For him the stark alternative is liberal democracy or egalitarian democracy, and he clearly opts for the latter. Those who disagree with his analysis or his conclusions will have to make their case, and will no doubt do so.
Crouch's book is sure to give rise to lively debate. Social capital theory is applied to the policies needed for civil renewal.
This thoughtful book is a culmination of all that we have been expecting--and more--from his Fabian pamphlets and Political Quarterly articles on the dilemmas of democracy in troubled times. You may have already requested this item. Please select Ok if you would like to proceed with this request anyway. WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online.
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What did you mean by this concept? A post-industrial society is not a non-industrial one. It continues to make and to use the products of industry, but the energy and innovative drive of the system have gone elsewhere. The same applies in a more complex way to post-modern, which is not the same as anti-modern or of course pre-modern. It implies a culture that uses the achievements of modernism but departs from them in its search for new possibilities.
A post-democratic society therefore is one that continues to have and to use all the institutions of democracy, but in which they increasingly become a formal shell. The energy and innovative drive pass away from the democratic arena and into small circles of a politico-economic elite. I did not say that we were now living in a post-democratic society, but that we were moving towards such a condition.
How have circumstances changed since then? Could the contemporary politics of austerity be considered a post-democratic phenomenon? Austerity is not by itself evidence of post-democracy — one can have austerity in all kinds of political system. However, the entire way in which the crisis has been managed has been evidence of a further drift towards post-democracy. First, the Anglo-American financial model that produced the crisis in the first place was designed by a politico-economic elite that corresponds to my concept, as bankers moved in and out of the revolving doors in Washington, designing policies to suit their firms.
Then the management of the crisis itself was primarily a rescue operation for banks at the expense of the rest of the population. The most explicit expression of the post-democratic aspects of crisis management was the framing of the Greek austerity package, designed by international authorities in close collaboration with an association of leading bankers. But that was just the clearest case; less formal, similar groupings will be found in most political centres.
What trends do you believe will shape the political culture of the UK in the long term? Do you believe a political era ended with the onset of the financial crisis? No, the crisis reinforced existing trends towards neoliberal, finance-driven and corporation-dominated public policy.
It is a paradox, but the collapse of the financial system erected on that basis only reinforced its political strength. This phenomenon is a symptom of post-democracy. Where democracy challenged class privileges, post-democracy goes a step further in outright denying them.
Primarily due to the push for industrialization across the world, the manual working class began to decline starting in the s. Almost parallelly there was a noticeable increase in the service sector. Just as unions of individual democratic nation-states are almost ceremonial, the people came to lack unity in coming together and holding the government accountable. Politicians on the other hand have undergone many changes too. Holding themselves separate from their own parties and the voters.
Simply because today, it has become easier to approach the aforementioned global firms for money and know-how in exchange for political favours. Politicians and political parties grow ever-distant of the general public and so, elections turn out to be dry affairs that are focused on building up a brand image rather than offer any meaningful choices to the voters.
Post-democracy undeniably represents a series of underlying changes that have caused severe democratic decline. This concentration of power within a small group of elites is not ideal in the long run, especially to other less privileged groups.
While the situation does seem, grim there are changes that can be made to revitalize democracy. A simple move would be to focus on better education.
More specifically, studies relating to citizenship should be inculcated into the school curriculums. If the public acted more severely, keeping a check on every action and decision taken by political parties, the parties would quickly adapt to this. As a result, we might be able to observe much more competence from these groups. There is no definite way of knowing whether a better-educated public would necessarily be more alert but it is an important step we can adopt.
Addressing and resolving the domination that corporations have herculean task. Simply abolishing the idea of capitalism and every action that relates to it is not practical. As bad as capitalism is, there has been no alternative offered that displays the same amount of innovation in terms of producing global goods and gauging customer response to these goods.
So, measures must be taken to restrict corporations from exercising too much power, especially to the point where it threatens democracy.
However, more and more efforts are taken by world governments to expand corporate freedom. In terms of the electoral system, a shift to proportional representation can do wonders for the post-democratic era. It forces political parties to compete with each other on a far more intense level. Furthermore, it would prevent egalitarian interests from dominating the political agenda. New social movements have the potential to disrupt the status quo in post-democratic politics.
Such movements have a tendency to cause disruptions by making demands for admission, which can change the political environment quickly. These movements also have the potential to be detrimental to democracy, so caution should be placed when gauging these movements. Post-democracy while sounding like a conspiracy theory is indeed a very real problem. The degree to which it has extended across societies is debatable. Nevertheless, post-democracy has inevitably trapped the world governments in a stalemate.
Politics should not be reduced to plays for power between the elite, especially in a democracy.
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