This collection of short essays on texts in the history of democracy shows the diversity of ideas that contributed to the making of our present democratic moment.

The selection of texts goes beyond the standard, Western-centric canonical history of democracy, with its beginnings in Ancient Athens and its climax in the French and American revolutions, recovering some of the significant body of democratic and anti-democratic thought in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. It includes discussions of well-known philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, but also of a variety of thinkers...

This collection of short essays on texts in the history of democracy shows the diversity of ideas that contributed to the making of our present democratic moment.

The selection of texts goes beyond the standard, Western-centric canonical history of democracy, with its beginnings in Ancient Athens and its climax in the French and American revolutions, recovering some of the significant body of democratic and anti-democratic thought in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. It includes discussions of well-known philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, but also of a variety of thinkers...

From the 19th century onwards, there has been a slow transformation in the nature of the norms that regulate political competition and the uses of state power. Monarchies whose legitimating principles appealed to divine sanction have slowly but surely given way to republican regimes normatively grounded in appeals to 'the people.' Ideals of liberty, equality, and solidarity, have gained ground relative to ideals of hierarchy and dependence. Yet while in some ways the world is more democratic now than it has ever been, new forms of non-democracy and new justifications for it have emerged....