Street Democracy

No visitor to Mexico can fail to recognize the omnipresence of street vendors, selling products ranging from fruits and vegetables to prepared food and clothes. The vendors compose a large part of the informal economy, which altogether represents at least 30 percent of Mexico's economically active population. Neither taxed nor monitored by the government, the informal sector is the fastest growing economic sector in the world. In Street Democracy Sandra C. Mendiola Garc�a explores the political lives and economic significance of this otherwise overlooked population, focusing on the radical street vendors during the 1970s and 1980s in Puebla, Mexico's fourth-largest city. She shows how the Popular Union of Street Vendors challenged the ruling party's ability to control unions and local authorities' power to regulate the use of public space. Since vendors could not strike or stop production like workers in the formal economy, they devised innovative and alternative strategies to protect their right to make a living in public spaces. By examining the political activism and historical relationship of street vendors to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mendiola Garc�a offers insights into grassroots organizing, the Mexican Dirty War, and the politics of urban renewal, issues that remain at the core of street vendors' experience even today.

This book explores street art’s contributions to democracy in Latin America through a comparative study of five cities: Bogota (Colombia), São Paulo (Brazil), Valparaiso (Chile), Oaxaca (Mexico) and Havana (Cuba). The author argues that when artists invade public space for the sake of disseminating rage, claims or statements, they behave as urban citizens who try to raise public awareness, nurture public debates and hold authorities accountable. Street art also reveals how public space is governed. When local authorities try to contain, regulate or repress public space invasions, they can achieve their goals democratically if they dialogue with the artists and try to reach a consensus inspired by a conception of the city as a commons. Under specific conditions, the book argues, street level democracy and collaborative governance can overlap, prompting a democratization of democracy.

'A gripping political thriller, a masterpiece of investigative journalism' Peter Manseau, author of Rag and Bone The secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as 'The Family' is leading a new crusade for 'God-led government'.Jeff Sharlet, authorThe Family (more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide), is the only journalist to have reported from insidethe organisation. The Family garnered intense media coverage in 2009 when theirtownhouse on Washington's C Street was central to three Republican sex scandals. Now Sharlet uncovers the convert efforts of C Street to transform the very fabric of Western democracy, with the Family, steeped in the influence and corruption usually associated with the notorious lobbing industry, fueling political fundamentalism from within government. When Barack Obama took office, headlines declared the age of culture wars over. In C Street, Sharlet show why these conflicts endure and why they matter now-from Uganda, where culture warriors are determined to eradicate homosexuality, to the battle for the soul of America's armed forces. Reporting with exclusive sources and explosives documents, Sharlet reveals the terrifying new front-lines of fundamentalism. PRAISE FOR THE FAMILY 'This expose of the hidden face of Christian fundamentalism is authoritative and alarming.' The Age 'One of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you'll ever read.' Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Smile or Die

They Rule reflects on key political questions raised by the Occupy movement, showing how similar questions have been raised by previous generations of radical activists: who really owns and rules the US? Does it matter that the nation is divided by stark class disparities and a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few? Along the way, this book sharpens readers' sense of who the US oligarchy are, including how their fortunes have changed over the course of US history, how they live and think and how to detect and de-cloak them. They Rule is a masterful historical and political analysis, revealing what lies beneath the surface of US society and what ordinary people can do to bring about social change.

From the former secretary of state and bestselling author -- a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom. "This heartfelt and at times very moving book shows why democracy proponents are so committed to their work...Both supporters and skeptics of democracy promotion will come away from this book wiser and better informed." -- The New York Times From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy. At a time when people around the world are wondering whether democracy is in decline, Rice shares insights from her experiences as a policymaker, scholar, and citizen, in order to put democracy's challenges into perspective. When the United States was founded, it was the only attempt at self-government in the world. Today more than half of all countries qualify as democracies, and in the long run that number will continue to grow. Yet nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Using America's long struggle as a template, Rice draws lessons for democracy around the world -- from Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, to Kenya, Colombia, and the Middle East. She finds that no transitions to democracy are the same because every country starts in a different place. Pathways diverge and sometimes circle backward. Time frames for success vary dramatically, and countries often suffer false starts before getting it right. But, Rice argues, that does not mean they should not try. While the ideal conditions for democracy are well known in academia, they never exist in the real world. The question is not how to create perfect circumstances but how to move forward under difficult ones. These same insights apply in overcoming the challenges faced by governments today. The pursuit of democracy is a continuing struggle shared by people around the world, whether they are opposing authoritarian regimes, establishing new democratic institutions, or reforming mature democracies to better live up to their ideals. The work of securing it is never finished. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Using colourful and detailed case material, Street-Level Democracy introduces a new method of researching everyday politics. It is a wide-ranging book that traces the conflicts between global power and local action. People in farming communities, town mosques, city markets, and fishing communities suffer the effects of wrenching change, but live far from the centres of power. From Britain and small-town USA to Nigeria, India, and Nicaragua, citizens everywhere grapple with the politics of everyday life.

Streets in Korea rarely go quiet without first having a public demonstration and Korean citizens are known as seasoned protestors, charting the course of national politics. Between the Streets and the Assembly explores how protest movements have become the prominent mode of democratic politics in Korea, in contrast to political parties in the National Assembly that have lagged behind in partisan representation and accountability. To unpack this political dynamic, this book closely follows three groups of democracy activists who were born in their resistance to military dictatorships but who pursued different methods of democratic representation in postauthoritarian Korea (1987–2020). One group stayed in civil society and organized powerful protests outside formal institutions; another group chose to join existing parties with the aim of reforming legislative politics; and the third group was devoted to forming separate progressive parties to be the agent of transformative agenda. By analyzing the interactive evolution of these three modes of democratic representation, Yoonkyung Lee finds that social movement organizations have been more effective than activist-turned politicians in centrist or progressive parties in creating coordination infrastructures for collective action. Through the practice of organizing national solidarity networks, innovating the methods of mass street demonstrations, and drawing professional expertise to formulate policy alternatives, Korean civic groups have built the capacity to directly shape and alter the course of national politics, unlike activist-turned politicians who remained divided with no common political programs. This study asserts that social movement organizations and political parties develop variable capacities for democratic representation, depending on coevolutionary interactions with each other. The experience of Korean democracy shows social movement groups can be a powerful agent of national politics against the scholarly assumption that views civic associations as narrowly focused, transient organizations. Between the Streets and the Assembly suggests a different possibility of political process, one in which civic groups and participatory citizens, not political parties, are the primary drivers of democratic politics.

The financial crisis that began in 2008 has made Americans keenly aware of the enormous impact Wall Street has on the economic well-being of the nation and its citizenry. How did financial markets and institutions-commonly perceived as marginal and elitist at the beginning of the twentieth century-come to be seen as the bedrock of American capitalism? How did stock investment-once considered disreputable and dangerous-first become a mass practice? Julia Ott tells the story of how, between the rise of giant industrial corporations and the Crash of 1929, the federal government, corporations, and financial institutions campaigned to universalize investment, with the goal of providing individual investors with a stake in the economy and the nation. As these distributors of stocks and bonds established a broad, national market for financial securities, they debated the distribution of economic power, the proper role of government, and the meaning of citizenship under modern capitalism. By 1929, the incidence of stock ownership had risen to engulf one quarter of American households in the looming financial disaster. Accordingly, the federal government assumed responsibility for protecting citizen-investors by regulating the financial securities markets. By recovering the forgotten history of this initial phase of mass investment and the issues surrounding it, Ott enriches and enlightens contemporary debates over economic reform.