Democracy category: 2250 books

Has the international movement for democracy and human rights gone from being a weapon against power to part of the arsenal of power itself? Nicolas Guilhot explores this question in his penetrating look at how the U.S. government, the World Bank, political scientists, NGOs, think tanks, and various...

Between 1898 and 1918, many American states introduced the initiative, referendum, and recall--known collectively as direct democracy. Most interpreters have seen the motives for these reform measures as purely political, but Thomas Goebel demonstrates that the call for direct democracy was deeply...

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...

Globality, Democracy and Civil Society explores the relationship between the concepts of democracy and civil society through a comparison of their meaning and function in different historical and cultural contexts. This volume presents detailed contextual studies in Europe, North America, Japan,...

This book addresses some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is democracy threatened by globalisation? Is there a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies? Is the welfare state in individual countries under pressure from global trends? What are the implications of high-level migration...

The first two editions of Models of Democracy have proven immensely popular among students and specialists worldwide. In a succinct and far-reaching analysis, David Held provides an introduction to central accounts of democracy from classical Greece to the present and a critical discussion of what...

C. Douglas Lummis writes as if he were talking with intelligent friends rather than articulating political theory. He reminds us that democracy literally means a political state in which the people (demos) have the power (kratia). The people referred to are not people of a certain class or gender...

On Extremism and Democracy in Europe is a collection of short and accessible essays on the far right, populism, Euroscepticism, and liberal democracy by one of the leading academic and public voices today. It includes both sober, fact-based analysis of the often sensationalized "rise of the far...

A new history of the world’s most embattled idea Today, democracy is the world’s only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In Can Democracy Work? James Miller, the author of the classic history of 1960s...

Capitalism, the market economy, is our best form of economic relationship. But capitalism has a very deep flaw. It tends toward monopoly. It concentrates excessive power, wealth and advantage into the hands of all too often ruthless, greedy elites who exploit the rest of the populace, corrupt our...

Social choice theory and theories of deliberative discourse have deeply impacted on the way political scientists understand the dynamics of democratic politics and decision-making. Deliberation, Social Choice and Absolutist Democracy addresses the dispute between these competing schools of thought. Deliberative...

Confidence in the future of democracy has been shaken by the authoritarian resurgence of the past decade, and some now argue that it is not realistic for the US to continue to champion democracy abroad. Does Democracy Matter? provides the conclusions of eleven scholars from widely different backgrounds...

Pillars of Industrial Democracy explores the politico-philosophic traditions of British Guild Socialism, German Social Democracy, European anarcho-syndicalism and the Gandhian concept of Trusteeship, which have endeavoured in thought and action to make the concept of industrial democracy. It questions...

For almost a decade, Freedom House’s annual survey has highlighted a decline in democracy in most regions of the globe. While some analysts draw upon this evidence to argue that the world has entered a "democratic recession," others dispute that interpretation, emphasizing instead democracy’s...