The Importance of the Middle Class in Political Stability and the Strength of Democracies PDF Download

Author: James Rogers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Author: R. Glassman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230371884
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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High technology capitalism utilizes computers, robots, and global information networks. It has engendered new classes - technocrats, bureaucrats, service and office workers - who will impact the structure and values of society. The question most central for us is that of the survival of democracy on this new base. Will the New Middle Class become the carrying class for a modern form of democracy utilizing the sophisticated communications technology, or will democracy decline under the weight of the managerial and technocratic strata essential to the functioning of the modern economic and political institutions?

Author: Bryn Rosenfeld
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691209774
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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How middle-class economic dependence on the state impedes democratization and contributes to authoritarian resilience Conventional wisdom holds that the rising middle classes are a force for democracy. Yet in post-Soviet countries like Russia, where the middle class has grown rapidly, authoritarianism is deepening. Challenging a basic tenet of democratization theory, Bryn Rosenfeld shows how the middle classes can actually be a source of support for autocracy and authoritarian resilience, and reveals why development and economic growth do not necessarily lead to greater democracy. In pursuit of development, authoritarian states often employ large swaths of the middle class in state administration, the government budget sector, and state enterprises. Drawing on attitudinal surveys, unique data on protest behavior, and extensive fieldwork in the post-Soviet region, Rosenfeld documents how the failure of the middle class to gain economic autonomy from the state stymies support for political change, and how state economic engagement reduces middle-class demands for democracy and weakens prodemocratic coalitions. The Autocratic Middle Class makes a vital contribution to the study of democratization, showing how dependence on the state weakens the incentives of key societal actors to prefer and pursue democracy.

Author: Robert D. Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691096681
Category : Middle class
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Author: Leslie G. Rubin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781481300551
Category : Middle class
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Brian D'Agostino
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440802742
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Providing an insightful diagnosis of what went wrong and prescriptions for a cure, this book is a must-read for angry and confused middle-class Americans who want to understand the forces that are undermining their prosperity and economic security. The Middle Class Fights Back: How Progressive Movements Can Restore Democracy in America presents an unapologetic and coherent analysis of American state capitalism. Is there a way to stop politicians, corporate CEOs, and predatory investors from plunging the entire world further into a new economic dark age? According to author, teacher, and political scientist Brian D'Agostino, PhD, the answer is "yes." His book identifies the policies undermining middle class prosperity, demolishes their protective ideologies, and offers a visionary but pragmatic agenda of policy and institutional reforms that will encourage and fuel progressive movements of the 21st century. Part I of the book exposes the national security and neoliberal policies that are deindustrializing America and undermining the middle class, as well as the ideologies that deceive and confuse ordinary people about what is occurring. Part II provides a manifesto of policy strategies and institutional reforms that can restore American democracy and prosperity, enabling the United States to once again lead the world by example as it once did in the 18th-century struggle for political democracy.

Author: Glassman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004618066
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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This volume presents an in-depth study of the commercial middle class and its link with legal-democratic processes. The material presented is critical for understanding both the future of democracy, and its past.

Author: David Stuart Parker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739168533
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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As middle classes in developing countries grow in size and political power, do they foster stable democracies and prosperous, innovative economies? Or do they encourage crass materialism, bureaucratic corruption, unrealistic social demands, and ideological polarization? These questions have taken on a new urgency in recent years but they are not new, having first appeared in the mid twentieth century in debates about Latin America. At a moment when exploding middle classes in the global South increasingly capture the world's attention, these Latin American classics are ripe for revisiting. Part One of the book introduces key debates from the 1950s and 1960s, when Cold War era scholars questioned whether or not the middle class would be a force for democracy and development, to safeguard Latin America against the perceived challenge of Revolutionary Cuba. While historian John J. Johnson placed tentative faith in the positive transformative power of the "middle sectors," others were skeptical. The striking disagreements that emerge from these texts lend themselves to discussion about the definition, character, and complexity of the middle classes, and about the assumptions that underpinned twentieth-century modernization theory. Part Two brings together more recent case studies from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, written by scholars influenced by contemporary trends in social and cultural history. These authors highlight issues of language, identity, gender, and the multiple faces and forms of power. Their studies bring flesh-and-blood Latin Americans to the forefront, reconstructing the daily lives of underpaid office workers, harried housewives and striving professionals, in order to revisit questions that the authors in Part One tended to approach abstractly. They also pay attention to changing cultural understandings and political constructions of who "the middle class" is and what it means to be middle class. Designed with the classroom and non-specialist reader in mind, the book has a comprehensive critical introduction, and each selection is preceded by a short description setting the context and introducing key themes.

Author: Arthur Norman Holcombe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Author: Ganesh Sitaraman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451493923
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.