Download or read book The Democracy Project written by David Graeber and published by Doubleday UK. This book was released on 2013 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the idea of democracy, its current state of crisis, and its potential as a tool for change, sharing historical perspectives on the effectiveness of democratic uprisings in various times and cultures.
Download or read book Breaking the Two party Doom Loop written by Lee Drutman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American democracy is in deep crisis. But what do we do about it? That depends on how we understand the current threat.In Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, Lee Drutman argues that we now have, for the first time in American history, a genuine two-party system, with two fully-sorted, truly national parties, divided over the character of the nation. And it's a disaster. It's a party system fundamentally at odds withour anti-majoritarian, compromise-oriented governing institutions. It threatens the very foundations of fairness and shared values on which our democracy depends.Deftly weaving together history, democratic theory, and cutting-edge political science research, Drutman tells the story of how American politics became so toxic and why the country is now trapped in a doom loop of escalating two-party warfare from which there is only one escape: increase the numberof parties through electoral reform. As he shows, American politics was once stable because the two parties held within them multiple factions, which made it possible to assemble flexible majorities and kept the climate of political combat from overheating. But as conservative Southern Democrats andliberal Northeastern Republicans disappeared, partisan conflict flattened and pulled apart. Once the parties became fully nationalized - a long-germinating process that culminated in 2010 - toxic partisanship took over completely. With the two parties divided over competing visions of nationalidentity, Democrats and Republicans no longer see each other as opponents, but as enemies. And the more the conflict escalates, the shakier our democracy feels.Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop makes a compelling case for large scale electoral reform - importantly, reform not requiring a constitutional amendment - that would give America more parties, making American democracy more representative, more responsive, and ultimately more stable.
Download or read book Move Fast and Break Things written by Jonathan Taplin and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that started the Techlash. A stinging polemic that traces the destructive monopolization of the Internet by Google, Facebook and Amazon, and that proposes a new future for musicians, journalists, authors and filmmakers in the digital age. Move Fast and Break Things is the riveting account of a small group of libertarian entrepreneurs who in the 1990s began to hijack the original decentralized vision of the Internet, in the process creating three monopoly firms -- Facebook, Amazon, and Google -- that now determine the future of the music, film, television, publishing and news industries. Jonathan Taplin offers a succinct and powerful history of how online life began to be shaped around the values of the men who founded these companies, including Peter Thiel and Larry Page: overlooking piracy of books, music, and film while hiding behind opaque business practices and subordinating the privacy of individual users in order to create the surveillance-marketing monoculture in which we now live. The enormous profits that have come with this concentration of power tell their own story. Since 2001, newspaper and music revenues have fallen by 70 percent; book publishing, film, and television profits have also fallen dramatically. Revenues at Google in this same period grew from $400 million to $74.5 billion. Today, Google's YouTube controls 60 percent of all streaming-audio business but pay for only 11 percent of the total streaming-audio revenues artists receive. More creative content is being consumed than ever before, but less revenue is flowing to the creators and owners of that content. The stakes here go far beyond the livelihood of any one musician or journalist. As Taplin observes, the fact that more and more Americans receive their news, as well as music and other forms of entertainment, from a small group of companies poses a real threat to democracy. Move Fast and Break Things offers a vital, forward-thinking prescription for how artists can reclaim their audiences using knowledge of the past and a determination to work together. Using his own half-century career as a music and film producer and early pioneer of streaming video online, Taplin offers new ways to think about the design of the World Wide Web and specifically the way we live with the firms that dominate it.
Download or read book Democracy on the Move written by Manindra N. Thakur and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Daring Democracy written by Frances Moore Lappé and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An optimistic book for Americans who are asking, in the wake of Trump’s victory, What do we do now? The answer: We need to organize and fight to protect and expand our democracy. Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Legendary Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé and organizer-scholar Adam Eichen offer a fresh, surprising response to this core crisis. This intergenerational duo opens with an essential truth: It’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit. It’s feeling powerless—in this case, fearing that to stand up for democracy is futile. It’s not, Lappé and Eichen argue. With riveting stories and little-known evidence, they demystify how we got here, exposing the well-orchestrated effort that has robbed Americans of their rightful power. But at the heart of this unique book are solutions. Even in this divisive time, Americans are uniting across causes and ideologies to create a “canopy of hope” the authors call the Democracy Movement. In this invigorating “movement of movements,” millions of Americans are leaving despair behind as they push for and achieve historic change. The movement and democracy itself are vital to us as citizens and fulfill human needs—for power, meaning, and connection—essential to our thriving. In this timely and necessary book, Lappé and Eichen offer proof that courage is contagious in the daring fight for democracy.
Download or read book Too Dumb for Democracy written by David Moscrop and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bad decisions down to a science. D'oh-mocracy at its finest. Brexit. Trump. Ford Nation. In this timely book, David Moscrop asks why we make irrational political decisions and whether our stone-age brains can process democracy in the information age. In an era overshadowed by income inequality, environmental catastrophes, terrorism at home and abroad, and the decline of democracy, Moscrop argues that the political decision-making process has never been more important. In fact, our survival may depend on it. Drawing on both political science and psychology, Moscrop examines how our brains, our environment, the media, and institutions influence decision-making. Making good decisions is not impossible, Moscrop argues, but the psychological and political odds are sometimes stacked against us. In this readable and provocative investigation of our often-flawed decisions, Moscrop explains what's going wrong in today's political landscape and how individuals, societies, and institutions can work together to set things right.
Download or read book Interest Groups and the New Democracy Movement in Hong Kong written by Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new era in the democracy movement in Hong Kong began on July 1, 2003, when half a million people protested on the streets, and has included the 2012 anti-National Education campaign, the 2014 Occupy Central Movement and the rapid rise of localist groups. The new democracy movement in Hong Kong is characterized by a diversity of interest groups calling for political reform, policy change and the territory’s autonomy vis-à-vis the central government in Beijing. These groups include lawyers, teachers, students, nativists, workers, Catholics, human rights activists, environmental activists and intellectuals. This book marks a new attempt at understanding the activities of the various interest groups in their quest for democratic participation, governmental responsiveness and openness. They are utilizing new and unconventional modes of political participation, such as the Occupy Central Movement, cross-class mobilization, the use of technology and cyberspace, and human rights activities with cross-boundary implications for China’s political development. The book will be useful to students, researchers, officials, diplomats and journalists interested in the political change of Hong Kong and the implications for mainland China.
Download or read book Routing The Opposition written by David S. Meyer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the crucial nexus of policy makers and social movements for the first time.
Download or read book We Are Indivisible written by Leah Greenberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This national bestseller is not only the guiding “centerpiece of a robust new grassroots machinery” (Rolling Stone), it is the story of democracy under threat. It’s the story of a movement rising up to respond. And it’s a story of what comes next. Shortly after Trump’s 2016 election, two outraged former congressional staffers wrote and posted a tactical guide to resisting the Trump agenda. This Google Doc entitled “Indivisible” was meant to be read by friends and family. No one could have predicted what happened next. It went viral, sparking the creation of thousands of local Indivisible groups in red, blue, and purple states, mobilizing millions of people who had never engaged in politics before. Between one and two million were inspired—they canvassed, caravanned, shouted back, and ran for office. Proof of concept: A blue 116th House of Representatives. In We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, the directors of Indivisible tell the story of the movement. They offer a behind-the-scenes look at how change comes to Washington, whether Washington wants it or not. And they explain how we’ll win the coming fight for the future of American democracy. We Are Indivisible isn’t a book of platitudes about hope; it’s a steely-eyed guide to people power—how to find it, how to build it, and how to use it to save our country. *All proceeds to the author go to Indivisible’s Save Democracy Fund
Download or read book Democracy written by Condoleezza Y Rice and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former secretary of state and bestselling author -- a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom. "This heartfelt and at times very moving book shows why democracy proponents are so committed to their work...Both supporters and skeptics of democracy promotion will come away from this book wiser and better informed." -- The New York Times From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy. At a time when people around the world are wondering whether democracy is in decline, Rice shares insights from her experiences as a policymaker, scholar, and citizen, in order to put democracy's challenges into perspective. When the United States was founded, it was the only attempt at self-government in the world. Today more than half of all countries qualify as democracies, and in the long run that number will continue to grow. Yet nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Using America's long struggle as a template, Rice draws lessons for democracy around the world -- from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, to Kenya, Colombia, and the Middle East. She finds that no transitions to democracy are the same because every country starts in a different place. Pathways diverge and sometimes circle backward. Time frames for success vary dramatically, and countries often suffer false starts before getting it right. But, Rice argues, that does not mean they should not try. While the ideal conditions for democracy are well known in academia, they never exist in the real world. The question is not how to create perfect circumstances but how to move forward under difficult ones. These same insights apply in overcoming the challenges faced by governments today. The pursuit of democracy is a continuing struggle shared by people around the world, whether they are opposing authoritarian regimes, establishing new democratic institutions, or reforming mature democracies to better live up to their ideals. The work of securing it is never finished. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Download or read book The Democracy Project written by David Graeber and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold rethinking of the most powerful political idea in the world—democracy—and the story of how radical democracy can yet transform America, from the co-author of The Dawn of Everything Democracy has been the American religion since before the Revolution—from New England town halls to the multicultural democracy of Atlantic pirate ships. But can our current political system, one that seems responsive only to the wealthiest among us and leaves most Americans feeling disengaged, voiceless, and disenfranchised, really be called democratic? And if the tools of our democracy are not working to solve the rising crises we face, how can we—average citizens—make change happen? David Graeber, one of the most influential scholars and activists of his generation, takes readers on a journey through the idea of democracy, provocatively reorienting our understanding of pivotal historical moments, and extracts their lessons for today—from the birth of Athenian democracy and the founding of the United States of America to the global revolutions of the twentieth century and the rise of a new generation of activists. Underlying it all is a bracing argument that in the face of increasingly concentrated wealth and power in this country, a reenergized, reconceived democracy—one based on consensus, equality, and broad participation—can yet provide us with the just, free, and fair society we want. The Democracy Project tells the story of the resilience of the democratic spirit and the adaptability of the democratic idea. It offers a fresh take on vital history and an impassioned argument that radical democracy is, more than ever, our best hope.
Download or read book Agency Democracy and Nature written by Robert J. Brulle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Robert Brulle draws on a broad range of empirical and theoretical research to investigate the effectiveness of U.S. environmental groups. Brulle shows how Critical Theory--in particular the work of Jürgen Habermas--can expand our understanding of the social causes of environmental degradation and the political actions necessary to deal with it. He then develops both a pragmatic and a moral argument for broad-based democratization of society as a prerequisite to the achievement of ecological sustainability. From the perspectives of frame analysis, resource mobilization, and historical sociology, using data on more than one hundred environmental groups, Brulle examines the core beliefs, structures, funding, and political practices of a wide variety of environmental organizations. He identifies the social processes that foster the development of a democratic environmental movement and those that hinder it. He concludes with suggestions for how environmental groups can make their organizational practices more democratic and politically effective.
Download or read book How Social Movements Can Save Democracy written by Donatella della Porta and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The birth of democracies owes much to the interventions and mobilizations of ordinary people. Yet many feel as though they have inherited democratic institutions which do not deliver for the people – that a rigid democratic process has been imposed from above, with increasing numbers of people feeling left out or left behind. In this well-researched volume, leading political sociologist Donatella della Porta rehabilitates the role social movements have long played in fostering and deepening democracy, particularly focusing on progressive movements of the Left which have sought to broaden the plurality of voices and knowledge in democratic debate. Bridging social movement studies and democratic theory, della Porta investigates contemporary innovations in times of crisis, particularly those in the direction of participatory and deliberative practices – ‘crowd-sourced constitutions’, referendums from below and movement parties – and reflects on the potential and limits of such alternative politics. In a moment in which concerns increase for the potential disruption of a Great Regression led by xenophobic movements and parties, the cases and analyses of resistance in this volume offer important material for students and scholars of political sociology, political science and social movement studies.
Download or read book After Democracy written by Zizi Papacharissi and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do ordinary citizens really want from their governments? Democracy has long been considered an ideal state of governance. What if it’s not? Perhaps it is not the end goal but, rather, a transition stage to something better. Drawing on original interviews conducted with citizens of more than thirty countries, Zizi Papacharissi explores what democracy is, what it means to be a citizen, and what can be done to enhance governance. As she probes the ways governments can better serve their citizens and evolve in positive ways, Papacharissi gives a voice to everyday people, whose ideas and experiences of capitalism, media, and education can help shape future governing practices. This book expands on the well-known difficulties of realizing the intimacy of democracy in a global world—the “democratic paradox”—and presents a concrete vision of how communications technologies can be harnessed to implement representative equality, information equality, and civic literacy.
Download or read book Democracy Moving written by Ariel Nereson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the potential of movement to create and revise historical narratives of race and nation
Download or read book Democracy Denied written by Phil Kerpen and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy Denied by Americans for Prosperity vice president Phil Kerpen is a guide to understanding and defeating the radical agenda that President Barack Obama is implementing by unilateral regulatory action through his agencies and czars. Democracy Denied exposes the Obama administration's agenda that disregards the American people, Congress, and the U.S. Constitution—and offers a plan of action to stop it.
Download or read book Activating Democracy written by Sheryl Oring and published by Intellect Books. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driven by a powerful belief in the value of free expression, Sheryl Oring has for more than a decade been helping people across the United States voice concerns about public affairs through her 'I Wish to Say' project. This book uses that project as the starting point for an exploration of a series of issues of public interest being addressed by artists today. It features essays by contributors ranging from art historians and practicing artists to scholars and creators working in literature, political science and architecture. All the contributors offer a different approach, but they share a primary goal of sparking a dialogue not just among makers of art, but among viewers, readers and the concerned public at large. The resulting volume will be an essential resource for politically engaged contemporary artists searching for innovative, cross-disciplinary ways of making and sharing art.
