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Democratic theorists frequently assume that the "people" must have something in common, or else democracy will fail. This produces an ironically anti-democratic tendency to emphasize the passive possession of commonality. Sharing Democracy counters this tendency with a radical vision of democracy grounded instead in the active exercise of political freedom.

"This book addresses the widely held belief that liberal democracy embodies an uneasy compromise of incompatible values: those of liberal rights in the one hand, and democratic equality on the other. Liberalism is said to compromise democracy, while democracy is said to endanger the values of liberalism. It is these theses that Janos Kis examines and tries to refute."--Jacket

Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics.Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary debates: Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus their own legitimacy in a democratic society? Even if so, how is a democracy to fairly distinguish betwee

Annotation This book proposes a new institution - the 'People's Forum' - to enable democratic governments to effectively address long-running issues like global warming and inequality. It would help citizens decide what strategic problems their government must fix, especially where this requires them to suffer some inconvenience or cost. The People's Forum is first based on a new diagnosis of government failure in democracies. The book tests its own analyses of government failure by seeing whether these might help us to explain the failures of particular democracies to address (and in some cases, to even recognize) several crucial environmental problems. The essential features of a new design for democracy are described and then compared with those of previous institutional designs that were also intended to improve the quality of democratic government. In that comparison, the People's Forum turns out to be not only the most effective design for developing and implementing competent policy, but also the easiest to establish and run. The latter advantage is crucial as there has been no success in getting previous designs into actual trial practice. It is hoped that this book may inspire a small group to raise the money to set up and run the People's Forum. Then, as citizens see it operating and engage with it, they may come to regard the new Forum as essential in helping them to deliberate long-running issues and to get their resulting initiatives implemented by government. Smith also discusses how the People's Forum must be managed and how groups with different political ideologies may react to it. An Afterword sets out the method by which this design was produced, to help those who might want to devise an institution themselves. The new concepts in environmental science that the book develops to test its diagnosis are applied in an Appendix to outline crucial options for the future of Tasmania. Similar options apply to many countries, states and provinces. As indicated above, those choices are currently beyond the capacity of democratic governments to address and in some cases, even to recognize. But the People's Forum may lift them out of that morass

"Intensifying economic and political inequality poses a dangerous threat to the liberty of democratic citizens. Mounting evidence suggests that economic power, not popular will, determines public policy, and that elections consistently fail to keep public officials accountable to the people. John P. McCormick confronts this dire situation through a dramatic reinterpretation of Niccol Machiavelli, 's political thought. Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today. Machiavellian Democracy fundamentally reassesses one of the central figures in the Western political canon and decisively intervenes into current debates over institutional design and democratic reform. Inspired by Machiavelli's thoughts on economic class, political accountability and popular empowerment, McCormick proposes a citizen body that excludes socioeconomic and political elites and grants randomly selected common people significant veto, legislative, and censure authority within government and over public officials"--

Intro -- Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction by Nicholas Lemann -- QUESTION 1: Citizenship: Who Are "We the People"? -- George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island -- Frederick Douglass: from What to the Slave is the 4th of July? -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Solitude of Self -- Henry Cabot Lodge: Speech in the Senate on Immigration -- Randolph S. Bourne: Trans-National America -- QUESTION 2: Equality: How Can It Be Achieved? -- Horace Mann: from Twelfth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education -- Abraham Lincoln: Speech to the 166th Ohio Regiment -- Jane Addams: from The Subtle Problems of Charity -- W.E.B. Du Bois: from Black Reconstruction -- QUESTION 3: A More Perfect Union: What Is the Government For? -- James Madison: The Federalist No. 51 -- John Marshall: from Opinion for the Court in McCulloch v. Maryland -- Alexis de Tocqueville: from Democracy in America -- Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address to the Commonwealth Club of California -- Paul Nitze et al.: from NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security -- QUESTION 4: The Power of Money: How to Control It? -- Andrew Jackson: from Veto of the Bank Charter -- Carl Schurz: from Address on Civil Service Reform -- Theodore Roosevelt: The New Nationalism -- John Paul Stevens: from Dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission -- QUESTION 5: Protest: Can We Disobey the Law? -- Henry David Thoreau: from Civil Disobedience -- Martin Luther King, Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail -- Hannah Arendt: from Civil Disobedience -- Sources and Acknowledgments.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- OUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT -- WE THE PEOPLE -- REPRESENTATION -- MAJORITY RULE, MINORITY RIGHTS -- THE CONSTITUTION -- FEDERAL AND STATE POWERS -- SEPARATION OF POWERS -- THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH -- THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH -- THE JUDICIAL BRANCH -- THE ROOTS OF DEMOCRACY -- THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT -- A SOCIAL CONTRACT -- LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL -- Glossary -- Index -- Primary Source List -- Websites -- Back Cover

The timely book takes stock of the state of the art and future of electronic democracy, exploring the history and potential of e-democracy in global perspective. Analysing the digital divide, the role of the internet as a tool for political mobilisation, internet Voting and Voting Advice Applications, and other phenomena, this volume critically engages with the hope for more transparency and political participation through e-democracy.

Introduction -- The triumphs and travails of democracy -- The democratic moment -- The role of human rights -- The links between liberalism and democracy -- Why liberalism became democratic -- Globalization and self-government -- Understanding the European Union -- Sovereignty and democracy -- Two kinds of internationalism -- The democratic moment revisited

Challenging the view of Islamic extremists and critics of Islam, this book explores the very topical issue of Islam'Ơ"s compatibility with democracy. It examines: principles of Islam's political theory and the notion of democracy therein the notion of democracy in medieval and modern Muslim thought Islam and human rights the contribution of Islamic legal ideas to European legal philosophy and law. The book addresses the pressing need for a systematic show of an Islamic politics of human rights and democracy grounded in the Qur'Ơ"an. The West wonders about Islam and human rights, and its own ability to incorporate Muslim minority communities. Many Muslims also seek to find within Islam support source for democratic governance and human rights. -- Publisher description