Customer Reviews

The Democracy Sourcebook

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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.

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 .