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Democracy : a very short introduction
The concept of democracy means that those governed--the demos--have a say in government. However, different conceptions of democracy have left many groups and individuals out. In this Very Short Introduction, Naomi Zack provides a descriptive philosophical distinction between conceptions, considering different instances of democracy and uses of the concept, and discussing normative ideals of democracy that claim to express what it really is. Zack explores existing forms of democratic government and considers traditional and alternative historical approaches to democracy, while analyzing ideas about democracy from leading social and political thinkers, from Plato to Rawls--back cover.
Book
Newsom says democracy is under assault
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on June 10 denounced President Donald Trump for inflaming the situation in Los Angeles by sending federal forces and warned the public to \"not give in to him.\"
Streaming Video
Beasts and gods : how democracy changed its meaning and lost its purpose
\"Democracy has failed to deliver. Equal opportunity and the individual's ability to influence decision-making are a mirage, while both new and established democracies suffer a growing sense of malaise. Analysing a variety of voting methods across twenty countries, Roslyn Fuller shows that modern democracies are not really democracies at all. The side with better funding invariably wins elections and referenda, and the party that forms the government rarely receives the majority of the popular vote. This lack of representation then compounds at the international level, as delegated power is delegated yet again. Arguing for a return to the ancient Athenian idea of democracy based on citizen participation, Beasts and Gods is an extraordinary work, set to reconfigure the foundations of modern society.\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
The democratic problems with Washington as the capital
Democracy demands a capital city that represents a country and is not removed from it. If the government is to be of the people and for the people, then the capital must be able to relate to the people—and the people to the capital. In the United States, democracy struggles not just because of what happens outside of and comes to Washington, but because of what happens inside Washington. The federal government, in other words, faces democratic problems because of the type of place that Washington is. There are many factors to consider in deciding where a country should be governed from, but the ability of the capital to understand the country it governs is certainly one of the most important of these factors. The goal of this symposium article is to consider the contemporary democratic crisis in these geographical terms. Washington was initially a rural area meant to govern a rural country. It has gradually turned into a dynamic metropolitan area meant to govern a country featuring many—and many different—dynamic metropolitan areas. During its entire history, though, Washington has remained dominated by a single company: the federal government. A company town will struggle to attract and to cultivate the large range of people featured in the United States. Given that a company town struggles to satisfy the democratic demands of a capital, the question then becomes whether other types of places would better satisfy these democratic demands.
Journal Article
Setting the people free : the story of democracy
\"Why does democracy--as a word and as an idea--loom so large in the political imagination, though it has so often been misused and misunderstood? Setting the People Free starts by tracing the roots of democracy from an improvised remedy for a local Greek difficulty 2,500 years ago, through its near extinction, to its rebirth amid the struggles of the French Revolution. Celebrated political theorist John Dunn then charts the slow but insistent metamorphosis of democracy over the next 150 years and its apparently overwhelming triumph since 1945. He examines the differences and the extraordinary continuities that modern democratic states share with their Greek antecedents and explains why democracy evokes intellectual and moral scorn for some, and vital allegiance from others. Now with a new preface and conclusion that ground this landmark work firmly in the present, Setting the People Free is a unique and brilliant account of an extraordinary idea.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Contesting democracy : political ideas in twentieth-century Europe
This book is the first major account of political thought in twentieth-century Europe, both West and East, to appear since the end of the Cold War. Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and cultural history, Jan-Werner Mller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the movements and institutions they inspired.Mller pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960s and neoliberalism, ending with a critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age.
eBook
Mapping and measuring deliberation : towards a new deliberative quality
Deliberative democracy has challenged two widely-accepted nostrums about democratic politics: that people lack the capacities for effective self-government; and that democratic procedures are arbitrary and do not reflect popular will; indeed, that the idea of popular will is itself illusory. On the contrary, deliberative democrats have shown that people are capable of being sophisticated, creative problem solvers, given the right opportunities in the right kinds of democratic institutions. 0But deliberative empirical research has its own problems. In this book two leading deliberative scholars review decades of that research and reveal three important issues. First, the concept 'deliberation' has been inflated so much as to lose empirical bite; second, deliberation has been equated with entire processes of which it is just one feature; and third, such processes are confused with democracy in a deliberative mode more generally. In other words, studies frequently apply micro-level tools and concepts to make macro- and meso-level judgements, and vice versa. 0Instead, Bachtiger and Parkinson argue that deliberation must be understood as contingent, performative, and distributed. They argue that deliberation needs to be disentangled from other communicative modes; that appropriate tools need to be deployed at the right level of analysis; and that scholars need to be clear about whether they are making additive judgements or summative ones. They then apply that understanding to set out a new agenda and new empirical tools for deliberative empirical scholarship at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
Book
Designs on nature
Biology and politics have converged today across much of the industrialized world. Debates about genetically modified organisms, cloning, stem cells, animal patenting, and new reproductive technologies crowd media headlines and policy agendas. Less noticed, but no less important, are the rifts that have appeared among leading Western nations about the right way to govern innovation in genetics and biotechnology. These significant differences in law and policy, and in ethical analysis, may in a globalizing world act as obstacles to free trade, scientific inquiry, and shared understandings of human dignity.
eBook