Lexington Books
Pages: 284
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-0243-6 • Hardback • October 2014 • $115.00 • (£88.00)
978-1-4985-0245-0 • Paperback • September 2016 • $51.99 • (£40.00)
978-1-4985-0244-3 • eBook • October 2014 • $49.00 • (£38.00)
Kenneth Good is adjunct professor in global studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and visiting professor in political and international studies at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.
Introduction
Chapter 1. Democratization in Athens: Participatory Democracy as a Dual Process of Empowering the People and Controlling Elites
Chapter 2. Democratization in Britain: A Long, Repeated and Incomplete Aspiration
Chapter 3. Democratization in South Africa: The People versus a Militarist, Predominant Ethno-Nationalist Elite.
Chapter 4. Democracy in the Capitalist Heartlands: Alienation and Dysfunctionalities
Chapter 5. Democratization in Europe and North Africa: Democracy Regains Its Revolutionary Potentialities.
Chapter 6. Democratization in South Africa in 21st Century: The Potentialities of the Organised Urban Poor and the Hostility of a Factionalised and Corrupt ANC
Conclusion
Good, author or coauthor of six books on democracy, social inequalities, and southern African politics, offers a study that favorably compares participative democracy to liberal political systems. His key argument is that the liberal capitalist democracy has failed and that participatory forms are rising in many places. The liberal form, epitomized by Great Britain and the US, is now under threat from its dysfunction and the alienation of its citizens from its institutions and elitist values. The participatory model upholds the capacity of uneducated and poor citizens to govern themselves actively and directly. Good provides illustrations for his arguments from ancient Athens through 17th-century England to developments in post-apartheid South Africa, Iceland, and Arab countries since 2011. Despite his optimism, he admits that the process of participatory democratization will be long term and inherently contentious. While questioning practices of liberal democracy, the author does not forget to criticize the political theory of elitism that underpins modern liberal democracies, a theory developed a century ago by Robert Michels, Max Weber, and Gaetano Mosca. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.
— CHOICE