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"Is Democracy in Decline? is a short book that takes up the fascinating question on whether this once-revolutionary form of government--the bedrock of Western liberalism--is fast disappearing. Has the growth of corporate capitalism, mass economic inequality, and endemic corruption reversed the spread of democracy worldwide? In this incisive collection, leading thinkers address this disturbing and critically important issue. Published as part of the National Endowment for Democracy's 25th anniversary--and drawn from articles forthcoming in the Journal of Democracy--this collection includes seven essays from a stellar group of democracy scholars: Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Thomas Carothers, Marc Plattner, Larry Diamond, Philippe Schmitter, Steven Levitsky, Ivan Krastev, and Lucan Way. Written in a thought-provoking style from seven different perspectives, this book provides an eye-opening look at how the very foundation of Western political culture may be imperiled"--

This text outlines a theory of democracy in action, based on four elementary forms of democracy - pendulum, consensus, voter and participatory democracy - that are thoroughly analysed compared and related to both the literature and the real world of democracy.

This text outlines a theory of democracy in action, based on four elementary forms of democracy - pendulum, consensus, voter and participatory democracy - that are thoroughly analysed compared and related to both the literature and the real world of democracy

While a stalemate in the predominantly Tamil North and East of Sri Lanka continues despite Indian intervention on the government's behalf, in the Sinhala South death squads associated with the pseudo People's Liberation Front, the JVP, have been ruthlessly eliminating its opponents. The United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), having created and nurtured popular racism for over thirty years in order to get into power (through a ready-made Sinhalese majority of 70 per cent of the population), * would now like to draw back from the brink of another crippling civil war, this time in the South. But they are unable to do so because the JVP has taken up the Sinhala cause and pushed it to the point of social fascism through assassination and murder. Popular racism based on Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism promoted in the schools and expressed in song, textbook and media served to fuel the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983, in which thousands were killed at the hands of street mobs. Some of the most violently anti- Tamil propaganda (deriving inspiration from mythical Sinhalese history) has emanated from the present government. Colonisation of Tamil areas by Sinhalese was justified on the pretext of protecting ancient Buddhist shrines. And it is an open secret that ministers hired their own hit squads in the 1983 pogrom. When, in a bid to end the unwinnable war with the Tamils, the UNP signed the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, allowing Indian troops to operate on Sri Lankan soil, it alienated the very Sinhala nationalists it had itself fostered. And it was the JVP which capitalised on the resentment over India's interference in Sri Lanka's internal affairs. Accusing the UNP government (and other supporters of the Accord) of treachery, it enlarged and deepened popular racism into fanatical patriotism. But what has given the JVP terror tactics a hold over the population has been the steady erosion of democratic freedoms, on the one hand, and the self-abasement of the Left, on the other. Both the SLFP and UNP governments have postponed elections to stay in power, but the UNP went further and got itself re-elected en bloc on a phoney referendum to postpone elections. Local elections were never held under the SLFP and whatever elections took place under the UNP have either been rigged and/or carried out under conditions of massive intimidation. In the process, the political literacy that the country once boasted has been lost to the people and, with it, their will to resist. At the same time the collaborationist politics of the Left in the SLFP government of 1970-77 have not only served to decimate its own chances at the polls (it obtained not a single seat in the election of 1977) but also to leave the working-class movement defenceless. So that it was a simple matter for the UNP government to crush the general strike of 1980, imprison its leaders and throw 80, 000 workers permanently out of work. And it has been left to the JVP to pretend to take up the socialist mantle of the Left even as it devotes itself to the racist cause of the Right, and so win the support of the Sinhala-Buddhist people. In the final analysis the choice before the country is that of two terrors: that of the state or that of the JVP. Below we publish an analysis of the situation as at October 1988, put out by the underground Campaign for Social Democracy in the run up to the presidential elections.

This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).

In the past two decades contemporary Confucian political theory has been propelled by the dialectical conversation between Confucianism and democracy and, more recently, between Confucian democracy and Confucian meritocracy. However, the absence of a shared point of reference in developing Confucian democratic theory has made it extremely difficult to understand whether the disagreement between Confucian democrats and Confucian meritocrats is merely a political one or is also of philosophical significance. 'Democracy after Virtue' explores a normative Confucian democratic theory that justifies democracy on pragmatic grounds, both as a political system and as a way of life in East Asia, with special attention to Confucianism, a dominant cultural tradition in the region, as well as to the value pluralism and moral conflict that increasingly characterize the circumstances of East Asian politics

THIS ARTICLE BRIEFLY CONSIDERS TWO QUESTIONS. THE FIRST IS WHETHER SOCIALISM OR CAPITALISM IS THE MORE PRODUCTIVE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. IT CONCLUDES THAT HISTORY WOULD UNEQUIVOCALLY ANSWER THAT CAPITALISM IS A MORE PRODUCTIVE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. THE SECOND, MORE DIFFICULT, QUESTION IS WHETHER CAPITALISM OR SOCIALISM IS THE BETTER SYSTEM POLITICALLY, IN THE SENSE OF BEING MORE CONDUCIVE TO DEMOCRACY. IT ARGUES THAT ATTEMPTS TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION OFTEN ONLY COMPOUND CONFUSION. THOSE WHO GRAPPLE WITH THE QUESTION OFTEN SHOW TENDENCIES TO APPROPRIATE DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY TO HISTORIC "DEMOCRATIC" PRACTICE, AND TO CONFLATE DEMOCRACY AS SUCH WITH LIBERAL DEMOCRACY. ONCE THIS CONFLATION IS MADE, THE CORRELATION BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY IS EASILY ESTABLISHED, BUT ONLY ON THE BASIS OF AN ASSUMPTION THAT DEVALUES DEMOCRACY TO THE POINT OF JEOPARDIZING ITS STATUS AS AN EMANCIPATORY PROJECT.

Since the Webbs published Industrial Democracy at the end of the nineteenth century, the principle that workers have a legitimate voice in decision-making in the world of work – in some versions through trade unions, in others at least formally through separate representative structures – has become widely accepted in most West European countries. There is now a vast literature on the strengths and weaknesses of such mechanisms, and we review briefly some of the key interpretations of the rise (and fall) of policies and structures for workplace and board-level representation. We also discuss the mainly failed attempts to establish broader processes of economic democracy, which the eclipse of nationally specific mechanisms of class compromise makes again a salient demand. Economic globalization also highlights the need for transnational mechanisms to achieve worker voice (or more radically, control) in the dynamics of capital–labour relations. We therefore examine the role of trade unions in coordinating pressure for a countervailing force at European and global levels, and in the construction of (emergent?) supranational industrial relations. However, many would argue that unions cannot win legitimacy as a democratizing force unless manifestly democratic internally. Therefore we revisit debates on and dilemmas of democracy within trade unions, and examine recent initiatives to enhance democratization.

Examines the current crisis being experienced by the democratic movement due to the reduction of democracy to a set of procedures. Any discussion of democracy requires discussion of politics, defined as everything relevant to the explicit power vested by individuals in institutions that legitimately make sanction-bearing decisions. The need to shift institutions in democratic directions stems from their obligations for accountability, their need to reject hierarchies based on individual viewpoints, & their responsibility to define the collective good. Autonomy of the collective can only be achieved with the autonomy of the individuals who compose it. Because autonomy implies participation in the law, it is impossible to achieve a legitimate procedural democracy without deep intervention in the social lives of individuals, a concept antithetical to the fundamental principles of democracy as embraced in the ancient Greek concept of democracy. Reduction of democracy to procedures thus fails to recognize the true nature of both the individual & the collective society, as well as the ability of politics to give itself the laws of its own existence & establish individual & collective autonomy. B. Wolfe

This article examines oligarchic tendencies within institutionalised deliberative democracy in theory and practice. Institutional deliberative democracy consists of deliberations within an institution according to regulations that are enforced and lead to voluntary changes of preferences that conclude in a majority vote. Oligarchic tendencies in deliberative democracy are changes in the preferences of a majority to match those of an interested minority through its control and manipulation of the deliberative process. The usual chain of reasoning with respect to oligarchic deliberative democracy is: (1) Democratic majority rule should reflect the common will, what is good for all members of society upon reflection and deliberation. (2) When the majority does not vote for the common will, the vote is not truly democratic. (3) If the majority does not vote for the common will, special interests or their imposition on the majority by a dominating and oppressive minority are to blame. (4) The necessary initial task of managers of deliberative democracy is to overcome domination and oppression, factors that cause voting against the common will such as ignorance, the mass media, religion, class, economic inequality and special interests. (5) This overcoming requires homogenisation of the voting public, the elimination of relevant inequalities and their legacies of disinformation by re-education. (6) An educated intellectual avant-garde is in charge both of identifying the common will and of homogenising and re-educating the deliberating public. (7) When and only when such homogenisation is achieved, real deliberative democracy and its great benefits can finally take place. (8) Since the preconditions to deliberative democracy are ideal, indeed utopian, society can never be sufficiently homogeneous or the revolutionary elite sufficiently powerful to bring about the desired homogenisation and re-education. I demonstrate first the oligarchic elements in the theory. Then I examine oligarchic aspects of really existing deliberative democratic institutions, namely, consensus conferences in Denmark, France and the US. I conclude by considering whether the oligarchic tendencies in deliberative democracy are inevitable.