Democratic Institutions and Practices is the second study carried out under the Democratic Audit of the UK. This volume explores the formal institutions and processes of the liberal democratic state: including the executive, elections, parliament and the civil service.

What is democracy? Why should we value it? What is the relation between democracy and individual rights? Is majority rule always democratic? Why do we have political parties? Are some electoral systems more democratic than others? What is the relation between nationalism and democracy, or democracy and a market economy? How can democracy be maintained and improved? What difference does it make to ordinary people? What is its future?

This volume of specially commissioned articles is devoted to a consideration of how the subject of human rights impacts on contemporary politics and on the discipline of political science. It assesses the role of human rights in political theory, international law and international relations and in relation to the politics of different regions of the world. An international group of contributors includes political scientists, political philosophers, academic lawyers and those with experience of human rights campaigning.

Max Weber's writings on the politics of Wilhelmine in Germany and the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 are much less well known than his contributions to historical and theoretical sociology, yet they are essential to any overall assessment of his thought. Drawing on these writings, still mostly untranslated, David Beetham offers the most comprehensive account available in English of Weber's political theory.

The book explores Weber's central concern with the prospects for liberal Parliamentarism in authoritarian societies and in an age of mass politics and bureaucratic...

What is democracy? How do we know when we have it? Is liberal democracy merely one, or the only, version of democracy.

This textbook, specially commissioned by UNESCO, addresses eighty of the most pressing questions about democracy today.

The new edition of this classic text provides a comprehensive introduction to the concept of legitimacy as applied to political systems. Now addressing the issue of legitimacy beyond the state, the book also includes a new introduction and two major additional chapters which update the argument in the light of developments and debates.

This text looks at the legitimacy of European supra-national governement. It discusses what is changing and why, where the power lies and what are the likely scenarios for development. It also examines the concept of the "democratic deficit" and assesses the legitimacy of the EU government.