Democracy And Disobedience

Howard Zinn's cogent defense of civil disobedience with a new introduction by the author. In this slim volume, Zinn lays out a clear and dynamic case for civil disobedience and protest, and challenges the dominant arguments against forms of protest that challenge the status quo. Zinn explores the politics of direct action, nonviolent civil disobedience, and strikes, and draws lessons for today.

Civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act, contrary to law, carried out to communicate opposition to law and policy of government. This book presents a theory of civil disobedience that draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy. This book explores the ethics of civil disobedience in democratic societies. It revisits the theoretical literature on civil disobedience with a view to taking a fresh look at long-standing questions: When is civil disobedience a justified method of political protest? What role, if any, does it play in democratic politics? Is there a moral right to civil disobedience in a democratic society? And how should a democratic state respond to citizens who commit civil disobedience? The answers given to these questions add up to a coherent and distinctive theory of civil disobedience, which draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy to forge an account that improves upon prominent approaches to this subject. Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary political theory, political science, democratization studies, social movement studies, criminology, legal theory and moral philosophy.

Civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act, contrary to law, carried out to communicate opposition to law and policy of government. This book presents a theory of civil disobedience that draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy. This book explores the ethics of civil disobedience in democratic societies. It revisits the theoretical literature on civil disobedience with a view to taking a fresh look at long-standing questions: When is civil disobedience a justified method of political protest? What role, if any, does it play in democratic politics? Is there a moral right to civil disobedience in a democratic society? And how should a democratic state respond to citizens who commit civil disobedience? The answers given to these questions add up to a coherent and distinctive theory of civil disobedience, which draws on ideas associated with deliberative democracy to forge an account that improves upon prominent approaches to this subject. Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary political theory, political science, democratization studies, social movement studies, criminology, legal theory and moral philosophy.

What role might civil disobedience play in the politics of representative democracies as power 'leaks' from the nation state? If traditional politics has surrendered to the interests of global corporations what are the consequences? Quill proposes a reappraisal of civil disobedience and civil obedience in order to address these and other questions.

Uncivil Disobedience examines the roles violence and terrorism have played in the exercise of democratic ideals in America. Jennet Kirkpatrick explores how crowds, rallying behind the principle of popular sovereignty and desiring to make law conform to justice, can disdain law and engage in violence. She exposes the hazards of democracy that arise when citizens seek to control government directly, and demonstrates the importance of laws and institutions as limitations on the will of the people. Kirkpatrick looks at some of the most explosive instances of uncivil disobedience in American history: the contemporary militia movement, Southern lynch mobs, frontier vigilantism, and militant abolitionism. She argues that the groups behind these violent episodes are often motivated by admirable democratic ideas of popular power and autonomy. Kirkpatrick shows how, in this respect, they are not so unlike the much-admired adherents of nonviolent civil disobedience, yet she reveals how those who engage in violent disobedience use these admirable democratic principles as a justification for terrorism and killing. She uses a "bottom-up" analysis of events to explain how this transformation takes place, paying close attention to what members of these groups do and how they think about the relationship between citizens and the law. Uncivil Disobedience calls for a new vision of liberal democracy where the rule of the people and the rule of law are recognized as fundamental ideals, and where neither is triumphant or transcendent.

The book offers a counter-model to the classical liberal theories of civil disobedience, as developed by authors such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Based on a strict opposition between liberalism and democracy it proposes a new perspective for the understanding of political disobedience. As an alternative to civil disobedience the author proposes the idea of civic disobedience. With reference to authors such as Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Rancière and Stanley Fish, and in opposition to liberal concepts of democracy, the outlines of a new novel theory of democracy become visible.