The Next Form of Democracy PDF Download

Author: Matthew Leighninger
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 9780826515414
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Author: Zizi Papacharissi
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030025864X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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What do ordinary citizens really want from their governments? Democracy has long been considered an ideal state of governance. What if it’s not? Perhaps it is not the end goal but, rather, a transition stage to something better. Drawing on original interviews conducted with citizens of more than thirty countries, Zizi Papacharissi explores what democracy is, what it means to be a citizen, and what can be done to enhance governance. As she probes the ways governments can better serve their citizens and evolve in positive ways, Papacharissi gives a voice to everyday people, whose ideas and experiences of capitalism, media, and education can help shape future governing practices. This book expands on the well-known difficulties of realizing the intimacy of democracy in a global world—the “democratic paradox”—and presents a concrete vision of how communications technologies can be harnessed to implement representative equality, information equality, and civic literacy.

Author: Vera Schatten Coelho
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848139152
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.

Author: Frank M. Bryan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226077985
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Relying on an astounding collection of more than three decades of firsthand research, Frank M. Bryan examines one of the purest forms of American democracy, the New England town meeting. At these meetings, usually held once a year, all eligible citizens of the town may become legislators; they meet in face-to-face assemblies, debate the issues on the agenda, and vote on them. And although these meetings are natural laboratories for democracy, very few scholars have systematically investigated them. A nationally recognized expert on this topic, Bryan has now done just that. Studying 1,500 town meetings in his home state of Vermont, he and his students recorded a staggering amount of data about them—238,603 acts of participation by 63,140 citizens in 210 different towns. Drawing on this evidence as well as on evocative "witness" accounts—from casual observers to no lesser a light than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—Bryan paints a vivid picture of how real democracy works. Among the many fascinating questions he explores: why attendance varies sharply with town size, how citizens resolve conflicts in open forums, and how men and women behave differently in town meetings. In the end, Bryan interprets this brand of local government to find evidence for its considerable staying power as the most authentic and meaningful form of direct democracy. Giving us a rare glimpse into how democracy works in the real world, Bryan presents here an unorthodox and definitive book on this most cherished of American institutions.

Author: Pierre Rosanvallon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231510446
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Democracy Past and Future is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises of the present. In so doing, he lays out an influential new theory of how to write the history of politics. Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the "pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy. Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are nowhere to be found. Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization. Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort. Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. Democracy Past and Future begins with Rosanvallon's groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought.

Author: Paul Hirst
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 074566721X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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In this book Paul Hirst makes a major contribution to democratic thinking, advocating "associative democracy"; the belief that human welfare and liberty are best served when as many of the affairs of society as possible are managed by voluntary and democratically self-governing associations.

Author: Eric Liu
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
ISBN: 1570618437
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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One of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “10 Books Everyone Should Read” This fascinating study of democracy in the 21st century is a much-needed call for citizens to reach across the aisle and put power back into the hands of individuals—not Big Government Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer outline a simple but revolutionary argument for why our most basic assumptions about democracy need updating for the 21st century. They offer a roadmap for those looking for a way forward from an American life marked by divisive conversations. In a world with widespread political upheaval, a deep wellspring of civic engagement and collective action is emerging. America is finding that our cultural and political dialogue is spiking over everything from racial and social justice to fighting the ever-widening income gap, to climate change—even how we might best collaborate as active citizens to heal our democracy. Timely, inspiring, and highly charged, The Gardens of Democracy is a much-needed call to action for citizens to embrace their roles in a democratic society. To model positivity and good citizenship, plus ensure liberty and justice for all, we must achieve compromise by reaching across the aisle and putting the power to execute programs back in the hands of individuals, not big government. We must redefine how we view prosperity in order to move from a dog-eat-dog mentality that perpetuates the top 1% to a communal and inclusive movement that illustrates that we’re all better off when we’re all better off.

Author: John Keane
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 717

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John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.

Author: Lyn Carson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271069074
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Growing numbers of scholars, practitioners, politicians, and citizens recognize the value of deliberative civic engagement processes that enable citizens and governments to come together in public spaces and engage in constructive dialogue, informed discussion, and decisive deliberation. This book seeks to fill a gap in empirical studies in deliberative democracy by studying the assembly of the Australian Citizens’ Parliament (ACP), which took place in Canberra on February 6–8, 2009. The ACP addressed the question “How can the Australian political system be strengthened to serve us better?” The ACP’s Canberra assembly is the first large-scale, face-to-face deliberative project to be completely audio-recorded and transcribed, enabling an unprecedented level of qualitative and quantitative assessment of participants’ actual spoken discourse. Each chapter reports on different research questions for different purposes to benefit different audiences. Combined, they exhibit how diverse modes of research focused on a single event can enhance both theoretical and practical knowledge about deliberative democracy.

Author: Jason Brennan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888395
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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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.