Download or read book Democracy Fatigue written by Carlos García-Rivero and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the early 21st century, democracy worldwide has deteriorated significantly. At the same time, new populist forces have appeared that challenge democracies through legal reforms. The stark contrast between Eastern and Western Europe in this respect is the focus of this collection of essays. The authors consider the 2008-2012 economic crisis to be at the root of the success of the populist parties and the rise of cultural backlash against liberal values. In turn, European governments’ responses to the crisis—mainly austerity measures demanded by IMF and the EU— help explain desenchantment with the European Union. These policies made the wider public feel that they were being left out of politics, and populist parties promised to return power to them. The contributors argue that polarization of the electorate can set in motion a radicalization that strengthens authoritarians at the expense of democrats. They also demonstrate that Eastern and Western Europe differ in their attitudes to the decline in quality of democracy. The studies consider how satisfied people are with the political changes they witness, and argue that seemingly more authoritarian attitudes in the East explain why people feel more satisfied with a defective democracy that empowers the populist-authoritarian political actors that they support.
Download or read book Democracy in Retreat written by Joshua Kurlantzick and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVSince the end of the Cold War, the assumption among most political theorists has been that as nations develop economically, they will also become more democratic—especially if a vibrant middle class takes root. This assumption underlies the expansion of the European Union and much of American foreign policy, bolstered by such examples as South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and even to some extent Russia. Where democratization has failed or retreated, aberrant conditions take the blame: Islamism, authoritarian Chinese influence, or perhaps the rise of local autocrats./divDIV /divDIVBut what if the failures of democracy are not exceptions? In this thought-provoking study of democratization, Joshua Kurlantzick proposes that the spate of retreating democracies, one after another over the past two decades, is not just a series of exceptions. Instead, it reflects a new and disturbing trend: democracy in worldwide decline. The author investigates the state of democracy in a variety of countries, why the middle class has turned against democracy in some cases, and whether the decline in global democratization is reversible./div
Download or read book Against Elections written by David Van Reybrouck and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small book with great weight and urgency to it, this is both a history of democracy and a clarion call for change. "Without drastic adjustment, this system cannot last much longer," writes Van Reybrouck, regarded today as one of Europe's most astute thinkers. "If you look at the decline in voter turnout and party membership, and at the way politicians are held in contempt, if you look at how difficult it is to form governments, how little they can do and how harshly they are punished for it, if you look at how quickly populism, technocracy and anti-parliamentarianism are rising, if you look at how more and more citizens are longing for participation and how quickly that desire can tip over into frustration, then you realize we are up to our necks." Not so very long ago, the great battles of democracy were fought for the right to vote. Now, Van Reybrouck writes, "it's all about the right to speak, but in essence it's the same battle, the battle for political emancipation and for democratic participation. We must decolonize democracy. We must democratize democracy." As history, Van Reybrouck makes the compelling argument that modern democracy was designed as much to preserve the rights of the powerful and keep the masses in line, as to give the populace a voice. As change-agent, Against Elections makes the argument that there are forms of government, what he terms sortitive or deliberative democracy, that are beginning to be practiced around the world, and can be the remedy we seek. In Iceland, for example, deliberative democracy was used to write the new constitution. A group of people were chosen by lot, educated in the subject at hand, and then were able to decide what was best, arguably, far better than politicians would have. A fascinating, and workable idea has led to a timely book to remind us that our system of government is a flexible instrument, one that the people have the power to change.
Download or read book Post Broadcast Democracy written by Markus Prior and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2007 book studies the impact of the media on politics in the United States during the last half-century.
Download or read book The People Vs Democracy written by Yascha Mounk and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uiteenzetting over de opkomst van het populisme en het gevaar daarvan voor de democratie.
Download or read book Does Democracy Matter written by Adrian Basora and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-03-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 who ask whether and, if so, how the US should support democracy beyond its own borders. The authors agree that American strategic interests are served in the long run by the spread of democracy abroad, but they differ as to how this support meshes with other national security goals. The concluding chapter outlines a system of triage for realistically assessing where and how such assistance can be effective in promoting US security interests. Contributions by Adrian A. Basora, Sarah Bush, Larry Diamond, Carl Gershman, Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Melinda Haring, Michal Kořan, Richard Kraemer, Agnieszka Marczyk, Tsveta Petrova, and Kenneth Yalowitz.
Download or read book Weak Strongman written by Timothy Frye and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Media and public discussion tends to understand Russian politics as a direct reflection of Vladimir Putin's seeming omnipotence or Russia's unique history and culture. Yet Russia is remarkably similar to other autocracies -- and recognizing this illuminates the inherent limits to Putin's power. Weak Strongman challenges the conventional wisdom about Putin's Russia, highlighting the difficult trade-offs that confront the Kremlin on issues ranging from election fraud and repression to propaganda and foreign policy. Drawing on three decades of his own on-the-ground experience and research as well as insights from a new generation of social scientists that have received little attention outside academia, Timothy Frye reveals how much we overlook about today's Russia when we focus solely on Putin or Russian exceptionalism. Frye brings a new understanding to a host of crucial questions: How popular is Putin? Is Russian propaganda effective? Why are relations with the West so fraught? Can Russian cyber warriors really swing foreign elections? In answering these and other questions, Frye offers a highly accessible reassessment of Russian politics that highlights the challenges of governing Russia and the nature of modern autocracy. Rich in personal anecdotes and cutting-edge social science, Weak Strongman offers the best evidence available about how Russia actually works"--
Download or read book Democracy written by Tom Lansford and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By illuminating the complexities and interrelations of the global community, this excellent resource helps students and other researchers enhance their global awareness on the topic of democracy. Readers will explore the relationship between democracy and government in several countries, including Spain, South Korea, Columbia and Ghana, as well as the relationship between democracy and equality. What is the role of activist groups in promoting democracy in Central and Eastern Europe? Can international pressure force Burma to democratize? Does the United States actively promote democracy in the developing world? This collection of essays provides the answers to these questions and more. Reader will also look at the impact of economics, including taxes and wealth distribution, on democratic growth.
Download or read book Democracy and Sovereignty written by Daniel Erasmus Khan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our world is in urgent need of global answers on subjects such as Big Data, climate change, and the interconnected global economy. This volume tackles those issues and more, with the goal of advancing more democratic modes of decision-making.
Download or read book You Can Do It written by Rob Schneider and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unfiltered and outrageously funny commentary on the threats to free speech in America from the legendary comedian, actor, and Emmy-nominated SNL writer. Rob Schneider’s childhood in the San Francisco Bay area with parents of mixed-race backgrounds shaped his view of the world: that America affords the greatest opportunity for peoples from all nations and all faiths. But today, in this world gone mad, free speech is under attack. And Schneider keeps finding himself in controversy for questioning what woke ideology is doing to our great nation. Still, he refuses to be censored. In his debut book, Schneider will make you laugh out loud as he tells his unique story of a Hollywood-comedian-turned-vocal-advocate for open dialogue. He takes readers along for a ride through his life in show business (where he’s starred in 27 movies with his friend Adam Sandler), shares stories from the glory days of Saturday Night Live, and makes a persuasive case for fearlessness in speech and pushing the boundaries in comedy. Comedians matter because they have a unique position in society to stand up against tyranny. In this book, Schneider shares never-before-told personal stories about Chris Farley, Norm Macdonald, Christopher Walken, Dana Carvey, and Martin Landau, and other comedy legends. You Can Do It! is part celeb memoir, part warning, and part siren call to action. It was said during the days of Covid the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth was about six months. Influenced by his own experiences in Hollywood, Schneider illustrates his points about free expression with provocative commentary on things you aren't suppose to question, like identity politics, Covid tyranny, "global boiling," medical freedoms and more. Schneider refuses to believe he’s dangerous for saying what he thinks. In fact, the opposite is true—it’s dangerous to not question the narrative. It’s dangerous to not exercise your free speech. That’s what Rob Schneider’s doing. And as this humorous, shocking, irreverent but insightful book shows readers, you can do it too.
Download or read book Democracy and Education written by John Dewey and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1916 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
Download or read book Regression of Democracy written by Gero Erdmann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-21 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratization since the implosion of the communist bloc displays a mixed balance. While the neo-democracies in Central Eastern European Countries can be seen as largely consolidated, many other processes of democratization in other parts of the world such as Africa, Asia and Latin America got stuck as unconsolidated or became defective democracies, some ‘regressed’ into hybrid regimes or were even turned into autocracies. While transitology dealt with the transition from authoritarian rule, the reverse process, the transition from democratic rule, remained almost completely outside the scholarly attention. This special issue will address the problems of the regression of democracy and aims at closing the gap between research on democracy and democratization on one side and the emergence of authoritarian regimes on the other. The contributions of this volume analyse the different phenomena in which decline of democracy fans out: the loss of quality, which means a silent regression; the backslide into hybrid regimes (hybridization); and the breakdown of democracy.
Download or read book The Great Regression written by Heinrich Geiselberger and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living through a period of dramatic political change – Brexit, the election of Trump, the rise of extreme right movements in Europe and elsewhere, the resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia and a concerted assault on the liberal values and ideals associated with cosmopolitanism and globalization. Suddenly we find ourselves in a world that few would have imagined possible just a few years ago, a world that seems to many to be a move backwards. How can we make sense of these dramatic developments and how should we respond to them? Are we witnessing a worldwide rejection of liberal democracy and its replacement by some kind of populist authoritarianism? This timely volume brings together some of the world's greatest minds to analyse and seek to understand the forces behind this 'great regression'. Writers from across disciplines and countries, including Paul Mason, Pankaj Mishra, Slavoj Zizek, Zygmunt Bauman, Arjun Appadurai, Wolfgang Streeck and Eva Illouz, grapple with our current predicament, framing it in a broader historical context, discussing possible future trajectories and considering ways that we might combat this reactionary turn. The Great Regression is a key intervention that will be of great value to all those concerned about recent developments and wondering how best to respond to this unprecedented challenge to the very core of liberal democracy and internationalism across the world today. For more information, see: www.thegreatregression.eu
Download or read book Democracy in Poland written by Anna Gwiazda and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the quality of democracy in Poland from the collapse of communism in 1989 up to the 2011 parliamentary election. It presents an in-depth, empirically grounded study comparing two decades of democratic politics. Drawing on democratic theory and comparative politics, the book puts forward an evaluation of democracy based on four dimensions: representation, participation, competition and accountability. The book is an important contribution to debates on the performance of the new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, where some scholars argue that there is a ‘democratic crisis’, that, after a period of democratic progress, most of these countries are experiencing democratic fatigue and that their democratic performance is poor. However, the Polish case shows that democracy is not in crisis - in fact, the quality of democracy in Poland has improved. The book shows that democratic quality stems from good democratic institutions. Moreover, the Polish case shows useful lessons that can be learnt by democratic reformers in countries that are undergoing the transition to democracy or are aiming to consolidate their democratic systems. It concludes that effective accountability, good representation and stable competition are vital.
Download or read book Compassion Fatigue written by Susan D. Moeller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Monitoring Democracy written by Judith G. Kelley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-25 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, governments and NGOs--in an effort to promote democracy, freedom, fairness, and stability throughout the world--have organized teams of observers to monitor elections in a variety of countries. But when more organizations join the practice without uniform standards, are assessments reliable? When politicians nonetheless cheat and monitors must return to countries even after two decades of engagement, what is accomplished? Monitoring Democracy argues that the practice of international election monitoring is broken, but still worth fixing. By analyzing the evolving interaction between domestic and international politics, Judith Kelley refutes prevailing arguments that international efforts cannot curb government behavior and that democratization is entirely a domestic process. Yet, she also shows that democracy promotion efforts are deficient and that outside actors often have no power and sometimes even do harm. Analyzing original data on over 600 monitoring missions and 1,300 elections, Kelley grounds her investigation in solid historical context as well as studies of long-term developments over several elections in fifteen countries. She pinpoints the weaknesses of international election monitoring and looks at how practitioners and policymakers might help to improve them.
Download or read book Let s save democracy written by Bernd Thomsen and published by Plassen Verlag. This book was released on 2024-08-22 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: But our way of life is in danger of dying. The author tackles this weighty subject with astonishing ease. A non-fiction book that is fun to read. Because it tells the story as vividly as a novel or a podcast. An extraordinary rescue mission from Hamburg to New York. Including: Joe Biden, Sanna Marin, Robert Habeck, Justin Trudeau... After five years of research, future expert Professor Bernd Thomsen now provides you with hundreds of learnings from 39 countries, futurology, exciting facts. And inspiring optimism. And above all: The formula for how to save our democracy. For everyone who loves our way of life. Even if politics is not your business. Do you love your freedom? Then read this book!
