Living under Post-Democracy

Living under Post-Democracy PDF

Author: Caleb R. Miller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-28

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1000034909

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When money equates to power and the system is rigged in favor of wealthy elites, why do we still pretend we are living in a democracy? In Living under Post-Democracy, Caleb R. Miller challenges us to admit what we already know: that most of us are effectively powerless over the political decisions that govern our lives. Instead, we should embrace a 'post-democratic' view of politics, one which recognizes the way in which our political institutions fail—both systematically and historically—to live up to our democratic ideals, while also acknowledging our tragic, yet enduring attachment to them both. Offering a new framework for conceptualizing contemporary citizenship, Miller explores how a post-democratic perspective can help us begin to reorient ourselves in our paradoxical, fractured political landscape. This model of citizenship opens the possibility for a distinctly post-democratic approach to both political participation and political philosophy, treating them not as ways of affecting politics, but as opportunities for therapeutically engaging with the ongoing challenges and inevitable frustrations of post-democratic life. This book is an excellent addition to courses on democratic theory, as well as introductory courses to political theory.

Post-Democracy

Post-Democracy PDF

Author: Colin Crouch

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2004-08-13

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9780745633152

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Post-Democracy is a polemical work that goes beyond current complaints about the failings of our democracy and explores the deeper social and economic forces that account for the current malaise. Colin Crouch argues that the decline of those social classes which had made possible an active and critical mass politics has combined with the rise of global capitalism to produce a self-referential political class more concerned with forging links with wealthy business interests than with pursuing political programmes which meet the concerns of ordinary people. He shows how, in some respects, politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century returns us to a world familiar well before the start of the twentieth, when politics was a game played among elites. However, Crouch maintains that the experience of the twentieth century remains salient and it reminds us of possibilities for the revival of politics. This engaging book will prove challenging to all those who claim that advanced societies have reached a virtual best of all possible democratic worlds, and will be compelling reading for anyone interested in the shape of twenty-first-century politics.

Post-Democracy After the Crises

Post-Democracy After the Crises PDF

Author: Colin Crouch

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 1509541586

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In Post-Democracy (Polity, 2004) Colin Crouch argued that behind the façade of strong institutions, democracy in many advanced societies was being hollowed out, its big events becoming empty rituals as power passed increasingly to circles of wealthy business elites and an ever-more isolated political class. Crouch’s provocative argument has in many ways been vindicated by recent events, but these have also highlighted some weaknesses of the original thesis and shown that the situation today is even worse. The global financial deregulation that was the jewel in the crown of wealthy elite lobbying brought us the financial crisis and helped stimulate xenophobic movements which no longer accept the priority of institutions that safeguard democracy, like the rule of law. The rise of social media has enabled a handful of very rich individuals and institutions to target vast numbers of messages at citizens, giving a false impression of debate that is really stage-managed from a small number of concealed sources. Crouch evaluates the implications of these and other developments for his original thesis, arguing that while much of his thesis remains sound, he had under-estimated the value of institutions which are vital to the support of a democratic order. He also confronts the challenge of populists who seem to echo the complaints of Post-Democracy but whose pessimistic nostalgia brings an anti-democratic brew of hatred, exclusion and violence.

Surviving Autocracy

Surviving Autocracy PDF

Author: Masha Gessen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0593332245

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“When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

Virtual Politics

Virtual Politics PDF

Author: Andrew Wilson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780300095456

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States like Russia and Ukraine may not have gone back to totalitarianism or the traditional authoritarian formula of stuffing the ballot box, cowing the population and imprisoning the opposition - or not obviously. But a whole industry of 'political technology' has developed instead, with shadowy private firms and government 'fixers' on lucrative contracts dedicated to the black arts of organizing electoral success. This book uncovers the sophisticated techniques of the 'virtual' political system used to legitimize post-Soviet regimes; entire fake parties, phantom political rivals and 'scarecrow' opponents. And it exposes the paramount role of the mass media in projecting these creations and in falsifying the entire political process. Wilson argues that it is not primarily economic problems that have made it so difficult to develop meaningful democracy in the former Soviet world. Although the West also has its 'spin doctors', dirty tricks, and aggressive ad campaigns, it is the unique post-Bolshevik culture of 'political technology' that is the main obstacle to better governance in the region, to real popular participation in public affairs, and to the modernization of the political economy in the longer term.

Living in Democracy

Living in Democracy PDF

Author: Rolf Gollob

Publisher: Council of Europe

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9789287163325

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This is a manual for teachers in Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC) and Human Rights Education (HRE), EDC/HRE textbook editors and curriculum developers. Nine teaching units of approximately four lessons each focus on key concepts of EDC/HRE. The lesson plans give step-by-step instructions and include student handouts and background information for teachers. In this way, the manual is suited for trainees or beginners in the teaching profession and teachers who are receiving in-service teacher training in EDC/HRE. The complete manual provides a full school year's curriculum for lower secondary classes, but as each unit is also complete in itself, the manual allows great flexibility in use. The objective of EDC/HRE is the active citizen who is willing and able to participate in the democratic community. Therefore EDC/HRE strongly emphasize action and task-based learning.

After the Revolution

After the Revolution PDF

Author: Jessica Greenberg

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-05-07

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0804791171

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What happens to student activism once mass protests have disappeared from view, and youth no longer embody the political frustrations and hopes of a nation? After the Revolution chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of the recent revolution in Serbia. Greenberg's narrative highlights the stories of young student activists as they seek to define their role and articulate a new form of legitimate political activity, post-socialism. When student activists in Serbia helped topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000, they unexpectedly found that the post-revolutionary period brought even greater problems. How do you actually live and practice democracy in the wake of war and the shadow of a recent revolution? How do young Serbians attempt to translate the energy and excitement generated by wide scale mobilization into the slow work of building democratic institutions? Greenberg navigates through the ranks of student organizations as they transition their activism from the streets back into the halls of the university. In exploring the everyday practices of student activists—their triumphs and frustrations—After the Revolution argues that disappointment is not a failure of democracy but a fundamental feature of how people live and practice it. This fascinating book develops a critical vocabulary for the social life of disappointment with the aim of helping citizens, scholars, and policymakers worldwide escape the trap of framing new democracies as doomed to failure.

Life after Privacy

Life after Privacy PDF

Author: Firmin DeBrabander

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-08

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1108491367

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Privacy, which digital citizens eagerly relinquish, is not so essential to the health and welfare of democracy after all.

What Universities Owe Democracy

What Universities Owe Democracy PDF

Author: Ronald J. Daniels

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2021-10-05

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1421442698

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Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.

Coping with Post-democracy

Coping with Post-democracy PDF

Author: Colin Crouch

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13:

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Argues that the democratic movement has passed, and that, in the West, we are moving into a post-democratic age where power becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a professionalized, political elite. Also shows how our opportunities for participating in public life have diminished.