Waves of democracy: social movements and political change

1. A quick history of modern democracy -- 2. States, social movement challengers, and elite reformers -- 3. Eighteenth-century revolution, nineteenth-century eddies -- 4. Twentieth-century pendulum swings -- 5. Semidemocracy, pseudodemocracy, democracy -- 6. Beyond the great democratic wave -- 7. Into the twenty-first century : new challenges, new opportunities.

Waves of Democracy looks at two centuries of history of democratization as a series of multicontinental episodes in which social movements and elite power holders in many countries converged to reorganize political systems. Democracy is defined and redefined in these episodes. John Markoff examines several ways in which governing elites of national states mimic each other and ways in which social movements and elites interact. There is no other book written for undergraduates that looks at democracy over such a broad sweep of time and across so many countries and cultures