Doing Democracy Differently

Doing Democracy Differently PDF Author: Henrike Knappe
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
ISBN: 3863883128
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Transnational civil society networks have become increasingly important democratizing actors in global politics. Still, the exploration of democracy in such networks remains conceptually and methodologically challenging. Practice theory provides a framework to study democracy as routinized performances even in contexts of fluid boundaries, temporal relations and a diffuse constituency. The author attempts to understand how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and their structural environments.

Doing Democracy Differently

Doing Democracy Differently PDF Author: Henrike Knappe
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
ISBN: 3863883128
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book

Book Description
Transnational civil society networks have become increasingly important democratizing actors in global politics. Still, the exploration of democracy in such networks remains conceptually and methodologically challenging. Practice theory provides a framework to study democracy as routinized performances even in contexts of fluid boundaries, temporal relations and a diffuse constituency. The author attempts to understand how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and their structural environments.

A Different Democracy

A Different Democracy PDF Author: Steven L. Taylor
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300198086
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
"Four distinguished scholars in political science analyze American democracy from a comparative point of view, exploring how the U.S. political system differs from that of thirty other democracies and what those differences ultimately mean for democratic performance. This essential text approaches the following institutions from a political engineering point of view: constitutions, electoral systems, and political parties, as well as legislative, executive, and judicial power. The text looks at democracies from around the world over a two-decade time frame. The result is not only a fresh view of the much-discussed theme of American exceptionalism but also an innovative approach to comparative politics that treats the United States as but one case among many. An ideal textbook for both American and comparative politics courses"--

Doing Democracy

Doing Democracy PDF Author: Bill Moyer
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 9780865714182
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
An empowering guide to understanding the strategies behind successful social movements.

Doing Democracy Differently

Doing Democracy Differently PDF Author: ROBERTA. RICE
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781773855639
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Across North and South America, Indigenous people play a dual political role, building self-governing structures in their own nations and participating in the elections of settler states. Doing Democracy Differently asks how states are responding to demands for Indigenous representation and autonomy and in what ways the ongoing project of decolonization may unsettle the practice of democracy. Based on the structured, focused comparison of four success stories across Northern Canada, Bolivia, and Ecuador, this book provides real-world examples of how Indigenous autonomy and self-determination may be successfully advanced using existing democratic mechanisms. Drawing on thorough original research to identify factors that create distinctive patterns within Indigenous-state relations, it argues that the capacity for democratic innovation lies within the realm of civil society while the possibility for uptake of such innovation is found within the state and its willingness to work with Indigenous and popular actors. Operating at the intersection of Indigenous and Comparative Politics, Doing Democracy Differently takes seriously the role of institutions and the land on which they are built in the creation of democratic transformations in the Americas. This book advances Indigenous rights to autonomy and self-government and speaks to some of the thorniest issues in democratic governance.

Democracy's Meanings

Democracy's Meanings PDF Author: Nicholas T. Davis
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472220381
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Democracy’s Meanings challenges conventional wisdom regarding how the public thinks about and evaluates democracy. Mining both political theory and more than 75 years of public opinion data, the book argues that Americans think about democracy in ways that go beyond voting or elected representation. Instead, citizens have rich and substantive views about the material conditions that democracy should produce, which draw from their beliefs about equality, fairness, and justice. The authors construct a typology of views about democracy. Procedural views of democracy take a minimalistic quality. While voting and fair treatment are important to this vision of democracy, ideas about equality are mostly limited to civil liberties. In contrast, social views of democracy incorporate both civil and economic equality; according to people with these views, democracy ought to meet the basic social and material needs of citizens. Complementing these two groups are moderate and indifferent views about democracy. While moderate views sit somewhere in between procedural and social perspectives regarding the role of democracy in producing social and economic equality, indifferent views of democracy involve disaffection toward it. For a small group of apathetic citizens, democracy is an ambiguous and ill-defined concept.

The Decline and Rise of Democracy

The Decline and Rise of Democracy PDF Author: David Stasavage
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691228973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
"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."--

Beasts and Gods

Beasts and Gods PDF Author: Roslyn Fuller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783605448
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Democracy does not deliver on the things we have assumed are its natural outcomes. This, coupled with a growing sense of malaise in both new and established democracies forms the basis to the assertion made by some, that these are not democracies at all. Through considerable, impressive empirical analysis of a variety of voting methods, across twenty different nations, Roslyn Fuller presents the data that makes this contention indisputable. Proving that the party which forms the government rarely receives the majority of the popular vote, that electoral systems regularly produce manufactured majorities and that the better funded side invariably wins such contests in both elections and referenda, Fuller's findings challenge the most fundamental elements of both national politics and broader society. Beast and Gods argues for a return to democracy as perceived by the ancient Athenians. Boldly arguing for the necessity of the Aristotelian assumption that citizens are agents whose wishes and aims can be attained through participation in politics, and through an examination of what “goods” are provided by democracy, Fuller offers a powerful challenge to the contemporary liberal view that there are no "goods" in politics, only individual citizens seeking to fulfil their particular interests.

The Life and Death of Democracy

The Life and Death of Democracy PDF 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.

Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction

Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Harvey C. Mansfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199746316
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
No one has ever described American democracy with more accurate insight or more profoundly than Alexis de Tocqueville. After meeting with Americans on extensive travels in the United States, and intense study of documents and authorities, he authored the landmark Democracy in America, publishing its two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Ever since, this book has been the best source for every serious attempt to understand America and democracy itself. Yet Tocqueville himself remains a mystery behind the elegance of his style. Now one of our leading authorities on Tocqueville explains him in this splendid new entry in Oxford's acclaimed Very Short Introduction series. Harvey Mansfield addresses his subject as a thinker, clearly and incisively exploring Tocqueville's writings--not only his masterpiece, but also his secret Recollections, intended for posterity alone, and his unfinished work on his native France, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Tocqueville was a liberal, Mansfield writes, but not of the usual sort. The many elements of his life found expression in his thought: his aristocratic ancestry, his ventures in politics, his voyages abroad, his hopes and fears for America, and his disappointment with France. All his writings show a passion for political liberty and insistence on human greatness. Perhaps most important, he saw liberty not in theories, but in the practice of self-government in America. Ever an opponent of abstraction, he offered an analysis that forces us to consider what we actually do in our politics--suggesting that theory itself may be an enemy of freedom. And that, Mansfield writes, makes him a vitally important thinker for today. Translator of an authoritative edition of Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield here offers the fruit of decades of research and reflection in a clear, insightful, and marvelously compact introduction.

Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies

Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 9780309059299
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
This ground-breaking new volume focuses on the interaction between political, social, and economic change in Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States. It includes a wide selection of analytic papers, thought-provoking essays by leading scholars in diverse fields, and an agenda for future research. It integrates work on the micro and macro levels of the economy and provides a broad overview of the transition process. This volume broadens the current intellectual and policy debate concerning the historic transition now taking place from a narrow concern with purely economic factors to the dynamics of political and social change. It questions the assumption that the post-communist economies are all following the same path and that they will inevitably develop into replicas of economies in the advanced industrial West. It challenges accepted thinking and promotes the utilization of new methods and perspectives.