Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Political Ideologies - Democracy

The book illustrates how community-based actions, programs, and organizations that allow women to determine their lives and participate in decision making contribute to the creation of a civil society and thus enhance democracy. The case studies show how participation in grassroots movements promotes women's involvement in their organizations, communities, and in societal institutions, as it influences state policy and empowers women in personal relationships.

The Democracy Sourcebook offers a collection of classic writings and contemporary scholarship on democracy, creating a book that can be used by undergraduate and graduate students in a wide variety of courses, including American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and political philosophy. The editors have chosen substantial excerpts from the essential theorists of the past, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the authors of The Federalist Papers; they place them side by side with the work of such influential...

Described both as "the Hobbes of our age" and as "the philosophical godfather of Nazism," Carl Schmitt was a brilliant and controversial political theorist whose doctrine of political leadership and critique of liberal democratic ideals distinguish him as one of the most original contributors to modern political theory. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. First published in 1923, it has often been viewed as an attempt to destroy parliamentarism; in fact, it was Schmitt's attempt to defend the Weimar...

This book offers a re-examination of the evidence about citizens' capacity for self-governance and what it means for the future of democratic politics, from both empirical and normative perspectives.

Are ordinary citizens capable of governing themselves? For more than three decades, social scientists have accumulated evidence of the undemocratic propensities of many ordinary citizens. This has caused some to worry about the stability of existing democratic institutions, while others argue that the institutions themselves are the problem: politics needs to be democratized further,...

As many formerly authoritarian regimes have been replaced by democratic governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, questions have arisen about the stability and durability of these new governments. One concern has to do with the institutional arrangements for governing bequeathed to the new democratic regimes by their authoritarian predecessors and with the related issue of whether presidential or parliamentary systems work better for the consolidation of democracy.

In this book, Peter Siavelis takes a close look at the important case of Chile, which had a long...

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that improving democratic politics requires keeping emotion out of it. Marcus advances the provocative claim that the tradition in democratic theory of treating emotion and reason as hostile opposites is misguided and leads contemporary theorists to misdiagnose the current state of American democracy. Instead of viewing the presence of emotion in politics as a failure of rationality and therefore as a failure of citizenship, Marcus argues, democratic theorists need to understand that emotions are in fact a prerequisite for the exercise of reason...

During the 1980s the Mexican regime faced a series of economic, social, and political disasters that led many to question its survival. Yet by 1992 the economy was again growing, with inflation under control and the confidence of international investors restored. Mexico was now touted as an example for regimes in Eastern Europe to emulate.

How did Carlos Salinas and his team of technocrats manage to gain political power sufficient to impose their economic model? How did they sustain their revolution from above despite the hardships these changes brought for many Mexicans? How did...

In their efforts to uncover the principles of a robust conception of democracy, theorists of deliberative democracy place a premium on the role of political expression--public speech and reasoned debate--as the key to democratic processes. They also frequently hark back to historical antecedents (as in the Habermasian invocation of the "public sphere" of eighteenth-century bourgeois society and the Arendtian valorization of the classical Athenian polis) in their quest to establish that deliberative procedures are more than "merely theoretical" and instead have a practical application. But...

The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America describes and explores the emergence of a directly democratic political culture in America, the Federalists' theoretical campaign against that culture, and the legacy of the struggle over democracy for politics today. The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America traces the rise of democracy in America beginning with the Puritans of New England; the radicalization during the eighteenth century of Puritan notions of community, autonomy, and participation; and the Antifederalist attempt to preserve a democratic political...

Robert Ahdieh assesses here the troubled history and uncertain future of constitutionalism in post-communist Russia. He argues that the development of Russian constitutionalism and legal culture, long ignored as secondary to the economic and political transformation of the country, is critical to the survival of democracy.

The discussion first focuses on the history of the Soviet Union and Russia from Gorbachev's selection as General Secretary in 1985 to the adoption of the new Constitution in December 1993. Ahdieh analyzes those decisions and events that impacted upon the...

When countries become more democratic, new opportunities arise for individuals and groups to participate in politics and influence the making of policy. But democratization does not ensure better representation for everyone, and indeed some sectors of society are ill-equipped to take advantage of these new opportunities. Small industry in Mexico, Kenneth Shadlen shows, is an excellent example of a sector whose representation decreased during democratization.

Shadlen's analysis focuses on the basic characteristics of small firms that complicate the process of securing representation...