Democracy Under Siege

2007 Society for the Anthropology of North America (SANA) Book Award Complete List of Authors:Dorothy Holland, Donald M. Nonini, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick-McGlathery, Thaddeus C. Guldbrandsen, and Enrique G. Murillo, Jr. What is the state of democracy at the turn of the twenty-first century? To answer this question, seven scholars lived for a year in five North Carolina communities. They observed public meetings of all sorts, had informal and formal interviews with people, and listened as people conversed with each other at bus stops and barbershops, soccer games and workplaces. Their collaborative ethnography allows us to understand how diverse members of a community not just the elite think about and experience “politics” in ways that include much more than merely voting. This book illustrates how the social and economic changes of the last three decades have made some new routes to active democratic participation possible while making others more difficult. Local Democracy Under Siege suggests how we can account for the current limitations of U.S. democracy and how remedies can be created that ensure more meaningful participation by a greater range of people. Complete List of Authors (pictured) From Left to Right, bottom row: Enrique Murillo, Jr., Thaddeus Guldbrandsen, Marla Frederick-McGlathery. Top row: Dorothy Holland, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, and Don Nonini.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 was catalyst for the most precipitous economic downturn in eight decades. This book examines how the GFC and ensuing Great Recession affected electoral politics in the world's developed democracies. The initial wave of research on the crisis concluded it did little to change the established relationships between voters, parties, and elections. Yet nearly a decade since the initial shock, the political landscape has changed in many ways, the extent to which has not been fully explained by existing studies. Democracy Under Siege? pushes against the received wisdom by advancing a framework for understanding citizen attitudes, preferences, and behaviour. It makes two central claims. First, while previous studies of the GFC tend to focus on an immediate impact of the crisis, Hellwig, Kweon, and Vowles argue that economic malaise has a long lasting impact. In addition to economic shock, the economic recovery has a significant impact on citizens' assessment of political elites. Second, the authors argue that unanticipated exogenous shocks like the GFC grants party elites an opening for political manoeuvre through public policy and rhetoric. As a result, political elites have a high degree of agency to shape public perceptions and behaviour. Political parties can strategically moderate citizens' economic uncertainty, mobilise/demobilise voters, and alter individuals' political preferences. By leveraging data from over 150,000 individuals across over 100 nationally-representative post-election surveys from the 1990s to 2017, this book shows how economic change during a tumultuous era affected economic perceptions, policy demands, political participation, and the vote. The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Participating countries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district, and macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis. The set of volumes in this series is based on these CSES modules, and the volumes address the key theoretical issues and empirical debates in the study of elections and representative democracy. Some of the volumes will be organized around the theoretical issues raised by a particular module, while others will be thematic in their focus. Taken together, these volumes will provide a rigorous and ongoing contribution to understanding the expansion and consolidation of democracy in the twenty-first century. Series editors: Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Ian McAllister.

Frank Furedi examines the frequent claim that democracy is a means to an end rather than an important value in and of itself. The prevalence of this sentiment in the current era is not surprising, given that the normative foundation for democracy is fragile, and there is little cultural valuation for this outlook. Until recently, virtually every serious commentator paid lip-service to democracy. However, in recent times the classical elitist disdain for democracy and for the moral and intellectual capacity of the electorate has acquired a powerful influence over public life. Democracy Under Siege outlines the long history of anti-democratic thought, explains why hostility to democracy has gained momentum in the current era, and offers a positive affirmation of the principle and the value of democracy.

Although the military has historically played a pivotal role in Latin American politics and society, until now little attention has been paid to the complex set of civilian-military relations in each country. This collection of essays, the product of a long-term research program organized by a group of prominent Latin American scholars, compares current linkages among the armed forces and local social and political structures and institutions. Within each nation studied, the contributing author found increasing military autonomy vis-a-vis the state. They show that this institutional autonomy has allowed the military to develop as independent political entities within the various countries, a process that seems to be common to all Latin American societies. Their research also demonstrates how the military diversifies itself when acquiring higher degrees of institutional autonomy. Collectively, the contributors contend that although civilian democratic forces will play a much larger role in political decisionmaking in this decade as compared to the last, it is evident that armed forces will retain a considerable share of political power. Regardless of the institutional arrangement, the military will continue to exercise significant veto power over civilian political forces. The independent military that has emerged is a new variable that must be taken into account in future analyses of Latin America's secular political crisis. By compiling the first complete analysis of Latin American military forces and their role in contemporary domestic politics, editor Augusto Varas has made a significant contribution to the study of Latin American politics. This first examination of the role of the armed forces during a period of relative political stability will be welcomed by historians and political scientists alike.

In this critical study of the present threat to American Democracy from the legacy of the Trump Presidency and the violent insurrection at America's Capitol on January 6, 2021, filmmaker Mark Sobel takes us on a journey that spans the ongoing influence of Trumpism in America, and considers possible steps to assure the survival of democracy in the United States. This collection of author essays calls out the former President's unrelenting lies and racist speeches, looking at how they influenced the thinking of a large percentage of American voters. The work examines the dangers posed by Trump's party in its ongoing efforts to rewrite history, and suggests that without immediate creation of a new opposition party the United States could find herself at the end of an almost 250-year "experiment" in democratic government. Additional topics range from how the world regards the separation of migrant children from their parents under International Law, to Wall Street's alleged subversion of the legislation by Congress to save the homes of 4 million American families during the Great Recession, to how the economic system might be made more fair for all Americans. From the book: "The creation of an alternative to the Trumpist Republican Party must be pursued immediately. While clearly this will be a long-term proposition to complete, even at startup this party could have the ability to field just enough candidates in the 2022 elections to deny control to Trumpists. In fact, there might be some moderate ex-Republican legislators who have been sitting on the sidelines since 2018 who would be able to give the Trumpists a run for their money if they were candidates of a legitimate, organized, moderate-right conservative party. A coalition in Congress between the Democratic Party and the new Moderate Conservative Party could pass the needed bills in support of democracy that would make a totalitarian insurrection in 2024 far less likely. But the effort must be immediate." The author is a Los Angeles based independent filmmaker and a director of numerous movies for Network and Cable television.

This work is an examination of the French Doctrinaires, a largely neglected group of liberal thinkers in post-revolutionary France who were proponents of a nuanced sociological and historical approach to political theory. It explores the Doctrinaires' ideas on the French Revolution.

With democracy in decline, authoritarian governments are staging a comeback around the world. Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries—including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retreated, failing to respond to the threat posed by the authoritarians. As undemocratic regimes become more assertive, they are working together to repress civil society while tightening their grip on cyberspace and expanding their reach in international media. These political changes have fostered the emergence of new counternorms—such as the authoritarian subversion of credible election monitoring—that threaten to further erode the global standing of liberal democracy. In Authoritarianism Goes Global, a distinguished group of contributors present fresh insights on the complicated issues surrounding the authoritarian resurgence and the implications of these systemic shifts for the international order. This collection of essays is critical for advancing our understanding of the emerging challenges to democratic development. Contributors: Anne Applebaum, Anne-Marie Brady, Alexander Cooley, Javier Corrales, Ron Deibert, Larry Diamond, Patrick Merloe, Abbas Milani, Andrew Nathan, Marc F. Plattner, Peter Pomerantsev, Douglas Rutzen, Lilia Shevtsova, Alex Vatanka, Christopher Walker, and Frederic Wehrey

Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.