Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Political Ideologies - Democracy

Today, powerful political forces seek to make the Indian state Hindu. Their rising influence since 1980 has occurred during a period of radical change in Indian society and politics, and has been accomplished by electoral means as well as by organized violence. The 1996 elections will be a major test of their power and of the influence of Hindu majoritarianism among the Indian electorate.

Animated by a sense of urgency that was heightened by the massive violence following the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, Contesting the Nation explores Hindu...

"Required reading for Middle East specialists, policy persons, and students. It is the accurate, empathetic, and largely untold internal story of Islam and democracy in the contemporary era." --Louis J. Cantori, University of Maryland

"Stands alone among the numerous books that have dealt with the familiar theme of politics and religion in the Muslim world. . . . All students of the present-day Muslim world, from academics to policy mavens to the general public, should be attracted to the arguments, and also the evidence, of this tightly constructed book." --Bruce Lawrence, Duke...

As the racial and ethnic minority populations of the United States grow past 30 percent, candidates cannot afford to ignore the minority vote. The studies collected in Diversity and Democracy show that political scientists, too, must fully recognize the significance of minority-representation studies for our understanding of the electoral process in general.

If anything has limited such inquiry in the past, it has been the tendency for researchers to address only a single group or problem, yielding little that can be applied to other contexts. Diversity in Democracy avoids this...

The recent revival of democracy across much of the globe, and the fragility of many of the new regimes, has inspired renewed interest in the origins of dictatorship and democracy in modern times. Assembling renowned specialists on Eastern and Western Europe, the U.S., Latin America and Japan, The Social Construction of Democracy explores the reasons for the success and failure of democracies over the past 100 years. With its sharp portraits of nations on four continents, George Reid Andrews and Herrick Chapman shed light on the historical process by which state institutions and...

As the principles and practices of democracy continue to spread ever more widely, it is hard to imagine a corner of the globe into which they will not eventually penetrate. But the euphoria of democratic revolutions is typically short-lived, and usually followed by disgruntlement and even cynicism about the actual operation of democratic institutions. It is widely accepted that democracy is a good thing. However democrats have much work to do in improving the performance of democratic institutions.

The essays in this volume focus on this difficult and vital challenge: how can we...