Democracy's Meanings

Democracy's Meanings PDF

Author: Nicholas T. Davis

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0472220381

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Democracy’s Meanings challenges conventional wisdom regarding how the public thinks about and evaluates democracy. Mining both political theory and more than 75 years of public opinion data, the book argues that Americans think about democracy in ways that go beyond voting or elected representation. Instead, citizens have rich and substantive views about the material conditions that democracy should produce, which draw from their beliefs about equality, fairness, and justice. The authors construct a typology of views about democracy. Procedural views of democracy take a minimalistic quality. While voting and fair treatment are important to this vision of democracy, ideas about equality are mostly limited to civil liberties. In contrast, social views of democracy incorporate both civil and economic equality; according to people with these views, democracy ought to meet the basic social and material needs of citizens. Complementing these two groups are moderate and indifferent views about democracy. While moderate views sit somewhere in between procedural and social perspectives regarding the role of democracy in producing social and economic equality, indifferent views of democracy involve disaffection toward it. For a small group of apathetic citizens, democracy is an ambiguous and ill-defined concept.

Democracy in Translation

Democracy in Translation PDF

Author: Frederic Charles Schaffer

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1501718398

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Frederic C. Schaffer challenges the assumption often made by American scholars that democracy has been achieved in foreign countries when criteria such as free elections are met. Elections, he argues, often have cultural underpinnings that are invisible to outsiders. To examine grassroots understandings of democratic institutions and political concepts, Schaffer conducted fieldwork in Senegal, a mostly Islamic and agrarian country with a long history of electoral politics. Schaffer discovered that ideas of "demokaraasi" held by Wolof-speakers often reflect concerns about collective security. Many Senegalese see voting as less a matter of choosing leaders than of reinforcing community ties that may be called upon in times of crisis.By looking carefully at language, Schaffer demonstrates that institutional arrangements do not necessarily carry the same meaning in different cultural contexts. Democracy in Translation asks how social scientists should investigate the functioning of democratic institutions in cultures dissimilar from their own, and raises larger issues about the nature of democracy, the universality of democratic ideals, and the practice of cross-cultural research.

Understandings of Democracy

Understandings of Democracy PDF

Author: Jie Lu

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0197570402

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"Democracy is popular and still enjoys in supremacy in contemporary political discourse with limited challenges from alternatives. Meanwhile, it has also been acknowledged that democracy is in crisis. However, if most people love democracy and politicians have to live with democracy, how can democracy be in trouble? This book examines this puzzling phenomenon. Theoretically, this book argues that (1) people hold distinct understandings of democracy; (2) popular conceptions of democracy are significantly shaped by socioeconomic and political contexts; (3) such varying conceptions generate different baselines for people to assess democratic practices and to establish their views of democracy; and (4) such distinct conceptions also drive political participation in different ways. Overall, popular understandings of democracy have critically shaped how citizens respond to authoritarian or populist practices in contemporary politics. Using new survey instruments embedded in the Global Barometer Surveys (GBS), this book highlights the significance and essentialness of how people assess the tradeoffs between key democratic principles and instrumental gains when they conceptualize democracy for comparative research on popular understandings of democracy. Furthermore, weaving together GBS II survey data from 72 societies and survey experiments, this book scrutinizes some key micro-dynamics that drive people's critical political attitudes and behaviors, which are centered on how people understand democracy in different ways. Overall, this book theorizes and demonstrates that, as a critical but under-appreciated component of the demand-side dynamics, varying conceptions of democracy offer significant explanatory power for understanding why democracy is in trouble, even when most people profess to love democracy"--

Patterns of Democracy

Patterns of Democracy PDF

Author: Arend Lijphart

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0300189125

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Examining 36 democracies from 1945 to 2010, this text arrives at conclusions about what type of democracy works best. It demonstrates that consensual systems stimulate economic growth, control inflation and unemployment, and limit budget deficits.

Understanding Democratic Politics

Understanding Democratic Politics PDF

Author: Roland Axtmann

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2003-02-17

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1847871003

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This textbook is designed for first-time students of politics. It provides an ideal introduction and survey to the key themes and issues central to the study of democratic politics today. The text is structured around three major parts: concepts, institutions and political behaviour; and ideologies and movements. Within each section a series of short and accessible chapters serve to both introduce the key ideas, institutional forms and ideological conflicts central to the study of democratic politics and provide a platform for further, in-depth studies. Each chapter contains a ′bullet-point′ summary, a guide to further reading, and a set of questions for tutorial discussion. Designed and written for an undergraduate readership, Understanding Democratic Politics: An Introduction will become an essential guide and companion to all students of politics throughout their university degree.

Democracy and Its Alternatives

Democracy and Its Alternatives PDF

Author: Richard Rose

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 1998-10-16

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780801860386

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The collapse of Communism has created the opportunity for democracy to spread from Prague to the Baltic and Black Seas. But the alternatives—dictatorship or totalitarian rule—are more in keeping with the traditions of Central Europe. And for many post-Communist societies, democracy has come to be associated with inflation, unemployment, crime, and corruption. Is it still true, then, as Winston Churchill suggested a half-century ago, that people will accept democracy with all its faults—because it is better than anything else? To find out, political scientists Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Christian Haerpfer examine evidence from post-Communist societies in eastern Europe. Drawing on data from public opinion and exit polls, election results, and interviews, the authors present testable hypotheses regarding regime change, consolidation, and prospects for stabilization. The authors point out that the abrupt transition to democracy in post-Communist countries is normal; gradual evolution in the Anglo-American way is the exception to the rule. While most recent books on democratization focus on Latin America and, to some extent, Asia, the present volume offers a unique look at the process currently under way in nine eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Despite the many problems these post-Communist societies are experiencing in making the transition to a more open and democratic polity, the authors conclude that a little democracy is better than no democracy at all.

The Decline and Rise of Democracy

The Decline and Rise of Democracy PDF

Author: David Stasavage

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0691228973

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"Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer--democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Delving into the prevalence of early democracy throughout the world, David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished--and when and why they declined--can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future."--

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