Democracy books

This volume contains an Open Access chapter. Relationships between elites and democracy have always been strained. The very concept of elites - of 'chosen people' - stands in contradiction to democratic ideals of political equality. Simultaneously, they are necessary parts of democratic societies. In any large-scale society, democracy is unthinkable without large organizations, be they political bodies, bureaucracies, enterprises, or voluntary organizations. When power is concentrated at the summit of such organizations the incumbents of the top positions potentially constitute groups that often are termed elite groups.   The present volume of Comparative Social Research offers a broad set of comparative studies of elites, stretching from the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt to women's political leadership in Brazil and Germany, via attainment of elite positions among minorities in France and the US.   The quality of democratic governance seems to be in decline in many parts of contemporary world. Nevertheless, political elections are still a main source of legitimacy, even when they are far from being free and fair. Developments in the Third Wave democracies established around 1990 both in Europe and in the rest of the world, are treated in several chapters. How do they fare two or three decades later? Another group of chapters sets the focus on elite recruitment and socialization, spelled out against class and gender. The volume concludes by highlighting various entanglements of elites with populism, concerning both underlying reasons for the recent populist expansion and the various images of elites in populist movements.

Social democrats in the Western world look back on a century where growth and expansion of centre-left values seemed, during certain periods of time, to be a law of nature. Today, the so-called golden era from the 1940s to the 1970s is just a distant memory for the social democratic movement. Volume 35 of Comparative Social Research challenges this narrative of the post-war glory of social democracy. It argues that social democracy has been associated too tightly with the specific context of post-1945 and explores the margin for manoeuvre for the social democratic movement, both now and in the future. Contributors to this book explore essential questions for contemporary social democrats, such as; What does social democracy constitute as a set of ideas in the 21st century experiencing rapid technological, economic and demographic change? Is the narrative of the decline of social democracy warranted, and is there an opportunity for transformation or even rejuvenation? Social Democracy in the 21st Century is an essential reading for academics and researchers of political science and sociology.

The Impact of Foreign Interventions on Democracy and Human Rights is a provocative study exploring the relationship between military and economic interventions around the world. The book establishes what determines the success or failure of foreign interventions with respect to their initial goals of helping improve the quality of the democratic institutions in locations such as Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. Using different methodologies ranging from quantitative methods to mixed methods as well as in-depth historical case studies, this volume profoundly analyses how military and economic interventions have affected the democratic institutions in those intervened countries. While some chapters are focused on cross-country analyses, other chapters provide a more in-depth case analysis of interventions and its effects on the target country including Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Brazil. With authors coming together from political science, international relations, and international political economy, The Impact of Foreign Interventions on Democracy and Human Rights provides a holistic view establishing the differences between the policies, methods, intentions, and consequences of the various American, French, and Chinese interventions in the case studies they present.