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Author: Eri Bertsou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000043606
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
This book represents the first comprehensive study of how technocracy currently challenges representative democracy and asks how technocratic politics undermines democratic legitimacy. How strong is its challenge to democratic institutions? The book offers a solid theory and conceptualization of technocratic politics and the technocratic challenge is analyzed empirically at all levels of the national and supra-national institutions and actors, such as cabinets, parties, the EU, independent bodies, central banks and direct democratic campaigns in a comparative and policy perspective. It takes an in-depth analysis addressing elitism, meritocracy, de-politicization, efficiency, neutrality, reliance on science and distrust toward party politics and ideologies, and their impact when pitched against democratic responsiveness, accountability, citizens' input and pluralist competition. In the current crisis of democracy, this book assesses the effects of the technocratic critique against representative institutions, which are perceived to be unable to deal with complex and global problems. It analyzes demands for competent and responsible policy making in combination with the simultaneous populist resistance to experts. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, political theory, policy analysis, multi-level governance as well as practitioners working in bureaucracies, media, think-tanks and policy making.
Author: Eri Bertsou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000043606
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book represents the first comprehensive study of how technocracy currently challenges representative democracy and asks how technocratic politics undermines democratic legitimacy. How strong is its challenge to democratic institutions? The book offers a solid theory and conceptualization of technocratic politics and the technocratic challenge is analyzed empirically at all levels of the national and supra-national institutions and actors, such as cabinets, parties, the EU, independent bodies, central banks and direct democratic campaigns in a comparative and policy perspective. It takes an in-depth analysis addressing elitism, meritocracy, de-politicization, efficiency, neutrality, reliance on science and distrust toward party politics and ideologies, and their impact when pitched against democratic responsiveness, accountability, citizens' input and pluralist competition. In the current crisis of democracy, this book assesses the effects of the technocratic critique against representative institutions, which are perceived to be unable to deal with complex and global problems. It analyzes demands for competent and responsible policy making in combination with the simultaneous populist resistance to experts. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, political theory, policy analysis, multi-level governance as well as practitioners working in bureaucracies, media, think-tanks and policy making.
Author: Esmark, Anders
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529200911
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
The rise of populist parties and movements across the Western hemisphere and their contempt for ‘experts’ has shocked the establishment. This book examines how the ‘post-industrial’ technocratic regime of the 1980’s – of managerialism, depoliticisation and the politics of expertise – sowed the seeds for the backlash against the political elites that is visible today. Populism, Esmark augues, is a sign that the technocratic bluff has finally been called and that technocracy posing as democracy will only serve to exasperate existing problems. This book sets a new benchmark for studies of technocracy, showing that a solution to the challenge of populism will depend as much on a technocratic retreat as democratic innovation.
Author: Eduardo Dargent
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107059879
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Praised by some as islands of efficiency in a sea of unprofessional, politicized, and corrupt states, and criticized by others for removing wide areas of policy making from the democratic arena, technocrats have become prominent and controversial actors in Latin American politics. Through an in-depth analysis of economic and health policy in Colombia from 1958 to 2011 and in Peru from 1980 to 2011, Technocracy and Democracy in Latin America explains the source of these experts' power as well as the leverage they have across state policy sectors in Latin America.
Author: Matthew Hindman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691138680
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
Matthew Hindman reveals here that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse in the United States, but rather that it empowers a small set of elites - some new, but most familiar.
Author: K. Sabeel Rahman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019046853X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
How do realize democratic values in a complex, deeply unequal modern economy and in the face of unresponsive governmental institutions? Drawing on Progressive Era thought and sparked by the real policy challenges of financial regulation, Democracy Against Domination offers a novel theory of democracy to answer these pressing questions.
Author: Christopher J. Bickerton
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198807767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Contemporary democracies face a crisis of political representation. In understanding this crisis, scholars and commentators often frame it as the 'end' or the 'collapse' of democracy. This book takes a very different path. It argues that we are witnessing a transformation in the nature and practice of political competition within existing democratic regimes. This transformation consists in the rise of a new political field, techno-populism. Within this field, appeals to the people and appeals to expertise are the new structuring logic of democratic politics. Populist appeals to a unitary 'people' combine in multiple ways with technocratic claims about efficient policy-making and policy implementation. These multiple combinations form the basis for the varieties of techno-populism outlined in detail in this book. We focus in particular on British, French, and Italian cases. The concept of technopopulism helps us to make sense of new and idiosyncratic political movements such as En Marche! and the Five Star Movement. Technopopulism is also the conceptual key to understanding the significance of Blairism for British politics and its legacy in the profound transformations underway in the contemporary Conservative Party. The transition from an ideological struggle between left and right to this technopopulist political field where populist and technocratic appeals are fused together into novel forms of political organization is having a significant impact on the quality of democratic political competition. This book analyses the origins and consequences of the rise of technopopulism, as well as considering the remedies available to us to tackle its negative effects.
Author: Boris Vormann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100007918X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
As illiberal and authoritarian trends are on the rise—both in fragile and seemingly robust democracies—there is growing concern about the longevity of liberalism and democracy. The purpose of this volume is to draw on the analytical resources of various disciplines and public policy approaches to reflect on the current standing of liberal democracy. Leading social scientists from different disciplinary backgrounds aim to examine the ideological and structural roots of the current crisis of liberal democracies, in the West and beyond, conceptually and empirically. The volume is divided into two main parts: Part I explores tensions between liberalism and democracy in a longer-term, historical perspective to explain immanent vulnerabilities of liberal democracy. Authors examine the conceptual foundations of Western liberal democracy that have shaped its standing in the contemporary world. What lies at the core of illiberal tendencies? Part II explores case studies from the North Atlantic, Eastern Europe, Turkey, India, Japan, and Brazil, raising questions whether democratic crises, manifested in the rise of populist movements in and beyond the Western context, differ in kind or only in degree. How can we explain the current popular appeal of authoritarian governments and illiberal ideas? The Emergence of Illiberalism will be of great interest to teachers and students of politics, sociology, political theory and comparative government.
Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538016
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Why policies should be based on careful consideration of their costs and benefits rather than on intuition, popular opinion, interest groups, and anecdotes. Opinions on government policies vary widely. Some people feel passionately about the child obesity epidemic and support government regulation of sugary drinks. Others argue that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they like. Some people are alarmed about climate change and favor aggressive government intervention. Others don't feel the need for any sort of climate regulation. In The Cost-Benefit Revolution, Cass Sunstein argues our major disagreements really involve facts, not values. It follows that government policy should not be based on public opinion, intuitions, or pressure from interest groups, but on numbers—meaning careful consideration of costs and benefits. Will a policy save one life, or one thousand lives? Will it impose costs on consumers, and if so, will the costs be high or negligible? Will it hurt workers and small businesses, and, if so, precisely how much? As the Obama administration's “regulatory czar,” Sunstein knows his subject in both theory and practice. Drawing on behavioral economics and his well-known emphasis on “nudging,” he celebrates the cost-benefit revolution in policy making, tracing its defining moments in the Reagan, Clinton, and Obama administrations (and pondering its uncertain future in the Trump administration). He acknowledges that public officials often lack information about costs and benefits, and outlines state-of-the-art techniques for acquiring that information. Policies should make people's lives better. Quantitative cost-benefit analysis, Sunstein argues, is the best available method for making this happen—even if, in the future, new measures of human well-being, also explored in this book, may be better still.
Author: Sarah Sunn Bush
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107069645
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Most government programs seeking to aid democracy abroad do not directly confront dictators. This book explains how organizational politics 'tamed' democracy assistance.
Author: Simon Tormey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745690513
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Fewer people are voting or joining political parties, and our interest in parliamentary politics is declining fast. Even oppositional and radical parties that should be benefitting from public disenchantment with politics are suffering. But different forms of political activity are emerging to replace representative politics: instant politics, direct action, insurgent politics. We are leaving behind traditional representation, and moving towards a politics without representatives. In this provocative new book, Simon Tormey explores the changes that are underway, drawing on a rich range of examples from the Arab Spring to the Indignados uprising in Spain, street protests in Brazil and Turkey to the emergence of new initiatives such as Anonymous and Occupy. Tormey argues that the easy assumptions that informed our thinking about the nature and role of parties, and ‘party based democracy’ have to be rethought. We are entering a period of fast politics, evanescent politics, a politics of the street, of the squares, of micro-parties, pop-up parties, and demonstrations. This may well be the end of representative politics as we know it, but an exciting new era of political engagement is just beginning.
