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Does democracy promote excellence? Searching history, literature, and works of political theory, the contributors conclude that American democracy does indeed promote excellence despite thousands of years of political theory arguing the contrary. However, the promotion of such excellence requires one to think differently about what excellence means and how best to promote it. Religion and a strong sense of community are vital in creating this democratic excellence and are necessary to counter conservative critics who see little value in democratic practices.Entering the twenty-first century, this question has become all the more important. Democracy is a difficult and challenging form of government that is increasingly more common than it once was. As the United States works to promote democracy throughout the world it is a timely matter to consider once again why democracy is a good thing. At the same time, Romance and Riemer remind us always to think about and ponder the ways democracy can fail us. Contributions from distinguished scholars of political science, history, and religion provide supporting evidence in a multi-disciplinary approach.

Mazzoleni, Stewart, Horsfield, and their contributors analyze the two-way relationship of the mass media and the contemporary phenomenon of extreme right wing neo-populist political parties which emerged in the closing years of the 20th century across the world. The success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the neo-populist Front National, in the first French presidential ballot in April 2002 shows that these extremist parties have strong, if varying, electoral support. Drawn into reporting on the policies and antigovernment critiques of the new parties, the mass communication institutions, especially those engaged in news production, have been challenged by a variety of unconventional but effective political campaign strategies that caused many media professionals considerable challenge.Taking an approach informed by mass communication theory, this book analyzes eight case studies of the interaction of news media dynamics and neo-populism in Austria, Australia, France, Canada, India, Italy, the United States, and the Latin American region against the background of widespread disenchantment with traditional parties and the complacency and cynicism of popularly elected governments. Insights into media responses reveal how dependent on media coverage the neo-populist parties were and how, in many cases, the media were initially unequal to the confronting ideologies of the new parties. Although the news media exploited the new parties, new parties exploited the news media as well in quite shrewd and original ways. This is an important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with political mass communications and right-wing political organizations.

Between August 1846 and April 1847, Guiseppe Mazzini, in London exile, published six articles in English in the People's Journal, the last of which was on Communism. With these articles, which became known in his native country in an 1852 Italian reworking, Mazzini powerfully inserted himself into the debate on the nature of democracy, alongside the most illustrious intellectuals of the time, Tocqueville, Blanc, Cabet, and Proudon.In two of his pieces, Mazzini answered the democratic communists-the Fraternal Democrats-who in 1847 invited the twenty-eight year old Karl Marx to London to rebut Mazzini's perceptive criticisms of communism and to explore a new possible elaboration of the ideology. Mastellone confronts the English text of Mazzini with the German text of Marx and traces an almost forgotten theoretical contest that has been ignored, but remains crucial for an understanding of two fundamental movements of the modern world: communism and democracy.

How do nations make successful transitions to democracies? Our understanding of how democracy functions—and under what circumstances it can be consolidated and strengthened—remains highly uneven. Recent events underscore the critical importance of expanding our understanding of democratic institutions and operations. Here McMahon and his distinguished contributors demonstrate how the dynamic process of democratization is shaped by the specific contexts in which it occurs; how the internal community plays a key role in the development of democracy; and how the ability to understand democratization requires both internal and external perspectives.The contributors seek to improve the definitions of what constitutes a democracy and to determine how the effectiveness of democratic institutions might best be judged in order to better serve the analysis of and policy approaches to building democratic institutions. With fewer overtly authoritarian states in the post-Cold War world, a wealth of raw information and experience has begun to accumulate. Our understanding of democratic institutional performance requires us to look closely at the performance of the institutions themselves. The book contains chapters on public opinion, civil society, domestic institutions of governance, elections, globalization, international standards of democratic development, international assistance and academic research. A concluding chapter summarizes what democratization processes can teach us about democracy in a broader context.

Donald Busky provides an in-depth, well referenced, and up to date examination of the history of social democratic parties and governments worldwide from the 19th century onward.After reviewing the history of democratic socialism and its rivals as well as defining the various movements, Dr. Busky examines the history and current state of social democratic parties beginning with Europe and Great Britain, and then moving to the United States and Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The volume concludes with a survey bibliography of key studies on the topic. This global survey will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with comparative politics and political ideologies.

Drawing on the new physics as the scientific foundation of transformational politics, Becker and Slaton write compellingly about teledemocracy, social energy, and democratic quanta. They outline their quantum political theory in rich detail, demonstrating how we have entered a phase of highly charged, erratic, and sometimes self-contradictory packets of social political energy that appears to occur with a rough regularity but with differing levels of velocity and force.Becker and Slaton explore the current state and future of televoting, electronic town meetings, and other initiatives designed to put the public back into public affairs. This book will prove to be a fascinating read for scholars, students, researchers, and policymakers interested in new political paradigms, politics, and public administration.

Pluralist democratic systems, according to Philipe Braud, do not do what they claim to do, but rather, serve to channel, diffuse, or reconcile society's conflicts. As one reviewer of the original French edition notes, the book can be seen as part of a long tradition in European political thought that sees democracy as a front for capitalism.Braud asserts that pluralist democracy is credible only because of the complete failure of communism. There is no government by the people; the rule of law is a tautology. What fundamental changes occur happen because of the forces of economics, culture, and labor, and in response to political direction. The efficacy of democracy comes from its ability to manage social emotions, specifically by addressing anguish with promises of security and identity: by meeting the need to be wooed and seduced by constant personalization of politics, offering the illusion of choice; by transposing the frustrations of gender, age, and class inequalities into the political domain; by providing pleasure in the game of politics; and by promising greed, power, and its prerequisites. Pluralist democracies know best how to manage these emotions, and how to use them without suffocating them. A powerful and disturbing vision of pluralist democracy that will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary political thought.

Professors Murphy and Choi use postmodern philosophy to expose an important source of racism and cultural domination. They examine foundationalism, which they see at the core of the Western intellectual tradition and which is shown to foster a metaphysics of domination. By contrast, postmodernism undermines this root of racism.They demonstrate that foundationalism is not needed to support identity, institutions, or political order. Indeed, they assert that true pluralism is possible once foundationalist approaches to knowledge and order are set aside. Special attention is directed to two current modes of discrimination: institutional racism and symbolic violence. Murphy and Choi provide an intriguing look at ways to undercut the justification for racism and other threats to cultural difference. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and other researchers in the areas of race relations, cultural studies, and political theory.