Democracy in Times of Upheaval

A narrative chronicle of Israeli democracy that defines historic phases and follows thematic challenges to democracy, including: competition between religion and the rule of law; the statist society and chaotic minoritocracy; modern illiberal populism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The comprehensive portrait exposes endemic flaws of democracy in Israel, but also shows that Israel has considerable capacity – and responsibility – to fulfill the promise of democracy.

Numerous analysts have lately expressed concern about tendencies including democratic backsliding and populism occurring in many countries worldwide. This book considers such theories in the context of the United Kingdom (UK) in the period since 2016, examining Brexit and numerous other subjects. The author applies the techniques of the historian, drawing on a variety of primary and secondary materials. Offering both evidence-based assessment and polemic, the work presents its analysis in a variety of different forms, intended to convey the complexity and extensive sweep of the issues. The book concludes that, while they have precedents, UK democracy faces real and broad challenges. The author makes recommendations for addressing these problems.

Democracy is on the run, and elected governments are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. Legislatures are increasingly seen as unrepresentative. To give legitimacy to democratic government, experts argue that we need more democracy and more opportunities for direct citizen participation. Representative democracy needs to be complemented by forms of direct engagement, such as referendums, popular votes, the recall, citizens’ juries, eDemocracy, etc. This is what we term Complementary Democracy. In this book experts from the worlds of practice and theory come together to explain – and occasionally critique – these complements to representative democracy. The volume provides an invaluable starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the new directions of democratic governance, and hopes to inspire those who seek to build stronger democracies.

The Will of the People: Populism and Citizen Participation in Latin America argues that while populist leaders typically claim to speak 'in the name of the people', they rarely allow the people to express their opinion independently through institutions of citizen participation. The argument is rooted in theoretical discussions and empirical analyses of trends and specific cases.

The volume deals with the following questions: Why is populism so prolific in the Latin American region? How and where do populist leaders arrive to power? Is there a connection between populism and fascism as claimed by negative views of Argentinian Peronism? Are populist leaders more keen on introducing mechanisms of direct citizen participation? Are the erosions of the political party system an explanation of the emergence of populism, as seems to be the case with Fujimorism in Peru? To what extent have the governments of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa given voice to the people through the so-called participatory democracy?

Beyond the Voting Rights Act movingly recounts over 30 years of contemporary voting rights battles in the United States from the 1980s to the present day. The book places in context the modern-day battles against voter suppression laws that were embedded in American history and are still underway across the country. It tells a story of that struggle from the author’s perspective beginning as a young African American from Cleveland in the 1980s, who reluctantly became involved within this movement as a student activist and inadvertently rose to become an integral part of the ultimate legislative victory

Putting the current crisis of democracy into historical perspective, Death by a Thousand Cuts chronicles how would-be despots, dictators, and outright tyrants have finessed the techniques of killing democracies earlier in history, in the 20^th Century, and how today’s autocrats increasingly continue to do so in the 21^st. It shows how autocratic government becomes a kleptocracy, sustained only to enrich the ruler and his immediate family. But the book also addresses the problems of being a dictator and considers if dictatorships are successful in delivering public policies, and finally, how autocracies break down.

We tend to think of democratic breakdowns as dramatic events, such as General Pinochet’s violent coup in Chile, or Generalissimo Franco’s overthrow of the Spanish Republic. But this is not how democracies tend to die – only five percent of democracies end like this. Most often, popular government is brought down gradually; almost imperceptibly. Based in part on Professor Qvortrup’s BBC Programme Death by a Thousand Cuts (Radio-4, 2019), the book shows how complacency is the greatest danger for the survival of government by the people. Recently democratically elected politicians have used crises as a pretext for dismantling democracy. They follow a pattern we have seen in all democracies since the dawn of civilisation. The methods used by Octavian in the dying days of the Roman Republic were almost identical to those used by Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán in 2020. And, sadly, there are no signs that the current malaise will go away.

Death by a Thousand Cuts adds substance to a much-discussed topic: the threat to democracy. It provides evidence and historical context like no other book on the market. Written in an accessible style with vignettes as well as new empirical data, the books promises to be the defining book on the topic. This book will help readers who are concerned about the longevity of democracy understand when and why democracy is in danger of collapsing, and alert them to the warning signs of its demise.

The goal of this book is to use the history of the 26th Amendment and the ongoing fight to promote and defend youth voter participation as a prism through which to teach the history of the struggle for the fundamental right to vote in the United States. The book centers on case studies of four US institutions—Tuskegee University, Prairie View A&M University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and Bard College, which offer unique insights into the role of college communities in the fight for suffrage, and their contributions to the evolution of the right to vote in the United States.

In this new edition of Matt Qvortrup’s acclaimed book, the author shows how neuroscience can help us understand why people willingly give up their democratic rights or are unwillingly forced to do so.
According to Plato, democracies die when people get angry. Resentment causes them to vote for demagogues. Recently, democratically elected politicians have used crises as a pretext for dismantling democracy, following a pattern we have seen since the dawn of civilization. Why do people fall for the lure of dictatorships? And what can we learn from the cause and effects of dictatorships to understand why democracies die?
Death by a Thousand Cuts: Neuropolitics, Thymos, and the Slow Demise of Democracy is written in an accessible style with vignettes and new empirical data to provide historical context and neurological evidence on a much-discussed topic: the threat of democracy. This book will help readers who are concerned about the longevity of democracy understand when and why democracy is in danger of collapsing and alert them to the warning signs of its demise.