Social Democracy

On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivaled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth. Democracy on the Road takes listeners on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers, and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.

For more than 15 years, award-winning journalist Sophie McNeill has reported on some of the most war-ravaged and oppressive places on earth, including Syria, Gaza, Yemen, West Bank and Iraq. In We Can't Say We Didn't Know, Sophie tells the human stories of devastation and hope behind the headlines—of children, families and refugees, of valiant doctors, steadfast dissidents and Saudi women seeking asylum. These innocent civilians bear the brunt of the lawlessness of the current age of impunity, where war crimes go unpunished and human rights are abused.

How much equality does democracy need to survive? Political thinkers have wrestled with that question for millennia. Aldo Schiavone guides us through historical thickets, from the first democracy to the present day, seeking solutions to the enduring tension between democracy and inequality. Turning from antiquity to the modern world, Schiavone shows how the American and the French revolutions attempted to settle old debates, introducing a new way of thinking about equality.

Prepare to be taken on a thought-provoking journey as Dr. David K. Ewen uncovers the ominous challenges that arise when artificial intelligence (AI) and democratic processes intersect. In his book, Democracy Under Siege: The Threat of AI-Powered Voter Manipulation, Dr. Ewen explores the transformative impact of advanced AI language models like ChatGPT on political campaigns and communication. However, as exciting as this new technology is, it also poses a significant threat to the integrity of democratic processes.

Propaganda has become an inescapable part of modern American society. On a daily basis, news outlets, politicians, and the entertainment industry - with motives both dubious and well-intentioned - launch propagandistic appeals. In Propaganda and American Democracy, eight writers explore various aspects of modern propaganda and its impact. Contributors include leading scholars in the field of propaganda studies.

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.

We are told that, when we vote and elect representatives, we gain a voice in government and its policies. Yet, it hasn't translated our preferences into higher living standards for the majority of us. In America, the wealthy few have built a system that works in their favor, while maintaining the illusion of democracy. American voters have little influence on policies engineered by lawmakers. Political scientists call it the "income bias", causing lawmakers to compete to satisfy preferences of donors from the top one percent instead of the middle class.

Americans today have “freedom” to be fleeced, groped, injected, harassed, surveilled, vilified, disarmed, beaten, detained, and maybe shot by federal agents. From hapless homeowners hit by SWAT raids to pandemic lockdowns pointlessly paralyzing lives, government agencies have become far more intrusive and abusive. There is no escape from tinhorn dictators seizing guns, sabotaging schooling, or wrecking housing markets.

Ruprecht Polenz tritt rechtsextremen Schwurblern und Demokratieverächtern seit Jahren energisch entgegen, weil er glaubt, dass auch seine neun Enkel das Glück haben sollen, in einer Demokratie zu leben. Er ist einer der erfahrensten Influencer im Dienst von Freiheit und Vielfalt in Deutschland, seine engagierten Posts in den sozialen Medien werden täglich tausendfach kommentiert. In seinem kurzen, Mut machenden Buch ruft er uns zu: Es reicht heute nicht mehr, die Demokratie als gegeben hinzunehmen – tut etwas, um sie zu verteidigen! Das Vertrauen in unsere Demokratie ist erschüttert.

For a century, the American Civil Liberties Union has fought to keep Americans in touch with the founding values of the Constitution. As its centennial approached, the organization invited Ellis Cose to become its first ever writer-in residence, serving as an "embedded journalist" with complete editorial independence. The result is Cose's groundbreaking Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU and Its 100-Year Battle for Our Rights, the most authoritative account ever of America's premier defender of civil liberties.

Let’s talk about democracy beyond its most basic definitions. Learn about democracy as a legacy of ancient Greece. Use this social studies audiobook to grow your child’s interest in learning the democratic system as well as the rights of the citizens. By knowing its origins, perhaps your child can better understand how the ancient Greek concept has impacted future governments.

This audiobook examines democracy, or a representative electoral political system, and the interaction with a nation's economy. 

From 1953 to 1969, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren brought about many of the proudest achievements of American constitutional law. The Warren Court declared racial segregation and laws forbidding interracial marriage to be unconstitutional; it expanded the right of citizens to criticize public officials; it held school prayer unconstitutional; and it ruled that people accused of a crime must be given a lawyer even if they can't afford one. Yet conservative critics have fiercely accused the justices of the Warren Court of abusing their authority....

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.

What if the American experiment is twofold, encompassing both democracy and tyranny? That is the question at the core of this book, which traces some of ways that Americans across the nineteenth century understood the perversions tyranny introduced into both their polity and society.

Most citizens are well aware that the world is run rather badly by those in power—the politicians—who are in many cases democratically elected. Time and time again democracy fails to protect the ordinary citizen and exhibits dangerous and damaging flaws. Yet, it is often held up as the model of how best to govern. This pamphlet presents arguments that highlight exactly why democracy just isn’t very good and is no more than the best of a bad bunch of options. However, this pamphlet also contains hope. It expresses the belief that there is a vastly better way to run the world.

Executing Democracy: Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807 is the first volume of a rhetorical history of public debates about crime, violence, and capital punishment in America. This examination begins in 1683, when William Penn first struggled to govern the rowdy indentured servants of Philadelphia, and continues up until 1807, when the Federalists sought to impose law-and-order upon the New Republic.

Wild Democracy calls for a more anarchic, more courageous democracy. This is an ethic for people who know the rights they hold, and who struggle to rule themselves. This is an ethic for unfinished revolutions; an ethic for those who will not be mastered. This is an ethic for those who hold fast to the rights they have by nature.

Maximilian Steinbeis, Jurist und streitbarer Experte für alle Fragen zur Verfassung, zeigt am Beispiel Thüringen, wie Populisten den freiheitlichen Staat zerstören könnten, indem sie Gesetze und Institutionen missbrauchen: Schulen und Universitäten, Justiz und Polizei, Medien und Kunst. Es bleibt nur noch wenig Zeit, unsere Freiheit gegen diese Angriffe zu verteidigen. Maximilian Steinbeis schärft unser Bewusstsein für die Bedrohungen, denen unsere freie Gesellschaft ausgesetzt ist.

How Free Speech Saved Democracy is a revealing reminder that First Amendment rights have often been curtailed in efforts to block progress, and that current measures to reduce hurtful language and to end hate speech could backfire on those who promote them.