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Saving Our Democracy
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Download or read book Saving Democracy written by Kevin O'Leary and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saving Democracy presents a bold yet practical plan for reinventing American democracy for the twenty-first century. The book diagnoses contemporary political ills as symptoms of corruption in our large republic and develops a new understanding of representative democracy. Building on the ideas of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, Saving Democracy shows how it is possible to combine the traditional town hall and the Internet to fashion a new theory of representative government that empowers citizens and bridges the enormous gap that now exists between the political elite and the average voter. Under the author's plan, in each of the nation's 435 congressional districts a local assembly of 100 citizens, selected by lot, would meet to discuss the major domestic and international issues. The role of this assembly would be deliberative and advisory and its views would constitute a second, more sophisticated and informed measure of public opinion than traditional public opinion polls. The next step would be the establishment of the People's House, which would hold actual legislative power.
Book Synopsis How to Save a Constitutional Democracy by : Tom Ginsburg
Download or read book How to Save a Constitutional Democracy written by Tom Ginsburg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-10-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self-rule. In the United States, the tenure of Donald Trump has seemed decisive turning point for many. What kind of president intimidates jurors, calls the news media the “enemy of the American people,” and seeks foreign assistance investigating domestic political rivals? Whatever one thinks of President Trump, many think the Constitution will safeguard us from lasting damage. But is that assumption justified? How to Save a Constitutional Democracy mounts an urgent argument that we can no longer afford to be complacent. Drawing on a rich array of other countries’ experiences with democratic backsliding, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq show how constitutional rules can both hinder and hasten the decline of democratic institutions. The checks and balances of the federal government, a robust civil society and media, and individual rights—such as those enshrined in the First Amendment—often fail as bulwarks against democratic decline. The sobering reality for the United States, Ginsburg and Huq contend, is that the Constitution’s design makes democratic erosion more, not less, likely. Its structural rigidity has had unforeseen consequence—leaving the presidency weakly regulated and empowering the Supreme Court conjure up doctrines that ultimately facilitate rather than inhibit rights violations. Even the bright spots in the Constitution—the First Amendment, for example—may have perverse consequences in the hands of a deft communicator who can degrade the public sphere by wielding hateful language banned in many other democracies. We—and the rest of the world—can do better. The authors conclude by laying out practical steps for how laws and constitutional design can play a more positive role in managing the risk of democratic decline.
Download or read book Say It Louder! written by Tiffany Cross and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breakout media and political analyst delivers a sweeping snapshot of American Democracy and the role that African Americans have played in its shaping while offering concrete information to help harness the electoral power of the country’s rising majority and exposing political forces aligned to subvert and suppress Black voters. Black voters were critical to the Democrats’ 2018 blue wave. In fact, 90 percent of Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to just 53 percent of all voters. Despite media narratives, this was not a fluke. Throughout U.S. history, Black people have played a crucial role in the shaping of the American experiment. Yet still, this powerful voting bloc is often dismissed as some “amorphous” deviation, argues Tiffany Cross. Say It Louder! is her explosive examination of how America’s composition was designed to exclude Black voters, but paradoxically would likely cease to exist without them. With multiple tentacles stretching into the cable news echo chamber, campaign leadership, and Black voter data, Cross creates a wrinkle in time with a reflective look at the timeless efforts endlessly attempting to deny people of color the right to vote—a basic tenet of American democracy. And yet as the demographics of the country are changing, so too is the electoral power construct—by evolution and by force, Cross declares. Grounded in the most-up-to-date research, Say It Louder! is a vital tool for a wide swath of constituencies.
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 335 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 Democracy's Edge by : Frances Moore Lappe
Download or read book Democracy's Edge written by Frances Moore Lappe and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-10-28 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three out of five Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, feel our country is headed in the wrong direction. America is at the edge, a critical place at which we can either renew and revitalize or give in and lose that most precious American ideal--democracy--and along with it the freedom, fairness, and opportunities it assures. Democracy's Edge is a rousing battle cry that we can--and must--act now. From Jefferson to Eisenhower, presidents from both parties have warned us of the danger of letting a closed, narrow group of business and government officials concentrate power over our lives. Yet today, a small and unrepresentative group of people is making vital decisions for all of us. But this crisis is only a symptom, Lappé argues. It's a symptom of thin democracy, something done to us or for us, not by or with us. Such democracy is always at risk of being stolen by private interests or extremist groups, left and right. But there is a solution. The answer, says Lappé, is Living Democracy, a powerful yet often invisible citizens' revolution surging in communities across America. It's not random, disjointed activism but the emergence of a new historical stage of democracy in which Americans realize that democracy isn't something we have but something we do. Either we live it or lose it, says Lappé.
Download or read book Ill Winds written by Larry Jay Diamond and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Larry Diamond, a lifelong scholar of democracy, examines the history of its struggles and its future. The defence of democracy has relied for decades on U.S. global leadership, including its alliances with advanced democracies in Europe and Asia. But, he warns, if America does not reclaim its traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's global authoritarian trend will accelerate. But there is hope - Diamond offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions for policymakers and citizens alike to turn the tide and usher a new age of democratic renewal.
Book Synopsis Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy by : David Daley
Download or read book Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy written by David Daley and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “wildly undersold story” (Lawrence Lessig) of the next American revolution, and the inspiring citizen activists fighting to save America’s fragile democracy. Our country is dominated by a political party that has no interest in governing, and that seeks to entrench its power by limiting democracy—going so far as to force people to the polls in the middle of a pandemic. Yet there is hope, as best-selling author David Daley argues in Unrigged, though it doesn’t lie in Congress, gerrymandered statehouses, or even the courts. We must, instead, look to the grassroots. Introducing us to groups that have pioneered innovative organizing methods—often combining old-school activism with new digital tools—Daley uncovers the story behind voting-rights victories nationwide and the new organizations reinventing our politics. The result is a vivid portrait of a new civic awakening, and an essential toolkit for reviving our democracy in the Trump era and beyond.
Book Synopsis American Manifesto by : Bob Garfield
Download or read book American Manifesto written by Bob Garfield and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you fear for our democracy? Are you ready to throw in the towel? Don't! This is your guidebook to reassembling our hyperpolarized American society in six (not-so-easy) steps, written by the cohost of WNYC's On the Media. As is often observed, Trump is a symptom of a virus that has been incubating for at least fifty years. But not often observed is where the virus is imbedded: in the psychic core of our identity. In American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves, popular media personality Bob Garfield examines the tragic confluence of the American preoccupation with identity and the catastrophic disintegration of the mass media. Garfield investigates how we've gotten to this moment when our identity is threatened by both the left and the right, when e pluribus unum is no longer a source of national pride, and why, when looking through this lens of identity, the rise of Trumpism is no surprise. Overlaying this crisis is the rise of the Facebook-Google duopoly and the filter bubble of social media, where identity is insular and immutable. But fear not! WNYC's On the Media cohost Garfield has ideas about how we may counter the forces of fragmentation—the manifesto itself: six steps to take to reassemble our fractured society. A quick, fascinating read, American Manifesto offers not only a vision of a country in extremis, but also a plan for how to address the ways in which our democracy is imperiled. Provocative, profound, and sometimes hilariously profane, American Manifesto is a call to action like no other.
Download or read book Demagogue written by Michael Signer and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-02-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A demagogue is a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This compelling narrative weaves stories about some of history's most fascinating figures, including Adolf Hitler, Senator Joe McCarthy, and General Douglas Macarthur, and explains how humanity's urge for liberty can give rise to dark forces that threaten that very freedom. To find the solution to democracy's demagogue problem, the book delves into the stories of four great thinkers who all personally struggled with democracy--Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt.
Download or read book Saving the Media written by Julia Cagé and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The media are in crisis. Confronted by growing competition and sagging advertising revenue, news operations in print, on radio and TV, and even online are struggling to reinvent themselves. Many have gone under. For too many others, the answer has been to lay off reporters, join conglomerates, and lean more heavily on generic content. The result: in a world awash with information, news organizations provide citizens with less and less in-depth reporting and a narrowing range of viewpoints. If democracy requires an informed citizenry, this trend spells trouble. Julia Cagé explains the economics and history of the media crisis in Europe and America, and she presents a bold solution. The answer, she says, is a new business model: a nonprofit media organization, midway between a foundation and a joint stock company. Cagé shows how this model would enable the media to operate independent of outside shareholders, advertisers, and government, relying instead on readers, employees, and innovative methods of financing, including crowdfunding. Cagé’s prototype is designed to offer new ways to share and transmit power. It meets the challenges of the digital revolution and the realities of the twenty-first century, inspired by a central idea: that news, like education, is a public good. Saving the Media will be a key document in a debate whose stakes are nothing less crucial than the vitality of democracy.
Book Synopsis The Politics Industry by : Katherine M. Gehl
Download or read book The Politics Industry written by Katherine M. Gehl and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.
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 Twelve Ways to Save Democracy in Wisconsin by : Matthew Rothschild
Download or read book Twelve Ways to Save Democracy in Wisconsin written by Matthew Rothschild and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wisconsin has become a laboratory for antidemocratic maneuvers that have considerably reduced citizen participation. This pocket-sized handbook is essential for politically aware citizens who want to reinstate constituent control of government as well as for journalists and organizers watching this crucial battleground state and political bellwether.
Download or read book Watchdog written by Richard Cordray and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day across America, consumers face issues with credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and student loans. When they are cheated or mistreated, all too often they hit a brick wall against the financial companies. People are fed up with being run over by big corporations, and few have the resources or expertise to fight back on their own. It is no wonder consumers feel powerless: they are outgunned every step of the way. Since 1970, the financial industry has doubled in size. It is the biggest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, spending about $1 billion annually on campaigns and another $500 million on lobbying. The four biggest banks each now has more than $1 trillion in assets. Financial products have become a mass of fine print that consumers can hardly even read, let alone understand. Growing problems in the increasingly one-sided finance markets blew up the economy in 2008. In the aftermath, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sharing the stories of individual consumers, Watchdog shows how the Bureau quickly became a powerful force for good, suing big banks for cheating or deceiving consumers, putting limits on predatory lenders, simplifying mortgage paperwork, and stepping in to help solve problems raised by individual consumers. It tells a hopeful story of how our system can be reformed by putting government back on the side of the people, to strengthen our families, safeguard the marketplace, and establish a new baseline of fairness in our democratic society.
Author :National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Publisher :National Academies Press ISBN 13 :030947647X Total Pages :181 pages Book Rating :4.3/5 (94 download)
Book Synopsis Securing the Vote by : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Download or read book Securing the Vote written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-09-30 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.
Author :Jeffrey Robert Orenstein Publisher :Suncoast Digital Press, Incorporated ISBN 13 :9781939237675 Total Pages :198 pages Book Rating :4.2/5 (376 download)
Book Synopsis Saving American Democracy by : Jeffrey Robert Orenstein
Download or read book Saving American Democracy written by Jeffrey Robert Orenstein and published by Suncoast Digital Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2020-02-02 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American democracy is in trouble. This is a practical non-partisan handbook for concerned citizens and policy-makers who want to take back the helm and learn how to make American government more democratic.
Book Synopsis America's Disenfranchised by : Desmond Meade
Download or read book America's Disenfranchised written by Desmond Meade and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lawrence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. Voting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civil rights they once had. They may return to school, secure employment to provide for their families, and become law-abiding, tax-paying citizens—sometimes for decades—and still be denied the voting rights afforded to every other citizen. Desmond Meade, director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and a returning citizen himself, played an instrumental role in the landslide 2018 Amendment 4 victory in Florida, which used the ballot box to restore voting rights to 1.4 million Floridians with a previous felony conviction. Meade argues how, state by state, America can do better. His efforts in Florida present a compelling argument that creating access to democracy for those living on the fringes of society will create a more vibrant and robust democracy for all. He is the winner of the 2021 Brown Democracy Medal for his continuing work to restore voting rights and connect Americans along shared social values.
