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Author: Jack Knight
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840333
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Why democracy is the best way of deciding how decisions should be made Pragmatism and its consequences are central issues in American politics today, yet scholars rarely examine in detail the relationship between pragmatism and politics. In The Priority of Democracy, Jack Knight and James Johnson systematically explore the subject and make a strong case for adopting a pragmatist approach to democratic politics—and for giving priority to democracy in the process of selecting and reforming political institutions. What is the primary value of democracy? When should we make decisions democratically and when should we rely on markets? And when should we accept the decisions of unelected officials, such as judges or bureaucrats? Knight and Johnson explore how a commitment to pragmatism should affect our answers to such important questions. They conclude that democracy is a good way of determining how these kinds of decisions should be made—even if what the democratic process determines is that not all decisions should be made democratically. So, for example, the democratically elected U.S. Congress may legitimately remove monetary policy from democratic decision-making by putting it under the control of the Federal Reserve. Knight and Johnson argue that pragmatism offers an original and compelling justification of democracy in terms of the unique contributions democratic institutions can make to processes of institutional choice. This focus highlights the important role that democracy plays, not in achieving consensus or commonality, but rather in addressing conflicts. Indeed, Knight and Johnson suggest that democratic politics is perhaps best seen less as a way of reaching consensus or agreement than as a way of structuring the terms of persistent disagreement.
Author: Jack Knight
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840333
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Why democracy is the best way of deciding how decisions should be made Pragmatism and its consequences are central issues in American politics today, yet scholars rarely examine in detail the relationship between pragmatism and politics. In The Priority of Democracy, Jack Knight and James Johnson systematically explore the subject and make a strong case for adopting a pragmatist approach to democratic politics—and for giving priority to democracy in the process of selecting and reforming political institutions. What is the primary value of democracy? When should we make decisions democratically and when should we rely on markets? And when should we accept the decisions of unelected officials, such as judges or bureaucrats? Knight and Johnson explore how a commitment to pragmatism should affect our answers to such important questions. They conclude that democracy is a good way of determining how these kinds of decisions should be made—even if what the democratic process determines is that not all decisions should be made democratically. So, for example, the democratically elected U.S. Congress may legitimately remove monetary policy from democratic decision-making by putting it under the control of the Federal Reserve. Knight and Johnson argue that pragmatism offers an original and compelling justification of democracy in terms of the unique contributions democratic institutions can make to processes of institutional choice. This focus highlights the important role that democracy plays, not in achieving consensus or commonality, but rather in addressing conflicts. Indeed, Knight and Johnson suggest that democratic politics is perhaps best seen less as a way of reaching consensus or agreement than as a way of structuring the terms of persistent disagreement.
Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139935763
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers and offer something of a compromise - agreeing with the latter in their criticisms of traditional notions of truth and objectivity, but disagreeing with them over the political implications they draw from dropping traditional philosophical doctrines. In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.
Author: Clive Barnett
Publisher: Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation
ISBN: 9780820351520
Category : Critical theory
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This original and ambitious work looks anew at a series of intellectual debates about the meaning of democracy. Clive Barnett engages with key thinkers in various traditions of democratic theory and demonstrates the importance of a geographical imagination in interpreting contemporary political change. Debates about radical democracy, Barnett argues, have become trapped around a set of oppositions between deliberative and agonistic theories--contrasting thinkers who promote the possibility of rational agreement and those who seek to unmask the role of power or violence or difference in shaping human affairs. While these debates are often framed in terms of consensus versus contestation, Barnett unpacks the assumptions about space and time that underlie different understandings of the sources of political conflict and shows how these differences reflect deeper philosophical commitments to theories of creative action or revived ontologies of "the political." Rather than developing ideal theories of democracy or models of proper politics, he argues that attention should turn toward the practices of claims-making through which political movements express experiences of injustice and make demands for recognition, redress, and re pair. By rethinking the spatial grammar of discussions of public space, democratic inclusion, and globalization, Barnett develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the crucial roles played by geographical processes in generating and processing contentious politics.
Author: Suzanne Mettler
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250244439
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them. While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present. In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound—even fatal—damage to the American democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics of disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power—alone or in combination—have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived—so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist. This convergence marks the contemporary era as a grave moment for democracy. But history provides a valuable repository from which we can draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened—or weakened—in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to today and chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.
Author: Michael McFaul
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9781442201118
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
In Advancing Democracy Abroad, McFaul explains how democracy provides a more accountable system of government, greater economic prosperity, and better security compared with other systems of government. He then shows how Americans have benefited from the advance of democracy abroad in the past, and speculates about security, economic, and moral benefits for the United States from potential democratic gains around the world.
Author: Thom Hartmann
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 1400052084
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Presents the thesis that democracy is one of the world's oldest and most resilient forms of government, along with ideas for transforming and reviving democracy in the United States in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson's original dream.
Author: John Dewey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
In this book, Dewey tries to criticize and expand on the educational philosophies of Rousseau and Plato. Dewey's ideas were seldom adopted in America's public schools, although a number of his prescriptions have been continually advocated by those who have had to teach in them.
Author: David Stasavage
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691177465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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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.
Author: Parker J. Palmer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118970365
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Hope for American democracy in an era of deep divisions In Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker J. Palmerquickens our instinct to seek the common good and gives us thetools to do it. This timely, courageous and practicalwork—intensely personal as well as political—is notabout them, "those people" in Washington D.C., or in ourstate capitals, on whom we blame our political problems. It's aboutus, "We the People," and what we can do in everyday settingslike families, neighborhoods, classrooms, congregations andworkplaces to resist divide-and-conquer politics and restore agovernment "of the people, by the people, for the people." In the same compelling, inspiring prose that has made him abestselling author, Palmer explores five "habits of the heart" thatcan help us restore democracy's foundations as we nurture them inourselves and each other: An understanding that we are all in this together An appreciation of the value of "otherness" An ability to hold tension in life-giving ways A sense of personal voice and agency A capacity to create community Healing the Heart of Democracy is an eloquent andempowering call for "We the People" to reclaim ourdemocracy. The online journal Democracy & Educationcalled it "one of the most important books of the early 21stCentury." And Publishers Weekly, in a Starred Review, said"This beautifully written book deserves a wide audience that willbenefit from discussing it."
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.
