Author: Robert E. Shalhope
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461645506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
The last half of the eighteenth century was a period of enormous cultural and intellectual ferment in America-an era of fundamental transformation in law, politics, and religion, as well as deep changes in the American social order. At the center of the turmoil was the American Revolution, an event with roots reaching far back into the colonial period and effects extending well into the nineteenth century. In The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800 Robert E. Shalhope traces the dramatic shifts in attitudes and behavior from before the Revolution, through the war itself, the creation of republican governments, and the conflicts of the 1790s. This outstanding synthesis addresses a number of recurrent themes in American cultural history, including the persistence of conflict between democratic impulses and elitist tendencies-a conflict that has resurfaced in our own time. Anyone seeking to understand American political thought will find this straightforward and provocative book a useful entry into the subject and will come away with a deeper awareness of the origins and meaning of American democracy. The Roots of Democracy is an outstanding synthesis that provides provocative insights into a vital time in which the forces that formed modern American democracy took shape.
The Roots of Democracy
Author: Robert E. Shalhope
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461645506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
The last half of the eighteenth century was a period of enormous cultural and intellectual ferment in America-an era of fundamental transformation in law, politics, and religion, as well as deep changes in the American social order. At the center of the turmoil was the American Revolution, an event with roots reaching far back into the colonial period and effects extending well into the nineteenth century. In The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800 Robert E. Shalhope traces the dramatic shifts in attitudes and behavior from before the Revolution, through the war itself, the creation of republican governments, and the conflicts of the 1790s. This outstanding synthesis addresses a number of recurrent themes in American cultural history, including the persistence of conflict between democratic impulses and elitist tendencies-a conflict that has resurfaced in our own time. Anyone seeking to understand American political thought will find this straightforward and provocative book a useful entry into the subject and will come away with a deeper awareness of the origins and meaning of American democracy. The Roots of Democracy is an outstanding synthesis that provides provocative insights into a vital time in which the forces that formed modern American democracy took shape.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461645506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
The last half of the eighteenth century was a period of enormous cultural and intellectual ferment in America-an era of fundamental transformation in law, politics, and religion, as well as deep changes in the American social order. At the center of the turmoil was the American Revolution, an event with roots reaching far back into the colonial period and effects extending well into the nineteenth century. In The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800 Robert E. Shalhope traces the dramatic shifts in attitudes and behavior from before the Revolution, through the war itself, the creation of republican governments, and the conflicts of the 1790s. This outstanding synthesis addresses a number of recurrent themes in American cultural history, including the persistence of conflict between democratic impulses and elitist tendencies-a conflict that has resurfaced in our own time. Anyone seeking to understand American political thought will find this straightforward and provocative book a useful entry into the subject and will come away with a deeper awareness of the origins and meaning of American democracy. The Roots of Democracy is an outstanding synthesis that provides provocative insights into a vital time in which the forces that formed modern American democracy took shape.
Indian Roots of American Democracy
Author: José Barreiro
Publisher: Akwe Kon Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
"When Europeans arrived on the continent, the Native people of the northeast, the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois, helped them find their way in the new land, taught them to raise food, and introduced them to the Iroquois rule of law, the Great Law of Peace. This rule, which united five nations and provided a rational basis to both war and diplomacy, differed in significant ways from the system of government familiar to the colonists. Benjamin Franklin and others admired the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and incorporated its symbols and principles into their thinking. Indian Roots of American Democracy examines Iroquois influences on the formation of American government in the 1700s as well as on the development of the women's rights movements in the 1800s."-- Back cover.
Publisher: Akwe Kon Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
"When Europeans arrived on the continent, the Native people of the northeast, the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois, helped them find their way in the new land, taught them to raise food, and introduced them to the Iroquois rule of law, the Great Law of Peace. This rule, which united five nations and provided a rational basis to both war and diplomacy, differed in significant ways from the system of government familiar to the colonists. Benjamin Franklin and others admired the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and incorporated its symbols and principles into their thinking. Indian Roots of American Democracy examines Iroquois influences on the formation of American government in the 1700s as well as on the development of the women's rights movements in the 1800s."-- Back cover.
Edinburgh Companion to the History of Democracy
Author: Benjamin Isakhan
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748653686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577
Book Description
Re-examines the long and complex history of democracy and broadens the traditional view of this history by complementing it with examples from unexplored or under-examined quarters.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748653686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577
Book Description
Re-examines the long and complex history of democracy and broadens the traditional view of this history by complementing it with examples from unexplored or under-examined quarters.
The Life and Death of Democracy
Author: John Keane
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 717
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.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 717
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.
The Decline and Rise of Democracy
Author: David Stasavage
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691201951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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.
Democracy in Chains
Author: Nancy MacLean
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101980974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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. *Now Updated With A New Preface* 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.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101980974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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. *Now Updated With A New Preface* 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.
Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521855266
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521855266
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
The Democracy Project
Author: David Graeber
Publisher: Doubleday UK
ISBN: 081299356X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
Explores the idea of democracy, its current state of crisis, and its potential as a tool for change, sharing historical perspectives on the effectiveness of democratic uprisings in various times and cultures.
Publisher: Doubleday UK
ISBN: 081299356X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
Explores the idea of democracy, its current state of crisis, and its potential as a tool for change, sharing historical perspectives on the effectiveness of democratic uprisings in various times and cultures.
New Democracy
Author: William J. Novak
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674260449
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
The activist state of the New Deal started forming decades before the FDR administration, demonstrating the deep roots of energetic government in America. In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. A series of legal reforms gradually brought an end to nineteenth-century traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked through legislation, regulation, and public administration. The last time American public life had been so thoroughly altered was in the late eighteenth century, at the founding and in the years immediately following. William J. Novak shows how Americans translated new conceptions of citizenship, social welfare, and economic democracy into demands for law and policy that delivered public services and vindicated peopleÕs rights. Over the course of decades, Americans progressively discarded earlier understandings of the reach and responsibilities of government and embraced the idea that legislators and administrators in Washington could tackle economic regulation and social-welfare problems. As citizens witnessed the successes of an energetic, interventionist state, they demanded more of the same, calling on politicians and civil servants to address unfair competition and labor exploitation, form public utilities, and reform police power. Arguing against the myth that America was a weak state until the New Deal, New Democracy traces a steadily aggrandizing authority well before the Roosevelt years. The United States was flexing power domestically and intervening on behalf of redistributive goals for far longer than is commonly recognized, putting the lie to libertarian claims that the New Deal was an aberration in American history.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674260449
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
The activist state of the New Deal started forming decades before the FDR administration, demonstrating the deep roots of energetic government in America. In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. A series of legal reforms gradually brought an end to nineteenth-century traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked through legislation, regulation, and public administration. The last time American public life had been so thoroughly altered was in the late eighteenth century, at the founding and in the years immediately following. William J. Novak shows how Americans translated new conceptions of citizenship, social welfare, and economic democracy into demands for law and policy that delivered public services and vindicated peopleÕs rights. Over the course of decades, Americans progressively discarded earlier understandings of the reach and responsibilities of government and embraced the idea that legislators and administrators in Washington could tackle economic regulation and social-welfare problems. As citizens witnessed the successes of an energetic, interventionist state, they demanded more of the same, calling on politicians and civil servants to address unfair competition and labor exploitation, form public utilities, and reform police power. Arguing against the myth that America was a weak state until the New Deal, New Democracy traces a steadily aggrandizing authority well before the Roosevelt years. The United States was flexing power domestically and intervening on behalf of redistributive goals for far longer than is commonly recognized, putting the lie to libertarian claims that the New Deal was an aberration in American history.
Democracy and Truth
Author: Sophia Rosenfeld
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812250842
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
"Fake news," wild conspiracy theories, misleading claims, doctored photos, lies peddled as facts, facts dismissed as lies—citizens of democracies increasingly inhabit a public sphere teeming with competing claims and counterclaims, with no institution or person possessing the authority to settle basic disputes in a definitive way. The problem may be novel in some of its details—including the role of today's political leaders, along with broadcast and digital media, in intensifying the epistemic anarchy—but the challenge of determining truth in a democratic world has a backstory. In this lively and illuminating book, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores a longstanding and largely unspoken tension at the heart of democracy between the supposed wisdom of the crowd and the need for information to be vetted and evaluated by a learned elite made up of trusted experts. What we are witnessing now is the unraveling of the détente between these competing aspects of democratic culture. In four bracing chapters, Rosenfeld substantiates her claim by tracing the history of the vexed relationship between democracy and truth. She begins with an examination of the period prior to the eighteenth-century Age of Revolutions, where she uncovers the political and epistemological foundations of our democratic world. Subsequent chapters move from the Enlightenment to the rise of both populist and technocratic notions of democracy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the troubling trends—including the collapse of social trust—that have led to the rise of our "post-truth" public life. Rosenfeld concludes by offering suggestions for how to defend the idea of truth against the forces that would undermine it.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812250842
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
"Fake news," wild conspiracy theories, misleading claims, doctored photos, lies peddled as facts, facts dismissed as lies—citizens of democracies increasingly inhabit a public sphere teeming with competing claims and counterclaims, with no institution or person possessing the authority to settle basic disputes in a definitive way. The problem may be novel in some of its details—including the role of today's political leaders, along with broadcast and digital media, in intensifying the epistemic anarchy—but the challenge of determining truth in a democratic world has a backstory. In this lively and illuminating book, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores a longstanding and largely unspoken tension at the heart of democracy between the supposed wisdom of the crowd and the need for information to be vetted and evaluated by a learned elite made up of trusted experts. What we are witnessing now is the unraveling of the détente between these competing aspects of democratic culture. In four bracing chapters, Rosenfeld substantiates her claim by tracing the history of the vexed relationship between democracy and truth. She begins with an examination of the period prior to the eighteenth-century Age of Revolutions, where she uncovers the political and epistemological foundations of our democratic world. Subsequent chapters move from the Enlightenment to the rise of both populist and technocratic notions of democracy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the troubling trends—including the collapse of social trust—that have led to the rise of our "post-truth" public life. Rosenfeld concludes by offering suggestions for how to defend the idea of truth against the forces that would undermine it.