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Democracy, Sovereignty, and the Struggle over Cherokee Removal
by David A. Moss Dean Grodzins Marc CampasanoBy the mid-1830s, the U.S. Government and the State of Georgia had for years been pushing the Cherokees to turn all of their territory over to white settlers and move west, yet it appeared that most Cherokees wanted to keep their ancestral homeland. In October 1835, the Cherokee General Council had named a committee of leaders to work out a mutually agreeable solution with the federal government in Washington. At about the same time, however, U.S. Indian Commissioner John Schermerhorn had called a meeting at New Echota, Georgia with a separate committee of Cherokees who he believed would be more willing to "remove" the entire tribe to the West. This separate committee ultimately agreed to the Treaty of New Echota on December 29, 1835. Under the treaty, the Cherokees would cede all of their eastern territory in exchange for $4.5 million, land in the West, and other sundry benefits. U.S. President Andrew Jackson, who had battled Native American tribes during much of his former military career, was eager to oust the Cherokees from the eastern states. However, several members of the Senate criticized the Treaty of New Echota as a "phantom treaty," claiming that it was signed by an illegitimate council without the consent of the Cherokee people. Approving the treaty, they insisted, would be a grave wrong against the Cherokee Nation and its official government, which the United States had long recognized. On May 18, 1836, the U.S. Senate finally put the Treaty of New Echota to a vote. If ratified, the treaty would bind all Cherokees to the decisions of the committee at New Echota, and the Cherokee Nation would have to leave its native land.
Democracy Struggles: NGOs and the Politics of Aid in Serbia (Dislocations #25)
by Theodora VettaTracing the boom of local NGOs since the 1990s in the context of the global political economy of aid, current trends of neoliberal state restructuring, and shifting post-Cold War hegemonies, this book explores the “associational revolution” in post-socialist, post-conflict Serbia. Looking into the country’s “transition” through a global and relational analytical prism, the ethnography unpacks the various forms of dispossession and inequality entailed in the democracy-promotion project.
A Democracy That Works: How Working-Class Power Defines Liberal Democracy in the United States (Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance)
by Stephen AmbergA Democracy That Works argues that rather than corporate donations, Republican gerrymandering, and media manipulation, the conservative ascendancy reflects the changes in how work is governed that have disempowered workers. Using six historical case studies from the emergence of the New Deal, and its later overtaking by the conservative neoliberal agenda, to today's intersectional social justice movements, Stephen Amberg deploys situated institutional analysis to show how real actors created the rules that empowered liberal democracy for fifty years and then how Democrats and Republicans undermined democracy by changing those rules, thereby organizing working-class people out of American politics. He draws on multidisciplinary studies to argue that when employees are organized to participate at work, they are also organized to participate in politics. In doing so the book opens up analytical space to understand the unprecedented threat to liberal democracy in the United States. A Democracy That Works is a fresh account of the crisis of democracy that illuminates how historical choices about the role of workers in the polity shaped America's liberal democracy during the twentieth century. It will appeal to scholars of American Politics and American Political Development, Labor and Social Movements, Democracy, and comparative politics.
Democracy, the God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order
by Hans-Hermann HoppeHoppe calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism and suggests, among other things, that the production of defense should be undertaken by insurance companies on the free market.
Democracy Within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico
by Miguel Angel CentenoDuring the 1980s the Mexican regime faced a series of economic, social, and political disasters that led many to question its survival. Yet by 1992 the economy was again growing, with inflation under control and the confidence of international investors restored. Mexico was now touted as an example for regimes in Eastern Europe to emulate.How did Carlos Salinas and his team of technocrats manage to gain political power sufficient to impose their economic model? How did they sustain their revolution from above despite the hardships these changes brought for many Mexicans? How did they stage their remarkable political comeback and create their “democracy within reason”? Why did Salinas succeed in keeping control of his revolution while Mikhail Gorbachev failed to do so in his similar effort at radical reform?Miguel Centeno addresses these questions by analyzing three critical developments in the Mexican state: the centralization of power within the bureaucracy; the rise of a new generation of technocrats and their use of a complex system of political networks; and the dominance of a neoliberal ideology and technocratic vision that guided policy decisions and limited democratic participation. In his conclusion the author proposes some alternative scenarios for Mexico’s future, including the role of NAFTA, and suggests lessons for the study of regimes undertaking similar transitions.Of obvious interest to students of contemporary Mexico and Latin America, the book will also be very useful for those analyzing the transition to the market in other countries, the role of knowledge in public policy, and the nature of the modern state in general.
Democracy Without Decency: Good Citizenship and the War on Poverty (G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects)
by William M. EpsteinThe conservative attacks on the welfare system in the United States over the past several decades have put liberal defenders of poverty relief and social insurance programs on the defensive. In this no-holds-barred look at the reality of American social policy since World War II, William Epstein argues that this defense is not worth mounting—that the claimed successes of American social programs are not sustained by evidence. Rather than their failure being the result of inadequate implementation or political resistance stemming from the culture wars, these programs and their built-in limitations actually do represent what the vast majority of people in this country want them to be. However much people may speak in favor of welfare, the proof of what they really want is in the pudding of the social policies that are actually legislated. The stinginess of America’s welfare system is the product of basic American values rooted in the myth of “heroic individualism” and reinforced by a commitment to social efficiency, the idea that social services need to be minimal and compatible with current social arrangements.
Democracy without Parties in Peru: The Politics of Uncertainty and Decay
by Omar Sanchez-SibonyThis book provides an in-depth look into key political dynamics that obtain in a democracy without parties, offering a window into political undercurrents increasingly in evidence throughout the Latin American region, where political parties are withering. For the past three decades, Peru has showcased a political universe populated by amateur politicians and the dominance of personalism as the main party–voter linkage form. The study peruses the post-2000 evolution of some of the key Peruvian electoral vehicles and classifies the partisan universe as a party non-system. There are several elements endogenous to personalist electoral vehicles that perpetuate partylessness, contributing to the absence of party building. The book also examines electoral dynamics in partyless settings, centrally shaped by effective electoral supply, personal brands, contingency, and iterated rounds of strategic voting calculi. Given the scarcity of information electoral vehicles provide, as well as the enormously complex political environment Peruvian citizens inhabit, personal brands provide readymade informational shortcuts that simplify the political world. The concept of “negative legitimacy environments” is furnished to capture political settings comprised of supermajorities of floating voters, pervasive negative political identities, and a generic citizen preference for newcomers and political outsiders. Such environments, increasingly present throughout Latin America, produce several deleterious effects, including high political uncertainty, incumbency disadvantage, and political time compression. Peru’s “democracy without parties” fails to deliver essential democratic functions including governability, responsiveness, horizontal and vertical accountability, or democratic representation, among others.
Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism
by James T. HamiltonInvestigative journalism holds democracies and individuals accountable to the public. But important stories are going untold as news outlets shy away from the expense of watchdog reporting. Computational journalism, using digital records and data-mining algorithms, promises to lower the cost and increase demand among readers, James Hamilton shows.
Democracy's Dilemma: Environment, Social Equity, And The Global Economy
by Robert C. PaehlkeThe author calls for a balancing of economic, environmental, and social concerns in the age of global economic integration.
Democratic Accountability and International Human Development: Regimes, institutions and resources (Routledge Explorations in Development Studies)
by Kamran Ali Afzal Mark ConsidineScholars and policymakers have long known that there is a strong link between human development and spending on key areas such as education and health. However, many states still neglect these considerations in favour of competing priorities, such as expanding their armies. This book examines how states arrive at these decisions, analysing how democratic accountability influences public spending and impacts on human development. The book shows how the broader paradigm of democratic accountability – extending beyond political democracy to also include bureaucratic and judicial institutions as well as taxation and other modes of resource mobilisation – can best explain how states allocate public resources for human development. Combining cross-country regression analysis with exemplary case studies from Pakistan, India, Botswana and Argentina, the book demonstrates that enhancing human capabilities requires not only effective party competition and fair elections, but also a particular nesting of public organisational structures that are tied to taxpaying citizens in an undisturbed chain of accountability. It draws out vital lessons for institutional design and our approach to the question of human development, particularly in the less developed states. This book will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of political economy, public policy, governance, and development. It also provides valuable insights for those working in the international relations field, including inside major aid and investment organisations.
A Democratic Architecture for the Welfare State (Routledge Studies in the Management of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations)
by Victor A. PestoffThe welfare state faces various challenges in Scandinavia and many European countries today, including a poor work environment in the public sector, a growing democracy deficit, and demographic obstacles. In this new book, Victor A. Pestoff argues that the state cannot resolve these challenges alone or together with the market, rather it requires the active participation of citizens and the third sector in order to overcome them and become more sustainable and flexible in the future. This book addresses the need for a more democratic architecture for the European welfare state, opening new perspectives for developing alternative channels for direct citizen participation at the sub-municipal level of governance. Pestoff finds that neither democratic theory nor welfare state theory devotes adequate attention to the contemporary role of the third sector as a service provider or to greater direct citizen participation in the provision of welfare services. He shifts the focus of analysis from the input to the output side of the political system and explores new ways to promote a greater role for the third sector and more citizen participation in the provision of universal, tax financed welfare services. Part 1 discusses social economy actors in Sweden and Scandinavia, both from a historical and future perspective. Part 2 explores major issues for the third sector and welfare state, including the allocation of an organization’s surplus or profit, work environment and service quality in public services and the third sector, consumer perspectives on the social economy, democratizing medical and health care in Japan, and co-production of childcare services in eight European countries. Part 3 revisits the third sector and state in democratic theory and welfare theory, as well as recognizing major hurdles to the third sector and democratization of the welfare state. Part 4 concludes by summarizing the politics of participation in the welfare state.
Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads: Technological Change and the Future of Politics
by Carles BoixAn incisive history of the changing relationship between democracy and capitalismThe twentieth century witnessed the triumph of democratic capitalism in the industrialized West, with widespread popular support for both free markets and representative elections. Today, that political consensus appears to be breaking down, disrupted by polarization and income inequality, widespread dissatisfaction with democratic institutions, and insurgent populism. Tracing the history of democratic capitalism over the past two centuries, Carles Boix explains how we got here—and where we could be headed.Boix looks at three defining stages of capitalism, each originating in a distinct time and place with its unique political challenges, structure of production and employment, and relationship with democracy. He begins in nineteenth-century Manchester, where factory owners employed unskilled laborers at low wages, generating rampant inequality and a restrictive electoral franchise. He then moves to Detroit in the early 1900s, where the invention of the modern assembly line shifted labor demand to skilled blue-collar workers. Boix shows how growing wages, declining inequality, and an expanding middle class enabled democratic capitalism to flourish. Today, however, the information revolution that began in Silicon Valley in the 1970s is benefitting the highly educated at the expense of the traditional working class, jobs are going offshore, and inequality has risen sharply, making many wonder whether democracy and capitalism are still compatible.Essential reading for these uncertain times, Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads proposes sensible policy solutions that can help harness the unruly forces of capitalism to preserve democracy and meet the challenges that lie ahead.
The Democratic Courthouse: A Modern History of Design, Due Process and Dignity
by Linda Mulcahy Emma RowdenThe Democratic Courthouse examines how changing understandings of the relationship between government and the governed came to be reflected in the buildings designed to house the modern legal system from the 1970s to the present day in England and Wales. The book explores the extent to which egalitarian ideals and the pursuit of new social and economic rights altered existing hierarchies and expectations about how people should interact with each other in the courthouse. Drawing on extensive public and private archives kept by the Ministry of Justice, but also using case studies from other jurisdictions, the book details how civil servants, judges, lawyers, architects, engineers and security experts have talked about courthouses and the people that populate them. In doing so, it uncovers a changing history of ideas about how the competing goals of transparency, majesty, participation, security, fairness and authority have been achieved, and the extent to which aspirations towards equality and participation have been realized in physical form. As this book demonstrates, the power of architecture to frame attitudes and expectations of the justice system is much more than an aesthetic or theoretical nicety. Legal subjects live in a world in which the configuration of space, the cues provided about behaviour by the built form and the way in which justice is symbolised play a crucial, but largely unacknowledged, role in creating meaning and constituting legal identities and rights to participate in the civic sphere. Key to understanding the modern day courthouse, this book will be of interest to legal scholars and students in all fields of law, sociology, political science, psychology and criminology.
Democratic Decentralization, Local Governance and Sustainable Development: Ghana's Experiences for Policy and Practice in Developing Countries (Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development)
by Prince Osei-Wusu Adjei Samuel Adu-GyamfiDrawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes.In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy, and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.
Democratic Decision-making: Consensus Voting for Civic Society and Parliaments (SpringerBriefs in Political Science)
by Peter EmersonThis book provides a practical guide to how groups of people, everywhere, from the local village council to the United Nations Security Council, can best make collective decisions. By comparing the many voting procedures used in democratic decision-making, it explains why win-or-lose binary voting can be inaccurate and divisive, while the more inclusive preferential points system of voting can be so much more accurate and, therefore, more democratic; indeed, it is a win-win methodology. The text, essential reading for anyone interested in fair and participatory collective decision-making, also compares the most common electoral systems.
The Democratic Developmental State: North-South Perspectives (CROP International Poverty Studies #4)
by Chris Tapscott Tor Halvorsen Teresita Cruz-Del RosarioThe concept of a democratic developmental state is part of the current development discourse advocated by international aid agencies, deliberated on by academics, and embraced by policymakers in many emerging economies in the global South. What is noticeable in this discourse is how little attention has been paid to a discussion of the essence of a democratic developmental state, and much of what passes for theory is little more than policy-speak and political rhetoric.This volume fills a gap in the literature on the democratic developmental state. Analyzing the different approaches to the implementation of democratic developmental states in various countries, it evaluates the extent to which these are merely replicating the central tenets of the East Asian model of the developmental state or if they are succeeding in their attempts to establish a new and more inclusive conceptualization of the state. In particular, the authors scrutinize to what degree the attempts to build a democratic developmental state may be distorted by the imperatives of neoliberalism. The volume broadens the understanding of the Nordic model of a democratic developmental state and shows how it represents an additional, and perhaps contending understanding of the developmental state derived from the East Asian experience.
Democratic Economic Planning (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy)
by Robin HahnelDemocratic Economic Planning presents a concrete proposal for how to organize, carry out, and integrate comprehensive annual economic planning, investment planning, and long-run development planning so as to maximize popular participation, distribute the burdens and benefits of economic activity fairly, achieve environmental sustainability, and use scarce productive resources efficiently. The participatory planning procedures proposed provide workers in self-managed councils and consumers in neighbourhood councils with autonomy over their own activities while ensuring that they use scarce productive resources in socially responsible ways without subjecting them to competitive market forces. Certain mathematical and economic skills are required to fully understand and evaluate the planning procedures discussed and evaluated in technical sections in a number of chapters. These sections are necessary to advance the theory of democratic planning, and should be of primary interest to readers who have those skills. However, the book is written so that the main argument can be followed without fully digesting the more technical sections. Democratic Economic Planning is written for dreamers who are disenamored with the economics of competition and greed want to know how a system of equitable cooperation can be organized; and also for sceptics who demand "hard proof" that an economy without markets and private enterprise is possible.
Democratic Federalism: The Economics, Politics, and Law of Federal Governance
by Robert Inman Daniel L. RubinfeldAn authoritative guide to federal democracy from two respected experts in the fieldAround the world, federalism has emerged as the system of choice for nascent republics and established nations alike. In this book, leading scholars and governmental advisers Robert Inman and Daniel Rubinfeld consider the most promising forms of federal governance and the most effective path to enacting federal policies. The result is an essential guide to federalism, its principles, its applications, and its potential to enhance democratic governance.Drawing on the latest work from economics, political science, and law, Inman and Rubinfeld assess different models of federalism and their relative abilities to promote economic efficiency, encourage the participation of citizens, and protect individual liberties. Under the right conditions, the authors argue, a federal democracy—including a national legislature with locally elected representatives—can best achieve these goals. Because a stable union between the national and local governments is key, Inman and Rubinfeld also propose an innovative method for evaluating new federal laws and their possible impact on state and local governments. Finally, to show what the adoption of federalism can mean for citizens, the authors discuss the evolution of governance in the European Union and South Africa’s transition from apartheid to a multiracial democracy.Interdisciplinary in approach, Democratic Federalism brims with applicable policy ideas and comparative case studies of global significance. This book is indispensable for understanding the importance of federal forms of government—both in recent history and, crucially, for future democracies.
Democratic Governance and Economic Performance
by Dino FalaschettiConventional wisdom warns that unaccountable political and business agents can enrich a few at the expense of many. But logically extending this wisdom implies that associated principals - voters, consumers, shareholders - will favor themselves over the greater good when 'rules of the game' instead create too much accountability. Democratic Governance and Economic Performance rigorously develops this hypothesis, and finds statistical evidence and case study illustrations that democratic institutions at various governance levels (e.g., federal, state, corporation) have facilitated opportunistic gains for electoral, consumer, and shareholder principals. To be sure, this conclusion does not dismiss the potential for democratic governance to productively reduce agency costs. Rather, it suggests that policy makers, lawyers, and managers can improve governance by weighing the agency benefits of increased accountability against the distributional costs of favoring principal stakeholders over more general economic opportunities. Carefully considering the fundamentals that give rise to this tradeoff should interest students and scholars working at the intersection of social science and the law, and can help professionals improve their own performance in policy, legal, and business settings.
Democratic Intergovernmental Organizations?
by Alexandru GrigorescuThis work posits that, over the past two centuries, democratic norms have spread from domestic politics to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Grigorescu explores how norms shaped IGO decision-making rules such as those driving state participation, voting, access to information, and the role of NGOs and transnational parliaments. The study emphasizes the role of 'normative pressures' (the interaction between norm strength and the degree to which the status quo strays from norm prescriptions). Using primary and secondary sources to assess the plausibility of its arguments across two centuries and two dozen IGOs, the study focuses on developments in the League of Nations, the International Labor Organization, the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization.
Democratic Legitimacy (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)
by Fabienne PeterThis book offers a systematic treatment of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. It argues that democratic procedures are essential for political legitimacy because of the need to respect value pluralism and because of the learning process that democratic decision-making enables. It proposes a framework for distinguishing among the different ways in which the requirements of democratic legitimacy have been interpreted. Peter then uses this framework to identify and defend what appears as the most plausible conception of democratic legitimacy. According to this conception, democratic legitimacy requires that the decision-making process satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness.
Democratic Legitimation of Central Bank Independence in the European Union
by Cornelia Manger-Nestler Markus GentzschThis short monograph examines the tense relationship between central bank independence and democratic legitimation, which has changed as the European Central Bank (ECB) has been entrusted with new tasks and faced unprecedented challenges. The financial and sovereign debt crisis, in particular, has affected the ECB's position within the Economic and Monetary Union without substantial changes in the Union's legal framework. However, the evolution of an institution primarily obligated to maintain price stability into an actor involved in sustaining financial stability, performing banking supervision and supporting economic policy raises the question of whether the high level of autonomy granted to the ECB is justified with regard to the principle of democracy that demands adequate accountability and control. This book identifies requirements for the democratic legitimation of central bank action in relation to specific tasks. Further, it analyses other scales of independence encountered in EU law in order to allow readers to gain a better conceptual understanding of central bank independence.
Democratic Militarism
by Jonathan D. CaverleyWhy are democracies pursuing more military conflicts, but achieving worse results? Democratic Militarism shows that a combination of economic inequality and military technical change enables an average voter to pay very little of the costs of large militaries and armed conflict, in terms of both death and taxes. Jonathan Caverley provides an original statistical analysis of public opinion and international aggression, combined with historical evidence from the late Victorian British Empire, the US Vietnam War effort, and Israel's Second Lebanon War. This book undermines conventional wisdom regarding democracy's exceptional foreign policy characteristics, and challenges elite-centered explanations for poor foreign policy. This accessible and wide ranging book offers a new account of democratic warfare, and will help readers to understand the implications of the revolution in military affairs.
The Democratic Organisation: Democracy and the Future of Work (Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations and Society)
by Thomas DiefenbachPrevailing models of organisation divide people into owners, managers and employees, forcing especially the latter to obey, to behave, and to function well within a hierarchical and managerial pecking order. However, there is no natural law suggesting the need for such organisations, not in market economies and definitely not in modern democratic societies – and there is no justification for such types of organisation. Arguing that most current organisations are orthodox, hierarchical, anti-democratic, oppressive, unfair, and unjust, this book presents a viable alternative, a better type of organisation – the democratic organisation. Diefenbach develops and provides step by step a systematic, comprehensive, thorough, and detailed general model of the democratic organisation. He describes the democratic organisation’s fundamental principles, values, governance, management, structures, and processes, and the ways it functions and operates both within the organisation and towards others and the environment. Crucially, and most importantly, the democratic organisation provides the institutions and organisational context for individuals to maintain and pursue their fundamental freedoms, inalienable rights, and dignity; to manage organisations in democratic, participative, and cooperative ways; and to conduct business in considerate, balanced, and sustainable ways. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of management, organisation studies, strategic management, business ethics, entrepreneurship, and family business.
Democratic Processes and Financial Markets
by William Bernhard David LeblangShows how elections, cabinet formations, and government dissolutions affect asset markets.