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The State of Democratic Theory

The State of Democratic Theory PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691123967
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
What should we expect from democracy, and how likely is it that democracies will live up to those expectations? In The State of Democratic Theory, Ian Shapiro offers a critical assessment of contemporary answers to these questions, lays out his distinctive alternative, and explores its implications for policy and political action. Some accounts of democracy's purposes focus on aggregating preferences; others deal with collective deliberation in search of the common good. Shapiro reveals the shortcomings of both, arguing instead that democracy should be geared toward minimizing domination throughout society. He contends that Joseph Schumpeter's classic defense of competitive democracy is a useful starting point for achieving this purpose, but that it stands in need of radical supplementation--both with respect to its operation in national political institutions and in its extension to other forms of collective association. Shapiro's unusually wide-ranging discussion also deals with the conditions that make democracy's survival more and less likely, with the challenges presented by ethnic differences and claims for group rights, and with the relations between democracy and the distribution of income and wealth. Ranging over politics, philosophy, constitutional law, economics, sociology, and psychology, this book is written in Shapiro's characteristic lucid style--a style that engages practitioners within the field while also opening up the debate to newcomers.

The State of Democratic Theory

The State of Democratic Theory PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691123967
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
What should we expect from democracy, and how likely is it that democracies will live up to those expectations? In The State of Democratic Theory, Ian Shapiro offers a critical assessment of contemporary answers to these questions, lays out his distinctive alternative, and explores its implications for policy and political action. Some accounts of democracy's purposes focus on aggregating preferences; others deal with collective deliberation in search of the common good. Shapiro reveals the shortcomings of both, arguing instead that democracy should be geared toward minimizing domination throughout society. He contends that Joseph Schumpeter's classic defense of competitive democracy is a useful starting point for achieving this purpose, but that it stands in need of radical supplementation--both with respect to its operation in national political institutions and in its extension to other forms of collective association. Shapiro's unusually wide-ranging discussion also deals with the conditions that make democracy's survival more and less likely, with the challenges presented by ethnic differences and claims for group rights, and with the relations between democracy and the distribution of income and wealth. Ranging over politics, philosophy, constitutional law, economics, sociology, and psychology, this book is written in Shapiro's characteristic lucid style--a style that engages practitioners within the field while also opening up the debate to newcomers.

The Real World of Democratic Theory

The Real World of Democratic Theory PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400836832
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
In this book Ian Shapiro develops and extends arguments that have established him as one of today's leading democratic theorists. Shapiro is hardheaded about the realities of politics and power, and the difficulties of fighting injustice and oppression. Yet he makes a compelling case that democracy's legitimacy depends on pressing it into the service of resisting domination, and that democratic theorists must rise to the occasion of fashioning the necessary tools. That vital agenda motivates the arguments of this book. Tracing modern democracy's roots to John Locke and the American founders, Shapiro shows that they saw more deeply into the dynamics of democratic politics than have many of their successors. Drawing on Lockean and Madisonian insights, Shapiro evaluates democracy's changing global fortunes over the past two decades. He also shows how elusive democracy can be by exploring the contrast between its successful establishment in South Africa and its failures elsewhere--particularly the Middle East. Shapiro spells out the implications of his account for long-standing debates about public opinion, judicial review, abortion, and inherited wealth--as well as more recent preoccupations with globalization, national security, and international terrorism. Scholars, students, and democratic activists will all learn from Shapiro's trenchant account of democracy's foundations, its history, and its contemporary challenges. They will also find his distinctive democratic vision both illuminating and appealing.

Participation and Democratic Theory

Participation and Democratic Theory PDF Author: Carole Pateman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521290043
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
Shows that current elitist theories are based on an inadequate understanding of the early writings of democratic theory and that much sociological evidence has been ignored.

Democratic Theory Naturalized

Democratic Theory Naturalized PDF Author: Walter Horn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793624968
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
To some, the word populism suggests the tyranny of the mob; to others, it suggests a xenophobic nativism. It is often even considered conducive to (if not simply identical to) fascism. In Democratic Theory Naturalized: The Foundations of Distilled Populism, Walter Horn uses his theory of "CHOICE Voluntarism” to offer solutions to some of the most perplexing problems in democratic theory and distill populism to its core premise: giving people the power to govern themselves without any constraints imposed by those on the left or the right. Beginning with explanations of what it means to vote and what makes one society better off than another, Horn analyzes what makes for fair aggregation and appropriate, deliberative representation. Through his examination of the American government, Horn suggests solutions to contemporary problems such as gerrymandering, immigration control, and campaign finance, and offers answers to age-old questions like why dissenters should obey the majority and who should have the right to vote in various elections.

A Preface to Democratic Theory

A Preface to Democratic Theory PDF Author: Robert A. Dahl
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226134260
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
Robert Dahl's Preface helped launch democratic theory fifty years ago as a new area of study in political science, and it remains the standard introduction to the field. Exploring problems that had been left unsolved by traditional thought on democracy, Dahl here examines two influential models--the Madisonian, which represents prevailing American doctrine, and its recurring challenger, populist theory--arguing that they do not accurately portray how modern democracies operate. He then constructs a model more consistent with how contemporary democracies actually function, and, in doing so, develops some original views of popular sovereignty and the American constitutional system.

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory PDF Author: Lucy Bernholz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022674860X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over—and upending—nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now-ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely at one significant facet of our rapidly evolving digital lives: how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments. To understand these transformations, this book brings together contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory. As expectations have whiplashed—from Twitter optimism in the wake of the Arab Spring to Facebook pessimism in the wake of the 2016 US election—the time is ripe for a more sober and long-term assessment. How should we take stock of digital technologies and their promise and peril for reshaping democratic societies and institutions? To answer, this volume broaches the most pressing technological changes and issues facing democracy as a philosophy and an institution.

Solidarity in Conflict

Solidarity in Conflict PDF Author: Rochelle DuFord
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503630706
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
Democracy has become disentangled from our ordinary lives. Mere cooperation or ethical consumption now often stands in for a robust concept of solidarity that structures the entirety of sociality and forms the basis of democratic culture. How did democracy become something that is done only at ballot boxes and what role can solidarity play in reviving it? In Solidarity in Conflict, Rochelle DuFord presents a theory of solidarity fit for developing democratic life and a complementary theory of democracy that emerges from a society typified by solidarity. DuFord argues that solidarity is best understood as a set of relations, one agonistic and one antagonistic: the solidarity groups' internal organization and its interactions with the broader world. Such a picture of solidarity develops through careful consideration of the conflicts endemic to social relations and solidarity organizations. Examining men's rights groups, labor organizing's role in recognitional protections for LGBTQ members of society, and the debate over trans inclusion in feminist praxis, DuFord explores how conflict, in these contexts, becomes the locus of solidarity's democratic functions and thereby critiques democratic theorizing for having become either overly idealized or overly focused on building and maintaining stability. Working in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, DuFord makes a provocative case that the conflict generated by solidarity organizations can address a variety of forms of domination, oppression, and exploitation while building a democratic society.

Parliamentarism and Democratic Theory

Parliamentarism and Democratic Theory PDF Author: Kari Palonen
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
ISBN: 3847404687
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The authors deal with the place of parliamentary politics in democracy. Apparently a truism, parliamentarism is in fact a missing research object in democratic theory, and a devalued institutional reference in democratic politics. Yet the parliamentary culture of politics historically explains the rise and fall of modern democracies. By exploring democracy from the vantage point of parliamentary politics, the book advances a novel research perspective. Aimed at revising current debates on parliamentary politics, democratization and democratic theory, the authors argue the role of the parliamentary culture of politics in democracy, highlighting the argumentative, debating experience of politics to recast both some of democratic theory’s normative assumptions and real democracies’ reform potential.

A Democratic Theory of Judgment

A Democratic Theory of Judgment PDF Author: Linda M.G. Zerilli
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022639803X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
In this sweeping look at political and philosophical history, Linda M. G. Zerilli unpacks the tightly woven core of Hannah Arendt’s unfinished work on a tenacious modern problem: how to judge critically in the wake of the collapse of inherited criteria of judgment. Engaging a remarkable breadth of thinkers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leo Strauss, Immanuel Kant, Frederick Douglass, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum, and many others, Zerilli clears a hopeful path between an untenable universalism and a cultural relativism that forever defers the possibility of judging at all. Zerilli deftly outlines the limitations of existing debates, both those that concern themselves with the impossibility of judging across cultures and those that try to find transcendental, rational values to anchor judgment. Looking at Kant through the lens of Arendt, Zerilli develops the notion of a public conception of truth, and from there she explores relativism, historicism, and universalism as they shape feminist approaches to judgment. Following Arendt even further, Zerilli arrives at a hopeful new pathway—seeing the collapse of philosophical criteria for judgment not as a problem but a way to practice judgment anew as a world-building activity of democratic citizens. The result is an astonishing theoretical argument that travels through—and goes beyond—some of the most important political thought of the modern period.

Theories of the Democratic State

Theories of the Democratic State PDF Author: John Dryzek
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0230366457
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
We live in a world governed by states whose enduring importance and domination of contemporary politics has been strikingly underlined by their renewed activism in the face of a global economic crisis. Yet the very nature of states remains deeply contested, with a range of competing theories offering very different views of how they actually do or should operate. In the past this competition has lead to deep ideological conflict – and even to war. In this major new work, John S. Dryzek and Patrick Dunleavy provide a broad-ranging assessment of classical and contemporary theories of the state, focusing primarily on the democratic state form that has come to dominate modern politics. The authors' starting point is the classical theories of the state: pluralism, elite theory, Marxism and market liberalism. They then turn to the contemporary forms of pluralism prevalent in political science, systematically exploring how they address central issues, such as networked governance, globalization, and changing patterns of electoral and identity politics. They proceed to analyse a range of key contemporary critiques of modern states and democracy that have emerged from feminism, environmentalism, neo-conservatism and post-modernism. Each approach is carefully introduced and analysed as far as possible in relation to a common set of issues and headings. Theories of the Democratic State takes the reader straight to the heart of contemporary issues and debates and, in the process, provides a challenging and distinctive introduction to and reassessment of contemporary political science.