Liberal democracy today, having aligned itself with capitalism, is producing a generalized feeling of weariness and disillusionment with government among the citizenry of many countries. Because of a decades-long march of globalized capitalism, economic oligarchies have gained oppressive levels of political power, and as a result, the economic needs of many people around the world have been neglected. It then becomes essential to remember that our ability to change society emerges from our power to formulate different questions; or, in this case, alternative understandings of democracy. This book draws together a variety of alternative theories of democracies in a quest to expose readers to a selection of the most exciting and innovative new approaches to politics today. The consideration of these leading alternative conceptualizations of democracy is important, as it is now common to see xenophobic and racist rhetoric using the platform of liberal democracy to threaten ideas of plurality, diversity, equality, and economic justice. In looking at four different models of democracy (utopian democracy, radical democracy, republican democracy, and plural democracy) this book argues that encounters with alternate conceptualizations of democracy is necessary if citizens and scholars are going to understand the constellation of possibilities that exist for inclusive, plural, economically equal, and just societies.

In 1989, the Cold War abruptly ended and it seemed as if the world was at last safe for democracy. But a spirit of uneasiness, discontent, and world-weariness soon arose and has persisted in Europe, in America, and elsewhere for two decades. To discern the meaning of this malaise we must investigate the nature of liberal democracy, says the author of this provocative book, and he undertakes to do so through a detailed investigation of the thinking of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville. Paul A. Rahe argues that these political thinkers anticipated the modern liberal republic's propensity to drift in the direction of “soft despotism”—a condition that arises within a democracy when paternalistic state power expands and gradually undermines the spirit of self-government. Such an eventuality, feared by Tocqueville in the nineteenth century, has now become a reality throughout the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. So Rahe asserts, and he explains what must be done to reverse this unfortunate trend.

SCOTT (copy 1): From the John Holmes Library collection.

The twin crises of immigration and mass migration brought new urgency to the balance of power between progressive, humanitarian groups and their populist opponents. In the United States and many European countries, the outcome of this struggle is uncertain, with a high chance that the public will elect more politicians who support an agenda of nativism and privatization. The Antiegalitarian Mutation makes a forceful case that those seeking to limit citizenship and participation, political or otherwise, have co-opted democracy. Political and legal institutions are failing to temper the interests of people with economic power against the needs of the many, leading to an unsustainable rise in income inequality and a new oligarchy rapidly assuming broad social control. For Nadia Urbinati and Arturo Zampaglione, this insupportable state of affairs is not an inevitable outcome of robust capitalism but rather the result of an ideological war waged against social democracy by the neoliberal governments of Reagan, Thatcher, and others. These giants of free-market fundamentalism secured power through legitimate political means, and only by taking back our political institutions can we remedy the social ills that threaten to unmake our world. That, according to The Antiegalitarian Mutation, is democracy's challenge and its ongoing promise.

This book examines the antagonistic relationship between new European nationalisms as these often go hand-in-hand with populism, and the phenomenon of migration. Migration has become a significant issue both in Europe and the whole world. Although it has always existed, much of public opinion sees it now as a problem. The latter has been exaggerated through a crisis in hospitality exacerbated by the relatively recently constructed and misplaced feeling of a civilisational threat from islam. Migration is then countered by the escalation of new nationalisms, at least some of which are supported by populism. This book offers an understanding of this conjunction of migration and nationalism in the post-cold war European context. More specifically, the book takes up how the end of the simplified cold war cognitive binary means an unprecedented epistemological confusion and depoliticisation which takes migration as its target, but could resort to other targets too. Discussing the postcolonial background to the new migrations, the book also considers womens' rights, postsocialism and the relevance of the current pandemic, as the issue of migration is addressed in the context of the European crisis-ridden present. This wide-ranging interrogation of how contemporary European migration is conceived and understood will appeal to students, academics, activists, policy makers, and others with interests in contemporary migration, new nationalisms, populism, feminism, colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial issues, as well as socialism and postsocialism.

The Romance of Democracy gives a unique insider perspective on contemporary Mexico by examining the meaning of democracy in the lives of working-class residents in Mexico City today. A highly absorbing and vividly detailed ethnographic study of popular politics and official subjugation, the book provides a detailed, bottom-up exploration of what men and women think about national and neighborhood democracy, what their dreams are for a better society, and how these dreams play out in their daily lives. Based on extensive fieldwork in the same neighborhood he discussed in his acclaimed book The Meanings of Macho, Matthew C. Gutmann now explores the possibilities for political and social change in the world's most populous city. In the process he provides a new perspective on many issues affecting Mexicans countrywide.

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

This book comprehensively collects the thinking - over the last 25 years - of one the most important contemporary scholars in the field of ideology studies. Clearly organised, it expounds on the changing nature of the sub-discipline, its components and methods of investigation. As such, it serves the need for a general, well-informed identification and elaboration of thematic possibilities in current ideology studies and represents the most developed and productive methodological approach to the study of ideologies in the last three decades. Freeden presents ideology studies as an evolving and vibrant field, encountering and surmounting a series of challenges in its successful path towards recognition as a fully legitimate and respected branch of political theory. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of political ideologies, political theory, political philosophy and more broadly to sociology, political science, anthropology, human geography, international studies and the humanities.

Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called "a state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just.

Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state? Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.