Download or read book The Death of British Democracy written by Stephen Haseler and published by London : P. Elek. This book was released on 1976 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Death of Consensus written by Phil Tinline and published by Hurst Publishers. This book was released on 2022-06-23 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over Britain’s first century of mass democracy, politics has lurched from crisis to crisis. How does this history of political agony illuminate our current age of upheaval? To find out, journalist Phil Tinline takes us back to two past eras when the ruling consensus broke down, and the future filled with ominous possibilities – until, finally, a new settlement was born. How did the Great Depression’s spectres of fascism, bombing and mass unemployment force politicians to think the unthinkable, and pave the way to post-war Britain? How was Thatcher’s road to victory made possible by a decade of nightmares: of hyperinflation, military coups and communist dictatorship? And why, since the Crash in 2008, have new political threats and divisions forced us to change course once again? Tinline brings to life those times, past and present, when the great compromise holding democracy together has come apart; when the political class has been forced to make a choice of nightmares. This lively, original account of panic and chaos reveals how apparent catastrophes can clear the path to a new era. The Death of Consensus will make you see British democracy differently.
Download or read book The Death of Britain written by J. Redwood and published by Springer. This book was released on 1999-05-20 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can the United Kingdom survive devolution, European integration, reform of the Lords, slimming of the monarchy and proportional representation? Will the new House of Lords be anything more than a rubber stamp full of friends of the Prime Minister? Will Scotland now shatter the Union by demanding full independence? In this dramatic new book John Redwood looks at the sweeping changes to Britain's institutions, democracy and the way of life now arising from the European project. Viewing the Blairite revolution as the agency for wider changes coming from the agenda of France, Germany and the European Commission, Redwood asks the key questions: are these changes inevitable, are they desirable, and what will they mean for British democracy?
Download or read book The Life and Death of Democracy written by John Keane and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.
Download or read book How Sick Is British Democracy written by Richard Rose and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-21 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forecasts of the death of democracy are often heard and the United Kingdom is on the death watch list. This book challenges such a gloomy view by carefully examining the health of the British body politic from Tony Blair’s time in Downing Street to the challenges of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. It finds some parts are in good health, for example, elections are free and losers as well as winners accept the results, unlike the United States. Other parts show intermittent symptoms of ill health, such as Cabinet ministers avoiding accountability. There is also a chronic problem of managing the unity of the United Kingdom. None of the symptoms is fatal. The book identifies effective remedies for some symptoms, placebos that offer assurance without cure, and perennially popular prescriptions that are politically impossible. Being a healthy democracy does not promise effectiveness in dealing with economic problems, but a big majority of Britons do not want to trade the freedom that comes with democracy for the promises of undemocratic leaders.
Download or read book The Death of Democracy written by Benjamin Carter Hett and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship. Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.
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
Download or read book The Death of Consensus written by Phil Tinline and published by . This book was released on 2023-09-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation concerns the nature and rationality of self-fulfilling beliefs: beliefs whose contents will be true just in case you believe them, because you believe them. Examples of this phenomenon span the quotidian - a child's belief that she will be fed may prompt a parent to begin her feeding - to the complex - as in cases, from the psychology of education, in which student performances match the expectations of their instructors. These examples can be difficult to fit into traditional theories of theoretical reasoning, where the role of theoretical reasoning is to get us on to some independent fact of the matter, by following our evidence. Since there is no independent fact of the matter to track when a belief is self-fulfilling, there will be no evidence of that fact for us to follow. But we are not Cartesian egos, apart from the world and observing it. We ourselves are part of the world we are trying to represent, and so, sometimes, what we believe can affect what the objective world is like. We need an account of theoretical reasoning which can accommodate this fact, and explain how we ought to deliberate about those states of affairs effected by our deliberating
Download or read book Democracy and the Death of Shame written by Jill Locke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is shame dead? With personal information made so widely available, an eroding public/private distinction, and a therapeutic turn in public discourse, many seem to think so. People across the political spectrum have criticized these developments and sought to resurrect shame in order to protect privacy and invigorate democratic politics. Democracy and the Death of Shame reads the fear that 'shame is dead' as an expression of anxiety about the social disturbance endemic to democratic politics. Far from an essential supplement to democracy, the recurring call to 'bring back shame' and other civilizing mores is a disciplinary reaction to the work of democratic citizens who extend the meaning of political equality into social realms. Rereadings from the ancient Cynics to the mid-twentieth century challenge the view that shame is dead and show how shame, as a politically charged idea, is disavowed, invoked, and negotiated in moments of democratic struggle.
Download or read book Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe written by Sheri Berman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of the twentieth century, many believed the story of European political development had come to an end. Modern democracy began in Europe, but for hundreds of years it competed with various forms of dictatorship. Now, though, the entire continent was in the democratic camp for the first time in history. But within a decade, this story had already begun to unravel. Some of the continent's newer democracies slid back towards dictatorship, while citizens in many of its older democracies began questioning democracy's functioning and even its legitimacy. And of course it is not merely in Europe where democracy is under siege. Across the globe the immense optimism accompanying the post-Cold War democratic wave has been replaced by pessimism. Many new democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia began "backsliding," while the Arab Spring quickly turned into the Arab winter. The victory of Donald Trump led many to wonder if it represented a threat to the future of liberal democracy in the United States. Indeed, it is increasingly common today for leaders, intellectuals, commentators and others to claim that rather than democracy, some form dictatorship or illiberal democracy is the wave of the future. In Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe, Sheri Berman traces the long history of democracy in its cradle, Europe. She explains that in fact, just about every democratic wave in Europe initially failed, either collapsing in upon itself or succumbing to the forces of reaction. Yet even when democratic waves failed, there were always some achievements that lasted. Even the most virulently reactionary regimes could not suppress every element of democratic progress. Panoramic in scope, Berman takes readers through two centuries of turmoil: revolution, fascism, civil war, and - -finally -- the emergence of liberal democratic Europe in the postwar era. A magisterial retelling of modern European political history, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe not explains how democracy actually develops, but how we should interpret the current wave of illiberalism sweeping Europe and the rest of the world.
Download or read book The Death of British Democracy written by Stephen Haseler and published by London : P. Elek. This book was released on 1976 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Death of Social Democracy written by Ashley Lavelle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whereas many writers and scholars interested in the field of social democracy have focused on factors such as the role of economic globalization and electoral pressures, Ashley Lavelle explores the importance of the collapse of the post-war economic boom and lower growth rates since then. He examines how these pressures have led social democrats to embrace neo-liberal policies and become threatened by minor parties and independent politicians. Providing an original argument about the decline of social democracy, the author investigates how its decline has increased the popularity of minor parties and independents, along with the reasons for social democratic membership and electoral decline. This is an important book for scholars of social democracy and the broader themes of world politics, political parties, social movements and globalization.
Download or read book The Life and Death of Democracy written by John Keane and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Plato to de Tocqueville to Fukuyama-an epic history of the governing philosophy that has defined Western history.
Download or read book Democracy and the Fall of the West written by Craig Smith and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is killing the West. That is the stunning conclusion of this book that tears apart the consensus underpinning modern political assumptions. Democracy is held to solve one of the oldest puzzles of human social life: how do we ensure that our rulers have a legitimate mandate and rule in the interests of the whole community? We are supposedly now guided by institutions whose democratic mandate ensures that they will govern in a benign manner in the interests of all. Democracy & the Fall of the West challenges that assumption by drawing on an alternative theory about the nature of modern democracy and its impact on Western society. It argues that the secret of the West's success is not Democracy, but Liberalism. Craig Smith and Tom Miers demonstrate that, since the introduction of democracy, the power of the state has re-grown at the expense of the liberty of the individual. Far from underpinning our freedoms, Democracy is in fact undermining them. It has unshackled the coercive power of the state, and will result in the inevitable decline of the West as we know it.
Download or read book Yes to Europe written by Robert Saunders and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 5 June 1975, voters went to the polls in Britain's first national referendum to decide whether the UK should remain in the European Community. As in 2016, the campaign shattered old political allegiances and triggered a far-reaching debate on Britain's place in the world. The campaign to stay in stretched from the Conservative Party - under its new leader, Margaret Thatcher - to the Labour government, the farming unions and the Confederation of British Industry. Those fighting to 'Get Britain Out' ranged from Enoch Powell and Tony Benn to Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Footballers, actors and celebrities joined the campaign trail, as did clergymen, students, women's groups and paramilitaries. In a panoramic survey of 1970s Britain, this volume offers the first modern history of the referendum, asking why voters said 'Yes to Europe' and why the result did not, as some hoped, bring the European debate in Britain to a close.
Download or read book The Strange Death of Liberal England written by George Dangerfield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-04 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the chaos that overtook England on the eve of the First World War. Dangerfield weaves together the three wild strands of the Irish Rebellion (the rebellion in Ulster), the Suffragette Movement and the Labour Movement to produce a vital picture of the state of mind and the most pressing social problems in England at the time. The country was preparing even then for its entrance into the twentieth century and total war.Dangerfield argues that between the death of Edward VII and the First World War there was a considerable hiatus in English history. He states that 1910 was a landmark year in English history. In 1910 the English spirit flared up, so that by the end of 1913 Liberal England was reduced to ashes. From these ashes, a new England emerged in which the true prewar Liberalism was supported by free trade, a majority in Parliament, the Ten Commandments, but the illusion of progress vanished. That extravagant behavior of the postwar decade, Dangerfield notes, had begun before the war. The war hastened everything - in politics, in economics, in behavior - but it started nothing.George Dangerfield's wonderfully written 1935 book has been extraordinarily influential. Scarcely any important analyst of modern Britain has failed to cite it and to make use of the understanding Dangerfield provides. This edition is timely, since the year 2010 has seen a definitive resurrection of Liberal power. Subsequent to the General Election of July 2010 the government of the United Kingdom has been in the hands of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. The Deputy Prime Minister is the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party - the direct successor of the old Liberal Party examined by Dangerfield. Five Liberal Democrat members of Parliament were appointed to the Cabinet and there are Liberal Democrat ministers in all governmental departments. After decades of absence from government power, Liberalism seems to be back with a vengeance.
Download or read book Power Kills written by R. J. Rummel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, newly published in paperback, is part of a comprehensive effort by R. J. Rummel to understand and place in historical perspective the entire subject of genocide and mass murder, or what he calls democide. It is the fifth in a series of volumes in which he offers a detailed analysis of the 120,000,000 people killed as a result of government action or direct intervention. In Power Kills, Rummel offers a realistic and practical solution to war, democide, and other collective violence. As he states it, "The solution...is to foster democratic freedom and to democratize coercive power and force. That is, mass killing and mass murder carried out by government is a result of indiscriminate, irresponsible Power at the center." Rummel observes that well-established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. The more democratic two nations are, the less likely is war or smaller-scale violence between them. The more democratic a nation is, the less severe its overall foreign violence, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence, and the less its democide. Rummel argues that the evidence supports overwhelmingly the most important fact of our time: democracy is a method of nonviolence.
