By Richard Swift
Following the commercial meltdown and the triumph of Barack Obama, have the probabilities of real democracy improved?
In this up to date version of The No-Nonsense advisor to Democracy, Richard quick explores how democracy has been constricted and deformed by way of fiscal energy agents and a self-serving political classification from Birmingham to Bangalore. He considers different instruments humans in strength have used to control democratic ideas, equivalent to freedom, to their advantage.
The booklet comprises chapter-length discussions of subject matters reminiscent of the commercial meltdown, Barack Obama, eco-democracy, democratizing the financial system, and democracy within the worldwide south. it's also a advisor to the wealthy variety of different types of elected executive, and it includes sensible principles for empowering trendy citizens round the world.
Richard Swift was once co-editor for the New Internationalist journal from 1984 to 2007 and lives in Toronto. He has written and broadcast on questions of ecology and democracy for lots of years.
Read Online or Download The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy (No-Nonsense Guides) PDF
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Extra info for The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy (No-Nonsense Guides)
Five creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eight 1 what's democracy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2 Democratic malaise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thirteen three susceptible and robust democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 four Democratizing the financial system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fifty eight five past the countryside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eighty three 6 Democratizing democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ninety nine 7 Democracy and ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 eight powerful democracy within the worldwide South . . . . . . . . . 123 nine end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . one hundred fifty 7 Introduction because the first version of this No-Nonsense advisor seemed in 2002, democracy has taken relatively a beating – now not least from those that set themselves up as its major defenders. Fundamentalists (of all stripes) evidently position their got ‘truths’ over an insignificant set of preparations the place the general public get to make a decision what's real and what's no longer. that they're a continual probability to democracy isn't any nice shock. however the reaction of the political category to this has, with a number of extraordinary exceptions, rallied round the garrison kingdom, with its quite a few doctrines of nationwide safeguard, and there was helpful little main issue for the freedoms which have been trampled on within the method. we now have been faced by way of a brand new and scary vocabulary – preventive detention, ‘black holes’, notable rendition, coercive interrogation, guns of mass destruction, caution structures in response to a number of colours (amber alert), high-value suspects, and unlawful opponents. phrases and ideas like those search to justify arbitrary motion by means of these in strength to stop disaster. Democratic rights simply appear to get within the method. one of many targets of this ebook is to make the case for a twin democracy – person who contains either a detrimental ‘freedom from’ and a favorable ‘freedom to’. In societies geared up round the industry economic climate, ‘freedom to’ has ordinarily been expelled from political lifestyles and lives on in basic terms within the dog-eat-dog global of marketplace task. via those criteria, the activity of democracy is to supply freedom from interference with the pursuit and pleasure of estate (in our period fairly company property). ‘Freedom to’ in a collective feel (the stuff of sturdy democracy) is hence in contradiction to freedom from interference available in the market. on the finish of the 1st decade of the hot millennium the prices of this loss of ‘interference’ available in the market – at eight minimum, a few type of potent law – are all too obvious. of their stressed look for profitability, the powerholders of the marketplace have introduced the worldwide banking approach, housing markets and lots more and plenty else to the threshold of cave in. As traditional, those who find themselves agony so much will not be people who find themselves such a lot in charge. a great time, one might imagine, to make the case for a much better democracy of way of life the place everyone is given a true say over easy fiscal and political judgements that form their lives.