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Democracy - A World History (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,577
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Democracy - A World History (Hardcover)
Series: New Oxford World History
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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At a moment when the term "Democracy " is evoked to express
inchoate aspirations for peace and social change or particular
governmental systems that may or may not benefit more than a select
minority of the population, this book examines attempts from
ancient Mesopotemia to the democratic movements of the early
twenty-first century to sustain and improve their own lives and
those of outsiders who have migrated into territory they regard as
their own. Democratic activists have formed organizations to
regulate the distribution of water, to restore the environment, and
to assure that they and their children will have a future. They
have organized their relations with deities and those who held
secular power, and they have created particular institutions that
they hoped would help them shape a good, free, and creative life
for themselves and those who follow. They have also created laws
and representative bodies to serve their needs on a regular basis
and have written about the difficulties those they have elected to
office have maintaining their ties to those who brought them to
power in the first place. Since early times, proponents of direct
or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders
of representative institutions that claim singular power over
democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim
the initiative to define what democracy should mean and who should
manage it. Frequently people in small communities, trade unions,
repressed, exploited, or denigrated racial, religious, political,
or sexual groups have marched forward using the language of
democracy to find space for themselves and their ideas at the
center of political life. Sometimes they have re-interpreted the
old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and
institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the
major issues of their time. Whatever conclusions they come to, they
are only temporary since changing times require new solutions,
assuring that democracy can only survive as a continuous process.
As such and as a system of beliefs, democracy has many flaws. But
looking cross-culturally and trans-historically, it still seems
like democracy still holds promise for improving the lives of all
the world's people.
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