Social Democracy

The old tools of political analysis are obsolete - they have rusted and are no longer fit for purpose. We've grown lazy, wedded to the assumption that, after ruptures such as Brexit, the pandemic and the rise of the populist Right, things will eventually go 'back to normal'. Award-winning political writer Matthew d'Ancona invites you to think afresh: to seek new ways of challenging political extremism, bombastic populism and democratic torpor on both Left and Right. In this groundbreaking book, he proposes a new way of understanding our era and plots a way forward.

Falsehoods have been at issue in every presidential impeachment proceeding from Nixon to Trump. But, until now, no one has analyzed why public lies might be impeachable offenses, and whether the First Amendment would provide a defense. Noting that speech by public employees does not receive the same First Amendment protection as the speech of ordinary citizens, legal scholar Catherine J. Ross proposes the constitutionally viable solution of treating presidents as public employees who work for the people.

Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism—the nation's first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In this important book, Feingold and Prindiville examine the grave risks inherent in this effort.

In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. Legal reforms gradually brought an end to traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked. William J. Novak shows how Americans translated new conceptions of citizenship, social welfare, and economic democracy into demands for law and policy that delivered public services and vindicated people's rights.

From their founding, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) educated as many as 90 percent of Black college students in the United States. Although many are aware of the significance of HBCUs in expanding Black Americans' educational opportunities, much less attention has been paid to the vital role that they have played in expanding American democracy. In The Power of Black Excellence, Deondra Rose provides an authoritative history of HBCUs and the unique role they have played in shaping American democracy since 1865.

During the last two decades, there has been much scholarly and popular interest in the financialization of the American economy-why the turn to finance has taken place, what constituted it, and what has come out of it. In Disembedded, Basak Kus draws from the theories of Karl Polanyi-one of the greatest and most influential political economists of the twentieth century-to answer these questions.

In democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can’t always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped up by white supremacy, whites (as a group) are accustomed to winning. Black citizens, on the other hand, are expected to be political heroes whose civic suffering enables progress toward racial justice. In this book, Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the two most important forces driving racial politics in the United States today are Black grief and white grievance.

En todo el mundo, las democracias se enfrentan a un enemigo nuevo e implacable que no tiene ejército ni armada; no procede de ningún país que podamos señalar en un mapa, porque no viene de ahí fuera, sino de aquí dentro. En lugar de desafiar a las sociedades libres con la destrucción desde el exterior, amenaza con corroerlas desde el interior.

Una persona, un voto: la democrazia si basa su una promessa di uguaglianza che troppo spesso si infrange sul muro del denaro. Finanziamento delle campagne elettorali, donazioni ai partiti politici, controllo dei media: da decenni la vita democratica è prigioniera degli interessi privati.

Das Vertrauen der Europäer in die demokratische Politik ist zerrüttet. Institutionen, die im 20. Jahrhundert zu den wichtigsten Vertrauensträgern gehörten, werden von vielen infrage gestellt. Woran liegt das? Was bedeutet das für unsere Gesellschaft? Und wie können wir damit umgehen? In den vergangenen Jahren hat sich ein dramatischer gesellschaftlicher Wandel vollzogen. Viele Menschen stehen nicht nur der Politik, sondern auch großen Konzernen, Medien und sogar der Wissenschaft mit Skepsis gegenüber.

I Dream with Open Eyes begins with an exploration of Prochnik's ancestral past: the pilgrimage of his mother's family, who were among the first English settlers in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel migration unfolds as Prochnik, along with his wife and their son, makes the decision to uproot their lives in New York to move to England.

Meinungsfreiheit und freier Journalismus sind die schärfsten Waffen zur Verteidigung von Demokratien. Maria Ressa steht wie keine andere für den Kampf um die Wahrheit und gegen Hass und Gewalt. In ihrem Buch beschreibt sie, wie Demokratien durch Autokraten und Diktatoren ausgehöhlt werden - mittels sozialer Medien. Denn Facebook und Google dulden aus Profitgier Propaganda und Fake News. Ressa legt ein Netzwerk der Desinformation offen, das den ganzen Globus umspannt.

Immer weniger Deutsche vertrauen noch den Institutionen dieses Landes - weder den Parteien noch den Medien, noch nicht einmal der Wissenschaft. Doch kann eine Demokratie so noch funktionieren? Anita Blasberg, preisgekrönte Journalistin, ergründet eine der dringlichsten Fragen unserer Zeit: den Vertrauensverlust in den eigenen Staat. Packend und schonungslos rekonstruiert sie die schrittweise Erosion des Vertrauens in den letzten dreißig Jahren - am Beispiel ihrer eigenen Mutter und entlang historischer Bruchstellen und Protagonisten.

Much of the attention paid to Trump's rise to power has focused on his corrosive personality and divisive style of governing. But he alone is not the problem. The vulnerability is much broader and deeper. The ascendance of Trump is the culmination of nearly 250 years of political reforms that gradually ceded party nominations to small cliques of ideologically motivated party activists, interest groups, and donors. Author Lawrence Jacobs provides a highly engaging history of political reforms since the late-eighteenth century that over time dangerously weakened democracy.

Das Vermächtnis eines Jahrhundertpolitikers Henry Kissinger, Jahrhundertpolitiker und Friedensnobelpreisträger, Meister der Diplomatie und politischer Stratege, zeigt in diesem Alterswerk, was Staatskunst in Zeiten von Krise und Umbruch auszeichnet. Am Beispiel von sechs Staatenlenkern, denen er persönlich verbunden war - Konrad Adenauer und Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon und Anwar el-Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew und Margaret Thatcher -, führt er uns vor, wie aus dem Zusammenspiel von Strategie, Mut und Charakter politische Führung erwächst.

Con un análisis crítico implacable, irónico y con verdades filosas, Jairo Calixto ofrece en este manual corrosivo tragicómicos retratos de personajes célebres de la actual oposición mexicana: Fox, Calderón y Zavala, Claudio X. González, Ricardo Anaya, el jefe Diego, así como de varios políticos de estos tiempos aciagos: Lozoya, Bartlett, Rosario Robles, Lorenzo Córdova y demás especies en peligro de irrupción.

La democracia es el espacio donde desembocan todos los ideales políticos de la modernidad. Ahí confluyen impulsos no sólo diversos sino incluso contrarios: la aspiración de identidad y pluralidad, de liderazgo y contrapesos, de libertad e igualdad, de soberanía y tolerancia, de participación y prudencia. Por ello, la contradicción no es un accidente de la democracia: es su esencia.

Trump, la Brexit, i risultati delle elezioni in molti paesi europei, la Turchia di Erdogan, l'India di Modi: prendono forza a livello globale tendenze che paiono sancire il divorzio fra la democrazia e i principi liberali che l'hanno innervata, soprattutto in Occidente. Eppure viviamo in un mondo che non vede affatto, come si crede, un peggioramento socioeconomico o un aumento delle diseguaglianze.

The 2016 election of Donald Trump focused people's minds on populism, and most of the attention paid to the subject since has been on the threat it poses to wealthy democracies. In Democracy Unmoored, Samuel Issacharoff takes a far wider-angle view of the phenomenon, covering countries from across the globe: Brazil, Poland, Argentina, Turkey, India, Hungary, Venezuela, and more. Just as importantly, he focuses on populism's attack on the institutions of governance.

Enrique Krauze, en esta lúcida colección de ensayos - a caballo entre la política, la filosofía, la literatura y la historia - advierte de los peligros de la acumulación del poder en una sola persona y sale en defensa de la democracia, el debate, la pluralidad y la tolerancia. En defensa de la libertad.