Democracy Theory

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Global Discontents by Noam Chomsky, read by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian. Global Discontents is an essential guide to geopolitics and how to fight back, from the world's leading public intellectual. What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? How are the discontents kindled today likely to blaze and explode tomorrow?

South African politics is riddled with delusions. Many common political arguments come pre-packaged in an old and dusty box - but the self-evident truths are not, in fact, so indisputable. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh sets out to dismantle that box. He argues that free education is far from impossible, the ANC's liberation narrative is too idyllic to swallow, land reform is not the first step to chaos, and the media is not free....

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power.

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 Can Democracy Work? James Miller, the author of the classic history of 1960s protest Democracy Is in the Streets, offers a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present. As he shows, democracy has always been rife with inner tensions.

In this short accessible book, leading democratic theorist Jason Brennan guides listeners through the evolution of the concept of democracy and actual democratic practice over time to help them understand the foundations of this longstanding and yet newly fragile political system. In his wide-ranging tour of the concept, Brennan will examine what democracy meant to the Greeks who first developed the concept before examining how it changed throughout European and later Western history.

How did such a major international public service media network become intensely politicized by government allies in such a short time, despite having its editorial independence protected by law? Capturing News, Capturing Democracy puts these events in historical and international context-and develops a new analytical framework for understanding government capture and its connection to broader processes of democratic backsliding.

Americans live in a liberal democracy. Yet, although democracy is widely touted today, liberalism is scorned by both the right and the left. The United States stands poised between its liberal democratic tradition and the illiberal alternatives of liberalism's critics. John McGowan argues that Americans should think twice before jettisoning the liberalism that guided American politics from James Madison to the New Deal and the Great Society.

Channeling his 20 years of experience on the issue, Daniel Miller takes the listener through the historical and cultural foundations of Texit, as well as its impact on mainstream politics, and plainly lays out the grievances expressed by many Texans that drive their support for an independent Texas. Texit also addresses the most common objections by using facts and sheds light on what a future Republic of Texas could look like.

Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace.

No political concept is more used, and misused, than that of democracy. Nearly every regime today claims to be democratic, but not all "democracies" allow free politics, and free politics existed long before democratic franchises. This book is a short account of the history of the doctrine and practice of democracy, from ancient Greece and Rome through the American, French, and Russian revolutions, and of the usages and practices associated with it in the modern world.

Figura central de la transición a la democracia en nuestro país y dirigente de la izquierda mexicana, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, en este nuevo libro, hace una revisión histórica y crítica del proceso revolucionario iniciado en 1910.

People on the right are furious. People on the left are livid. And the center isn't holding. There is only one thing on which almost everyone agrees: there is something very wrong in Washington. The country is being run by pollsters. Few politicians are able to win the voters' trust. Blame abounds and personal responsibility is nowhere to be found. There is a cynicism in Washington that appalls those in every state, red or blue.

In An Uncivil War, Washington Post journalist Greg Sargent vividly lifts the curtain on the nightmare dynamic that is transforming American politics into little more than a naked power struggle. Yet An Uncivil War is not only a thorough dissection of an ultimately immoral system, but a handbook for turning that around by restoring authentic democracy. Given the incredibly high stakes in 2018 and 2020, Sargent’s book could not be more essential.

La crisis económica ha acelerado el ritmo de los cambios políticos en todo el mundo: mayor imprevisibilidad electoral, regresiones autoritarias, surgimiento de nuevos partidos, dificultades para formar gobierno o aumento de las tensiones territoriales, todas ellas cuestiones al orden del día. Esta aceleración ha hecho que cada vez haya ganado más espacio en el debate público una figura hasta ahora ignorada: el politólogo.

Control of the country is up for grabs - and Republicans have been rigging the game in their favor. Twenty-two states have passed restrictions on voting. Ruthless gerrymandering has given the GOP a long-term grip on Congress. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, boosting candidates backed by big money. It would be worrying enough if these were just schemes for partisan advantage. But the reality is even more disturbing.

As AI and robotics eliminate jobs across the spectrum, governmental revenues will plummet while the debt increases dramatically. This crisis of limited resources on all levels - underfunded or nonexistent pensions, health problems, lack of savings, and job destruction without comparable job creation - will drive many into homelessness and produce a dramatic rise in violence as we fight over shrinking resources.

How should we "fix" digital technologies to support democracy instead of undermining it? In Designing for Democracy, Jennifer Forestal argues that accurately evaluating the democratic potential of digital spaces means studying how the built environment - a primary component of our "modern public square" - structures our activity, shapes our attitudes, and supports the kinds of relationships and behaviors democracy requires.

Behind every financial crisis lurks a "political bubble" - policy biases that foster market behaviors leading to financial instability. Rather than tilting against risky behavior, political bubbles - arising from a potent combination of beliefs, institutions, and interests - aid, abet, and amplify risk.

When Jeff Weaver hopped in a car with Bernie Sanders in the summer of 1986, he had no idea the Vermont backroads would lead them all the way to the 2016 presidential campaign. In How Bernie Won, Weaver shows listeners how Bernie built a movement that would sweep America and inspire millions. He vowed not to run a negative campaign. He would focus on policies, not personalities. He would not be beholden to big money. He would actually make America great. Weaver also shows how they overcame significant challenges.

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States.