Author: John Gerring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009100378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Explores the deep roots of modern democracy, focusing on geography and long-term patterns of global diffusion.

Author: Avidit Acharya
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691203725
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
"Despite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to support Republican candidates, gun rights, and the death penalty, and southern whites harbor higher levels of racial resentment than whites in other parts of the country. Why haven't these sentiments evolved or changed? Deep Roots shows that the entrenched political and racial views of contemporary white southerners are a direct consequence of the region's slaveholding history, which continues to shape economic, political, and social spheres. Today, southern whites who live in areas once reliant on slavery--compared to areas that were not--are more racially hostile and less amenable to policies that could promote black progress. Highlighting the connection between historical institutions and contemporary political attitudes, the authors explore the period following the Civil War when elite whites in former bastions of slavery had political and economic incentives to encourage the development of anti-black laws and practices. Deep Roots shows that these forces created a local political culture steeped in racial prejudice, and that these viewpoints have been passed down over generations, from parents to children and via communities, through a process called behavioral path dependence. While legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act made huge strides in increasing economic opportunity and reducing educational disparities, southern slavery has had a profound, lasting, and self-reinforcing influence on regional and national politics that can still be felt today. A groundbreaking look at the ways institutions of the past continue to sway attitudes of the present, Deep Roots demonstrates how social beliefs persist long after the formal policies that created those beliefs have been eradicated."--Jacket.

Author: James MacDonald
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691126326
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
For the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars.

Author: Nancy MacLean
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101980974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic “This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

Author: S. Schneider
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230275338
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Does the democratic nation state remain a legitimate regime form in the current age of globalization? This book uses a novel, analytical approach to probe this topical question, drawing on a comparative study of legitimation discourses in the media of four Western democracies (Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and the United States.)

Author: James MacDonald
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691126321
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 574

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Book Description
For the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars.

Author: David Stasavage
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
"One of the most important books on political regimes written in a generation."—Steven Levitsky, New York Times–bestselling author of How Democracies Die A new understanding of how and why early democracy took hold, how modern democracy evolved, and what this history teaches us about the future Historical accounts of democracy’s rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer—democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Delving into the prevalence of early democracy throughout the world, David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished—and when and why they declined—can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future. Drawing from examples spanning several millennia, Stasavage first considers why states developed either democratic or autocratic styles of governance and argues that early democracy tended to develop in small places with a weak state and, counterintuitively, simple technologies. When central state institutions (such as a tax bureaucracy) were absent—as in medieval Europe—rulers needed consent from their populace to govern. When central institutions were strong—as in China or the Middle East—consent was less necessary and autocracy more likely. He then explores the transition from early to modern democracy, which first took shape in England and then the United States, illustrating that modern democracy arose as an effort to combine popular control with a strong state over a large territory. Democracy has been an experiment that has unfolded over time and across the world—and its transformation is ongoing. Amidst rising democratic anxieties, The Decline and Rise of Democracy widens the historical lens on the growth of political institutions and offers surprising lessons for all who care about governance.

Author: Charles Derber
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040047335
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This book uniquely reverses today’s MAGA conspiratorial concept of the deep state to reveal how a very real “deeper state” is evident throughout history, back to the founding of American democracy. Class and caste-based elites and their political allies have held dominant power in the US. Large corporations, Wall Street, and other sectors of the capitalist class outsource day-to-day governance to the mainstream political parties, which can compete vigorously and create a credible veneer of civil liberties and electoral democracy, disguising and legitimating the deep state. But it is a “shallow democracy,” since the deep state sets boundaries on policies and choices to serve itself. It also denies a universal franchise and obstructs the voting rights of people of color, the poor, and other communities threatening to the deep state. Moreover, the deep state constrains civic governance in the workplace and community, denying virtually all working people democratic control over their economic and social life. Shallow democracy has a long history. Two embryonic deep states – a Northern capitalist deep state and a Southern slave-based deep state – came together in a tense and unstable union to create and govern the US. While the Confederate deep state, which we call proto-American fascism, was defeated in the Civil War, it left a deep imprint on the culture and politics of millions of Americans, and has resurged again in Trumpism. The shallow democracy of the capitalist deep state has survived previous challenges, but it lacks the deep roots that guarantees its survival. The authors point to prospects for meaningful change arising from the extreme economic chasm dividing the nation economically and racially, and from existential crises of the survival of democracy and of a sustainable planet. They discuss strategy that might finally move the nation beyond MAGA toward deep democracy.

Author: Peter Harris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
How does one build democracy in the aftermath of a violent, deep-rooted conflict? This handbook shows how to structure negotiations and design democratic institutions which address the real needs and interests of conflicting parties. It provides practical advice for policy-makers and political leaders in post-conflict societies and presents a wealth of options that can be drawn upon to build a sustainable peace. Aimed at those negotiating a peace settlement, this book provides a thorough overview of democratic levers - such as power-sharing formulas, questions of federalism and autonomy, options for electoral reform, when to use truth commissions, transitional justice mechanisms, methods of preserving minority rights, constitutional safeguards and many others. It also analyses actual negotiated settlements from various countries and illustrates the many, often unrecognized, options that negotiators can draw upon when attempting to build or rebuild democracy.

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

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Book Description
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.