The Democracy Sourcebook offers a collection of classic writings and contemporary scholarship on democracy, creating a book that can be used by undergraduate and graduate students in a wide variety of courses, including American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and political philosophy. The editors have chosen substantial excerpts from the essential theorists of the past, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the authors of The Federalist Papers; they place them side by side with the work of such influential modern scholars as Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Przeworski, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel P. Huntington, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen.The book is divided into nine self-contained chapters: "Defining Democracy," which discusses procedural, deliberative, and substantive democracy; "Sources of Democracy," on why democracy exists in some countries and not in others; "Democracy, Culture, and Society," about cultural and sociological preconditions for democracy; "Democracy and Constitutionalism," which focuses on the importance of independent courts and a bill of rights; "Presidentialism versus Parliamentarianism"; "Representation," discussing which is the fairest system of democratic accountability; "Interest Groups"; "Democracy's Effects," an examination of the effect of democracy on economic growth and social inequality; and finally, "Democracy and the Global Order" discusses the effects of democracy on international relations, including the propensity for war and the erosion of national sovereignty by transnational forces.
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" The Democracy Sourcebook brings together the classical texts on democratic politics with the best examples of contemporary scholarly argument and analysis. The modern texts are not yet classics, though some of them will be, and their inclusion here definitely gives them a leg up. For students who want to understand democracy and for students who see themselves as democratic citizens and activists, this is a superb collection." Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study
" The Democracy Sourcebook is a magisterial collection of classic and contemporary readings, carefully chosen and edited, that gives readers direct access to some of the most important texts in the development of democratic thought." Thomas F. Remington, Emory University
"If you want to learn about democracy, The Democracy Sourcebook is the place to start. Dahl, Shapiro, and Cheibub have collected the best readings, both historical and contemporary, on what democracy is, how it works, and why it is important. This book will be the standard reference work on the subject." Joshua Cohen, Goldberg Professor of the Humanities, MIT, and editor, Boston Review
"If you want to learn about democracy, *The Democracy Sourcebook* is *the* place to start. Dahl, Shapiro, and Cheibub have collected the best readings, both historical and contemporary, on what democracy is, how it works, and why it is important. This book will be the standard reference work on the subject."--Joshua Cohen, Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of the Humanities and Head of the Department of Political Science, MIT
"*The Democracy Sourcebook* is a magisterial collection of classic and contemporary readings, carefully chosen and edited, that gives readers direct access to some of the most important texts in the development of democratic thought."--Thomas F. Remington, Emory University
"*The Democracy Sourcebook* brings together the classical texts on democratic politics with the best examples of contemporary scholarly argument and analysis. The modern texts are not yet classics, though some of them will be, and their inclusion here definitely gives them a leg up. For students who want to understand democracy and for students who see themselves as democratic citizens and activists, this is a superb collection."--Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
"Electing to Fight is an important book. With analytical power and historical depth, Mansfield and Snyder argue for a simple conclusion: democratization can be dangerous, even if democracy, once achieved, is a good thing. Scholars, journalists, politicians, and citizens all need to hear this message, and to heed it. If Mansfield and Snyder are right, then policies that rely on war to promote elections are bound to produce disaster."--Joshua Cohen, Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of the Humanities and Head of the Department of Political Science, MIT
About the Author
Robert A. Dahl, a leading authority on democracy, is the author of many books, including A Preface to Democracy, Democracy and Its Critics, and How Democratic Is the American Constitution? He is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University.
José Antonio Cheibub is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
Ian Shapiro is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at Yale University.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good sourcebook on democracy,
By Steven A. Peterson (Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL)) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: The Democracy Sourcebook (Paperback)
This edited work, "The Democracy Sourcebook," is a good reference source for differing perspectives on democracy. The volume provides historical context as well as more contemporary reflections on the subject. The editors, Robert Dahl, Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub, have done their work well in assembling this set of readings in one book.
Any edited volume is going to have some unevenness. One could surely quibble with why some works were included and others excluded. That said, though, this still represents an important resource for those interested in democracy. The book is divided into 9 sections. The following paragraphs will briefly note what is included in some of these. Section 1 is critical, for setting the stage for the remainder of the work. The animating question is deceptively simple: How do we define democracy? The oldest reading is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract." Other key readings are excerpted presented in this volume, such as Schumpeter, Przeworski, Gutmann, Diamond, Pateman, and one of the editors, Dahl. The reader who confronts these works will get a much better sense of the diverse readings of exactly what democracy is--and what is at stake, depending on the definition that one selects. The difference between Schumpeter and Pateman represents a major debate, for instance. The second section explores a critical issue: What factors affect the development of democracy? Classics such as Lipset's "Political Man" have excerpts appear in this section. So, too, other key figures such as Huber et al., Huntington, Przeworski et al. Other sections follow, with rich representation from the Federalist papers, published during the American constitutional debates (perhaps these are even overrepresented), with discussion of the differences between presidential and parliamentary democracy, the nature of representation, the role of interest groups, and so on. A rich and diverse array of works that address the multiple issues raised by a study of democracy. This is, in the final analysis, a rich resource for trying to better understand the nature of democracy and the various issues at stake. There are some articles which I think might better have been included; I think that too many numbers of the "Federalist" series are provided. Nonetheless, this is a valuable resource.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A book for all interested in the theory of Democracy,
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This review is from: The Democracy Sourcebook (Paperback)
More than a good introduction to the various theories on the subject . It also serves as an acount of the history and development of the idea .
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I assume that men reach a point where the obstacles to their preservation in a state of nature prove greater than the strength that each man has to preserve himself in that state. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
minority government formation, conscious judicial empowerment, democracy with guarantees, cyclical majority preference, oppositional influence, electoral decisiveness, summing individual utilities, presidential legislative powers, median party, third reverse wave, electoral salience, participatory theory, national high courts, democratic equilibrium, parliamentary basis, conflicting political forces, challenger spending, collective bads, unorganized interests, median citizen, presidential democracies, cyclical majorities, political power holders, preference clusters, presidential regimes Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, United States, Cambridge University Press, African Americans, South Africa, Latin America, Yale University Press, New Haven, New Zealand, American Political Science Review, Princeton University Press, James Madison, Johns Hopkins University Press, Adam Przeworski, Fernando Limongi, Social Origins, Western Europe, World War, Oxford University Press, Ian Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, José Antonio Cheibub, Arend Lijphart, European Union, Harvard University Press New!
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