Author: Pratap Bhanu Mehta Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited ISBN: 9387326446 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 100
Book Description
After nearly seven decades of its existence, there is a pervasive feeling that India's democracy is in crisis. But what is the nature of this threat? In this essay, republished now with a new foreword from the author, Pratap Bhanu Mehtareminds us what a bold experiment bringing democracy to a largely illiterate and unpropertied India was. He argues that the sphere of politics has truly created opportunities for people to participate in society. Looking at various facts, he also finds that persistent social inequality on the one hand and a mistaken view of the state's proper function and organization on the other have modified and hindered the workings of democracy and its effects in innumerable ways. Posting the quest for self-respect as democracy's deepest aspiration, this essay explores how inequality and the crisis of accountability have together impeded collective action to achieve such an end. To recover this sense of moral well-being and responsibility, Mehta suggests, is the core of the democratic challenge before us. Optimistic, lively and closely argued, The Burden of Democracy offers a new ideological imagination that throws light on our discontents. By returning to the basics of democracy it serves to illuminate our predicament, even while perceiving the broad contours for change.
Author: Rutherford H. Platt Publisher: Island Press ISBN: 1610912632 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
In recent years, the number of presidential declarations of “major disasters” has skyrocketed. Such declarations make stricken areas eligible for federal emergency relief funds that greatly reduce their costs. But is federalizing the costs of disasters helping to lighten the overall burden of disasters or is it making matters worse? Does it remove incentives for individuals and local communities to take measures to protect themselves? Are people more likely to invest in property in hazardous locations in the belief that, if worse comes to worst, the federal government will bail them out? Disasters and Democracy addresses the political response to natural disasters, focusing specifically on the changing role of the federal government from distant observer to immediate responder and principal financier of disaster costs.
Author: Samuel Issacharoff Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107038707 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 311
Book Description
This book examines how constitutional courts can support weak democratic states in the wake of societal division and authoritarian regimes.
Author: Aharon Barak Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400827043 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 355
Book Description
Whether examining election outcomes, the legal status of terrorism suspects, or if (or how) people can be sentenced to death, a judge in a modern democracy assumes a role that raises some of the most contentious political issues of our day. But do judges even have a role beyond deciding the disputes before them under law? What are the criteria for judging the justices who write opinions for the United States Supreme Court or constitutional courts in other democracies? These are the questions that one of the world's foremost judges and legal theorists, Aharon Barak, poses in this book. In fluent prose, Barak sets forth a powerful vision of the role of the judge. He argues that this role comprises two central elements beyond dispute resolution: bridging the gap between the law and society, and protecting the constitution and democracy. The former involves balancing the need to adapt the law to social change against the need for stability; the latter, judges' ultimate accountability, not to public opinion or to politicians, but to the "internal morality" of democracy. Barak's vigorous support of "purposive interpretation" (interpreting legal texts--for example, statutes and constitutions--in light of their purpose) contrasts sharply with the influential "originalism" advocated by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As he explores these questions, Barak also traces how supreme courts in major democracies have evolved since World War II, and he guides us through many of his own decisions to show how he has tried to put these principles into action, even under the burden of judging on terrorism.
Author: Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess ISBN: 0268200157 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
This book serves as an introduction to the ongoing political debate about the relationship of capitalism and democracy. In recent years, the ideological battles between advocates of free markets and minimal government, on the one hand, and adherents of greater democratic equality and some form of the welfare state, on the other hand, have returned in full force. Anyone who wants to make sense of contemporary American politics and policy battles needs to have some understanding of the divergent beliefs and goals that animate this debate. In Capitalism and Democracy, Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., examines the opposing sides of the free market versus welfare state debate through the lenses of political economy, moral philosophy, and political theory. He asks: Do unchecked markets maximize prosperity, or do they at times produce wasteful and damaging outcomes? Are market distributions morally appropriate, or does fairness require some form of redistribution? Would a society of free markets and minimal government be the best kind of society possible, or would it have serious problems? After leading the reader through a series of thought experiments designed to compare and clarify the thought processes and beliefs held by supporters of each side, Spragens explains why there are no definitive answers to these questions. He concludes, however, that some answers are better than others, and he explains why his own judgement is that a vigorous free marketplace provides great benefits to a democratic society, both economically and politically, but that it also requires regulation and supplementation by collective action for a society to maximize prosperity, to mitigate some of the unfairness of the human condition, and to be faithful to important democratic purposes and ideals. This engaging and accessible book will interest students and scholars of political economy, democratic theory, and theories of social justice. It will also appeal to general readers who are seeking greater clarity and understanding of contemporary debates about government's role in the economy.
Author: Sheldon Whitehouse Publisher: New Press, The ISBN: 1620972085 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 237
Book Description
A U.S. senator, leading the fight against money in politics, chronicles the long shadow corporate power has cast over our democracy In Captured, U.S. Senator and former federal prosecutor Sheldon Whitehouse offers an eye-opening take on what corporate influence looks like today from the Senate Floor, adding a first-hand perspective to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. Americans know something is wrong in their government. Senator Whitehouse combines history, legal scholarship, and personal experiences to provide the first hands-on, comprehensive explanation of what's gone wrong, exposing multiple avenues through which our government has been infiltrated and disabled by corporate powers. Captured reveals an original oversight by the Founders, and shows how and why corporate power has exploited that vulnerability: to strike fear in elected representatives who don’t “get right” by threatening million-dollar "dark money" election attacks (a threat more effective and less expensive than the actual attack); to stack the judiciary—even the Supreme Court—in "business-friendly" ways; to "capture” the administrative agencies meant to regulate corporate behavior; to undermine the civil jury, the Constitution's last bastion for ordinary citizens; and to create a corporate "alternate reality" on public health and safety issues like climate change. Captured shows that in this centuries-long struggle between corporate power and individual liberty, we can and must take our American government back into our own hands.
Author: John Tagg Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 9780816624058 Category : Photography Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
Photographs are used as documents, evidence, and records every day in courtrooms, hospitals, and police work, on passports, permits, and licenses. But how did such usages come to be established and accepted, and when? What kinds of photographs were seen seen as purely instrumental and able to function in this way? What sorts of agencies and institutions had the power to give them this status? And more generally, what conception of photographic representation did this involve, and what were its consequences?
Author: Sarah Elizabeth Kreps Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019086530X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
"Why have the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted longer than any others in American history? One view is that the move to an all-volunteer force and drones have allowed the wars to continue almost unnoticed for years. Taxing Wars suggests how Americans bear the burden in treasure has also changed, with recent wars financed by debt rather than taxes. This shift has eroded accountability and contributed to the phenomenon of perpetual war"--
Author: Donald A. Wittman Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226904238 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
In The Myth of Democratic Failure, Donald A. Wittman refutes one of the cornerstone beliefs of economics and political science: that economic markets are more efficient than the processes and institutions of democratic government.
Author: Jenny Andersson Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1847796664 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 219
Book Description
The notion of social policy as a productive investment and a prerequisite for economic growth became a core feature in the ideology of Swedish social democracy, and a central component of the universalism of the Swedish welfare state. However as the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) embarked on its Third Way in 1981, this outlook on social policy as a productive investment was replaced by the identification of social policy as a cost and a burden for growth. This book discusses the components of this ideological turnaround from Swedish social democracy’s post-war notion of a strong society, to its notion of a Third Way in the early 1980s. It is a novel and innovative contribution to the history of Swedish social democracy and recent developments in the Swedish welfare state, and it also sheds light on contemporary social policy debates. It will appeal to a wide readership from students of contemporary history and politics to policy makers and specialists.
Author: Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Author: Rutherford H. Platt
Author: Samuel Issacharoff
Author: Aharon Barak
Author: Thomas A. Spragens, Jr.
Author: Sheldon Whitehouse
Author: John Tagg
Author: Sarah Elizabeth Kreps
Author: Donald A. Wittman
Author: Jenny Andersson