Download or read book Democracy Reinvented written by Hollie Russon Gilman and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Participatory Budgeting—the experiment in democracy that could redefine how public budgets are decided in the United States. Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called "revolutionary civics in action" by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds. Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, indepth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance. While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Reinvesting in Democracy also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance.

Download or read book Innovations Reinvented Politics and Representative Democracy written by Agnès Alexandre-Collier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on the issue of change in democratic politics in terms of experimental or actual innovations introduced either within political parties or outside the party system, involving citizen participation and mobilization. Including a wide and diverse range of alternatives in the organization of groups, campaigning, conducting initiatives and enhancing practices, they not only question the relevance of traditional institutions in representing citizens’ values and interests, but also share a common goal which is precisely – and perhaps paradoxically – to reshape and invigorate representative democracy This book is of key interest to scholars and students of party politics, elections/electoral studies, social movement and democratic innovations and more broadly to comparative politics, political theory and political sociology.

Download or read book Open Democracy written by Hélène Landemore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, more than ever, urgently needed. -- Cover page 4.

Download or read book Democracy and Prosperity written by Torben Iversen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a widespread view that democracy and the advanced nation-state are in crisis, weakened by globalization and undermined by global capitalism, in turn explaining rising inequality and mounting populism. This book, written by two of the world's leading political economists, argues this view is wrong: advanced democracies are resilient, and their enduring historical relationship with capitalism has been mutually beneficial. For all the chaos and upheaval over the past century--major wars, economic crises, massive social change, and technological revolutions--Torben Iversen and David Soskice show how democratic states continuously reinvent their economies through massive public investment in research and education, by imposing competitive product markets and cooperation in the workplace, and by securing macroeconomic discipline as the preconditions for innovation and the promotion of the advanced sectors of the economy. Critically, this investment has generated vast numbers of well-paying jobs for the middle classes and their children, focusing the aims of aspirational families, and in turn providing electoral support for parties. Gains at the top have also been shared with the middle (though not the bottom) through a large welfare state. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom on globalization, advanced capitalism is neither footloose nor unconstrained: it thrives under democracy precisely because it cannot subvert it. Populism, inequality, and poverty are indeed great scourges of our time, but these are failures of democracy and must be solved by democracy.

Download or read book Civic Power written by K.Sabeel Rahman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What will it take to restore American democracy and rescue it from this moment of crisis? Civic Power argues that the current threat to US democracy is rooted not just in the outcome of the 2016 election, but in deeper, systemic forms of inequality that concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. Drawing on historical and social science research and case studies of contemporary democratic innovations across the country, Civic Power calls for a broader approach to democracy reform focused on meaningfully redistributing power to citizens. It advocates for both reviving grassroots civil society and novel approaches to governance, policymaking, civic technology, and institutional design - aimed at dismantling structural disparities to build a more inclusive, empowered, bottom-up democracy, where communities and people have greater voice, power, and agency.

Download or read book Democracy Unchained written by David Orr and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stellar group of America's leading political thinkers explore how to reboot our democracy The presidential election of 2016 highlighted some long-standing flaws in American democracy and added a few new ones. Across the political spectrum, most Americans do not believe that democracy is delivering on its promises of fairness, justice, shared prosperity, or security in a changing world. The nation cannot even begin to address climate change and economic justice if it remains paralyzed by political gridlock. Democracy Unchained is about making American democracy work to solve problems that have long impaired our system of governance. The book is the collective work of thirty of the most perceptive writers, practitioners, scientists, educators, and journalists writing today, who are committed to moving the political conversation from the present anger and angst to the positive and constructive change necessary to achieve the full promise of a durable democracy that works for everyone and protects our common future. Including essays by Yasha Mounk on populism, Chisun Lee on money and politics, Ras Baraka on building democracy from the ground up, and Bill McKibben on climate, Democracy Unchained is the articulation of faith in democracy and will be required reading for all who are working to make democracy a reality. Table of Contents Foreword Introduction David W. Orr Part I. The Crisis of Democracy Populism and Democracy Yascha Mounk Reconstructing Our Constitutional Democracy K. Sabeel Rahman Restoring Healthy Party Competition Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson When Democracy Becomes Something Else: The Problem of Elections and What to Do About It Andrew Gumbel The Best Answer to Money in Politics After Citizens United: Public Campaign Financing in the Empire State and Beyond Chisun Lee Remaking the Presidency After Trump Jeremi Suri The Problem of Presidentialism Stephen Skowronek Part II. Foundations of Democracy Renewing the American Democratic Faith Steven C. Rockefeller American Land, American Democracy Eric Freyfogle Race and Democracy: The Kennedys, Obama, Trump, and Us Michael Eric Dyson Liberty and Justice for All: Latina Activist Efforts to Strengthen Democracy in 2018 Maria Hinojosa What Black Women Teach Us About Democracy Andra Gillespie and Nadia E. Brown Engines of Democracy: Racial Justice and Cultural Power Rashad Robinson Civic and Environmental Education: Protecting the Planet and Our Democracy Judy Braus The Supreme Court's Legitimacy Crisis and Constitutional Democracy’s Future Dawn Johnsen Part III. Policy Challenges Can Democracy Survive the Internet? David Hickton The New New Deal: How to Reregulate Capitalism Robert Kuttner First Understand Why They're Winning: How to Save Democracy from the Anti-Immigrant Far Right Sasha Polakow-Suransky No Time Left: How the System Is Failing to Address Our Ultimate Crisis Bill McKibben Powering Democracy Through Clean Energy Denise G. Fairchild The Long Crisis: American Foreign Policy Before and After Trump Jessica Tuchman Mathews Part IV. Who Acts, and How? The Case for Strong Government William S. Becker The States Nick Rathod Democracy in a Struggling Swing State Amy Hanauer Can Independent Voters Save American Democracy? Why 42 Percent of American Voters Are Independent and How They Can Transform Our Political System Jaqueline Salit and Thom Reilly Philanthropy and Democracy Stephen B. Heintz Keeping the Republic Dan Moulthrop The Future of Democracy Mayor Ras Baraka Building a University Where All People Matter Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and Derrick M. Anderson Biophilia and Direct Democracy Timothy Beatley Purpose-Driven Capitalism Mindy Lubber Restoring Democracy: Nature's Trust, Human Survival, and Constitutional Fiduciary Governance 397 Mary Christina Wood Conclusion Ganesh Sitaraman

Download or read book WE MUST RETHINK AND REINVENT THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IN ORDER TO SAVE IT written by Donald G Fisher and published by Donald G Fisher. This book was released on 2024-05-29 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American democracy will be under stress, for decades to come. If the American people do not take action, to save it, it will almost certainly cease to exist, at some point in the future. A nation's democracy is not held in place, by the laws of physics. It is an abstract concept that each person has in his or her mind. In our nation's history we have always had the problem of the people, who are living happy lives declaring that the United States is a great democracy, while the people living in slavery, and later under segregation, declaring, just the opposite. In my view the United States did not become a legitimate democracy, until the civil rights victories of the 1960's, were achieved. How can you say that my people were living in a democracy, when most of them were not allowed, to vote?

Download or read book Rebooting Democracy written by Manuel Arriaga and published by Thistle Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you want things organized, you might have to read some quite tricky books about democracy [such as this one]." - RUSSELL BRAND, actor and comedian, reading excerpts of Rebooting Democracy on his show The Trews Unless you are a banker, by now you must have realized that politicians don't serve your interests. Our democracies are failing us and, from Occupy Wall Street to the riots in Sao Paulo, millions have taken to the streets to voice their frustration. But is there anything we can do about it? Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics takes readers on a global journey in search of solutions. From Vancouver to Saint Petersburg, from France to Australia, we discover that there are sensible ways to reform our democracies. As we travel the globe and zoom in on these real-world democratic breakthroughs, we also pick up insights from the social sciences-from key ideas in political science, sociology and economics to the latest research in social and cognitive psychology-that clarify why elected politicians will always fail to represent us. In a concise and engaging way, this book shows why the problems we are facing arise from inescapable, structural aspects of our political systems-and invites readers to explore five concrete, innovative ideas to help repair them. Praise for Rebooting Democracy: "A quick and easy read that makes the case for why existing political systems are inadequate and then shows examples of how to move us past those problems and toward more democratic systems. Along with many clever insights, Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics points the way to where democracy is heading." - PROFESSOR JOHN GASTIL, Director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University "A bold challenge to the status quo that shows, with some very good examples, how democracy can work. A concise and readable book that makes a cogent case for reinventing politics. Well worth a read." - KATHARINE QUARMBY, award-winning journalist; former Britain correspondent for The Economist and political producer for BBC Newsnight "Passionately argued, yet plainly written, Rebooting Democracy is part scholarship, part manifesto-a wholehearted call for civic engagement at a time of growing dissatisfaction with politics. Manuel Arriaga's book challenges the idea that our democracies cannot be improved and successfully builds a case for political renewal." - ALBERTO ALEMANNO, Professor at HEC Paris and NYU School of Law; Founder of eLabEurope "A short and engaging book. Written in the irreverent, outsider spirit of the Occupy protests, Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics goes well beyond critiquing the status quo. It discusses several ways to democratize our society. [...] Interesting and well-worth reading." - YORAM GAT, founder and editor of Equality by Lot "Don't you feel sometimes that there is something wrong with contemporary democracy? That politicians are like a separate caste which makes decisions over the heads of people? Why is this happening? In Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics, Manuel Arriaga answers these questions in a straightforward manner, carefully explaining point-by-point how it is possible that those we elect so often fail to represent us. But this is only the beginning of the book. [...] [The rest is devoted to] an overview of concrete solutions from different parts of the world. From the citizen panels in British Columbia to ranked voting in Ireland and all the way to campaign finance reform in France. [...] This short book prompted me to think of issues which I had never thought of before, even though I have been interested in the topic of democracy for a long time." - MARCIN GERWIN, Dziennik Opinii

Download or read book Preserving the White Man s Republic written by Joshua A. Lynn and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Preserving the White Man’s Republic, Joshua Lynn reveals how the national Democratic Party rebranded majoritarian democracy and liberal individualism as conservative means for white men in the South and North to preserve their mastery on the eve of the Civil War. Responding to fears of African American and female political agency, Democrats in the late 1840s and 1850s reinvented themselves as "conservatives" and repurposed Jacksonian Democracy as a tool for local majorities of white men to police racial and gender boundaries by democratically withholding rights. With the policy of "popular sovereignty," Democrats left slavery’s expansion to white men’s democratic decision-making. They also promised white men local democracy and individual autonomy regarding temperance, religion, and nativism. Translating white men’s household mastery into political power over all women and Americans of color, Democrats united white men nationwide and made democracy a conservative assertion of white manhood. Democrats thereby turned traditional Jacksonian principles—grassroots democracy, liberal individualism, and anti-statism—into staples of conservatism. As Lynn’s book shows, this movement sent conservatism on a new, populist trajectory, one in which democracy can be called upon to legitimize inequality and hierarchy, a uniquely American conservatism that endures in our republic today.

Download or read book Reinventing Government written by David Osborne and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1993-02-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A landmark in the debate on the future of public policy."—The Washington Post.

Download or read book Republicanism and the Future of Democracy written by Geneviève Rousselière and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how republican political thought can make a constructive and distinctive contribution to our understanding of democracy and the challenges it faces.

Download or read book Empire of Democracy written by Simon Reid-Henry and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day, Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are. Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale “crisis of democracy”— with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent sowing crisis from one nation to the next— a new political-economic order was devised and the postwar social contract was torn up and written anew. In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and western history with it, was profoundly reimagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times. The present crisis of liberalism enjoins us to revisit these as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this panoramic history poignantly reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to come to terms with where we have been.

Download or read book Citizenville written by Gavin Newsom and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating case for a more engaged government, transformed to meet the challenges and possibilities of the twenty-first century.” —President William J. Clinton A rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age, Citizenville reveals how ordinary Americans can reshape their government for the better. Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, argues that today’s government is stuck in the last century while—in both the private sector and our personal lives—absolutely everything else has changed. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with thinkers and politicians, Newsom shows how Americans can transform their government, taking matters into their own hands to dissolve political gridlock even as they produce tangible changes in the real world. Citizenville is a timely road map for restoring American prosperity and for reinventing citizenship in today’s networked age.

Download or read book Renovating Democracy written by Nathan Gardels and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of populism in the West and the rise of China in the East have stirred a rethinking of how democratic systems work—and how they fail. The impact of globalism and digital capitalism is forcing worldwide attention to the starker divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” challenging how we think about the social contract. With fierce clarity and conviction, Renovating Democracy tears down our basic structures and challenges us to conceive of an alternative framework for governance. To truly renovate our global systems, the authors argue for empowering participation without populism by integrating social networks and direct democracy into the system with new mediating institutions that complement representative government. They outline steps to reconfigure the social contract to protect workers instead of jobs, shifting from a “redistribution” after wealth to “pre-distribution” with the aim to enhance the skills and assets of those less well-off. Lastly, they argue for harnessing globalization through “positive nationalism” at home while advocating for global cooperation—specifically with a partnership with China—to create a viable rules-based world order. Thought provoking and persuasive, Renovating Democracy serves as a point of departure that deepens and expands the discourse for positive change in governance.

Download or read book Dynasties and Democracy written by Daniel M. Smith and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although democracy is, in principle, the antithesis of dynastic rule, families with multiple members in elective office continue to be common around the world. In most democracies, the proportion of such "democratic dynasties" declines over time, and rarely exceeds ten percent of all legislators. Japan is a startling exception, with over a quarter of all legislators in recent years being dynastic. In Dynasties and Democracy, Daniel M. Smith sets out to explain when and why dynasties persist in democracies, and why their numbers are only now beginning to wane in Japan—questions that have long perplexed regional experts. Smith introduces a compelling comparative theory to explain variation in the presence of dynasties across democracies and political parties. Drawing on extensive legislator-level data from twelve democracies and detailed candidate-level data from Japan, he examines the inherited advantage that members of dynasties reap throughout their political careers—from candidate selection, to election, to promotion into cabinet. Smith shows how the nature and extent of this advantage, as well as its consequences for representation, vary significantly with the institutional context of electoral rules and features of party organization. His findings extend far beyond Japan, shedding light on the causes and consequences of dynastic politics for democracies around the world.

Download or read book They Can t Represent Us written by Marina Sitrin and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is one of the first books to assert that mass protest movements in disparate places such as Greece, Argentina, and the United States share an agenda-to raise the question of what democracy should mean. These horizontalist movements, including Occupy, exercise and claim participatory democracy as the ground of revolutionary social change today. Written by two international activist intellectuals and based on extensive interviews with movement participants in Spain, Venezuela, Japan, across the United States, and elsewhere, this book is both one of the most expansive portraits of the assemblies, direct democracy forums, and organizational forms championed by the new movements, and an analytical history of direct and participatory democracy from ancient Athens to Athens today. The new movements put forward the idea that liberal democracy is not democratic, nor was it ever.

Download or read book Digitising Democracy written by Volker Boehme-Neßler and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that in the digital era, a reinvention of democracy is urgently necessary. It discusses the mounting evidence showing that digitalisation is pushing classical parliamentary democracy to its limits, offering examples such as how living in a filter bubble and debating with political bots is profoundly changing democratic communication, making it more emotional, hysterical even, and less rational. It also explores how classical democracy involves long, slow thinking and decision processes, which don’t fit to the ever-increasing speed of the digital world, and examines the technical developments some fear will lead to governance by algorithms.In the digitalised world, democracy no longer functions as it has in the past. This does not mean waving goodbye to democracy – instead we need to reinvent it. How this could work is the central theme of this book.