Download or read book New Democracies in Crisis written by Paul Blokker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers whether the potential of democracy following the end of the Cold War was diminished by technocratic, judicial control of politics in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the complexities and drawbacks of modern constitutionalism by offering a comprehensive theoretical and comparative-empirical assessment of the status and role of constitutionalism in five new EU Member States. The democratization of countries in Central and Eastern Europe has been guarded by constitutions and constitutional courts. This book examines the implications of powerful courts and rigid constitutions for the democratic engagement of citizens and the political authority of politicians. Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the book analyses the historical emergence of powerful constitutional institutions in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The author argues that the democratic promise of 1989 largely lost out to a technocratic and top-down view of judicial control of politics – a state of affairs reinforced by EU accession. The current backlash in countries such as Hungary and Romania indicates that the realization of democratization to the extent initially expected might be ever more remote in some new democracies. New Democracies in Crisis? will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, democratization studies, European constitutionalism, socio-legal studies, governance and comparative politics.
Download or read book Crises of Democracy written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the economic, social, cultural, as well as purely political threats to democracy in the light of current knowledge.
Download or read book Democracy in Crisis written by Robert Goodrich and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-12-07 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in Crisis explores one of the world's greatest failures of democracy in Germany during the so-called Weimar Republic, 1919–33—a failure that led to the Third Reich. For more than a decade after World War I, liberalism, nationalism, conservatism, social democracy, Christian democracy, communism, fascism, and every variant of these movements struggled for power. Although Germany's constitutional framework boldly enshrined liberal democratic values, the political spectrum was so broad and fully represented that a stable parliamentary majority required constant negotiations. The compromises that were made subsequently alienated citizens, who were embittered by national humiliation in the war and the ensuing treaty and struggling to survive economic turmoil and rapidly changing cultural norms. As positions hardened, the door was opened to radical alternatives. In this game, students, as delegates of the Reichstag (parliament), must contend with intense parliamentary wrangling, uncontrollable world events, street fights, assassinations, and insurrections. The game begins in late 1929, just after the U.S. stock market crash, as the Reichstag deliberates the Young Plan (a revision to the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I). Students belonging to various political parties must debate these matters and more as the combination of economic stress, political gridlock, and foreign pressure turn Germany into a volcano on the verge of eruption.
Download or read book State Crisis in Fragile Democracies written by Samuel Handlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a new political-institutional explanation of South America's 'two lefts' and the divergent fates of the region's democratic regimes.
Download or read book Ill Winds written by Larry Diamond and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award* From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count. In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."
Download or read book New Democracies in Crisis written by Paul Blokker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers whether the potential of democracy following the end of the Cold War was diminished by technocratic, judicial control of politics in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the complexities and drawbacks of modern constitutionalism by offering a comprehensive theoretical and comparative-empirical assessment of the status and role of constitutionalism in five new EU Member States. The democratization of countries in Central and Eastern Europe has been guarded by constitutions and constitutional courts. This book examines the implications of powerful courts and rigid constitutions for the democratic engagement of citizens and the political authority of politicians. Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the book analyses the historical emergence of powerful constitutional institutions in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The author argues that the democratic promise of 1989 largely lost out to a technocratic and top-down view of judicial control of politics – a state of affairs reinforced by EU accession. The current backlash in countries such as Hungary and Romania indicates that the realization of democratization to the extent initially expected might be ever more remote in some new democracies. New Democracies in Crisis? will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, democratization studies, European constitutionalism, socio-legal studies, governance and comparative politics.
Download or read book Constitutional Democracy in Crisis written by Mark A. Graber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the world facing a serious threat to the protection of constitutional democracy? There is a genuine debate about the meaning of the various political events that have, for many scholars and observers, generated a feeling of deep foreboding about our collective futures all over the world. Do these events represent simply the normal ebb and flow of political possibilities, or do they instead portend a more permanent move away from constitutional democracy that had been thought triumphant after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989? Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? addresses these questions head-on: Are the forces weakening constitutional democracy around the world general or nation-specific? Why have some major democracies seemingly not experienced these problems? How can we as scholars and citizens think clearly about the ideas of "constitutional crisis" or "constitutional degeneration"? What are the impacts of forces such as globalization, immigration, income inequality, populism, nationalism, religious sectarianism? Bringing together leading scholars to engage critically with the crises facing constitutional democracies in the 21st century, these essays diagnose the causes of the present afflictions in regimes, regions, and across the globe, believing at this stage that diagnosis is of central importance - as Abraham Lincoln said in his "House Divided" speech, "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."
Download or read book The New Democracies written by Brad Roberts and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Up-to-date and broad in scope, these essays have been carefully selected from The Washington Quarterly to address specific problems, countries, and regions involved in the tide of political change.
Download or read book Freedom in the World 2018 written by Freedom House and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 1265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.
Download or read book New Democracy written by William J. Novak and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The activist state of the New Deal started forming decades before the FDR administration, demonstrating the deep roots of energetic government in America. In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. A series of legal reforms gradually brought an end to nineteenth-century traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked through legislation, regulation, and public administration. The last time American public life had been so thoroughly altered was in the late eighteenth century, at the founding and in the years immediately following. William J. Novak shows how Americans translated new conceptions of citizenship, social welfare, and economic democracy into demands for law and policy that delivered public services and vindicated peopleÕs rights. Over the course of decades, Americans progressively discarded earlier understandings of the reach and responsibilities of government and embraced the idea that legislators and administrators in Washington could tackle economic regulation and social-welfare problems. As citizens witnessed the successes of an energetic, interventionist state, they demanded more of the same, calling on politicians and civil servants to address unfair competition and labor exploitation, form public utilities, and reform police power. Arguing against the myth that America was a weak state until the New Deal, New Democracy traces a steadily aggrandizing authority well before the Roosevelt years. The United States was flexing power domestically and intervening on behalf of redistributive goals for far longer than is commonly recognized, putting the lie to libertarian claims that the New Deal was an aberration in American history.
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 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 Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus written by Danielle Allen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-02-16 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in crisis -- Pandemic resilience -- Federalism is an asset -- A transformed peace: an agenda for healing our social contract.
Download or read book The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy written by Carl Schmitt and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1988-06-22 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. Described both as "the Hobbes of our age" and as "the philosophical godfather of Nazism," Carl Schmitt was a brilliant and controversial political theorist whose doctrine of political leadership and critique of liberal democratic ideals distinguish him as one of the most original contributors to modern political theory. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. First published in 1923, it has often been viewed as an attempt to destroy parliamentarism; in fact, it was Schmitt's attempt to defend the Weimar constitution. The introduction to this new translation places the book in proper historical context and provides a useful guide to several aspects of Weimar political culture. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.
Download or read book The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies written by Leonardo Morlino and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2018-07-21 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book questions whether and to what extent a conjunctural phenomenon such as an economic crisis can bring about lasting political consequences. It focuses on the parties and party systems of four South European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece) between 2008-15. The authors also consider how elections, protests, and interests are affected by the crisis in these four democracies, before assessing how to define the impact of the economic crisis on political participation and competition. In this vein the book analyzes relevant aspects of party systems, the notion of neo-populism as a key to understanding new actors of South European policy, and interest intermediation as a factor of weakness in managing the crisis. Finally, the authors summarize the empirical results emerging from the research: the partial reshaping of cleavages as well as the relevance of the establishment vs. anti-establishment cleavage for the emergence and success of neo-populist parties. The book will be of use to students and scholars interested in South European politics, comparative politics, and democracies.
Download or read book Democracy in Crisis around the World written by Saliba Sarsar and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twenty-first century, democracies across the globe are in crisis. The strength of basic democratic institutions and core enduring political principles and values are eroding in key regions and countries. Authoritarian regimes are rising and populist leaders are emerging. Democracy in Crisis across the World weaves threads of history and politics in two parts to analyze how long this trend may last and what the future may bring. By first examining the state of democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa, the second part of the collection highlights to democratic trajectory of India, China, Russia, and the United States. Ending with a look at how the world’s governments have responded to the coronavirus pandemic, contributors argue that unless democracy is defended with resolution and nurtured with resilience, it will fall.
Download or read book Party System Change the European Crisis and the State of Democracy written by Marco Lisi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Party systems are crucial elements for the functioning of political systems and representative democracies. With several European countries experiencing significant changes recently, it is necessary to update our knowledge. This volume analyses party system changes in Europe in the 21st century by considering several dimensions such as interparty competition, the cleavage structure, electoral volatility and the emergence of new actors. The book describes the principal continuities and changes in party systems in Europe; analyzes the main explanations for these trends; and assesses the impact of the crisis on the patterns observed. By considering a wide range of Western and Eastern European countries, and focusing on the ‘parameters’ of party system change, this book seeks to fill an important gap in the literature through a comparative analysis of the evolution of party systems in Europe over the last decades. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties, party systems and politics, electoral behavior as well as more broadly to European politics, comparative politics. political representation and the quality of democracies.
