Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1 Democracy Against Itself -- 2 Democracy in Athens: Autonomy, Tragedy and Decline -- 3 Democide in Weimar: Militant Democracy and the Paradox of Self-Defence -- 4 The Coming Authoritarianism: The State of America's Democracy -- 5 China's New Authoritarianism: A Glimpse at Our Post-Democratic Future? -- 6 Occupy Democracy: Democracy Against Itself and the Global Occupy Movement -- Bibliography -- Index

Beginning with the premise that democracies are often deeply implicated in their own downfall, The Theory of Democide challenges the conventional view of how and why democracies collapse by demonstrating that democratic collapse is often a direct result of the inherent logic of democracy itself

Localism has recently been placed back on the political agenda in many countries. Given this, the case for prioritizing the local should be subject to renewed scrutiny. In this review essay, I do this in two ways while being guided by two new books: Trevor Latimer's Small Isn't Beautiful: The Case Against Localism and Jennifer Vey and Nate Storring's edited collection, Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World. Firstly, I use Latimer to examine how the localist revolution—much heralded by some—has the potential not only to produce good as well as regrettable outcomes, but increasingly regrettable outcomes in the name of good. Secondly, I use Vey and Storring to examine why localist solutions emerge and sometimes become necessary in the face of state and federal neglect. But even so, this does not necessarily mean that localism alone, without centralized coordination and oversight, is enough.

AbstractIn recent years, a growing number of Australian local governments have reaffirmed their longstanding climate leadership by declaring a climate emergency. Indeed, since 2016, when Melbourne's Darebin council became the world's first local government to declare a climate emergency, close to 100 local governments – or a little under one fifth of all Australian local governments – have taken the extraordinary step and made a similar declaration. But although these local government climate emergency declarations have received widespread government and media scrutiny, the precise nature and obligations of climate emergency declarations for local government remain unclear. Indeed, there is currently little analysis and understanding of what obligations local governments incur from declaring a climate emergency, whether those that have made such a declaration have fulfilled their obligations, and whether climate emergency declarations exceed the remit of existing local government environmental and climate roles and policies. This practice insight article seeks to answer these questions in both theory and practice. It finds that, at present, much of the talk about climate emergency by local government may merely be symbolic and broadly aligned with their existing local environmental and climate roles and policies.

ABSTRACTIn federal political systems such as the United States, there has long existed a view that citizens should be more politically competent at the local level than at the federal level of government. Recent studies have challenged this view. This article argues that these findings may reflect only one part of the broader picture. Through a review of two recent studies, I contend that research in this realm must consider more than only the level of government. Odd as this sounds, assumptions about varying levels of political competence at different levels of government have always been premised on the notion that local-level politics is smaller and less complex than federal-level politics. However, when local politics takes place today against the backdrop of small villages and towns as well as in large cities, these are assumptions that must be reevaluated.