Equal Democracies

Who Stays at Home?

Are the world's oldest democracies failing? For most of the past fifty years democratic governments made determined and successful efforts at overcoming the significant inequalities that are the by-product of a capitalist economy. During this period a new concept of democratic citizenship that added social and economic rights to the liberal legacy of political and civil liberties established roots in most North Atlantic democracies. Since the 1980s this notion of democratic citizenship has been challenged ideologically to such a degree that through either major modification or complete elimination of programs, equality as a fundamental democratic goal is disappearing in many nations - particularly in the Anglo-American democracies. In this extraordinary collection, top scholars in political science, sociology, philosophy and economics, discuss this radical shift towards inequality in an age of mass capital globalization. Wide ranging in topic yet coherent in approach, Inequality and the Modern Democratic State comprises thirteen essays, including Ed Broadbent's "Ten Propositions about Equality and Democracy", Robert Hackett's "Watch Dogs, Mad Dogs, or Lap Dogs?: News Media and Civic Equality" and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Inequality in the Clinton Era". Many European democracies, argue the contributors, have adapted to new circumstance in the global economy without resorting to policies that actively promote inequality. While differing in some important details on solutions, they all contend that the political decision-making process is of critical importance in entrenching, or battling, an escalating inequality that is neither necessary nor desirable.

This book analyses social democratic parties’ attempts to tackle inequality in increasingly challenging times. It provides a distinctive contribution to the literature on the so-called ‘crisis’ of social democracy by exploring the role of equality policy in this crisis. While the main focus is on analysing Australian Labor governments, examples are also given from a wide range of parties internationally. The book traces how a traditional focus on class has expanded to include other forms of inequality, including issues of gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality and explores both the intersections and potential tensions that result. Meanwhile there are new challenges for equality policy arising from a changing geo-economics (the rise of Asia), the legacies of neoliberalism and the impact of technological disruption.

How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, political theorist Corey Brettschneider proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints. Distinguishing between two kinds of state action--expressive and coercive--Brettschneider contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. Brettschneider extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and he shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.

Originally published in 1985, Retrieving Democracy offers a thorough and systematic answer to the familiar objection that genuine democracy is utopian. The book outlines an imaginary, yet imaginable, society that would be non-racist, non-sexist, and sufficiently classless to support true civic equality. Moving beyond previous discussions of re-industrialization and economic democracy, the book proposes the social control of corporations; a democratic division of labour that would maximize equality of citizenship rather than merely the production of commodities; the democratization of trade unions; the equalization of wages and job opportunities and the insulation of electoral politics from the power of money.

This book documents a worrisome gap between principles and practice in democratic governance. The State of Access is a comparative, cross-disciplinary exploration of the ways in which democratic institutions fail or succeed to create the equal opportunities that they have promised to deliver to the people they serve. In theory, rules and regulations may formally guarantee access to democratic processes, public services, and justice. But reality routinely disappoints, for a number of reasons—exclusionary policymaking, insufficient attention to minorities, underfunded institutions, inflexible bureaucracies. The State of Access helps close the gap between the potential and performance in democratic governance.

Democracy posits the universality of the equality principle: a community of citizens is governed by the principle of the formal equality of all individuals, whatever their real social, cultural, or other inequalities. Democratization, on the other hand, is motivated by the ambition of ensuring the real equality of citizens, and not simply their formal equality. The dynamics of democracy are thus insured by the development of a welfare state that increasingly intervenes in order to satisfy the social and economic needs of individuals. Especially focused on France, yet informed by the experiences of other European countries, this book examines the dilemmas of the search for equality in society and politics.Democratization guarantees the rights of salaried workers and employees, the rights to material survival and housing, as well as health care, education, and culture. Today, however, as Schnapper observes, its action has become paradoxical. As the fruit of a praiseworthy concern to ensure the universality of rights, what Schnapper identifies as a "Providence State" now aims, by means of positive discrimination and other specific promotion policies, to defend the particular rights of certain categories of individuals. The action of the Providence State thus nourishes an aspiration: that the identities of historical collectivities gathered within the same national society be publicly recognized, and that these have rights. Equity thus supplants equality; and multiculturalism, universality. Such is the ordeal currently experienced by Western democracies, which are faced with the increasingly "providential" nature of their societies. Indeed, the author asks, how can a united political Europe be constructed on the ideals and institutions of citizenship, when European nations are becoming providential democracies?Providential Democracy offers a searching and timely critique of democratization that will be of interest to sociologists, political sci

Participation in America represents the largest study ever conducted of the ways in which citizens participate in American political life. Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie addresses the question of who participates in the American democratic process, how, and with what effects. They distinguish four kinds of political participation: voting, campaigning, communal activity, and interaction with a public official to achieve a personal goal. Using a national sample survey and interviews with leaders in 64 communities, the authors investigate the correlation between socioeconomic status and political participation. Recipient of the Kammerer Award (1972), Participation in America provides fundamental information about the nature of American democracy.