Democratizations: Comparisons, Confrontations, and Contrasts

Democracy is not in steady state and democratizations are open-ended processes; they depend on structures and functions in systemic contexts that idiosyncratically evolve in tone,tenor, direction, and pace. They affect and are affected by scores of determinants, both perceived and hypothetical. In interlinked chapters that span a number of disciplines, this volume reexamines the basic traits, the comparable outcomes, and the self-defining dynamics of some of the more widely attempted versions of democracy across the world. It discusses some of the controversies that can speed up or slow democratizations (depending on systemic structures, functions, processes, and contexts at play inside, outside, and across political boundaries). The crucial question these chapters address is whether democratization is possible without an understanding of what is expected from a mode of citizenship inseparable from an ethic of freedom.

A cross-disciplinary examination of democratization, as seen in different attempts at it across the globe.

Library Journal

In the 13 essays collected here by Ciprut (editor, Indeterminacy: The Mapped, the Navigable, and the Uncharted), professors and academics investigate democracy, attempted democracy, and pseudodemocracy. For example, Patrick J. Deneen (government, Georgetown Univ.; The Odyssey of Political Theory) writes that democracy has come to be associated with periodic elections and universal suffrage. Other essayists note that majority preference, not the common good, is the result. Jerzy J. Wiatr, a politician in Poland, does a good job of chronicling the struggles of Eastern Europeans for democracy without quite explaining why the reformed Communist parties continue to be surprisingly popular. Other contributors discuss democracy in China, Africa, the European Union, Latin America, and Russia. Two seismic events that should have delayed this book until they could be digested have shaken the world—the troubles of financial institutions and Barack Obama's re-creation of the politics of ideas. One shook faith in market self-regulation; the other awakened an increasingly educated public. VERDICT There is much useful information here, but it is dated and often marred by thick social science prose. Fit only for determined academics.—Leslie Armour, Dominican Univ. Coll., Ottawa, Ont.

Jose V. Ciprut is a social systems scientist and an international political economist. His expertise is in national development, regional security, international relations, and the global political economy. As independent scholar and seminar director, he is the convening editor also of The Art Of The Feud: Reconceptualizing International Relations, and Of Fears And Foes: Security and Insecurity in a Globalizing International Political Economy.