Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Political Ideologies - Democracy

Southern Europe

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The idea that the United States can and should help Latin America achieve democracy has been a recurrent theme in U.S. foreign policy throughout the twentieth century. By the 1990s, it had become virtually unchallenged doctrine, broadly supported on a bipartisan basis. Yet no systematic and comparative study of U.S. attempts to promote Latin American democracy has ever been published -- and the policy community often seems unaware of this history.

In Exporting Democracy, Abraham F. Lowenthal and fourteen other noted scholars from the United States, Latin America, and Europe...

Since their classic volume The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes was published in 1978, Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan have increasingly focused on the questions of how, in the modern world, nondemocratic regimes can be eroded and democratic regimes crafted. In Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, they break new ground in numerous areas. They reconceptualize the major types of modern nondemocratic regimes and point out for each type the available paths to democratic transition and the tasks of democratic consolidation. They argue that, although -nation-state-...

Drawn from outstanding articles published in the Journal of Democracy, The Global Divergence of Democracies follows the enthusiastically received earlier volume, The Global Resurgence of Democracy.

The tremendous momentum of democratic expansion that characterized the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s has drawn to a halt. Significantly, this halt has not yet been followed by a -reverse wave-of democratic breakdowns, and democracy remains unchallenged as a global model and ideal of governance. The values of freedom, human rights, and popular sovereignty have...

Political parties are one of the core institutions of democracy. But in democracies around the world--rich and poor, Western and non-Western--there is growing evidence of low or declining public confidence in parties. In membership, organization, and popular involvement and commitment, political parties are not what they used to be. But are they in decline, or are they simply changing their forms and functions? In contrast to authors of most previous works on political parties, which tend to focus exclusively on long-established Western democracies, the contributors to this volume cover...

Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy draws on worldwide experience since the mid-1980s to evaluate international election monitoring and domestic monitoring, and their contributions to democracy promotion and democratic change. In this book, Eric Bjornlund provides an overview of what election monitoring is, where it comes from, and how it is currently conducted, and he educes general lessons for democracy promotion. Bjornlund reports on actual practice, including case studies of particular election monitoring efforts and the author's own experience in...

Constitutional Odyssey is an account of the politics of making and changing Canada's constitution from Confederation to the present day. Peter H. Russell frames his analysis around two contrasting constitutional philosophies - Edmund Burke's conception of the constitution as a set of laws and practices incrementally adapting to changing needs and societal differences, and John Locke's ideal of a Constitution as a single document expressing the will of a sovereign people as to how they are to be governed.

The first and second editions of Constitutional Odyssey, published...

Constitutional Odyssey is an account of the politics of making and changing Canada's constitution from Confederation to the present day. Peter H. Russell frames his analysis around two contrasting constitutional philosophies - Edmund Burke's conception of the constitution as a set of laws and practices incrementally adapting to changing needs and societal differences, and John Locke's ideal of a Constitution as a single document expressing the will of a sovereign people as to how they are to be governed.

The first and second editions of Constitutional Odyssey, published...

For more than a generation this concise survey has been the classic introduction to the fundamental ideas and structure of Canadian government and the practice of democracy in this country. It examines the various elements of federal government -- the House of Commons, the cabinet, the Senate, the monarchy and governor-general, the public service, and the courts -- and of provincial and municipal governments, and explores their interrelationships.

In this new edition Norman Ward has incorporated the many changes in government since his last revision in 1971.

An in-depth study of Antonio Gramsci's prison notebooks (Quaderni del carcere) and his specific contributions to radical democratic theory. The book encompasses English, Italian, and French debates on the subject as well as political and philosophical discussions concerning the limitations of liberal and socialist democratic theory.

In Building New Democracies Michel Duquette analyses the main public policies of Brazil, Chile, and Mexico to explore examples of how countries make the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic society.

The main objective of the book is to follow the process of policy formation in very young democracies. Duquette isolates the specific problems that surround decision-making in a transitional government, showing how legislating structural change does not guarantee democratic success. He offers a general model of domestic and international policy-making as a...

Are the world's oldest democracies failing? For most of the past fifty years democratic governments made determined and successful efforts at overcoming the significant inequalities that are the by-product of a capitalist economy. During this period a new concept of democratic citizenship that added social and economic rights to the liberal legacy of political and civil liberties established roots in most North Atlantic democracies. Since the 1980s this notion of democratic citizenship has been challenged ideologically to such a degree that through either major modification or complete...

The UFA/UFWA launched the most successful agrarian revolt in North American history. "The Rise of Agrarian Democracy" is a lucid and persuasive work detailing one of the greatest mass democratic movements in Canada. The book makes new and significant contributions towards our scholarly understanding of the evolution and politicization of the Alberta farmers' movement over several decades.

The result is an important investigation in western and agrarian history and economics. A path is laid from the farmers' inherited ideas and common experience, gender assumptions, class opposition,...

Why is Canadian unity important to democratic pluralism worldwide?

Democratic pluralism is the ability of different cultural and language communities to find representation under a single set of democratic institutions, however configured. Although traditional liberal arguments at best ignored culture, in practise, out of a long struggle to eliminate gargantuan prejudices, errors and wrongs, the liberal tradition has created in democratic pluralism a dialectic of culture and liberal politics that resolves the theoretical conundrums so dear to both. Canadian democracy is a monument to...

As public issues stretch out to affect an ever expanding population, democratizing planning and governance becomes increasingly important. How localized communities embrace the progressive qualities of civil society is a critical topic in an era where diverse and divergent forces often counteract civil society formation and community initiatives. This collection explores the theoretical underpinnings of democratic planning and governance in relation to civil society formation and social learning.

The contributors to this volume use multiple lenses to uncover the challenges of...