Compare any two political maps, one from the early twentieth century and one from the present, and you will notice that the world now contains more democracies than it used to. How and why did democracy spread around the world? How do we recognize democracies when we see them? And what does the future of democracy look like? This book shows you how to define and measure democracy, and to identify what democracies have in common. It evaluates important recent trends in democratization and the challenges that face it including: - Democratic decay - Populism, authoritarianism and the far right - Threats posed by global terrorism and sectarian violence - The rise of 'illiberal democracies' - Declining civic participation. Analysing economic development, education, industrialization and other factors, Democratization shows you the internal political, economic and social conditions that help or hinder democratization. Looking at globalization, political aid, military intervention and the 'neighbourhood'-effect, it also explains how external factors put pressure on democratic reform. Covering key theories, such as modernization and democratic peace theory, and with case studies from Indonesia to the Zapatista movement, this is the ideal text for those studying democratization for the first time.

This book explores the dynamics and trajectories of change in international politics through an English School analysis of primary institutions including international law, sovereignty and diplomacy, with particular reference to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The study argues that it serves as an important indicator and model for redefining international politics, particularly through its impact upon three major institutions as prescribed by the English School: international law, sovereignty and diplomacy. The author explores three major areas: the ICC's contribution to the consolidation of the individual as a subject of the international law; the significance of the Court and its jurisdiction in terms of the state sovereignty; and the strong and determinative role of non-state actors active on global level during the diplomatic process upheld for the making of the norms and rules during the creation of the ICC. These three fields of change, point out to the redefinition and reconstruction of international politics, heralding a solidarist vision of international society. The book will be of particular interest to researchers in the field of the IR, as well as graduate students interested in IR theory, international law, and international organizations.

In this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, An American Dilemma, refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks.

The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal--a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. An American Dilemma is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused.

When it first appeared An American Dilemma was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in The American Sociological Review. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States.

This book, first published in 1970, examines the thesis that demonstrations are becoming an integral an integral part of the democratic way of life. It analyses the conditions under which some demonstrations become violent and explores ways in which the incidence of such violence can be greatly reduced. It discusses the necessity for governmental responsiveness to legitimate, articulated needs; and looks at the degree of responsiveness required if demonstrations are to remain peaceful.

"An excellent analysis of the complex dynamics of inclusion in post-conflict societies: theoretically grounded, empirically rich, and with a well-informed set of policy-relevant insights and recommendations with implications far beyond the cases of Kosovo and Northern Ireland."Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham, UK "Does the promotion of political accommodation between the contending parties in an ethno-nationalist conflict disadvantage other groups in society? This important question is at the heart of Michael Potter's nuanced study of post-settlement parliaments in Kosovo and Northern Ireland, in which he probes their record of representativeness, focusing on gender and ethnicity. His meticulous research, drawing on extensive fieldwork, shows that the domination of the parliaments by parties aligned to the conflict does indeed tend to marginalise other identities. His findings provide plenty of food for thought for practitioners in the field of conflict resolution. In particular, they underline the need for care in the design of institutional arrangements for deeply divided societies, so as to minimise potentially negative consequences that priority for accommodation and reconciliation may have for other issues and for the practice of inclusion."Adrian Guelke, Queen's University Belfast, UK "Identity is a central organising principle of politics in the 21st century. In this impressive book Michael Potter shows that a focus on gender and minority ethnic identities in newly-formed post-conflict assemblies provides a unique litmus test of the robustness of democratic politics. He analyses the cases of Kosovo and Northern Ireland with rigour and considerable insight. This book makes a highly original and lasting contribution to theory and practice in post-conflict settings world-wide."Yvonne Galligan, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland This book examines inclusion in post-conflict legislatures, using Northern Ireland and Kosovo as case studies and gender and minority ethnicity as indicators. The analysis uses an adapted framework developed by Yvonne Galligan and Sara Clavero to measure inclusion across a range of factors associated with deliberative democratic principles. The logic is that political systems designed to accommodate communities in conflict will prioritise certain identities over others. The aim of the book is to investigate how identities not directly associated with a conflict fare in a political system designed to manage identities in conflict. The book looks comparatively at the conflicts in Kosovo and Northern Ireland, then discusses approaches to conflict management, describing how political institutions were designed in those contexts. The themes of women and minority identities in those conflicts are then explored with a view to examining the extent of inclusion in the Northern Ireland and Kosovo Assemblies.

"Representative Bureaucracy and Performance: Public Service Transformation in South Africa is a first-rate blend of quantitative and qualitative analysis of one of the major transitions in modern governance. Fernandez makes a major theoretical contribution to the literature on representative bureaucracy in demonstrating how descriptive representation translates into both active representation and better performance. His discussion of the crucial role of language and communication brings new insight to the literature on public administration and democracy."-Kenneth Meier, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, American University "This study of public sector transformation goes beyond the descriptive qualitative research largely found in South African public administration historiography by undertaking sophisticated quantitative analysis to show that representation of previously historically disadvantaged groups, under certain circumstances, can improve the performance of public organizations. This is an excellent contribution, not only to public administration scholarship in South Africa, but also to the sparse literature on public organizations in developing countries. The book should be of great value to scholars and practitioners of public administration, as well as to students of political science and organizational studies."-Robert Cameron, Professor, University of Cape Town "This book provides an excellent analysis of the theory of representative bureaucracy in the context of South African post-apartheid government. South Africa is an important and fascinating case. The work adds substantially to the literature on representative bureaucracy and will be of interest to all who are concerned with the effectiveness of government organizations."-J. Edward Kellough, Professor, University of Georgia Governments throughout the world seek to promote employment equity and ensure that bureaucracies are representative of the citizenry. South Africa offers a rare and fascinating case for exploring what happens to bureaucracies as they undergo demographic transformation. Grounded in the theory of representative bureaucracy and using a mixed methods approach, this book explores how major changes in the demographics of the South African public service have affected the performance of the institution. The empirical analysis offers compelling evidence that representative bureaucracies perform better. As public organizations become increasingly representative by hiring historically disadvantaged persons, especially Africans, their performance improves, controlling for a range of factors. Evidence indicates representative bureaucracies perform better because they empathize with and advocate for historically disadvantaged communities, are equipped with linguistic and cultural competencies to serve a diverse citizenry, and can induce compliance, cooperation, and coproduction.

Rainer Bauboeck is the world's leading theorist of transnational citizenship. He opens this volume with a question that is crucial to our thinking on citizenship in the twenty-first century: who has a claim to be included in a democratic political community? Bauboeck's answer addresses the major theoretical and practical issues of the forms of citizenship and access to citizenship in different types of polity, the specification and justification of rights of non-citizen immigrants as well as non-resident citizens, and the conditions under which norms governing citizenship can legitimately vary. This argument is challenged and developed in responses by Joseph Carens, David Miller, Iseult Honohan, Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, David Owen and Peter J. Spiro. In the concluding chapter, Bauboeck replies to his critics. -- .

This book analyses the reform movement in Iran and the Egyptian opposition movement since the early 1990s in their historical contexts. It argues that the contemporary movements seen on the streets of the regions today represent the culmination of over twenty years of mobilisation by social movements.

In this study, an audit of British compliance with international human rights standards is carried out. The book identifies 44 violations and 19 near violations. It provides an up-to-date description of law and practice with respect of freedom of information, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and public protest, freedom of association and trade unionism, state surveillance, the right to life and liberty, and the right to vote and stand in elections. This study looks at both the political and legal aspects of political freedom in the UK. It measures political freedom specifically against international standards and provides the "Human Rights Index" - a system for measuring political rights which may be used to monitor legislation in the UK from 1997 or in any country in the rest of the world.

The rise of populism, Donald Trump's election and the result of the EU referendum in the UK have been widely interpreted as a rejection of the post-war liberal order - the manifestation of a desire to undermine the political system that people feel has let them down. Yet mainstream politicians and analysts have been slow to grasp the changing situation, instead relying on a rhetoric of 'hard data' and narrow economic arguments while failing to properly engage with the politics of identity. This book argues that the relationship between methodology and politics is now more important than ever - that politics, if it is anything, is about engaging with people's interpretations and narratives of the world in which they find themselves. Politics in this new 'post-truth' era will require an appreciation of the fact we live in an uncertain world of endless diversity and potential for change. This thoughtful book addresses how we might think about and do politics in these strange new times. -- .

The euphoria and promise that accompanied the Arab Spring has been replaced with a business-as-usual tone in the MENA. Revolutionary shifts in political and religious power have been tempered and, in some cases, reversed. Observers should not be surprised at these outcomes, but skeptics would be advised to remain attentive to regional factors that continue to present potentials for reform. This volume examines a variety of such factors as mediators of MENA political reform, including: Islam, political party and government relations, regime type, elite influence, and Internet access. By providing both a broad review of the relevant literatures and a flexible assessment of the region's political prospects in the post-Spring period, the volume leverages insights from a series of regional experts and political analysts to offer a useful contribution to the continuing work of reform by MENA scholars, policymakers, and the general public.

This 1998 book provides a sophisticated alternative to existing accounts of the role of the intellectual in modern democracy. Arguing that society suffers from a systemic deliberation deficit, Jeffrey Goldfarb explores the potential of the intellectual as democratic agent, at once civilizing political contestation and subverting complacent consensus. The sentimental Leftist view of the intellectual as guardian of democracy and the demonising Rightist view of the intellectual as obstructor of progress, are both shown to be flawed. Instead, intellectuals are portrayed as special kinds of 'strangers' who pay careful attention to their critical faculties, equipping them uniquely to address the most pressing issues of today. Professor Goldfarb deploys classical and contemporary social theory to analyse a diverse set of intellectuals in action, from Socrates in fifth-century Athens to Malcolm X and Toni Morrison in twentieth-century America, and, drawing on personal acquaintance, the political dissidents in Communist and post-Communist Central Europe.

Building a Social Democracy offers an alternative intellectual history of American pragmatism, one that tries to reclaim the middle of the twentieth century in order to push neo-pragmatism beyond its philosophical limitations. Danisch argues that the major entailment of the invention of American pragmatism at the beginning of the twentieth century is that rhetorical practices are the rightful object of study and means of improving democratic life. Pragmatism entails a commitment to rhetoric. Rhetorical pragmatism is intended to be more faithful to the project of first generation pragmatism, to offer insight into the ways in which rhetoric operates in contemporary democratic cultures, to recommend practices, methods, and modes of action for improving contemporary democratic cultures, and to subordinate philosophy to rhetoric by reimagining appropriate ways for pragmatist scholarship and social research to advance.

Democratic Ideals and the Politization of Nature introduces the feral citizen as a response to a perceived need to revitalize the disruptive, critical, and exploratory nature of democratic culture. By learning from the traditions of aimless walking and by embracing a consciously feral method of political engagement, radically-democratic citizens can prompt political moments that create conditions where the primacy of the political can be performed, realized and defended. Ultimately, this book seeks not to solve the problems and paradoxes of democracy but to assist in unleashing and celebrating them. Garside concludes that using the methodology of feral citizenship - inspired by environmentalism and democratic articulation - to reprioritize the political within the green public sphere, citizens can reclaim necessary (and welcome) tensions between representations of nature and political citizenship.

This book asks whether sovereignty can guarantee international equality by exploring the discourses of sovereignty and their reliance on the notions of civilisation and savagery in two historical colonial encounters: the French explorations of Canada in the 16th century and the domestic troubles linked to the Wars of Religion. Presenting the concept of 'civilised sovereignty', Mathieu reveals the interplay between the domestic and external claims to sovereignty, and offers a dynamic analysis of the theory and practice of the concept. Based on extensive archival research, this book provides an in-depth intellectual picture of the theory and practice of sovereignty in early modern France by focusing on the discourses deployed by French political theorists. Mathieu applies performativity in order to denaturalise these discourses of statehood and reveals how the domestic and international constructions of sovereignty feed into one another and equally rely on appeals to civilisation and savagery. Overall, the book questions the 'myth of sovereignty as equality' and reflects on the persistence of this association despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that it institutes international hierarchies and inequalities. Representing a major intervention in the existing IR debates about sovereignty, this book will be a valuable resource for researchers working on issues of sovereignty and equality in IR.

, The papers in this collection, written by a cross-regional group of experts, provide insights into the causes of declining levels of citizen participation and other distinct forms of civic activism in Europe and explore a range of factors contributing to apathy and eventually disengagement from vital political processes and institutions. At the same time, this volume examines informal or unconventional types of civic engagement and political participation corresponding to the rapid advances in culture, technology and social networking. The volume is divided into three interrelated parts: Part I consists of critical essays in the form of theoretical approaches to analysing weakening political participation and citizen estrangement; Part II is dedicated to an exploration of the role and deployment of technologically advanced media, such as the internet, as determinants of changing patterns of political participationist behaviour. Finally, Part III presents findings of empirical research on the issue of political participation. Combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, the book contributes towards a better understanding of the disquieting trend of voter apathy and disenchantment with politics in the context of the ongoing process of European integration, and offers a variety of analytical tools for decoding both the emergence of alternative conceptualizations of citizenship and other forms of meaningful civic and political engagement.

When the PRI fell from power in the elections of 2000, scholars looked for an explanation. Some focused on international pressures, while others pointed to recent electoral reforms. In contrast, Dolores Trevizo argues that a more complete explanation takes much earlier democratizing changes in civil society into account. Her book explores how largely rural protest movements laid the groundwork for liberalization of the electoral arena and the consolidation of support for two opposition parties, the PAN on the right and the PRD on the left, that eventually mounted a serious challenge to the PRI. She shows how youth radicalized by the 1968 showdown between the state and students in Mexico City joined forces with peasant militants in nonviolent rural protest to help bring about needed reform in the political system. In response to this political effervescence in the countryside, agribusinessmen organized in peak associations that functioned like a radical social movement. Their countermovement formulated the ideology of neoliberalism, and they were ultimately successful in mobilizing support for the PAN. Together, social movements and the opposition parties nurtured by them contributed to Mexico's transformation from a one-party state into a real electoral democracy nearly a hundred years after the Revolution.

This book analyses Brexit in the larger context of the crisis in liberal democracies and the continuing rise of 'nationalism'. With electoral verdicts favouring right-wing populists across the world, the volume argues that Brexit has become a key event in understanding global political currents, as well as emerging as a watershed moment in the current political climate. The author focuses on the underlying currents that shaped the Brexit vote and delineates the various strands of arguments that inform the current political climate. The volume also locates the deepening divide within the discourse and understanding of democracy, as well the abysmally low level of rhetoric informing the debates around it. Further, it links this up with other 'nationalist' waves across the world, including South Asia. A nuanced reading of a key event, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, especially political theory, political sociology and history.

Based on in-depth studies of the relationship between expertise and democracy in Europe, this book presents a new approach to how the un-elected can be made safe for democracy. It addresses the challenge of reconciling modern governments' need for knowledge with the demand for democratic legitimacy. Knowledge-based decision-making is indispensable to modern democracies. This book establishes a public reason model of legitimacy and clarifies the conditions under which unelected bodies can be deemed legitimate as they are called upon to handle pandemics, financial crises, climate change and migration flows. Expert bodies are seeking neither re-election nor popularity, they can speak truth to power as well as to the citizenry at large. They are unelected, yet they wield power. How could they possibly be legitimate? This book is of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, governance, and more broadly to political and administrative science as well as the Science Technology Studies (STS).

This book examines the complex relationship between the state and civil society and the impact that this has had on democratization processes in Nigeria from colonial times to the present. Expanding notions of democracy, the author builds a theoretical understanding of civil society to show how it can be both antithetical to and an ally of the state in the struggle for democratization. Combining the neo-Gramscian framework with discursive perspectives from Habermas and Foucault, the book takes a dialectical approach that traces the incarnations of the state and civil society and relates the mutual connections of the two spaces. This book will be of interest to scholars of African politics, democratization and civil society.

Based on in-depth studies of the relationship between expertise and democracy in Europe, this book presents a new approach to how the un-elected can be made safe for democracy. It addresses the challenge of reconciling modern governments' need for knowledge with the demand for democratic legitimacy. Knowledge-based decision-making is indispensable to modern democracies. This book establishes a public reason model of legitimacy and clarifies the conditions under which unelected bodies can be deemed legitimate as they are called upon to handle pandemics, financial crises, climate change and migration flows. Expert bodies are seeking neither re-election nor popularity, they can speak truth to power as well as to the citizenry at large. They are unelected, yet they wield power. How could they possibly be legitimate? This book is of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, governance, and more broadly to political and administrative science as well as the Science Technology Studies (STS).

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analyzing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives. Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

This is a book about the role of culture in social change and the transition to democracy of post-Franco Spain. Since General Franco's death in 1975, Spanish political life has seen an extraordinarily quiescent "period of consensus," unique in its own history. Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to this "strategy of consensus" and institutionalization of democracy, and uncovers the processes of symbolization and ritualization that characterize it.

The concept of democracy is fraught with ambiguity. There are none who know what democracy means, where it came from or indeed where it is going despite it being the system of governance that is most widely heralded for its modernity and promotion of equality. For example, the theory and principles that underpin democracy are unimaginably complicated while its institutions across time and space are contradictory. The stark reality is that democracy is imprisoned by parochialism, subjectivity and myopia with humanity being governed by a system that is does not fully understand. If democracy is everywhere and everyone wants it, then how do we not know what it means? If we do not know what democracy means, then why is it forcefully driving our politics and societies? This extremely ambitious and illuminating book offers a way out by answering these important questions and by exploring democracy in its purest form and as such has been nominated for the 2013 Stein Rokkan Prize.
Evolutionary Basic Democracy has been nominated for the 2013 Stein Rokkan prize. This extrememly presitgious award is presented by the International Social Science Council, The University of Bergen and the European Consortium for Political Research. For more details please click the link below.
http: //www.worldsocialscience.org/?page_id=78