Democracy Under Stress

Democracy Under Stress PDF Author: Ursula Van Beek
Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
ISBN: 1920338705
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book

Book Description
DEMOCRACY UNDER STRESS focuses on the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and its implications for democracy. Why and how did the crisis come about? Are there any instructive lessons to be drawn from comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s? What are the democratic response mechanisms to cope with serious crises? Do they work? Is China a new trend setter? Do values matter? Are global democratic rules a possibility? These are some of the key questions addressed in the volume.

Democracy Under Stress

Democracy Under Stress PDF Author: Ursula Van Beek
Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
ISBN: 1920338705
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book

Book Description
DEMOCRACY UNDER STRESS focuses on the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and its implications for democracy. Why and how did the crisis come about? Are there any instructive lessons to be drawn from comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s? What are the democratic response mechanisms to cope with serious crises? Do they work? Is China a new trend setter? Do values matter? Are global democratic rules a possibility? These are some of the key questions addressed in the volume.

Construction Of Democracy, The: China's Theory, Strategy And Agenda

Construction Of Democracy, The: China's Theory, Strategy And Agenda PDF Author: Shangli Lin
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811220638
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Get Book

Book Description
The book expounds on the role played by democracy in China's revolution and modernization led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), and how the CPC, in both its party building and state building, has constantly sought to leverage democracy's positive functions while avoiding its shortcomings.Special attention is paid to reconstructing and explaining the historical contexts from which the Party's theoretical innovations have emerged, thus offering readers insights into the inner political logic that has shaped China's development.The author, a member of the Party's senior policy panel, offers a perceptive analysis of the modernization of the country and its governing capacity, and provides a clear assessment of how democracy in China has developed with the times.Always bearing the big picture in mind, the author has not shied away from some of the more controversial parts of China's recent history, and his deep understanding of relevant Party documents and historical facts give strong support to his analyses. He concludes that that the Party is central to leading the nation to explore its path of socialism with Chinese characteristics and that the country has always emerged stronger after setbacks.

New Democracy

New Democracy PDF Author: William J. Novak
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674260449
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book

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.

Real Democracy

Real Democracy PDF Author: Frank M. Bryan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226077985
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book

Book Description
Relying on an astounding collection of more than three decades of firsthand research, Frank M. Bryan examines one of the purest forms of American democracy, the New England town meeting. At these meetings, usually held once a year, all eligible citizens of the town may become legislators; they meet in face-to-face assemblies, debate the issues on the agenda, and vote on them. And although these meetings are natural laboratories for democracy, very few scholars have systematically investigated them. A nationally recognized expert on this topic, Bryan has now done just that. Studying 1,500 town meetings in his home state of Vermont, he and his students recorded a staggering amount of data about them—238,603 acts of participation by 63,140 citizens in 210 different towns. Drawing on this evidence as well as on evocative "witness" accounts—from casual observers to no lesser a light than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—Bryan paints a vivid picture of how real democracy works. Among the many fascinating questions he explores: why attendance varies sharply with town size, how citizens resolve conflicts in open forums, and how men and women behave differently in town meetings. In the end, Bryan interprets this brand of local government to find evidence for its considerable staying power as the most authentic and meaningful form of direct democracy. Giving us a rare glimpse into how democracy works in the real world, Bryan presents here an unorthodox and definitive book on this most cherished of American institutions.

Mobilizing for Democracy

Mobilizing for Democracy PDF Author: Vera Schatten Coelho
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848139152
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book

Book Description
Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.

Democracy and New Media

Democracy and New Media PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262600637
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Get Book

Book Description
Essays on the promise and dangers of the Internet for democracy.

Inventing Leadership

Inventing Leadership PDF Author: J. Thomas Wren
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1847207243
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423

Get Book

Book Description
Tom Wren s book is a masterpiece of intellectual history. It explores the philosophical and historical foundations of democracy in a compelling way. Wren is a sparkling and graceful writer. He makes a potentially dry subject come alive with wit and insight. The issues Wren addresses are extremely timely, as the United States endeavors to advance democracy in the Middle East. George Goethals, University of Richmond, US In this important analysis of democratic thought and treatise on leadership, historian Tom Wren drills down to the essential intellectual paradox: that leadership and democracy are inherently hostile concepts. Wren brilliantly strips down our fictions concerning these domains in his extensive deconstruction of both classical and modern thought. What emerges is a dialectical awakening and a practical new vision of citizen participation and enlightened leadership. Georgia Sorenson, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland, College Park and US Army An excellent scholarly work that is well written and highly relevant within the context of contemporary politics. Although essential reading for teachers and students of political theory, it will also interest the general reader and armchair politician. First Trust Bank Economic Outlook and Business Review Wren is to be commended for attempting to lay bare the underlying assumptions and premises that inform any approach to politics. . . an important contribution to an ongoing conversation about what contemporary leadership should look like. Undergraduates will benefit from his review of important theorists, and practitioners should be challenged by Wren s own theses about leadership. Highly recommended. All readership levels. M.J. Watson, Choice The tension between ruler and ruled in democratic societies has never been satisfactorily resolved, and the competing interpretations of this relationship lie at the bottom of much modern political discourse. In this fascinating book, Thomas Wren clarifies and elevates the debates over leadership by identifying the fundamental premises and assumptions that underlie past and present understandings. The author traces the intellectual history of the central constructs: the leader, the people, and, ultimately, the relationship between them as they seek to accomplish societal objectives. He begins with a discussion of the invented notion of the classical paragon of a ruler. Next he pursues the invention of the countervailing concept of a sovereign people, and finally, the need for the invention of a new construct leadership which embodies a new relation between ruler and ruled in regimes dedicated to power in the people. In doing so, he draws upon the giants of the Western intellectual tradition as well as the insights of modern historians, political scientists, sociologists and leadership scholars. The book concludes with a proposed model of leadership for a modern democratic world. Elegantly written and masterfully argued, this comprehensive study will be essential reading for students and scholars of leadership and democracy.

Japan Under Construction

Japan Under Construction PDF Author: Brian Woodall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780520088153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book

Book Description
"I would like to commend Professor Woodall for his in-depth look at the corrupt "dango" system that has plagued the public works market in Japan. Having spent the last ten years trying to pry open the closed Japanese public works market, I believe that this book lays out clearly the structural problems that block access for U.S. firms. I hope that this illuminating look at how the Japanese system operates will lead to further changes in Japan's public procurement system."--Senator Frank L. Murkowski "Woodall has done a wonderful job of getting behind the scenes to look at the preeminent sector where money flows to politicians. This is the richest and most subtle analysis of this industry to appear in English."--Ezra F. Vogel, author of "Japan as Number One" "An important contribution to our knowledge of Japan. Brian Woodall has dug up quite a bit of new factual information on this understudied industry."--Frances Rosenbluth, author of "Financial Politics in Contemporary Japan" and coauthor of "Japan's Political Marketplace"

Democracy under Construction

Democracy under Construction PDF Author: Ursula J. van Beek
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
ISBN: 3847414534
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book

Book Description
The book compares five newly emerged democracies in Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and Africa. Cutting across vastly dif¬fer¬ent historical and cultural backgrounds it tells the story of how societies come to terms with a painful past and how politics, culture and the economy intertwine in the process of creating new democratic nations.

Parties, Politics, and Democracy in the New Southern Europe

Parties, Politics, and Democracy in the New Southern Europe PDF Author: P. Nikiforos Diamandouros
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801865176
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book

Book Description
In the acclaimed Politics of Democratic Consolidation, Nikiforos Diamandouros, Richard Gunther, and their co-authors showed how democratization unfolded in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, culminating in consolidated democratic regimes. This volume continues that analysis, posing the basic question: What kind of democratic politics emerged in those countries? It presents systematic analyses of the basic institutions of government and of the dynamics of electoral competition in the four countries (set in comparative context alongside several other democracies), as well as detailed studies of the evolution of the major parties, their electorates, their ideologies, and their performances in government over the past twenty years. The authors reach two major conclusions. First, the new democracies' salient features are moderation, centripetalism, and the democratization of erstwhile antisystem parties on the Right and Left. Second, no single "Southern European model" has emerged; the systems differ from one another about as much as do the other established democracies of Europe. Contributors: P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, University of Athens • Richard Gunther, Ohio State University • Thomas C. Bruneau, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey • Arend Lijphart, University of California at San Diego • Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence • Risa A. Brooks, Stanford University • José R. Montero, Autonomous University of Madrid • Giacomo Sani, University of Pavia • Paolo Segatti, University of Trieste • Gianfranco Pasquino, University of Bologna • Takis S. Pappas, College Year, Athens • Hans-Jrgen Puhle, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main • Anna Bosco, University of Trieste