The politics of participation : From Athens to e-democracy
We live in an age of democracy. Very few people challenge the virtues of?government by the people?, yet politicians and commentators are fond of decrying the?crisis of democracy?. How do these views square up?This book provides the answer by surveying the philosophical history of democracy and its critics and by analysing empirical data about citizen participation in Britain and other developed democracies. In addition to analysis of major political thinkers like Plato, Machiavelli and J.S. Mill, the book analyses how modern technology has influenced democracy. Among the issues discussed in t
Case Reports
1 online resource (201 pages)
9781847792303, 9781781701560, 9780719076596, 1847792308, 1781701563, 0719076595
818847339
9780719076589; 9780719076589; Copyright; Contents; List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; A note on the data; Introduction; Part I Theoretical aspects of citizen politics; 1 Understanding citizen politics: a methodological overview; 2 Participation and democracy from the Greeks to our times; Part II Empirical foundations of citizen politics; 3 An empirical approach to citizen politics; 4 Bottom-up politics: riots and extraparliamentary participation; 5 Top-down politics: e-democracy, citizens' juries and designer politics; 6 Citizens as voters; 7 Excursus: the power of the representatives. Part III Case studies in citizen democracy8 Decisions to hold referendums in the UK; 9 Voting by the people: the referendums on the European Constitution; 10 Absentee voting: a comparative perspective; Conclusion: quo vadis democracy?; References; Index
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010