Social Democracy

In Defense of Liberal Democracy is a clarion call for today's divided time: a bold reaffirmation of the liberal democratic principles that have carried America through each crisis in its history - and can do so again. Merging expert historical, political, and economic analysis, In Defense of Liberal Democracy shows how our recent technological revolution - what high-profile economist Manuel Hinds calls the Connectivity Revolution - has led to a crisis of divisiveness.

How should we "fix" digital technologies to support democracy instead of undermining it? In Designing for Democracy, Jennifer Forestal argues that accurately evaluating the democratic potential of digital spaces means studying how the built environment - a primary component of our "modern public square" - structures our activity, shapes our attitudes, and supports the kinds of relationships and behaviors democracy requires.

Hope for Democracy introduces new tools for tamping down hyper-partisanship and placing citizens at the heart of the democratic process. It showcases the Citizens' Initiative Review, which convenes a stratified random sample of citizens to study ballot measures. Citizen panelists interrogate advocates, opponents, and experts, then write an analysis that distills their findings for voters.

In Spying on Democracy, National Lawyers Guild executive director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, and their perceived political beliefs.

Enlightened Democracy traces the history of the Electoral College from the Constitutional Convention to the present. The Electoral College protects our republic and promotes our liberty. Americans should defend their unique presidential election system at all costs.

At a critical time in American life, Parker J. Palmer looks with realism and hope at how to deal with our political tensions for the sake of the common good - without the shouting, blaming, or defaming so common in our politics today.

La digitalización avanza inexorablemente. Aturdidos por el frenesí de la comunicación y la información, nos sentimos impotentes ante el tsunami de datos que despliega fuerzas destructivas y deformantes.

With Barack Obama's historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives, including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski, began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks - known to political insiders as "ratf**king" - to a whole new unprecedented level.

Wilkins decided to make a congressional run when the elected official in his district reneged on his commitment not to seek re-election after five terms. Wilkins asserts that term limits would encourage greater involvement in the political process. He hopes this book will encourage citizens to retrieve the reins of power from the hands of career politicians and restore it to the American people—where it has always belonged.

Nell'ultimo decennio il mondo è divenuto protagonista di mutamenti politici, economici e sociali sempre più rapidi, che stanno portando alla creazione di nuove realtà politiche volte a cambiare, o addirittura stravolgere, le regole della democrazia occidentale. Una nuova generazione di élite fautrici di idee illiberali e autoritarie sta ottenendo un crescente consenso tra le masse e, dunque, una maggiore influenza. Oltreoceano, la presidenza di Trump, con il suo «America First», ha infiammato gli animi dei suprematisti bianchi.

In Consequences: The Rise of a Fractured World Order, William Priest, David Roche, and Alex Michailoff deliver an engaging, timely, and insightful analysis of identifying the sources and challenges facing liberal democracies and their ability to confront autocracies and autocratic behavior. The authors identify and address structural flaws present in both democracies and autocracies.

We do just about everything on our phones, and yet we still can't use them to vote. But the technology exists, provides enhanced security over traditional paper ballots, and it could exponentially increase voter turnout.

Das Erstarken der politischen Ränder, Identitätspolitik, Migration, die Einschränkungen der Meinungsfreiheit und die Corona-Politik haben das Vertrauen in die Demokratie ausgehöhlt: Wolfgang Kubicki packt die drängendsten politischen Themen unserer Zeit bei der Wurzel und zeigt schonungslos auf, welche politischen Entscheidungen zum Verlust des Freiheitsgefühls geführt haben. Sein neues Buch ist eine liberale Kampfansage, ein Aufruf zur Rückkehr zu echten demokratischen Werten und zum Kampf für die Freiheit—auch wenn sie mit unbequemen Debatten verbunden ist.

«Abbiamo tutti in mente la tipica immagine di uno stato autocratico. C'è un cattivo al vertice, che controlla l'esercito e la polizia. L'esercito e la polizia minacciano il popolo con la violenza. Ci sono collaboratori malvagi, e magari qualche coraggioso dissidente.» Tuttavia, per Anne Applebaum, saggista e vincitrice del premio Pulitzer, questa convinzione diffusa altro non è che un anacronismo. Nel XXI secolo, infatti, una simile rappresentazione delle Autocrazie ha scarsa attinenza con la realtà e per di più ne ignora del tutto l'evoluzione.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power.

South African politics is riddled with delusions. Many common political arguments come pre-packaged in an old and dusty box - but the self-evident truths are not, in fact, so indisputable. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh sets out to dismantle that box. He argues that free education is far from impossible, the ANC's liberation narrative is too idyllic to swallow, land reform is not the first step to chaos, and the media is not free....

This book details the destructive flawed foundations of Democracy, destroying the mythology behind the innovated political system which has become a valued religion to many voters and politicians. Diabolical Democracy Debunked also suggests a morally superior political system as an alternative to Democracy.

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely translated and acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics in Democracy Rules. In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded not just on liberty and equality, but also on uncertainty.

When cybersecurity expert Jake Braun challenged hackers at DEFCON, the largest hacking conference in the world, to breach the security of an American voting machine, a hacker in Europe conquered the task in less than two minutes. From hacking into voting machines to more mundane, but no less serious problems, America's democracy faces unprecedented tests from within and without.

In this lively and illuminating book, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores a long-standing and largely unspoken tension at the heart of democracy between the supposed wisdom of the crowd and the need for information to be vetted and evaluated by a learned elite made up of trusted experts.