Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization
- ISBN-10
- 081573722X
- ISBN-13
- 9780815737223
- Category
- Political Science
- Pages
- 280
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-09-24
- Publisher
- Brookings Institution Press
- Authors
- Thomas Carothers, Andrew O'Donohue
Description
“A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of contemporary democracies.”—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes—in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book’s editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world’s democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization
By Thomas Carothers, Andrew O'DonohueTimely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.
-
The Quality of Divided Democracies: Minority Inclusion, Exclusion, and Representation in the New Europe
By Licia CianettiThe book uses rich comparative data to tackle the vital questions of what determines a democracy’s level of inclusiveness and the ways in which minorities can gain access to the policy-making process.
-
The Divide: How Fanatical Certitude Is Destroying Democracy
By Taylor DotsonIn The Divide, Taylor Dotson argues provocatively that what drives political polarization is not our disregard for facts in a post-truth era, but rather our obsession with truth.
-
Democratic Speech in Divided Times
By Maxime LepoutreDrawing on the resources of political theory, epistemology, and philosophy of language, this book develops a sustained account of the norms that should govern public discourse in deeply divided circumstances.
-
Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management
By Ben ReillyThis text examines the potential of electoral engineering as a mechanism of conflict management in divided societies.
-
Democratic Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies:: From Conflict to Common Ground
By E. Ugarriza, D. CaluwaertsThrough case-analysis and cross-sectional assessment of eleven countries this collection explores the most deeply divided societies in the world in order to highlight what deliberative democracy looks like in a deeply divided society and to ...
-
Divided America: The Ferocious Power Struggle in American Politics
By Earl Black, Merle BlackKevin M. Kruse, White Flight (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Matthew D. Lassiter, ... Southern Churches in Crisis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1966); John C.Green,Lyman A.Kellstedt,Corwin E.Smidt,and ...
-
Divided We Stand: The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy
By Walter Prescott WebbDivided We Stand: The Crisis of a Frontierless Democracy
-
Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era
By Darrell M. WestThese are the only ways to calm our anger, forge a new path forward, and deal with twentyfirst-century challenges.
-
Party Elites in Divided Societies: Political Parties in Consociational Democracy
By Kurt Richard Luther, Kris DeschouwerWorking from the basis of Arend Lijphart's 1968 work on divided societies, the authors go on to look at such cultures and subcultures thirty years on, bringing in new evidence and analysis to bear on the issue.