Parliamentary theory, practices, discourses and institutions constitute a distinctively European contribution to modern politics. Taking a broad historical perspective, this cross-disciplinary, innovative and rigorous collection locates the essence of parliamentarism in four key…
"Democracy in the 21st century has failed to live up to its promise. It is widely noted that democratic governments have grown increasingly detached from the governed and incapable of standing up to the powerful economic interests that tend to dominate everyday life. Indeed, the…
"This book is the first to report the results of a large-scale survey-research project, the East Asian Barometer, in which eight research teams conducted national-sample surveys in five new democracies (Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mongolia), one established dem…
"Today, democracy is the world's only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In [this book], James Miller, author of the classic history of 1960s protest "Democracy Is in the Streets", offers a…
"Ancient Greece first coined the concept of "democracy," yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker--from Plato and Aristotle onwards--were ambivalent or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation is quite simple: the elite perceived majority power as tantamount to…
Based on a new data-set covering 29 European and neighboring countries, this volume shows how, Europeans view and evaluate democracy: what are their conceptions of democracy, how do they assess the quality of democracy in their own country, and to what extent do they consider th…
Many observers of Western democracies - from Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-first Century to proponents of campaign finance reform in the United States - have lamented the rise of plutocracy, claiming that putatively democratic, capitalist societies are moving ever clos…
Deliberative democracy puts communication and talk at the centre of democracy. This text takes a fresh look at the foundations of the field, and develops new applications in areas ranging from citizen participation to the democratization of authoritarian states to the global sys…
"Richard Tuck traces the history of the distinction between sovereignty and government and its relevance to the development of democratic thought. Tuck shows that this was a central issue in the political debates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and provides a new in…
Representation
by Brito Vieira, Mónica, Runciman, David
fromKey concepts (Polity Press)
What is representation? What does it mean when a politician represents citizens in government? These are just some of the questions which will be answered by David Runciman and Mónica Brito Vieira as they explain why representation should be understood as one of the key concepts…
Presidents and democracy in Latin America
This new textbook provides students with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the presidents and presidential leadership in Latin America. Unlike other texts, Presidents and Democracy in Latin America integrates both political analysis and major theoretical perspective…
"Do political leaders determine whether a polity will receive a democratic future or not? Research and advocates of democracy agree on the significance of political elites for democratization, yet there is a need for a more specific understanding of their role. This book develop…
"'Democratization' is a concept often used in academic book titles, yet not many of them deal with the initial breakthrough of democratization. This research companion presents an alternative view to the widespread assumption that Western democracies should be the normative refe…
This book examines in the context of South Asia, four inter related dimensions that constitute the central policy challenges of our time: consolidating democracy, confronting violent extremism, overcoming mass poverty, and addressing the challenge of climate change. These dimens…
