Accelerating Democracy
Author: John O. McGinnis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 0691151024
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Explains how politicians and citizens can use technology to enhance American democracy.
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Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time
Author: William E. Scheuerman
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2020-06-09
Total Pages: 311
ISBN-13: 1421440490
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"A fine contribution to the literature on the problems of modern liberal democracy."—Choice The pace of American society has quickened exponentially since the Founding Fathers first mapped the constitution. Information travels at the speed of light; so does money. We can hop from one side of the country to the other in a matter of hours, contact our elected officials instantaneously, and share our views with thousands of people at the touch of a button. Both academia and the popular media have grappled with the consequences of this acceleration on every aspect of contemporary life. Most pressing, however, may be its impact on political life. In Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time, William Scheuerman offers a sophisticated assessment of the implications of social and technological celerity in the operation of liberal democracies. Specifically, he asks what is acceleration's main impact on the traditional liberal democratic model of the separation of powers? According to Scheuerman, high speed has created an imbalance. The executive branch was intended to react with dispatch; by contrast, legislatures and the courts were designed to be more deliberate and thoughtful. While this system of checks and balances was effective in the age of horse and buggy, Scheuerman argues that the very features that were these institutions' strengths may now be a liability. Throughout this book, Scheuerman offers a constructive critique which articulates ways in which "liberal democracy might be recalibrated in accordance with the tempo of modern society.
Empires of Speed
Author: Robert Hassan
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2009-06-02
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9004186859
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Explaining and comparing the rise and effects of the 'empires' of clock time and 'network time', Empires of Speed argues with power and clarity that our network society is hurtling fast through a volatile present into an increasingly precarious future.
How Democracies Die
Author: Steven Levitsky
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2019-01-08
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 1524762946
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Empires of Speed
Author: Robert Hassan
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 263
ISBN-13: 9004175903
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The beginning of the 21st century is witnessing the emergence of a social, political and technological revolution in networked computing. We now live in a networked society, but it functions and develops at such an accelerating rate that it becomes increasingly difficult to adequately understand the nature of this radical society. "Empires of Speed" is the first book to analyse the far-reaching transformations of speed-filled everyday life. In a compelling study Hassan shows that we are leaving behind a modern world based upon the time of the clock, and are entering a new and volatile phase where an accelerating network time poses fundamental economic and political challenges in our postmodern world, challenges we barely comprehend and are thus woefully unprepared for.
Laboratories Against Democracy
Author: Jacob Grumbach
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2023-08-15
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0691218463
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the price Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy. Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments into the engines of American policymaking. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. The consequences don’t stop there, however. Drawing on a wealth of new data on state policy, public opinion, money in politics, and democratic performance, Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself. Required reading for this precarious moment in our politics, Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today’s state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time—or accelerating them.
The Politics of Speed
Author: Simon Glezos
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-03-01
Total Pages: 247
ISBN-13: 1136642625
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Everyone agrees that the world is accelerating. With advances in communication, transportation and information processing technologies, it is clear that the pace of events in global politics is speeding up at an alarming rate. The implications of this new speed however, continue to be a significant source of debate. Will acceleration lead to a more interconnected, productive, peaceful, and humane world; or a nightmarish descent into ecological devastation, economic exploitation and increasingly violent warfare? The Politics of Speed attempts to map the contours of the new global space of speed, and investigates key issue areas – including democratic governance, warfare, capitalism, globalization and transnational activism – to uncover the ways in which acceleration is shaping the world. The book uses contemporary political theory (especially the works of Deleuze and Guattari) to develop an ontological account of speed, showing how its effects are frequently far more complex and surprising than we might expect. The result is an attempt to craft a way of engaging with global acceleration that might help avoid the dangers of speed, while embracing the possibilities it provides us with to produce a safer, more egalitarian, democratic and pluralistic world.
Democracy, Federalism, the European Revolution, and Global Governance
Author: Andrea Bosco
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2020-06-10
Total Pages: 436
ISBN-13: 1527554457
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The European Union is facing today the greatest crisis since its creation. Brexit could mean not only the reversal of its steady enlargement—from 6 to 28 member states—but also the beginning of an inexorable decline leading to its disintegration. However, few today seem to recollect that it was precisely the British who were the first to promulgate the political culture which inspired the European Union’s construction—democracy and federalism—and the first who tried to realise, in June 1940, a European federation on the basis of an Anglo-French union. This volume traces the fundamental stages of the European unification process, placing it in relation to the wider process of world economic and political integration. In particular, it analyses the historical significance of the European Revolution, which is identified in the overcoming of the nation state—namely the modern political formula which institutionalised the political division of mankind—and the birth of the first truly international state. The universal historical significance of the European Revolution lies in its exportability—as for the other great European revolutions—and, therefore, its potential as progressively extensible to all the states of the planet. Europe was indeed the first region of the world where the barriers between national states fell, and a post-national political identity emerged, complementary to national political identities. It is, in fact, in the context of the European Union that democracy beyond the borders of the nation state has first been realized, constituting a guiding principle for global governance.
Democracy and Political Ignorance
Author: Ilya Somin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2016-06-15
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 0804799350
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. The second edition of Democracy and Political Ignorance fully updates its analysis to include new and vital discussions on the implications of the "Big Sort" for politics, the link between political ignorance and the disproportionate political influence of the wealthy, assessment of proposed new strategies for increasing political knowledge, and up-to-date survey data on political ignorance during recent elections. Ilya Somin mines the depths of the current state of ignorance in America and reveals it as a major problem for democracy. He weighs various options for solving this problem, provocatively arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. People make better decisions when they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information—and to use it wisely.
Smart Villages
Author: V. I. Lakshmanan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2021-06-25
Total Pages: 511
ISBN-13: 303068458X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book brings together technical expertise, best practices, case studies and ground-level application of the ideas for empowering the rural population of the world to live economically prosperous, environmentally sustainable, and socially progressive lives, on par or comparable with the quality of life enjoyed by the global urban population. The idea of Smart Villages takes on greater urgency in light of the investments made in this millennium on “Smart Cities”, taking advantage of the technological advances, particularly in digital connectivity. These investments have and will continue to expand the urban-rural divide, unless similar investments are made in the villages as well. The book provides a much-needed guide for a holistic development of a Smart Village, by defining the need, developing the framework, and describing the delivery, complete with successful case studies. Contributors to the book, from Canada, USA, Africa and India bring years of academic, industry and governmental experience, including organization of several Smart Village conferences. The knowledge base in the book will be of great value to anyone interested in or active in rural planning, including governmental and non-governmental organizations, industrial solution providers, public healthcare professionals, public policy professionals and students, as well as rural communities around the world. Consolidates all the aspects of creating/developing a Smart Village; Delivers an effective tool-kit for practitioners in the area of Smart Villages; Provides a policy-based framework for the development of an ideal Smart Village; Illustrates, through case studies, the fulfillment of key requirements of a Smart Village; Brings together experts from around the world to share their vision of a Smart Village; Highlights the importance of balancing development with social/gender equity and cultural traditions.
