In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders? (Kindle Single) (TED Books)
Language: English
Pages: 71
ISBN: B00AU3NOFA
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A recent Gallup poll listed the most- and least-trusted professions in America. At the bottom of the list: car salesmen and members of Congress. It's not hard to understand why our politicians rate so poorly — scandals, myopia, obstinence, party loyalty over common good, fiscal cliffs. All have left voters exasperated and confused. But while confidence in our elected leaders has never been lower, we cling to the belief that democracies represent they epitome of societal and political organization. Why? In his provocative book "In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders", political commentator Ivan Krastev explores this incongruity between our head and our heart. There has been a profound decline of the public’s trust in the performance of public institutions, he notes, which is an outcome of the voters’ sense of their lost power. Tech tools may help provide some openness to the machinations of the political machine, but they may just be putting a band-aid on an open wound. Ultimately, Krastev ponders whether we can enjoy the many rights of our society, without enjoying real political choice or power. Simply put: can democracy survive without trust?
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Banerjee/Shutterstock The rich and powerful have never been very popular with the poor and powerless. But now meritocratic elites are even more fiercely resented than their predecessors, and the public’s resentment of the “deserving rich” is remaking citizens’ perception of democracy (the experience of Central and Eastern Europe is particularly instructive because it was in those regions where inequality at one time increased most dramatically.) Until the 1970s, democratization was narrowing the.
Inequality gap. The promise of democracy, after all, was also the promise of egalitarianism. The hope was that in these new political regimes where millions of people could vote, those at the top would need to secure legitimacy via the have-nots. Historically, the social democratic compromise of the post-war period was more an effort of the haves to make capitalism legitimate than an effort of the have-nots to overcome it. However, beginning in the 1970s, the spread of democracy coincided with.
Immigrants are mistreated. The WikiLeaks cables didn’t help us learn something about America’s policies we hadn’t known. Rather, it is the decision of someone to take personal risks and confront the authorities or his or her community and not some “unknown” truth that makes a speech politically powerful. Living in truth can’t be reduced to having access to full information. It is the person daring to say the truth and not the truth itself that will ultimately bring change. Transparency and.
The legislator’s support for the increase of the military budget. But in our Age of Transparency people are tempted to take shortcuts. “Tell me his donors, and I will tell you his politics” is the regrettable shorthand for today’s political environment. But politics cannot be reduced in this way. All this new information and state-of-the-art digital technologies don’t help fashion a better understanding of democratic politics. Rather, this approach risks that the public will start treating its.
And is thus subject to all the well-known difficulties of organization — namely, representation and free riding. Voice and exit thus distinguish the world of politics from the world of the market. The politics of voice is what we call political reform. But in order for political reform to succeed, there are several important preconditions. People must feel committed to invest themselves in changing their societies by feeling a part of that society. And for the voice option to function properly,.