Download or read book Illusions of Democracy written by Sophie Lemière and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-14 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a group of both international and Malaysian scholars, this book offers an up-to-date and broad analysis of the contemporary state of Malaysian politics and society. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, it offers a look at Malaysian politics not only through the lens of political science but also anthropology, cultural studies, international relations, political economy and legal studies touching on both overlooked topics in Malaysian political life as well as the emerging trends which will shape Malaysia's future. Covering silat martial arts, Malaysia's constitutional identity, emergency legislation, the South China Sea dilemma, ISIS discourse, zakat payment, the fallout from the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia's green movement, Illusions of Democracy charts the complex and multi-faceted nature of political life in a semi-authoritarian state, breaking down the illusions which keep it functioning, to uncover the mechanisms which really underlie the paradoxical longevity of Malaysia's political, economic and social system.
Download or read book The Illusion of Democracy written by Phil Mennitti and published by Phil Mennitti. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second story in a non-partisan series detailing how the elite have impoverished America's Middle Class. In this timely and revealing book the author explains what has happened in simple, easy to understand terms, that are brief and to-the-point. The crippling and devastating consequences to liberty have not gone unnoticed. The author bears witness to history and the treacherous crimes which have overthrown the Republic. Referred to as the history of the Deep State. The Illusion of Democracy is a more accurate historical accounting of the United States since the coup of 1963, when President Kennedy was executed in Dealey Plaza by the Operation 40 assassination squad. This sequel focuses on the big picture. It explains Hegelian Dialectic Principles of how our puppet masters create conflict to increase their wealth and power. The book connects the dots of all major false flag events to prove this massive deception was intentionally engineered, and that we the people have been subjugated through indentured servitude into a feudal system controlled by wealthy oligarchs. This book was written at a high school level with those students in mind. It is perfect for high school classes, college courses, or the average reader at home who is curious about what went wrong over the past generation which killed the American Dream.
Download or read book Democratic Illusion written by Genevieve Fuji Johnson and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of deliberative democracy promotes the creation of systems of governance in which citizens actively exchange ideas, engage in debate, and create laws that are responsive to their interests and aspirations. While deliberative processes are being adopted in an increasing number of cases, decision-making power remains mostly in the hands of traditional elites. In Democratic Illusion, Genevieve Fuji Johnson examines four representative examples: participatory budgeting in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Deliberative Polling by Nova Scotia Power Incorporated, a national consultation process by the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and public consultations embedded in the development of official languages policies in Nunavut. In each case, measures that appeared to empower the public failed to challenge the status quo approach to either formulating or implementing policy. Illuminating a critical gap between deliberative democratic theory and its applications, this timely and important study shows what needs to be done to ensure deliberative processes offer more than the illusion of democracy.
Download or read book Political Visions Illusions written by David T. Koyzis and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this freshly updated, comprehensive study, political scientist David Koyzis surveys the key political ideologies of our era, unpacking the worldview issues inherent to each and pointing out essential strengths and weaknesses. Writing with broad international perspective, Koyzis is a sensible guide for Christians working in the public square, culture watchers, and all students of modern political thought.
Download or read book Necessary Illusions written by Noam Chomsky and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the media serves the needs of those in power rather than performing a watchdog role, and looks at specific cases and issues
Download or read book Ideal Illusions written by James Peck and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a noted historian and foreign-policy analyst, a groundbreaking critique of the troubling symbiosis between Washington and the human rights movement The United States has long been hailed as a powerful force for global human rights. Now, drawing on thousands of documents from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and development agencies, James Peck shows in blunt detail how Washington has shaped human rights into a potent ideological weapon for purposes having little to do with rights—and everything to do with furthering America's global reach. Using the words of Washington's leaders when they are speaking among themselves, Peck tracks the rise of human rights from its dismissal in the cold war years as "fuzzy minded" to its calculated adoption, after the Vietnam War, as a rationale for American foreign engagement. He considers such milestones as the fight for Soviet dissidents, Tiananmen Square, and today's war on terror, exposing in the process how the human rights movement has too often failed to challenge Washington's strategies. A gripping and elegant work of analysis, Ideal Illusions argues that the movement must break free from Washington if it is to develop a truly uncompromising critique of power in all its forms.
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 The End of Illusions written by Andreas Reckwitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-28 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.
Download or read book Does Truth Matter written by Ronald Tinnevelt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-11-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The claim once made by philosophers of unique knowledge of the essence of humanity and society has fallen into disrepute. Neither Platonic forms, divine revelation nor metaphysical truth can serve as the ground for legitimating social and political norms. On the political level many seem to agree that democracy doesn’t need foundations. Nor are its citizens expected to discuss the worth of their comprehensive conceptions of the good life. According to Rawls, for example, we have to accept that “politics in a democratic society can never be guided by what we see as the whole truth (...)”. (1993: 243) And yet we still call upon truth when we participate in defining the basic structure our society and argue why our opinions, beliefs and preferences need to be taken seriously. We do not think that our views need to be taken into account by others because they are our views, but because we think they are true. If in a democratic society citizens have to deal with the challenge of affirming their claims as true, we need to analyse the precise relationship between truth and democracy. Does truth matter to democracy and if so, what is the place of truth in democratic politics? How can citizens affirm the truth of their claims and accept - at the same time - that their truth is just one amongst many? Our book centers on the role of the public sphere in these pressing questions. It tries to give a comprehensive answer to these questions from the perspective of the main approaches of contemporary democratic theory: deliberative democracy, political pragmatism and liberalism. A confrontation of these approaches, will result in a more encompassing philosophical understanding of our plural democracy, which – in this era of globalization – is more complex than ever before. Because a good understanding of the function, meaning and shortcomings of the public sphere is essential to answering these questions, a good deal of the book addresses these issues. Historically, after all, the idea that citizens have to engage each other in discussion in order to determine the structure and goals of society, is connected to the rational ideal of a public sphere where conflicting views can be expressed, formed, and transformed. But hasn’t the collective decision making in which everyone participates on an equal footing turned out to be a deceptive ideal or a simple illusion? Not every individual in society has equal access to the podium. Furthermore, power, being an inevitable feature of the public sphere, seems to permanently endanger its democratic value. Moreover, the existence of this sphere depends on a specific ethos and particular public spaces where citizens are called upon to present themselves as citizens, as people taking responsibility for their society. It is not clear whether this ethos and these spaces exist at all, and if so, if they preserved their ascribed capacity for constituting ‘democratic’ truth? By answering these questions we expect to deepen our understanding of the relation between truth and democracy.
Download or read book The Glass Palace written by Nasser M. Beydoun and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Americans read in today's news that Qatar is funding rebel groups across the Middle East, few of us have any idea what Qatar is or how it is run. A nation of perhaps 250,000 locals served by 1.35 million foreign workers, the emirate is burning its gas and oil revenue at a break-neck pace in an effort to build a position on the global stage. Is Qatar actually a suitable ally or a legitimate partner for the United States? Under Qatari labor law, foreign workers are actually owned, for all practical purposes, by their Qatari sponsors in a system akin to slavery. This book chronicles the experience of an American executive working in Qatar and delves into Qatar's feudal work-sponsorship system, showing that an economic great leap forward is not necessarily accompanied by modernization, despite superficial emblems; that prosperity and democracy need not go hand in hand; and that being a US ally may be totally unrelated to any notion of human rights or personal liberties. There are other Western expats still trapped in Qatar. Yet American workers, students and others blithely interact with Qatar as if it were a 'normal' (i.e., Westernized) nation where one may navigate with confidence. It is nothing of the sort. In the meantime Qatar, under the leadership of an emir who overthrew his own father, is fostering international unrest across the entire Arab world, while racing to build a modern-looking city from scratch. Some of the economic, environmental and demographic assumptions underlying these plans are worthy of another 1000 tales from Arabia. American businessman Nasser Beydoun found out for himself how quickly the Qataris are moving when he embarked on an exciting new career path, leaving his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, to move to Qatar to manage the opening of several chain restaurants as part of the sudden economic boom there. It didn't take long for the deal to turn sour, but Beydoun didn't realize the extent of his problem until he tried to leave the country — and was stopped at the border. In this book he paints a general picture of life in this fantastical realm while relaying his personal struggle to escape a legal runaround worthy of Kafka's novels.
Download or read book News written by W. Lance Bennett and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1995 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Future of Illusion written by Victoria Kahn and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the rise of fundamentalism and a related turn to religion in the humanities have led to a powerful resurgence of interest in the problem of political theology. In a critique of this contemporary fascination with the theological underpinnings of modern politics, Victoria Kahn proposes a return to secularism—whose origins she locates in the art, literature, and political theory of the early modern period—and argues in defense of literature and art as a force for secular liberal culture. Kahn draws on theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt and their readings of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Spinoza to illustrate that the dialogue between these modern and early modern figures can help us rethink the contemporary problem of political theology. Twentieth-century critics, she shows, saw the early modern period as a break from the older form of political theology that entailed the theological legitimization of the state. Rather, the period signaled a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency and a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction intersected the terrain of religion.
Download or read book Grand Illusion written by Theresa A. Amato and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative critique of how two-party campaigns are compromising democracy identifies key flaws in the electoral process, ballot access laws, partisan administration, and other systems, in a report that argues for federal standards that lift barriers against third-party and independent candidates.
Download or read book Lies Passions and Illusions written by François Furet and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely considered one of the leading historians of the French Revolution, Franc̦ois Furet was a maverick for his time, shining a critical light on the entrenched Marxist interpretations that prevailed during the mid-twentieth century. Lies, Passion, and Illusions is a fitting capstone to this celebrated author's oeuvre: a late-career conversation with the philosopher Paul Ricoeur on the twentieth century writ large. This conversation would be, sadly, Furet's last - he died while Ricoeur was completing his edits. Ricoeur did not want to publish his half without Furet's approval, so what remains is Furet's alone, an astonishingly cohesive meditation on the political passions of the twentieth century, a century of violence and turmoil, of unprecendented welath and progress, in which history advanced, for better or worse, in quantum leaps. Whether new to Furet or deeply familiar with his work, readers will find thought-provoking assessments on every page, a deeply moving look back at one of the most tumultuous periods of history and how we might learn and look forward from it. -- from dust jacket.
Download or read book Discipline and Punishment in Global Politics written by J. Leatherman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-06-09 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global politics is a crowded stage of players competing for power and authority. Who is in charge of what? How do they stay in charge and what are the effects? This volume raises these questions in case studies on regimes of torture and surveillance in women's rights, border control, media, global capital and religion.
Download or read book The Age of Illusions written by Andrew Bacevich and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable. In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom. In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.
Download or read book Myths Illusions and Peace written by Dennis Ross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-06-11 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A trenchant and often pugnacious demolition of the numerous misconceptions about strategic thinking on the Middle East" -The New York Times Now updated with a new chapter on the current climate, Myths, Illusions, and Peace addresses why the United States has consistently failed to achieve its strategic goals in the Middle East. According to Dennis Ross-special advisor to President Obama and senior director at the National Security Council for that region-and policy analyst David Makovsky, it is because we have repeatedly fallen prey to dangerous myths about this part of the world-myths with roots that reach back decades yet persist today. Clearly articulated and accessible, Myths, Illusions, and Peace captures the reality of the problems in the Middle East like no book has before. It presents a concise and far-reaching set of principles that will help America set an effective course of action in the region, and in so doing secure a safer future for all Americans.
