How Democracies Die

How Democracies Die
Author: Steven Levitsky
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1524762946

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

Democracies at War

Democracies at War
Author: Dan Reiter
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400824451

Why do democracies win wars? This is a critical question in the study of international relations, as a traditional view--expressed most famously by Alexis de Tocqueville--has been that democracies are inferior in crafting foreign policy and fighting wars. In Democracies at War, the first major study of its kind, Dan Reiter and Allan Stam come to a very different conclusion. Democracies tend to win the wars they fight--specifically, about eighty percent of the time. Complementing their wide-ranging case-study analysis, the authors apply innovative statistical tests and new hypotheses. In unusually clear prose, they pinpoint two reasons for democracies' success at war. First, as elected leaders understand that losing a war can spell domestic political backlash, democracies start only those wars they are likely to win. Secondly, the emphasis on individuality within democratic societies means that their soldiers fight with greater initiative and superior leadership. Surprisingly, Reiter and Stam find that it is neither economic muscle nor bandwagoning between democratic powers that enables democracies to win wars. They also show that, given societal consent, democracies are willing to initiate wars of empire or genocide. On the whole, they find, democracies' dependence on public consent makes for more, rather than less, effective foreign policy. Taking a fresh approach to a question that has long merited such a study, this book yields crucial insights on security policy, the causes of war, and the interplay between domestic politics and international relations.

Contemporary Democracies

Contemporary Democracies
Author: G. Bingham POWELL
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674042352

Why do some democracies succeed while others fail? In seeking an answer to this classic problem, G. Bingham Powell, Jr., examines the record of voter participation, government stability, and violence in 29 democracies during the 1960s and 1970s. The core of the book and its most distinguishing feature is the treatment of the role of political parties in mobilizing citizens and containing violence.

Democracies Divided

Democracies Divided
Author: Thomas Carothers
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 081573722X

“A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of contemporary democracies.”—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes—in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book’s editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world’s democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.

Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures

Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures
Author: Majia Nadesan
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2022-09-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0128227974

Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures explores how our dominant carbon and nuclear energy assemblages shape conceptions of participation, risk, and in/securities, and how they might be reengineered to deliver justice and democratic participation in transitioning energy systems. Chapters assess the economies, geographies and politics of current and future energy landscapes, exposing how dominant assemblages (composed of technologies, strategies, knowledge and authorities) change our understanding of security and risk, and how they these shared understandings are often enacted uncritically in policy. Contributors address integral relationships across the production and government of material and human energies and the opportunities for sustainable and democratic governance. In addition, the book explores how interest groups advance idealized energy futures and energy imaginaries. The work delves into the role that states, market organizations and civil society play in envisioned energy change. It assesses how risks and security are formulated in relation to economics, politics, ecology, and human health. It concludes by integrating the relationships between alternative energies and governance strategies, including issues of centralization and decentralization, suggesting approaches to engineer democracy into decision-making about energy assemblages. Explores descriptive and normative relationships between energy and democracy Reviews how changing energy demand and governance threaten democracies and democratic institutions Identifies what participative energy transformations look like when paired with energy security Reviews what happens to social, economic and political infrastructures in the process of achieving sustainable and democratic transitions

Comparing Democracies

Comparing Democracies
Author: Lawrence LeDuc
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2014-04-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1473905087

This book provides you with a theoretical and comparative understanding of the major topics related to elections and voting behaviour. It explores important work taking place on new areas, whilst at the same time covering the key themes that you’ll encounter throughout your studies. Edited by three leading figures in the field, the new edition brings together an impressive range of contributors and draws on a range of cases and examples from across the world. It now includes: New chapters on authoritarian elections and regime change, and electoral integrity A chapter dedicated to voting behaviour Increased emphasis on issues relating to the economy. Comparing Democracies, Fourth Edition will remain a must-read for students and lecturers of elections and voting behaviour, comparative politics, parties, and democracy.

The Democracy Advantage

The Democracy Advantage
Author: Morton H. Halperin
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780415950527

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Fragile Democracies

Fragile Democracies
Author: Samuel Issacharoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2015-06-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107038707

This book examines how constitutional courts can support weak democratic states in the wake of societal division and authoritarian regimes.

Imagined Democracies

Imagined Democracies
Author: Yaron Ezrahi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139577069

This book proposes a revisionist approach to democratic politics. Yaron Ezrahi focuses on the creative unconscious collective imagination that generates ever-changing visions of legitimate power and authority, which compete for enactment and institutionalization in the political arena. If, in the past, political authority was grounded in fictions such as the divine right of kings, the laws of nature, historical determinism and scientism, today the space of democratic politics is filled with multiple alternative social imaginaries of the desirable political order. Exposure to electronic mass media has made contemporary democratic publics more aware that credible popular fictions have greater impact on shaping our political realities than do rational social choices or moral arguments. The pressing political question in contemporary democracy is, therefore, how to select and enact political fictions that promote peace and how to found the political order on checks and balances between alternative political imaginaries of freedom and justice.

Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America

Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America
Author: Scott Mainwaring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2014-01-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107433630

This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors - the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism - to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.