The Priority of Democracy

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Release : 2011-08-22
Genre : Political Science
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Book Rating : 333/5 ( reviews)

The Priority of Democracy - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Priority of Democracy write by Jack Knight. This book was released on 2011-08-22. The Priority of Democracy available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Why democracy is the best way of deciding how decisions should be made Pragmatism and its consequences are central issues in American politics today, yet scholars rarely examine in detail the relationship between pragmatism and politics. In The Priority of Democracy, Jack Knight and James Johnson systematically explore the subject and make a strong case for adopting a pragmatist approach to democratic politics—and for giving priority to democracy in the process of selecting and reforming political institutions. What is the primary value of democracy? When should we make decisions democratically and when should we rely on markets? And when should we accept the decisions of unelected officials, such as judges or bureaucrats? Knight and Johnson explore how a commitment to pragmatism should affect our answers to such important questions. They conclude that democracy is a good way of determining how these kinds of decisions should be made—even if what the democratic process determines is that not all decisions should be made democratically. So, for example, the democratically elected U.S. Congress may legitimately remove monetary policy from democratic decision-making by putting it under the control of the Federal Reserve. Knight and Johnson argue that pragmatism offers an original and compelling justification of democracy in terms of the unique contributions democratic institutions can make to processes of institutional choice. This focus highlights the important role that democracy plays, not in achieving consensus or commonality, but rather in addressing conflicts. Indeed, Knight and Johnson suggest that democratic politics is perhaps best seen less as a way of reaching consensus or agreement than as a way of structuring the terms of persistent disagreement.

Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1

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Release : 1990-11-30
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 763/5 ( reviews)

Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1 - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1 write by Richard Rorty. This book was released on 1990-11-30. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1 available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers and offer something of a compromise - agreeing with the latter in their criticisms of traditional notions of truth and objectivity, but disagreeing with them over the political implications they draw from dropping traditional philosophical doctrines. In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

The Priority of Injustice

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Release : 2017
Genre : Critical theory
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Book Rating : 520/5 ( reviews)

The Priority of Injustice - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Priority of Injustice write by Clive Barnett. This book was released on 2017. The Priority of Injustice available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This original and ambitious work looks anew at a series of intellectual debates about the meaning of democracy. Clive Barnett engages with key thinkers in various traditions of democratic theory and demonstrates the importance of a geographical imagination in interpreting contemporary political change. Debates about radical democracy, Barnett argues, have become trapped around a set of oppositions between deliberative and agonistic theories--contrasting thinkers who promote the possibility of rational agreement and those who seek to unmask the role of power or violence or difference in shaping human affairs. While these debates are often framed in terms of consensus versus contestation, Barnett unpacks the assumptions about space and time that underlie different understandings of the sources of political conflict and shows how these differences reflect deeper philosophical commitments to theories of creative action or revived ontologies of "the political." Rather than developing ideal theories of democracy or models of proper politics, he argues that attention should turn toward the practices of claims-making through which political movements express experiences of injustice and make demands for recognition, redress, and re pair. By rethinking the spatial grammar of discussions of public space, democratic inclusion, and globalization, Barnett develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the crucial roles played by geographical processes in generating and processing contentious politics.

Advancing Democracy Abroad

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Release : 2010
Genre : Political Science
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Book Rating : 118/5 ( reviews)

Advancing Democracy Abroad - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Advancing Democracy Abroad write by Michael McFaul. This book was released on 2010. Advancing Democracy Abroad available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In Advancing Democracy Abroad, McFaul explains how democracy provides a more accountable system of government, greater economic prosperity, and better security compared with other systems of government. He then shows how Americans have benefited from the advance of democracy abroad in the past, and speculates about security, economic, and moral benefits for the United States from potential democratic gains around the world.

Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy

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Release : 1996
Genre : Business & Economics
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Book Rating : 167/5 ( reviews)

Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy write by Pierre Manent. This book was released on 1996. Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. One of France's leading and most controversial political thinkers explores the central themes of Tocqueville's writings: the democratic revolution and the modern passion for equality. What becomes of people when they are overcome by this passion and how does it transform the contents of life? Pierre Manent's analysis concludes that the growth of state power and the homogenization of society are two primary consequences of equalizing conditions. The author shows the contemporary relevance of Tocqueville's teaching: to love democracy well, one must love it moderately. Manent examines the prophetic nature of Tocqueville's writings with breadth, clarity, and depth. His findings are both timely and highly relevant as people in Eastern Europe and around the world are grappling with the fragile, complicated, and frequently contradictory nature of democracy. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of political theory and political philosophy, as well as general readers interested in the nature of modern democracy.