Reinventing Democracy (Political Quarterly Monograph Series) - Softcover

Hirst, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631202633 ISBN 13: 9780631202639

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 1996

Synopsis

Democracy is everywhere praised and aspired to as a political system. Yet in established democracies people feel dissatisfied with existing institutions and the levels of accountability they offer. This book explores the ways in which democracy in national states, local government and social institutions can be renewed and extended.

About this title

Review

"It will... make as interesting reading during the next election campaign as it did during the last." Alan Scott, University of East Anglia

"Its Britishness does not make this a parochial text. It raises issues for all (post?) social democratic parties and for the constitution of the European Union." Alan Scott, University of East Anglia

From the Back Cover

The current triumph of democracy has also brought to the fore its great vulnerability. There is rising dissatisfaction with the existing institutions of British democracy, and with the scope and degree of accountability they offer. This is reflected in declining levels of participation and falling party recruitment, but also in the emergence of a striking critical consensus across the political spectrum about the ills of democracy in Britain.

This collection of specially commissioned essays addresses this paradox, and sets out both to further the diagnosis and to suggest remedies to the difficulties which democracy faces in Britain. Unusually, it balances a commitment to expanding the imaginative boundaries of our thinking about democracy with a determination to offer quite practical suggestions for reforming existing institutions and practices. The essays deal wit the depletion of the powers of local government and the rise of quongos ; with the erosion of democratic control by managerial and accounting techniques and the challenges to accountability posed by the new information technologies; with the economic limits to democracy, and the need to improve the accountability of both companies and associations within civil society, with the relationship between national democracy and the governance of the European Union; and with the shifting content of the idea of democracy.

Written by distinguished academics, journalists, politicians and activists, this volume brings together a wide range of perspectives, all of them directed towards the task of reinventing the unsettlingly simple idea of democracy for a world which is becoming increasingly complex. It will appeal to all those concerned with British politics today, as well as those interested in the future of democracy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0631202633
• ISBN 13: 9780631202639
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144