Philip Oxhorn and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “South America is not the poorest continent in the world, but it may very well be the most unjust.” This statement by Ricardo Lagos, then president of Chile, at the Summit of the Americas in January 2004 captures nicely the dilemma that faces Latin American countries in the wake of the transition to democracy that swept across the continent in the last two decades of the twentieth century. While political rights are now available to citizens at unprecedented levels, social and economic rights lag far behind, and the fledgling democracies struggle with long legacies of poverty, inequality, and corruption. Key to understanding what is happening in Latin America today is the relationship between the state and civil society. In this ambitious book, Philip Oxhorn sets forth a theory of civil society adequate for explaining current developments in a way that such controversial neoconservative theories as Francis Fukuyama’s liberal triumphalism or Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” cannot. Inspired by the rich political sociology of an earlier era and the classic work of T. H. Marshall on citizenship, Oxhorn studies the process by which social groups are incorporated, or not, into national socioeconomic and political development through an approach that focuses on the “social construction of citizenship.”
Book Synopsis Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro by : Enrique Desmond Arias
Download or read book Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro written by Enrique Desmond Arias and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. Employing participant observation and interview research in three favelas (shantytowns) in Rio de Janeiro over a nine-year period, Arias closely considers the social interactions and criminal networks that are at the heart of the challenges to democratic governance in urban Brazil. Much of the violence is the result of highly organized, politically connected drug dealers feeding off of the global cocaine market. Rising crime prompts repressive police tactics, and corruption runs deep in state structures. The rich move to walled communities, and the poor are caught between the criminals and often corrupt officials. Arias argues that public policy change is not enough to stop the vicious cycle of crime and corruption. The challenge, he suggests, is to build new social networks committed to controlling violence locally. Arias also offers comparative insights that apply this analysis to other cities in Brazil and throughout Latin America.
Book Synopsis From Poverty to Power by : Duncan Green
Download or read book From Poverty to Power written by Duncan Green and published by Oxfam. This book was released on 2008 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.
Book Synopsis Unequal Democracy by : Larry M. Bartels
Download or read book Unequal Democracy written by Larry M. Bartels and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acclaimed examination of how the American political system favors the wealthy—now fully revised and expanded The first edition of Unequal Democracy was an instant classic, shattering illusions about American democracy and spurring scholarly and popular interest in the political causes and consequences of escalating economic inequality. This revised, updated, and expanded second edition includes two new chapters on the political economy of the Obama era. One presents the Great Recession as a "stress test" of the American political system by analyzing the 2008 election and the impact of Barack Obama's "New New Deal" on the economic fortunes of the rich, middle class, and poor. The other assesses the politics of inequality in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2012 election, and the partisan gridlock of Obama’s second term. Larry Bartels offers a sobering account of the barriers to change posed by partisan ideologies and the political power of the wealthy. He also provides new analyses of tax policy, partisan differences in economic performance, the struggle to raise the minimum wage, and inequalities in congressional representation. President Obama identified inequality as "the defining challenge of our time." Unequal Democracy is the definitive account of how and why our political system has failed to rise to that challenge. Now more than ever, this is a book every American needs to read.
Book Synopsis Democracy and Development by : Adam Przeworski
Download or read book Democracy and Development written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-08-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines impact of political regimes on economic development between 1950 and 1990.
Book Synopsis Democracy in Decline by : Philip Kotler
Download or read book Democracy in Decline written by Philip Kotler and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in Decline is an examination by the ′father of modern marketing′ into how a long cherished product (democracy) is failing the needs of its consumers (citizens). Philip Kotler identifies 14 shortcomings of today’s democracy and confronts this gloomy outlook with some potential solutions and a positive message; that a brighter future awaits if we can come together and save democracy from its decline. Encouraging readers to join the conversation, exercise their free speech and get on top of the issues that affect their lives regardless of nationality or political persuasion. Suitable for students across a broad range of courses including Political Science, Politics, Political Marketing and Critical Management/Sociology. An accompanying website invites those interested to help find and publish thoughtful articles that aid our understanding of what is happening and what can be done to improve democracies around the world.
