Edge of Now: New Questions for Democracy in the - Softcover

Howell, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330482092 ISBN 13: 9780330482097

Publisher: Pan Books, 2001

Synopsis

In the face of new technologies and globalisation, this book raises the key questions for democracy in the new millennium.Politics, in the new millennium, will continue to revolve around the outdated theories and unreliable statistics of economics. Yet, new insights from the worlds of science and biology, combined with the realities of a privatised world order, have changed governmental and political processes forever. David Howell's unique insight gives the inside story on how politics will evolve.

About this title

From the Publisher:

An important and timely publication
This is a book about the challenges of globalism and new technology by the man behind one of the key concepts of recent times - privatization. Politics in the new millenium will continue to revolve around economics, and economics continues to rely on time-expired theories about how individuals and economies behave and on ever more unreliable statistics. New insights from the worlds of science and biology, combined with the new realities of a privatised world order, have changed forever the way governments need to govern and politicians to seek and retain power. This book raises the key questions for democracy in the new millenium.

The idea of privatising public assets, and of unravelling the state's domain was the great heresy of the 1960s and 1970s. In turn, it became, as heresies do, the new orthodoxy. Now Howell, one of the key architects of the concept of privatisation, turns to new ideas and new heresies. Could they be the orthodoxies of the globalisation age?

From the Author:

A NEW POINT has been reached in the globalisation debate
It is just beginning to dawn on policy makers the world over that the globalisation process, and the rise of networking power, together create vast, and entirely new and unfamiliar, problems of governance. Major challenges are posed for nation-state Governments which they show little sign as yet of understanding or being able to handle.

On one side the globalisation trend drains power away to remote international and supranational institutions, creating a crisis of democracy and legitimacy, and arousing deep fears which are just beginning to surface.

On the other side, the rise of the internet and the world-wide communications web, drains power downwards from the state, bringing liberalisation and empowerment, but also the narrowest and most selfish of mini-nationalisms which threaten to shatter the compromises and alliances on which the state depends and the civic order rests.

The political task is neither to surrender to these forces nor try to suppress them. The former spells anarchy, the latter is no longer possible. There is no going back.

So what is left for Governments and the nation state?

What, if any, are the new systems and frameworks, if any, in which policy makers and those who seek to govern societies must now operate?

My arguement is that, far from the day of the nation state being over, it becomes more vital than ever in the new network world now emerging. But the tasks of governing nations have now to be radically re-defined.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0330482092
• ISBN 13: 9780330482097
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416