Crises of Democracy

Crises of Democracy PDF Author: Adam Przeworski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498809
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Examines the economic, social, cultural, as well as purely political threats to democracy in the light of current knowledge.

Crises of Democracy

Crises of Democracy PDF Author: Adam Przeworski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498809
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Examines the economic, social, cultural, as well as purely political threats to democracy in the light of current knowledge.

Responsible Parties

Responsible Parties PDF Author: Frances Rosenbluth
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300241054
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
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.

Democracy in Crisis

Democracy in Crisis PDF Author: Robert Goodrich
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469665557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Democracy in Crisis explores one of the world's greatest failures of democracy in Germany during the so-called Weimar Republic, 1919–33—a failure that led to the Third Reich. For more than a decade after World War I, liberalism, nationalism, conservatism, social democracy, Christian democracy, communism, fascism, and every variant of these movements struggled for power. Although Germany's constitutional framework boldly enshrined liberal democratic values, the political spectrum was so broad and fully represented that a stable parliamentary majority required constant negotiations. The compromises that were made subsequently alienated citizens, who were embittered by national humiliation in the war and the ensuing treaty and struggling to survive economic turmoil and rapidly changing cultural norms. As positions hardened, the door was opened to radical alternatives. In this game, students, as delegates of the Reichstag (parliament), must contend with intense parliamentary wrangling, uncontrollable world events, street fights, assassinations, and insurrections. The game begins in late 1929, just after the U.S. stock market crash, as the Reichstag deliberates the Young Plan (a revision to the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I). Students belonging to various political parties must debate these matters and more as the combination of economic stress, political gridlock, and foreign pressure turn Germany into a volcano on the verge of eruption.

Political Parties and the Crisis of Democracy

Political Parties and the Crisis of Democracy PDF Author: Chair of Comparative Politics & Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute Thomas Poguntke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198888734
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Instead of taking a regional approach which dominates the literature on political parties, this volume takes a global perspective. It brings together experts from four continents, which opens up fresh comparative perspectives on the role of political parties in the democratic process.

Democracy and Crisis

Democracy and Crisis PDF Author: Wolfgang Merkel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319725599
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
In light of the public and scholarly debates on the challenges and problems of established democracies, such as a lack of participation, declining confidence in political elites, and the deteriorating capabilities of democratic institutions, this volume discusses the question whether democracy as such is in crisis. On the basis of the shared concept of embedded democracy, it develops a range of conceptual approaches to empirically analyzing the challenges of democracy and their potential transformation into crisis phenomena. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which highlights various aspects of political participation, such as political inequality in voting. In turn, Part II focuses on problems of political representation, while Part III assesses whether processes such as globalization, deregulation, and the withdrawal of the state from important policy areas have limited the political control and legitimacy of democratically elected governments.

The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes

The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes PDF Author: Scott Mainwaring
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804767910
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The essays in this book analyze and explain the crisis of democratic representation in five Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. In this region, disaffection with democracy, political parties, and legislatures has spread to an alarming degree. Many presidents have been forced from office, and many traditional parties have fallen by the wayside. These five countries have the potential to be negative examples in a region that has historically had strong demonstration and diffusion effects in terms of regime changes. "The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes" addresses an important question for Latin America as well as other parts of the world: Why does representation sometimes fail to work?

Crisis!

Crisis! PDF Author: Cedric de Leon
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503610659
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
A timely analysis of the power and limits of political parties—and the lessons of the Civil War and the New Deal in the Age of Trump. American voters have long been familiar with the phenomenon of the presidential frontrunner. In 2008, it was Hillary Clinton. In 1844, it was Martin Van Buren. And in neither election did the prominent Democrat win the party’s nomination. Insurgent candidates went on to win the nomination and the presidency, plunging the two-party system into disarray over the years that followed. In this book, Cedric de Leon analyzes two pivotal crises in the American two-party system: the first resulting in the demise of the Whig party and secession of eleven southern states in 1861, and the present crisis splintering the Democratic and Republican parties and leading to the election of Donald Trump. Recasting these stories through the actions of political parties, de Leon draws unsettling parallels in the political maneuvering that ultimately causes once-dominant political parties to lose the people’s consent to rule. Crisis! takes us beyond the common explanations of social determinants to illuminate how political parties actively shape national stability and breakdown. The secession crisis and the election of Donald Trump suggest that politicians and voters abandon the political establishment not only because people are suffering, but also because the party system itself is unable to absorb an existential challenge to its power. Just as the U.S. Civil War meant the difference between the survival of a slaveholding republic and the birth of liberal democracy, what political elites and civil society organizations do today can mean the difference between fascism and democracy.

Party, Society and Government

Party, Society and Government PDF Author: David L. Hanley
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571813374
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
According to received wisdom parties have played a mainly destructive role in French political development. Of questionable legitimacy, pursuing narrow sectarian goals, often corruptly, they have brought about division, weakness and the collapse of regimes. A proper reading of history suggests differently. By combining historical research and contemporary political science theory about party, the author shows that for over a century party has irrigated French democracy in often invisible ways, brokering working compromises between groups divided strongly along social, political and cultural lines. The key to this success is the party system, which allowed for a high degree of collusion and cooptation between political elites, rhetoric notwithstanding. This hidden logic has persisted to this day despite the advent of presidentialism and remains the key to the continuing prosperity of French democracy.

Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy

Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy PDF Author: Marco Lisi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351377647
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Party systems are crucial elements for the functioning of political systems and representative democracies. With several European countries experiencing significant changes recently, it is necessary to update our knowledge. This volume analyses party system changes in Europe in the 21st century by considering several dimensions such as interparty competition, the cleavage structure, electoral volatility and the emergence of new actors. The book describes the principal continuities and changes in party systems in Europe; analyzes the main explanations for these trends; and assesses the impact of the crisis on the patterns observed. By considering a wide range of Western and Eastern European countries, and focusing on the ‘parameters’ of party system change, this book seeks to fill an important gap in the literature through a comparative analysis of the evolution of party systems in Europe over the last decades. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties, party systems and politics, electoral behavior as well as more broadly to European politics, comparative politics. political representation and the quality of democracies.

Populism and the Crisis of Democracy

Populism and the Crisis of Democracy PDF Author: Gregor Fitzi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367655761
Category : Political sociology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Today, there is no comparable threat to Western democracies as the rise of right-wing populism. While it has played an increasing role at least since the 1990s, only the social consequences of the global financial crises in 2008 have given its break that led to UK's 'Brexit' and the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016 but also promoted what has been called left populism in countries that were hit the hardest from both the banking crisis and consequential neo-liberal austerity politics in the EU like Greece and Portugal. In 2017, the French Front National (FN) attracted many voters in the French Presidential elections; we have seen the radicalization of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and the formation of centre-right government in Austria. Further, we have witnessed the consolidation of autocratic regimes as in the EU member states Poland and Greece. All these manifestations of right-wing populism share a common feature: they attack or even compromise the core elements of democratic societies such as the separation of powers, protection of minorities, or the rule of law. Despite a broad debate on the re-emergence of 'populism' in the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century that has brought forth many interesting findings, a lack of sociological reasoning cannot be denied as sociology itself withdrew from theorising populism decades ago and left the field to mainly political sciences and history. In a sense, Populism and the Crisis of Democracy considers itself as a contribution to start with filling this lacuna. Written in a direct and clear style, this set of volumes will be an invaluable reference for students and scholars in the field of political theory, political sociology and European Studies.