If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities - Hardcover

Benjamin Barber

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 030016467X ISBN 13: 9780300164671

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2013

Synopsis

In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time - climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns and people - the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big, too interdependent, too divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy's best hope, today democratically dysfunctional? Obsolete? The answer, says Benjamin Barber in this highly provocative and original book, is yes. Cities and the mayors who run them can do and are doing a better job. Barber cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. Featuring profiles of a dozen mayors around the world - courageous, eccentric, or both at once - If Mayors Ruled the World presents a compelling new vision of governance for the coming century. Barber makes a persuasive case that the city is democracy's best hope in a globalizing world, and great mayors are already proving that this is so.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin R. Barber is senior research scholar at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. He is also president and founder of the Interdependence Movement and the author of seventeen books, including Jihad vs. McWorld and Strong Democracy. He lives in New York City.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030016467X
• ISBN 13: 9780300164671
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256