The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy (No-Nonsense Guides)
Richard Swift
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 1906523304
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Following the economic meltdown and the triumph of Barack Obama, have the chances of genuine democracy improved?
In this updated edition of The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy, Richard Swift explores how democracy has been constricted and deformed by economic power brokers and a self-serving political class from Birmingham to Bangalore. He considers the different tools people in power have used to manipulate democratic principles, such as freedom, to their advantage.
The book includes chapter-length discussions of topics such as the economic meltdown, Barack Obama, eco-democracy, democratizing the economy, and democracy in the global south. It is also a guide to the rich diversity of forms of elected government, and it contains practical ideas for empowering today's voters around the world.
Richard Swift was co-editor for the New Internationalist magazine from 1984 to 2007 and lives in Toronto. He has written and broadcast on questions of ecology and democracy for many years.
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Democratic or not. Or whether it has a good or bad record on democratic rights. But sovereignty has always been limited in the inter national system of state relations that lie outside the control of even the most committed democrats. The 83 Beyond the nation-state difference between the United States or China and Gabon or Trinidad when it comes to the exercise of their respective national sovereignties is large indeed. Their capacity for maneuver to meet the needs of their citizens varies.
Communists. These kind of initiatives are often supported by ‘new groups’ (feminists, environmentalists) or smaller political parties (Greens in Switzerland, the Radical Party in Italy) as a way of putting their issues before the public. Some concrete results have been electoral reform in Italy and a moratorium on nuclear power in Switzerland. Groups in the US have pushed for everything from tax reform to legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Since the 1850s there have been nearly 500 national.
Influence the course of events from the streets are often treated by the political class as unfortunate disruptions to orderly decisionmaking – or even as terrorist threats to the very idea of democracy. In fact new issues – environmental protection or minority rights – can often only enter the political arena through direct action and demonstrations. A complacent political class has at best a lukewarm interest in new issues and significant changes. Restricted participation Any meaningful.
A new basis for democracy is Gandhi’s notion that ‘there is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed’. We are facing an ecological situation where ‘possessive individualism’ is increasingly in conflict with species survival – including our own. Any ecological democracy would clearly need to identify and reject as its basis the classic liberal notion of the right of each individual to maximize their desires and powers. This is perhaps the most promising intersection of democratic.
Unlikely to flower in conditions of desperate poverty and repressive inequality. Such an ‘imported demo cracy’ will always be tainted by its association with big power bullying and corporate maneuvering to obtain access to natural resources, exemptions from environmental or labor standards and extensive tax holidays. Only practices of democracy that are part of daily life will prevent it from becoming another ossified hypocrisy used by those with power to trick those below them. Brutal.