EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book For the Survival of Democracy

Download or read book For the Survival of Democracy written by Alonzo L. Hamby and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For the Survival of Democracy" is a masterful retelling of the prewar crisis years that situates Franklin Roosevelt and America in the larger context of German, British, and world history--rendering the most accurate picture to date of FDRUs extraordinary leadership.

Book Globalization and Sustainable Economic Development

Download or read book Globalization and Sustainable Economic Development written by Piya Mahtaney and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world in transition and an era of transformation, Mahtaney calls for reflection and an analysis of a wide canvas of global economic experience. Her new work initiates a thorough review of the strategies and policies that have been pursued over the past two decades. The economic meltdown compelled the beginning of the next phase of globalization and she contends that the future will see an increase in globalization. As crucial questions arise about the direction in which globalization is headed and the sustainability of economic growth and reform, the fundamental objective of this exciting work is to elucidate crucial insights about the next phase of development in the world economy.

Book Unfit for Democracy

    Book Details:
  • Author : Stephen E Gottlieb
  • Publisher : NYU Press
  • Release : 2016-01-08
  • ISBN : 0814733018
  • Pages : 540 pages

Download or read book Unfit for Democracy written by Stephen E Gottlieb and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asked if the country was governed by a republic or a monarchy, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Since its founding, Americans have worked hard to nurture and protect their hard-won democracy. And yet few consider the role of constitutional law in America’s survival. In Unfit for Democracy, Stephen Gottlieb argues that constitutional law without a focus on the future of democratic government is incoherent—illogical and contradictory. Approaching the decisions of the Roberts Court from political science, historical, comparative, and legal perspectives, Gottlieb highlights the dangers the court presents by neglecting to interpret the law with an eye towards preserving democracy. A senior scholar of constitutional law, Gottlieb brings a pioneering will to his theoretical and comparative criticism of the Roberts Court. The Roberts Court decisions are not examined in a vacuum but instead viewed in light of constitutional politics in India, South Africa, emerging Eastern European nations, and others. While constitutional decisions abroad have contributed to both the breakdown and strengthening of democratic politics, decisions in the Roberts Court have aggravated the potential destabilizing factors in democratic governments. Ultimately, Unfit for Democracy calls for an interpretation of the Constitution that takes the future of democracy seriously. Gottlieb warns that the Roberts Court’s decisions have hurt ordinary Americans economically, politically, and in the criminal process. They have damaged the historic American melting pot, increased the risk of anti-democratic paramilitaries, and clouded the democratic future.

Book The Logic of Political Survival

Download or read book The Logic of Political Survival written by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-01-14 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.

Book Surviving Autocracy

Download or read book Surviving Autocracy written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

Book How Democracies Die

Download or read book How Democracies Die written by Steven Levitsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN

Book The Taming of Democracy Assistance

Download or read book The Taming of Democracy Assistance written by Sarah Sunn Bush and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most government programs seeking to aid democracy abroad do not directly confront dictators. This book explains how organizational politics 'tamed' democracy assistance.

Book Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America

Download or read book Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America written by Scott Mainwaring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors - the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism - to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.

Book Four Threats

    Book Details:
  • Author : Suzanne Mettler
  • Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
  • Release : 2020-08-11
  • ISBN : 1250244439
  • Pages : 206 pages

Download or read book Four Threats written by Suzanne Mettler and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Book One World Democracy

Download or read book One World Democracy written by Jerry Tetalman and published by Origin Press (CA). This book was released on 2005 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In One World Democracy, authors Jerry Tetalman and Byron Belitsos describe the only known long-term solution to the urgent global problems that threaten the survival of humankind: democratic world government and the rule of law at the global level—a federation of all nations. This book provides the definitive overview for our time of how humanity can replace the United Nations with a genuine world democracy. In this future world democracy, the executive branch will be strictly limited by a separation of powers—world courts, a global bill of rights, and a world legislature—all under a world constitution. One World Democracy is directed at today’s progressives who are ready to implement tomorrow’s solutions to the global crisis. This book teaches how to become part of the greatest political revolution in history.

Book The Survival and the Success of Liberty

Download or read book The Survival and the Success of Liberty written by Morton H. Halperin and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of the twentieth century, Americans came to embrace the defense and promotion of rights and democracy as a vital mission of U.S. foreign policy. But this popular view shifted during the George W. Bush administration. Bush's controversial crusade for democracyone that came to be associated with unilateralism, invasion, alliance, expansion, and double standardsso tainted the notion of democracy promotion that many in the foreign policy establishment exhorted President Obama to abandon the practice. In this passionate and persuasive book, Morton Halperin and Michael Fuchs argue that abandoning the promotion of democracy would be a great mistake. Patient efforts over the past three decades have laid the foundations for a widening international commitment to sustain and expand the writ of democracy in the world. An American retreat to "realism" would only hearten the autocracies that rightly fear going the way of the dinosaurs. Halperin and Fuchs present new and proactive ideas for how the United States can and should help countries that are on the path to democracy and how it may help peoples struggling to establish a democratic regime. Advance praise for "The Survival and the Success of Liberty " "Morton Halperin has been one of Washington's smartest strategic thinkers and once again, in "The Survival and the Success of Liberty," he shows us why. He illustrates a critical point: America benefits when more countries are democratic, and democracies should help each other not just to vote, but also to deliver what their people need." Madeleine K. Albright, 64th U.S. Secretary of State "Fresh in its insights and yet deeply informed by history, this book provides a viable and progressive alternative to the hubris and hypocrisy that has undermined previous American approaches to democracy promotion." Larry Diamond, senior fellow, Hoover Institution and Freeman Spogli Institute, and director, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford University "Honest, engaging, and deeply wise, it should be included in courses on U.S. foreign policy and read by all who care about making America's ideals more achievable. Ted Widmer, senior research fellow, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation, and director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University"

Book States United

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joanna Lydgate
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 2022-10-15
  • ISBN : 1501770098
  • Pages : 113 pages

Download or read book States United written by Joanna Lydgate and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-15 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. Elections are the bedrock of any democracy, but they are under attack in the United States. State legislatures are moving to limit voting rights and seize control of election administration, candidates are refusing to accept election results, and antidemocracy forces are sowing lies and encouraging political violence. The States United Democracy Center is fighting back by equipping state and local officials, law enforcement leaders, and prodemocracy partners with the tools and resources they need to protect free, fair, and secure elections. For this important work, its cofounders are the recipients of the 2022 Brown Democracy Medal. States United was founded during the 2020 election and continues to be led by Joanna Lydgate, former chief deputy attorney general of Massachusetts; Norman Eisen, former ambassador to the Czech Republic and special assistant to President Barack Obama for ethics and government reform; and Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Book The Politics of Survival

Download or read book The Politics of Survival written by Marc Abélès and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative analysis of global politics, the anthropologist Marc Abélès argues that the meaning and aims of political action have radically changed in the era of globalization. As dangers such as terrorism and global warming have moved to the fore of global consciousness, foreboding has replaced the belief that tomorrow will be better than today. Survival, outlasting the uncertainties and threats of a precarious future, has supplanted harmonious coexistence as the primary goal of politics. Abélès contends that this political reorientation has changed our priorities and modes of political action, and generated new debates and initiatives. The proliferation of supranational and transnational organizations—from the European Union to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to Oxfam—is the visible effect of this radical transformation in our relationship to the political realm. Areas of governance as diverse as the economy, the environment, and human rights have been partially taken over by such agencies. Non-governmental organizations in particular have become linked with the mindset of risk and uncertainty; they both reflect and help produce the politics of survival. Abélès examines the new global politics, which assumes many forms and is enacted by diverse figures with varied sympathies: the officials at meetings of the WTO and the demonstrators outside them, celebrity activists, and online contributors to international charities. He makes an impassioned case that our accounts of globalization need to reckon with the preoccupations and affiliations now driving global politics. The Politics of Survival was first published in France in 2006. This English-language edition has been revised and includes a new preface.

Book The State of Democratic Theory

Download or read book The State of Democratic Theory written by Ian Shapiro and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-16 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should we expect from democracy, and how likely is it that democracies will live up to those expectations? In The State of Democratic Theory, Ian Shapiro offers a critical assessment of contemporary answers to these questions, lays out his distinctive alternative, and explores its implications for policy and political action. Some accounts of democracy's purposes focus on aggregating preferences; others deal with collective deliberation in search of the common good. Shapiro reveals the shortcomings of both, arguing instead that democracy should be geared toward minimizing domination throughout society. He contends that Joseph Schumpeter's classic defense of competitive democracy is a useful starting point for achieving this purpose, but that it stands in need of radical supplementation--both with respect to its operation in national political institutions and in its extension to other forms of collective association. Shapiro's unusually wide-ranging discussion also deals with the conditions that make democracy's survival more and less likely, with the challenges presented by ethnic differences and claims for group rights, and with the relations between democracy and the distribution of income and wealth. Ranging over politics, philosophy, constitutional law, economics, sociology, and psychology, this book is written in Shapiro's characteristic lucid style--a style that engages practitioners within the field while also opening up the debate to newcomers.

Book Advancing Democracy Abroad

Download or read book Advancing Democracy Abroad written by Michael McFaul and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Book Death by a Thousand Cuts

Download or read book Death by a Thousand Cuts written by Matt Qvortrup and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Putting the current crisis of democracy into historical perspective, Death by a Thousand Cuts chronicles how would-be despots, dictators, and outright tyrants have finessed the techniques of killing democracies earlier in history, in the 20th Century, and how today’s autocrats increasingly continue to do so in the 21st. It shows how autocratic government becomes a kleptocracy, sustained only to enrich the ruler and his immediate family. But the book also addresses the problems of being a dictator and considers if dictatorships are successful in delivering public policies, and finally, how autocracies break down. We tend to think of democratic breakdowns as dramatic events, such as General Pinochet’s violent coup in Chile, or Generalissimo Franco’s overthrow of the Spanish Republic. But this is not how democracies tend to die – only five percent of democracies end like this. Most often, popular government is brought down gradually; almost imperceptibly. Based in part on Professor Qvortrup’s BBC Programme Death by a Thousand Cuts (Radio-4, 2019), the book shows how complacency is the greatest danger for the survival of government by the people. Recently democratically elected politicians have used crises as a pretext for dismantling democracy. They follow a pattern we have seen in all democracies since the dawn of civilisation. The methods used by Octavian in the dying days of the Roman Republic were almost identical to those used by Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán in 2020. And, sadly, there are no signs that the current malaise will go away. Death by a Thousand Cuts adds substance to a much-discussed topic: the threat to democracy. It provides evidence and historical context like no other book on the market. Written in an accessible style with vignettes as well as new empirical data, the books promises to be the defining book on the topic. This book will help readers who are concerned about the longevity of democracy understand when and why democracy is in danger of collapsing, and alert them to the warning signs of its demise.

Book Twilight of Democracy

Download or read book Twilight of Democracy written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.