Download or read book Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy written by Hubert Heinelt and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-19 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies political leadership at the local level, based on data from a survey of the mayors of cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants in 29 European countries carried out between 2014 and 2016. The book compares these results with those of a similar survey conducted ten years ago. From this comparative perspective, the book examines how to become a mayor in Europe today, the attitudes of these politicians towards administrative and territorial reforms, their notions of democracy, their political priorities, whether or not party politicization plays a role at the municipal level, and how mayors interact with other actors in the local political arena. This study addresses students, academics and practitioners concerned at different levels with the functioning and reforms of the municipal level of local government.

Download or read book Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America written by Benjamin Goldfrank and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The resurgence of the Left in Latin America over the past decade has been so notable that it has been called “the Pink Tide.” In recent years, regimes with leftist leaders have risen to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. What does this trend portend for the deepening of democracy in the region? Benjamin Goldfrank has been studying the development of participatory democracy in Latin America for many years, and this book represents the culmination of his empirical investigations in Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In order to understand why participatory democracy has succeeded better in some countries than in others, he examines the efforts in urban areas that have been undertaken in the cities of Porto Alegre, Montevideo, and Caracas. His findings suggest that success is related, most crucially, to how nationally centralized political authority is and how strongly institutionalized the opposition parties are in the local arenas.

Download or read book Inventing Local Democracy written by Rebecca Abers and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abers (political science, Center for Public Policy Research, U. of Brasília, Brazil) provides a close study of innovative city government in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Led by the Workers' Party, the city implemented a participatory budget program in which residents meet in their neighborhoods to determine budget priorities. Taking place in a city long dominated by patronage politics and elite rule, the story is both a sociopolitical study of the impact that state- sponsored participatory forums can have on civil society and a contribution to the theory and practical possibilities of participatory democracy.--

Download or read book Between the Streets and the Assembly written by Yoonkyung Lee and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Streets in Korea rarely go quiet without first having a public demonstration, and Korean citizens are known as seasoned protestors, charting the course of national politics. Between the Streets and the Assembly explores how protest movements have become the prominent mode of democratic politics in Korea, in contrast to political parties in the National Assembly that have lagged behind in partisan representation and accountability. To unpack this political dynamic, this book closely follows three groups of democracy activists who were born in their resistance to military dictatorships but who pursued different methods of democratic representation in postauthoritarian Korea (1987–2020). One group stayed in civil society and organized powerful protests outside formal institutions; another group chose to join existing parties with the aim of reforming legislative politics; and the third group was devoted to forming separate progressive parties to be the agent of transformative agenda. By analyzing the interactive evolution of these three modes of democratic representation, Yoonkyung Lee finds that social movement organizations have been more effective than activist-turned politicians in centrist or progressive parties in creating coordination infrastructures for collective action. Through the practice of organizing national solidarity networks, innovating the methods of mass street demonstrations, and drawing professional expertise to formulate policy alternatives, Korean civic groups have built the capacity to directly shape and alter the course of national politics, unlike activist-turned politicians who remained divided with no common political programs. This study asserts that social movement organizations and political parties develop variable capacities for democratic representation, depending on coevolutionary interactions with each other. The experience of Korean democracy shows social movement groups can be a powerful agent of national politics against the scholarly assumption that views civic associations as narrowly focused, transient organizations. Between the Streets and the Assembly suggests a different possibility of political process, one in which civic groups and participatory citizens, not political parties, are the primary drivers of democratic politics.

Download or read book Freedom Is an Endless Meeting written by Francesca Polletta and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “excellent study of activist politics in the United States over the past century” challenges the conventional wisdom about participatory democracy (Times Literary Supplement). Freedom Is an Endless Meeting offers vivid portraits of American experiments in participatory democracy throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on meticulous research and more than one hundred interviews with activists, Francesca Polletta upends the notion that participatory democracy is worthy in purpose but unworkable in practice. Instead, she shows that social movements have often used bottom-up decision making as a powerful tool for political change. Polletta traces the history of democracy from early labor struggles and pre-World War II pacifism, through the civil rights, new left, and women’s liberation movements of the sixties and seventies, and into today’s faith-based organizing and anti-corporate globalization campaigns. In the process, she uncovers neglected sources of democratic inspiration—such as Depression-era labor educators and Mississippi voting registration workers—as well as practical strategies of social protest. Polletta also highlights the obstacles that arise when activists model their democracies after nonpolitical relationships such as friendship, tutelage, and religious fellowship. She concludes with a call to forge new kinds of democratic relationships that balance trust with accountability, respect with openness to disagreement, and caring with inclusiveness. For anyone concerned about the prospects for democracy in America, Freedom Is an Endless Meeting will offer abundant historical, theoretical, and practical insights.

Download or read book Barrio Democracy in Latin America written by Eduardo Canel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.

Download or read book Democracy in Social Movements written by Donatella della Porta and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-07-31 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores conceptions and practices of democracy of social movement organizations involved in global protest. Focusing on the global justice movement this book shows how they adopt radical new democratic approaches and thus provide a fundamental critique of conventional politics.

Download or read book Multilevel Democracy written by Jefferey M. Sellers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores ways to make democracy work better, with particular focus on the integral role of local institutions.

Download or read book Social Movements for Global Democracy written by Jackie Smith and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-02-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contested globalizations -- Rival transnational networks -- Politics in a global system -- Globalizing capitalism : the transnational neoliberal network in action -- Promoting multilateralism : social movements and the UN system -- Mobilizing a transnational network for democratic globalization -- Agenda-setting in a global polity -- Domesticating international human rights norms -- Confronting contradictions between multilateral economic institutions and the UN system -- Alternative political spaces : the world social forum process and "globalization from below"--Conclusions: Network politics and global democracy.

Download or read book When Protest Makes Policy written by Laurel Weldon and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A must-read for scholars across a broad sweep of disciplines. Laurel Weldon weaves together skillfully the theoretical strands of gender equality policy, intersectionality, social movements, and representation in a multimethod/level comparative study that unequivocally places women's movements at the center of our understanding of democracy and social change." ---Amy G. Mazur, Washington State University "Laurel Weldon's When Protest Makes Policy expands and enriches our understanding of representation by stressing social movements as a primary avenue for the representation of marginalized groups. With powerful theory backed by persuasive analysis, it is a must-read for anyone interested in democracy and the representation of marginalized groups." ---Pamela Paxton, University of Texas at Austin "This is a bold and exciting book. There are many fine scholars who look at women's movements, political theorists who make claims about democracy, and policy analysts who do longitudinal treatments or cross-sectional evaluations of various policies. I know of no one, aside from Weldon, who is comfortable with all three of these roles." ---David Meyer, University of California, Irvine What role do social movements play in a democracy? Political theorist S. Laurel Weldon demonstrates that social movements provide a hitherto unrecognized form of democratic representation, and thus offer a significant potential for deepening democracy and overcoming social conflict. Through a series of case studies of movements conducted by women, women of color, and workers in the United States and other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Weldon examines processes of representation at the local, state, and national levels. She concludes that, for systematically disadvantaged groups, social movements can be as important---sometimes more important---for the effective articulation of a group perspective as political parties, interest groups, or the physical presence of group members in legislatures. When Protest Makes Policy contributes to the emerging scholarship on civil society as well as the traditional scholarship on representation. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with advancing social cohesion and deepening democracy and inclusion as well as those concerned with advancing equality for women, ethnic and racial minorities, the working class, and poor people. S. Laurel Weldon is Professor of Political Science at Purdue University.

Download or read book Deliberative Democracy and Social Movements written by Andrea Felicetti and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deliberative democracy is increasingly central in democratic theory and its concepts are employed in a growing number of fields, including social movement studies and environmental politics. At the same time, contemporary citizen activism seems to feature some forms of engagement that resonate with deliberative democratic ideas. This book provides an in-depth investigation of the qualities of citizens’ engagement from a deliberative democratic standpoint. The key concept through which such qualities are investigated is ‘deliberative capacity’, the extent to which organisations host authentic, inclusive, and consequential discursive processes. This book is based on a comparative study of four grassroots local initiatives, two from Australia (in Tasmania and Queensland) and two from Italy (in Emilia-Romagna and Sicily). By offering a critical assessment of deliberation in social movement organisations, this study identifies key aspects affecting their ability to pursue democratic deliberation and sheds new light on the role of community actors in deliberative democracy.

Download or read book Movement Parties Against Austerity written by Donatella della Porta and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ascendance of austerity policies and the protests they have generated have had a deep impact on the shape of contemporary politics. The stunning electoral successes of SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) in Italy, alongside the quest for a more radical left in countries such as the UK and the US, bear witness to a new wave of parties that draws inspiration and strength from social movements. The rise of movement parties challenges simplistic expectations of a growing separation between institutional and contentious politics and the decline of the left. Their return demands attention as a way of understanding both contemporary socio-political dynamics and the fundamentals of political parties and representation. Bridging social movement and party politics studies, within a broad concern with democratic theories, this volume presents new empirical evidence and conceptual insight into these topical socio-political phenomena, within a cross-national comparative perspective.

Download or read book Mobilizing Democracy written by Paul Almeida and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the conditions and factors that drive people to protest against government economic policies in the developing world? Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association (2015) Paul Almeida’s comparative study of the largest social movement campaigns that existed between 1980 and 2013 in every Central American country (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) provides a granular examination of the forces that spark mass mobilizations against state economic policy, whether those factors are electricity rate hikes or water and health care privatization. Many scholars have explained connections between global economic changes and local economic conditions, but most of the research has remained at the macro level. Mobilizing Democracy contributes to our knowledge about the protest groups “on the ground” and what makes some localities successful at mobilizing and others less successful. His work enhances our understanding of what ingredients contribute to effective protest movements as well as how multiple protagonists—labor unions, students, teachers, indigenous groups, nongovernmental organizations, women’s groups, environmental organizations, and oppositional political parties—coalesce to make protest more likely to win major concessions. Based on extensive field research, archival data of thousands of protest events, and interviews with dozens of Central American activists, Mobilizing Democracy brings the international consequences of privatization, trade liberalization, and welfare-state downsizing in the global South into focus and shows how persistent activism and network building are reactivated in these social movements. Almeida enables our comprehension of global and local politics and policy by answering the question, “If all politics is local, then how do the politics of globalization manifest themselves?” Detailed graphs and maps provide a synthesis of the quantitative and qualitative data in this important study. Written in clear, accessible prose, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars in the fields of political science, social movements, anthropology, Latin American studies, and labor studies.

Download or read book Political Translation written by Nicole Doerr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time of increasing doubts about political legitimacy, concern for equal and inclusive democratic processes and deliberation is sweeping the social sciences. In this empirical study, the author presents the collective practices of political translation, which help multilingual and culturally diverse groups work together more democratically.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe written by John Loughlin and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 810 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe analyses the state of play of democracy at the subnational level in the 27 member states of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland. It places subnational democracy in the context of the distinctive Anglo, the French, the German and Scandinavian state traditions in Europe asking to what extent these are still relevant today. The Handbook adapts Lijphart's theory of democracy and applies it to the subnational levels in all the country chapters. A key theoretical issue is whether subnational (regional and local) democracy is derived from national democracy or whether it is legitimate in its own right. Besides these theoretical concerns it focuses on the practice of democracy: the roles of political parties and interest groups and also how subnational political institutions relate to the ordinary citizen. This can take the form of local referendums or other mechanisms of participation. The Handbook reveals a wide variety of practices across Europe in this regard. Local financial systems also reveal a great variety. Finally, each chapter examines the challenges facing subnational democracy but also the opportunities available to them to enhance their democratic systems. Among the challenges identified are: Europeanization, globalization, but also citizens disaffection and switch-off from politics. Some countries have confronted these challenges more successfully than others but all countries face them. An important aspect of the Handbook is the inclusion of all the countries of East and Central Europe plus Cyprus and Malta, who joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. This is the first time they have been examined alongside the countries of Western Europe from the angle of subnational democracy.

Download or read book Street Citizens written by Marco Giugni and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the character of contemporary protest politics through a micro-mobilization analysis of participation in street demonstrations.

Download or read book Politicising Democracy written by J. Harriss and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a major contradiction in contemporary politics: there has been a wave of democratization that has swept across much of the world, while at the same time globalization appears to have reduced the social forces that have built democracy historically. This book, by an international group of authors, analyzes the ways in which local politics in developing countries - often neglected in work on democratization - render democratic experiments more or less successful in realizing substantial democracy.