This volume offers a broad exploration of the cultural history of democracy in the Renaissance. The Renaissance has rarely been considered an important moment in the history of democracy. Nonetheless, as this volume shows, this period may be seen as a "democratic laboratory" in many, often unexpected, ways. The classicizing cultural movement known as humanism, which spread throughout Europe and beyond in this period, had the effect of vastly enhancing knowledge of the classical democratic and republican traditions. Greek history and philosophy, including the story of Athenian democracy, became fully known in the West for the first time in the postclassical world. Partly as a result of this, the period from 1400 to 1650 witnessed rich and historically important debates on some of the enduring political issues at the heart of democratic culture: issues of sovereignty, of liberty, of citizenship, of the common good, of the place of religion in government. At the same time, the introduction of printing, and the emergence of a flourishing, proto-journalistic news culture, laid the basis for something that recognizably anticipates the modern "public sphere." The expansion of transnational and transcontinental exchange, in what has been called the "age of encounters," gave a new urgency to discussions of religious and ethnic diversity. Gender, too, was a matter of intense debate in this period, as was, specifically, the question of women's relation to political agency and power. This volume explores these developments in ten chapters devoted to the notions of sovereignty, liberty, and the "common good"; the relation of state and household; religion and political obligation; gender and citizenship; ethnicity, diversity, and nationalism; democratic crises and civil resistance; international relations; and the development of news culture. It makes a pressing case for a fresh understanding of modern democracy's deep roots.

This volume surveys the burst of political imagination that created multiple Enlightenment cultures in an era widely understood as an age of democratic revolutions. Enlightenment as precursor to liberal democratic modernity was once secular catechism for generations of readers. Yet democracy did not elicit much enthusiasm among contemporaries, while democracy as a political system remained virtually nonexistent through much of the period. If seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ideas did underwrite the democracies of succeeding centuries, they were often inheritances from monarchical governments that had encouraged plural structures of power competition. But in revolutions across France, Britain, and North America, the republican integration of constitutional principle and popular will established rational hope for public happiness. Nevertheless, the tragic clashes of principle and will in fraught revolutionary projects were also democratic legacies. Each chapter focuses on a distinct theme: sovereignty; liberty and the rule of law; the "common good"; economic and social democracy; religion and the principles of political obligation; citizenship and gender; ethnicity, race, and nationalism; democratic crises, revolutions, and civil resistance; international relations; and the transformations of sovereignty-a synoptic survey of the cultural entanglements of "enlightenment" and "democracy."

This volume surveys democracy broadly as a cultural phenomenon operating in different ways across a very wide range of societies in the nineteenth-century world. In the long nineteenth century, democracy evolved from a contested, maligned conception of government with little concrete expression at the level of the state, to a term widely associated with good governance throughout the diverse political cultures of the Atlantic world and beyond. The geographical scope and public range of discussions about the meaning of democracy in this era were unprecedented in comparison to previous centuries. These lively debates involved fundamental questions about human nature, and encompassed subjects ranging from the scope of the people who would participate in self-government to the importance of social and economic issues. For these reasons, the nineteenth century has proven the formative century in the modern history of democracy. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: sovereignty; liberty and the rule of law; the "common good"; economic and social democracy; religion and the principles of political obligation; citizenship and gender; ethnicity, race, and nationalism; democratic crises, revolutions, and civil resistance; international relations; and beyond the polis. These ten different approaches to democracy in the nineteenth century add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.

This volume explores democracy in the 20th century, examining the triumph, crises, recovery, and resilience of democracy and its associated cultures in this period. From 1920 democracy became the hegemonic discourse in political cultures, to the extent that even its enemies claimed its legacy. The end of empires ushered in an unprecedented globalization of democratic aspirations. Barriers of gender and race were gradually removed, and greater equality gave new meaning to citizenship. Yet, already in 1922 democracy was on its back foot with the rise of fascism. Even after the latter's defeat in 1945, liberal democracy died wherever communist democracy triumphed. The situation changed again from 1989, but democratic hubris was then checked by the rise of a new enemy-populism. The paradox is that the century of democracy's triumph was also that of its near final defeat, while the peace and stability that everybody desired and many expected as the outcome of the extension of democracy were, at best, intermittent and geographically limited. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: sovereignty; liberty and the rule of law; the "common good"; economic and social democracy; religion and the principles of political obligation; citizenship and gender; ethnicity, race, and nationalism; democratic crises, revolutions, and civil resistance; international relations; and democratic politics beyond the polis. These ten different approaches to democracy since 1920 offer a global, synoptic, and probing exploration of the subject.

This book examines electoral politics in the state of Punjab, India as it has evolved since the colonial period. It underlines the emergence of the state as a singular unit for electoral analysis in the last three decades. This book: Charts the common trends and developments that have dominated politics in Punjab, and those that continue to play an important role in the government of the state; Examines state parties and their leadership in the context of party alliances, campaigns and electoral verdicts; Presents a comparative study of the assembly and Lok Sabha elections held in the state after reorganisation in 1966 with the objective of highlighting differences in electoral issues taken up by the parties. An important intervention in the study of state-level politics in India, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of politics, especially comparative politics and political institutions, political sociology and social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

This book analyses the political transition in West Bengal, India, which witnessed longest democratically elected Left regime of the world. It examines and compares micro-dynamics of political practices in India and delineates underlying political themes of state politics. The author explores the politics of land reform and the anti-land-acquisition movements which were critical points in the contemporary history of Bengal in independent India. The volume further delves into the caste and communal politics which had been latent until the Left Front's loss in the state, as well as the what sets apart politics in West Bengal from other Indian states. Based on thorough ethnographic research, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian studies, politics and political processes, sociology and social anthropology.

This book focuses on the hidden but ever-present civil society dimension of the EU's policies towards Turkey and uncovers the pitfall of EU-Turkey relations. It establishes the growing depoliticization of Turkish civil society (in contrast to what the EU's policies aimed for) and engages with the questions of why and how Turkish civil society depoliticized. It discusses how Turkey's retreating democracy, and the intense polarization in Turkish political and social life make rights-based activism more difficult. Finally, this book investigates what implications Turkish civil society's depoliticization bears for EU-Turkey relations, reveals the diminishing leverage of the EU's policies and discusses how this reflects on Turkey's already closing civic space. It explains why and how EU-Turkey relations deteriorated over the last decade, examines the current stalemate, and discusses why civil society matters. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students in the field of EU-Turkey relations, Turkish studies and civil society studies as well as more broadly to NGOs, European studies and politics, and International Relations.

This book reconstructs and explains the arms relationship that successive U.S. administrations developed with the Shah of Iran between 1950 and 1979. This relationship has generally been neglected in the extant literature leading to a series of omissions and distortions in the historical record. By detailing how and why Iran transitioned from a primitive military aid recipient in the 1950s to America's primary military credit customer in the late 1960s and 1970s, this book provides a detailed and original contribution to the understanding of a key Cold War episode in U.S. foreign policy. By drawing on extensive declassified documents from more than 10 archives, the investigation demonstrates not only the importance of the arms relationship but also how it reflected, and contributed to, the wider evolution of U.S.-Iranian relations from a position of Iranian client state dependency to a situation where the U.S. became heavily leveraged to the Shah for protection of the Gulf and beyond - until the policy met its disastrous end in 1979 as an antithetical regime took power in Iran. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East studies, US Foreign Policy and Security studies and for those seeking better foundations for which to gain an understanding of U.S. foreign policy in the final decade of the Cold War, and beyond.

Presenting Regional insights (authors from Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand) on Cutting edge issues and development in Asian political development. Providing insightful typolocial analysis with case studies among Asian countries. Reflecting over western modality of democratic development with regional features. Appealing in Asian studies with topical focus on democratization.

Fully updated new edition, focusing on countries where the religion-state nexus is of particular importance. Explores the constantly evolving relationship between religion and democracy, and problematizes the findings in light of developments during the last decade. Adds a new qualitative approach to the first edition's quantitative approach, providing a mixed methodology and nuanced analysis of the religion/democracy relationship. Explores how religion is used instrumentally by political leaders - both democratically elected and authoritarian ones - in different parts of the world; particularly topical at the moment.

Provides a clear and concise overview of public policymaking, designed to equip citizens to participate more effectively in the policymaking process. Includes information on new modes of public policymaking participation, impediments to participation, and the role of whistleblowers as part of bureaucratic responsibility. Offers all-new case studies throughout the book on topics of interest to students and citizens alike, such as the policy response to COVID-19, George Floyd and police reform, homelessness, and the Affordable Care Act. Student projects are offered throughout the text, along with a glossary, and extensive coverage on Project Citizen, a format that provides students with hands-on tools for participating in the policymaking process. May be used in introductory courses on public policy, internships, or service-learning programs, but it equally serves as an invaluable resource for any organized effort to involve citizens in community service and the exercise of civic responsibility.

- Excellent synthesis of the period's history from a progressive point of view - Incorporates huge amounts of new scholarship - Written in a sprightly and accessible style that will engage students and the general reader alike - Contemporary relevance will make the book attractive to faculty and students, as well as the more general reader

Iris Marion Young (1949-2006) was one of the most influential and innovative political theorists of her generation who had a significant impact on a wide range of topics such as democratic theory, feminist theory, and justice. She bridged many longstanding divides among political theorists, engaging in Continental and critical theory, but also insisting on the importance of normative argument: her corpus stands as a testament to the fruitfulness of engaging in both abstract theory and the 'real world' of everyday politics. This volume spans the several decades of her work, illustrating her intellectual development over time through three major areas of innovation: Gender: Maintaining that gender is both conceptually and politically meaningful, Young theorized gender in terms of structures that, in combination, position different people we call "women" in different ways, such that some women have some structures in common, without all women sharing all gendered structures in common. Justice: Young's early writings on a critical theory of justice evolved in her later and posthumously published works where she developed an account of justice that brought together her theorization of structure with her concern to respond to contemporary claims of injustice. The Politics of Difference: Young rejected universal and abstract theories of justice and maintained that justice instead required attending to the experiences of people marked by difference. This volume will prove useful to scholars and students working in the fields of critical and political theory, feminist theory, international law and public diplomacy.

This volume examines to what extent the positive atmosphere created by the Helsinki Accords contributed to the change in political circumstances seen in the countries of Central Europe, under Soviet domination. It focuses in particular on - firstly - a consequent new impetus to bolster human rights in international politics, as Western democracies - especially the US - integrated human rights concerns into its foreign policy relations with Soviet Bloc countries and - secondly - how this Western embrace of human rights seemed to create new incentives for increased dissident activity in Central and Eastern Europe and from 1976 onward. Finally, the book reminds us of the significant role of the Helsinki Accords in developing democratic practices in Eastern European societies under Soviet domination in 1975-1989 and in creating the conditions for the peaceful transition to democratic government in the years that followed. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of the history of communism, post-Soviet, Russian, and central and East European politics, the history of human rights, and democratization.

Agonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers. Paxton then delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen's perfectionist agonism, Mouffe's adversarial agonism and William Connolly and James Tully's inclusive agonism. She demonstrates how each is fundamental to enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further. By discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, this book provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory.

Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, this book analyses the politics of memory. Since the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, memory politics in Serbia has undergone drastic changes in the way in which the Second World War and its aftermath is understood and interpreted. The glorification and romanticisation of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, more commonly referred to as the Chetnik movement, has become the central theme of Serbia's memory politics during this period. The book traces their construction as a national antifascist movement equal to the communist-led Partisans and as victims of communism, showing the parallel justification and denial of their wartime activities of collaboration and mass atrocities. The multifaceted approach of this book combines a diachronic perspective that illuminates the continuities and ruptures of narratives, actors and practices, with in-depth analysis of contemporary Serbia, rooted in ethnographic fieldwork and exploring multiple levels of memory work and their interactions. It will appeal to students and academics working on contemporary history of the region, memory studies, sociology, public history, transitional justice, human rights and Southeast and East European Studies.

With the rise of both populist parties and social movements in Europe, the role of emotions in politics has once again become key to political debates, and particularly in the Spanish case. Since 2011, the Spanish political landscape has been redrawn. What started as the Indignados movement has now transformed into the party Podemos, which claims to address important deficits in popular representation. By creating space for emotions, the movement and the party have made this a key feature of their political subjectivity. Emotions and affect, however, are often viewed as either purely instrumental to political goals or completely detached from 'real' politics. This book argues that the hierarchy between the rational and the emotional works to sediment exclusionary practices in politics, deeming some forms of political expressions more worthy than others. Using radical theories of democracy, Emmy Eklundh masterfully tackles this problem and constructs an analytical framework based on the concept of visceral ties, which sees emotions and affect as constitutive of any collective identity. She later demonstrates empirically, using both ethnographic method and social media analysis, how the movement Indignados is different from the political party Podemos with regards to emotions and affect, but that both are suffering from a broader devaluation of emotional expressions in political life. Bridging social and political theory, Emotions, Protest, Democracy: Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain provides one of the few in-depth accounts of the transition from the movement Indignados to party Podemos, and the role of emotions in contemporary Spanish and European politics.

This book is a study of the complex relationship between Britain and Europe from the Second World War to the present day. Drawing on first-hand experience of British and European politics, the author highlights not only the dramatically shifting power play between London and Brussels but also the EU's own struggle to come to terms with its federal mission. He traces the important constitutional events that have fashioned the EU, of which the Brexit process is an outstanding example. The author proposes a number of constitutional reforms which, if carried through, would form the basis of a new entente between the EU and the UK. Both polities will profit from stronger democratic government of a federal type. The author advocates spanning the divide between NATO and the EU. He proposes installing a new class of affiliate EU membership, which may be useful for the whole European neighbourhood, including the UK. Featuring the history, present and future of Britain's relationship with the European Union, the book will be of worldwide interest to students and practitioners of European integration, as well as diplomats and journalists. It is the first comprehensive manifesto for the future of Europe and Britain since Brexit.

This book examines Egypt's turbulent and contradictory political period (2011-2015) as key to understanding contemporary politics in the country and the developments in the Arab region after the mass protests in 2010/11, more broadly. In doing so, it breaks new ground in the study of political representation, providing analytical innovation to the study of disenchantment with politics, democracy fatigue and social cohesion. Based on five years of intense fieldwork, the author provides rare insights into local and national ideas on politics, justice and identity, and on how people situate themselves and Egypt in the regional and global context. It analyzes how the creation of an alternate, political system was discussed and negotiated among the Egyptian population, the military, the government, public figures, the media, and international actors, and yet nevertheless today, Egypt has a new political regime that is the most repressive in the countries' modern history. Finally, it recalls the emotions and perceptions of individuals and collectives and interlinks these local perspectives to national events and developments through time. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of democratization and authoritarianism, Middle East Studies, political representation and informality, collective action, and more broadly to cultural studies and international relations.

How do we prevent the next pandemic? Will governments successfully tackle climate change? Will they find ways to close the gap between the haves and have-nots and to eliminate poverty? Which solution - democratic or authoritarian - will determine the global governance of a f lawed nation-state system? This unique contribution to global studies advances a multidisciplinary theory that the governments of all human societies are the tenuous outcome of the competing solutions to the Imperatives of Order, Welfare, and Legitimacy (OWL). The OWL paradigm provides a common framework to evaluate the contrasting responses of the liberal democratic, Chinese, and Russian solutions to global governance. Underscored is the volume's contention that global governance is the overriding issue confronting nation-states and the diverse and divided peoples of what is now a global society for the first time in the evolution of the species. The volume addresses a wide spectrum of audiences, united in their shared resolve that the democracies prevail in a projected century-long struggle between democratic and authoritarian regimes to determine global governance. Scholars, teachers, students, elected officials, policy analysts, media professionals, and engaged citizens who make self-government work will profit from this visionary and provocative study.

This book examines Islam's relationship to democratization in the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives. It explores how and why an electoral democracy based in a constitution that has many liberal features but also Islam-based limitations, especially lack of religious freedom, emerged in the country by 2009. In doing so, the book interrogates a major approach to Muslim politics that assumes reformist interpretations of Islam are a positive, and even a necessary, force for liberalization and democratization in Muslim-majority contexts. This book shows reformist Islam did play certain positive roles in democratization in the Maldives. However, the book suggests reformist Islam may not be an invariably uncontroversial force in the space of politics. It argues that modern nation building in the Maldives shaped by political actors with reformist Islamic orientations, since around the 1930s, has also completely transformed Islam as a modern institutional and discursive political religion. These transformations of Islam as a modern political religion have existed as path-dependent constraints on the depth of democratization, ensuring religion-based limitations and intensifying controversy over religion vis-a-vis the state and individual rights. An original empirical contribution towards a better understanding of Islam and politics in the Maldives, this book will be of interest to academics and students working on democracy, and Islam in particular, and in the fields of political science and area studies, especially South Asian politics.

Offering the first in-depth analysis of the relationship between populism and political meritocracy, this book asks why states with meritocratic systems such as Singapore and China have not faced the populist challenge to the extent that liberal-democratic states have. Is political meritocracy immune to populism? Or does it fan its flames? Exploring this puzzle, the authors argue that political meritocracies are simultaneously immune and susceptible to populism. The book maintains that political meritocracy's focus on the intellect, social skills, and most importantly virtue of political leaders can reduce the likelihood of populist actors rising to power; that meritocracy's promise of upward mobility for the masses can work against elitism; and that rule by the 'meritorious' can help avoid crises, diminishing the political opening for populism. However, it also shows that meritocracy does little to eliminate grievances around political, cultural, and social inequality, instead entrenching a hierarchy - an allegedly 'just' one. The book ultimately argues that the more established the system of political meritocracy becomes, the more it opens the door to populist resentment and revolt. Pitched primarily to scholars and postgraduate students in political theory, comparative politics, Asian studies, and political sociology, this book fills an important scholarly gap.

Autocracies not only resist the global spread of democracy but are sources of autocratic influence and pressure. This book presents a conceptual model to understand, assess, and explain the promotion and diffusion of authoritarian elements. Employing a cross-regional approach, leading experts empirically test the concept of authoritarian gravity centers (AGCs), defined as "regimes that constitute a force of attraction and contagion for countries in geopolitical proximity." With an analysis extending across Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Asia, these AGCs are shown to be effective as active promoters (push) or as neutral sources of attraction (pull). The authors contend that the influence of exogenous factors, along with international and regional contexts for the transformation of regime types, is vital to understanding and analyzing the transmission of autocratic institutional settings, ideas, norms, procedures, and practices, thus explaining the regional clustering of autocracies. It is the regional context in which external actors can influence authoritarian processes most effectively. Authoritarian Gravity Centers is a vibrant and comprehensive contribution to the growing field of autocratization, which will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of comparative area studies, illiberalism, international politics, and studies of democracy.

The volume sheds light on the backsliding process of Turkish democratization from the early 2010's until 2018. In addition to historical contextualization, the book analyzes data collected through a nationally representative survey of Turkish voters during the 2018 elections and data available by the Supreme Election Board (YSK) in a pre-and post-election panel design. A more centralized administration of elections that are directly under the control of the central government brought reliability of election results as well as the free and fair nature of the elections in question. Mobilization efforts of the parties, as well as the varying degree of influence of the economy, appear to have simultaneously influential over the vote choices. Yet another factor of potency in shaping the vote choices was the longer-term effects of ideology, conservative values, and hence the party identification. Through the 2018 elections in Turkey, the book provides an excellent glimpse into the dynamics of Turkish politics, society and culture. Targeting students and scholars of Middle Eastern and North African politics, the book is a key resource for any readers interested in the political developments of Turkey, comparative politics, and voting behavior.

Exploring NATO's post-Cold War determination to support democracy abroad, this book addresses the alliance's adaptation to the new illiberal backlashes in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and Afghanistan after the alleged 'return of history'. The book engages the question of what has driven NATO to pursue democratisation in face of the significant region-specific challenges and what can explain policy expansion or retrenchment over time. Explaining NATO's adaptation from the perspective of power dynamics that push for international change and historical experience that informs grand strategy allows wider inferences not only about democratisation as a foreign policy strategy but also about the nature of the transatlantic alliance and its relations with a mostly illiberal environment. Larsen offers a theoretical conception of NATO as a patchwork of one hegemonic and several great power interests that converge or diverge in the formulation of common policy, as opposed to NATO as a community of universal values. This volume will appeal to researchers of transatlantic relations, NATO's functional and geographical expansion, hegemony and great power politics, democracy promotion, lessons of the past, (Neoclassical) Realism, alliance theory, and the crisis of the liberal world order.