Making Democracy Work

Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity.

The Supreme Court is one of the most extraordinary institutions in our system of government. Charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution, the nine unelected justices of the Court have the awesome power to strike down laws enacted by our elected representatives. Why does the public accept the Court’s decisions as legitimate and follow them, even when those decisions are highly unpopular? What must the Court do to maintain the public’s faith? How can the Court help make our democracy work? These are the questions that Justice Stephen Breyer tackles in this groundbreaking book. Today we assume that when the Court rules, the public will obey. But Breyer declares that we cannot take the public’s confidence in the Court for granted. He reminds us that at various moments in our history, the Court’s decisions were disobeyed or ignored. And through investigations of past cases, concerning the Cherokee Indians, slavery, and Brown v. Board of Education, he brilliantly captures the steps—and the missteps—the Court took on the road to establishing its legitimacy as the guardian of the Constitution. Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution’s text or to the eighteenth-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circumstances—an approach that will best demonstrate to the public that the Constitution continues to serve us well. The Court, he believes, must also respect the roles that other actors—such as the president, Congress, administrative agencies, and the states—play in our democracy, and he emphasizes the Court’s obligation to build cooperative relationships with them. Finally, Justice Breyer examines the Court’s recent decisions concerning the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, contrasting these decisions with rulings concerning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. He uses these cases to show how the Court can promote workable government by respecting the roles of other constitutional actors without compromising constitutional principles. Making Our Democracy Work is a tour de force of history and philosophy, offering an original approach to interpreting the Constitution that judges, lawyers, and scholars will look to for many years to come. And it further establishes Justice Breyer as one of the Court’s greatest intellectuals and a leading legal voice of our time.

In his most important book to date, Daniel Yankelovich, the dean of American public research, offers a prescription for strengthening the public's hand in its silent power struggle with the experts.

Profound social changes have made governance and political leadership more challenging than ever. The result is that politics in the democratic world faces a crisis in the 21st century. The revised edition of this highly successful text reassesses the gap between citizen expectation and the realities of government in light of new developments.

Is democratic governance good for economic prosperity? Does it accelerate progress towards social welfare and human development? Does it generate a peace-dividend and reduce conflict at home? Within the international community, democracy and governance are widely advocated as intrinsically desirable goals. Nevertheless, alternative schools of thought dispute their consequences and the most effective strategy for achieving critical developmental objectives. This book argues that both liberal democracy and state capacity need to be strengthened to ensure effective development, within the constraints posed by structural conditions. Liberal democracy allows citizens to express their demands, hold public officials to account and rid themselves of ineffective leaders. Yet rising public demands that cannot be met by the state generate disillusionment with incumbent officeholders, the regime, or ultimately the promise of liberal democracy ideals. Thus governance capacity also plays a vital role in advancing human security, enabling states to respond effectively to citizen's demands.

Demonstrates how specific dimensions of democracy - participation, citizenship rights, and an inclusionary state - enhance human development and well-being.

Reconnecting with the sources of decisions that affect us, and with the processes of democracy itself, is at the heart of 21st-century sustainable communities. Slow Democracy chronicles the ways in which ordinary people have mobilized to find local solutions to local problems. It invites us to bring the advantages of "slow" to our community decision making. Just as slow food encourages chefs and eaters to become more intimately involved with the production of local food, slow democracy encourages us to govern ourselves locally with processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and citizen powered. Susan Clark and Woden Teachout outline the qualities of real, local decision making and show us the range of ways that communities are breathing new life into participatory democracy around the country. We meet residents who seize back control of their municipal water systems from global corporations, parents who find unique solutions to seemingly divisive school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizens across the nation who have designed local decision-making systems to solve the problems unique to their area in ways that work best for their communities. Though rooted in the direct participation that defined our nation's early days, slow democracy is not a romantic vision for reigniting the ways of old. Rather, the strategies outlined here are uniquely suited to 21st-century technologies and culture.If our future holds an increased focus on local food, local energy, and local economy, then surely we will need to improve our skills at local governance as well.

Company democracy is often misunderstood in the business context as democracy is usually related to politics. In this book, the authors present a different dimension. They focus first on democracy from an organizational culture perspective and then offer employees opportunities to understand and apply democracy from the company floor level. The Company Democracy Model (CDM) is an industry-wide, practical methodology for knowledge management utilization under applied philosophical thinking. The model progresses through a framework in which an organizational evolutionary spiral method empowers the creation of knowledge-based democratic cultures for wise and effective strategic management and leadership. This new innovative methodology, supported with techniques and processes, can gain/create many ideas, insights, innovations, new products, and services that can benefit a company. One purpose of using the model is to create a robust conceptual framework as a theoretical basis for a business strategy that promotes sustainable, continuous, and democratic development. Another purpose is to emphasize the importance of intellectual capital and compare capital-related and human-related business issues in shaping a company’s competitiveness, profitability, productivity, performance, and shared value. A third purpose is to use its symbolic infrastructure that builds solid democratic systems for viable business development and management. Finally, the described purposes give the reader new ideas to change and improve the design of business activities in a collective and modern democratic way.