On the Abolition of All Political Parties PDF Download

Author: Simone Weil
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590177908
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
An NYRB Classics Original Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she challenges the foundation of the modern liberal political order, making an argument that has particular resonance today, when the apathy and anger of the people and the self-serving partisanship of the political class present a threat to democracies all over the world. Dissecting the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil forcefully makes the case that a true politics can only begin where party spirit ends. This volume also includes an admiring portrait of Weil by the great poet Czeslaw Milosz and an essay about Weil’s friendship with Albert Camus by the translator Simon Leys.

Author: Frederick G. Whelan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351205854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1396

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Book Description
Democracy in Theory and Practice presents an authoritative overview of democratic theory today. Its distinctive approach links theory to practice, emphasizing the wide variety of institutions and procedures through which core democratic principles are implemented and the normative and practical dimensions of the choices to be made among these alternatives. Designed for courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level, the book features eighteen chapters organized thematically and divided into sections and subsections for easy reference; historical and current examples, citations for specific ideas, annotated references, and further readings throughout enhance the volume's utility for students, scholars, and researchers. Sidebars give biographical sketches of classic theorists and democratic ideas from the US founders and constitutional tradition. Featured topics discussed include: Majority Rule; Participation; Deliberation; Accountability; Representation; Constitutionalism; Electoral Laws; Parties; Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Functions. The Boundary Problem; The "All-Affected" Principle; Contested Senses of Liberal and Procedural Democracy; The Pros and Cons of Term Limits; Proportional Representation; Referendums; Problems of Democratic Transparency and Reversibility. Written by a leading authority in the field, Frederick G. Whelan encourages us to think of the many alternative ways of putting democracy into practice and of these alternatives as requiring choices. This diversity means that there is no unique or correct democratic outcome from a given set of preferences, since outcomes are shaped by the methods followed in reaching them.

Author: Loïc Wacquant
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745634877
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Pierre Bourdieu was a brilliant sociologist and social thinker; he was also an intensely political man whose work is of profound significance for rethinking democracy. This original volume presents and develops Bourdieu's distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of democratic politics. It explicates and illustrates his core concepts of political field and field of power, his historical model of the bureaucratic state, and his influential analyses of the practices and institutions involved in the paradoxical phenomenon of political representation - starting with the enigma of delegation, or what he called the "mystery of ministry." The fruitfulness of Bourdieu's approach is demonstrated in a series of integrated studies of voting, public opinion polls, party dynamics, class rule, and state-building, as well as by careful analyses of Bourdieu's own civic engagements and his theoretical treatment of the politics of reason and recognition in contemporary society. Charting the connections between Bourdieu's political views, the main nodes of his sociology of democratic representation, and the implications of this sociology for progressive civic thought and action, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the gamut of disciplines as well as to citizens concerned with renewing struggles for social justice.

Author: Alberto Simpser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107311322
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Why do parties and governments cheat in elections they cannot lose? This book documents the widespread use of blatant and excessive manipulation of elections and explains what drives this practice. Alberto Simpser shows that, in many instances, elections are about more than winning. Electoral manipulation is not only a tool used to gain votes, but also a means of transmitting or distorting information. This manipulation conveys an image of strength, shaping the behavior of citizens, bureaucrats, politicians, parties, unions and businesspeople to the benefit of the manipulators, increasing the scope for the manipulators to pursue their goals while in government and mitigating future challenges to their hold on power. Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections provides a general theory about what drives electoral manipulation and empirically documents global patterns of manipulation.

Author: Hans Keman
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0761954767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This essential new book brings together world class scholars to provide a completely new comparative politics text. It offers a comprehensive reivew of the complete democratic process and provides a framework for measuring and evaluating contemporary democracy and democratic performance around the world.

Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

Author: Robert Rohrschneider
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192558692
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 752

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Book Description
The Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies offers a state-of-the-art assessment of the functioning of political representation in liberal democracies. In 34 chapters the world's leading scholars on the various aspects of political representation address eight broad themes: The concept and theories of political representation, its history and the main requisites for its development; elite orientations and behavior; descriptive representation; party government and representation; non-electoral forms of political participation and how they relate to political representation; the challenges to representative democracy originating from the growing importance of non-majoritarian institutions and social media; the rise of populism and its consequences for the functioning of representative democracy; the challenge caused by economic and political globlization: what does it mean for the functioning of political representation at the national leval and is it possible to develop institutions of representative democracy at a level above the state that meet the normative criteria of representative democracy and are supported by the people? The various chapters offer a comprehensive review of the literature on the various aspects of political representation. The main organizing principle of the Handbook is the chain of political representation, the chain connecting the interests and policy preferences of the people to public policy via political parties, parliament, and government. Most of the chapters assessing the functioning of the chain of political representation and its various links are based on original comparative political research. Comparative research on political representation and its various subfields has developed dramatically over the last decades so that even ten years ago a Handbook like this would have looked totally different.

Author: Nancy Bermeo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107156793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
A comparative study of the role of political parties and movements in the founding and survival of developing world democracies.

Author: Carole Pateman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521290043
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Shows that current elitist theories are based on an inadequate understanding of the early writings of democratic theory and that much sociological evidence has been ignored.

Author: Anika Gauja
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131707873X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Political Parties and Elections presents a comparative analysis of the ways in which advanced industrial democracies seek to regulate the activities of political parties in electoral contests. Actual political practice suggests that parties are crucial actors in democratic elections, yet the nature and extent to which parties are regulated, or even recognized, as participants in the electoral process varies greatly among nations. Author Anika Gauja analyzes the electoral laws of five key common law democracies with similar parliamentary and representative traditions, similar levels of economic and political development, yet with significantly different electoral provisions: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Using the relationship between law and politics as a lens, the book focuses specifically on the ways in which these jurisdictions seek to regulate the behavior of their political parties as the product of a broader normative vision of how representative democracy ought to function. In its subject matter, comparative scope, and interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book examines not only electoral law but also ancillary legislation such as funding regulations, associations and corporations law, and constitutional provisions. It also analyzes the case law that guides the interpretation of this legislation. Political Parties and Elections represents an innovative body of research, comparing for the first time the electoral-legal regimes of a significant number of common law nations.