Description
Book SynopsisThe past few years have seen a remarkable ferment in the theory of democracy. Deliberative Democracy and Beyond is a critical tour through recent democratic theory by one of the leading political theorist in the field. It examines the deliberative turn in democratic theory, which argued that the essence of democratic legitimacy is to be found in authentic deliberations on the part of those affected by a collective decision. The deliberative turn began as a challenge to established institutions and models of democracy, but it has now been largely assimilated by these same institutions and models. Drawing a distinction between liberal constitutionalist deliberative democracy and discursive democracy, the author criticizes the former and advocates the latter. He argues that a defensible theory of democracy should be critical of established power, pluralistic, reflexive in its questioning orientation to established traditions, transnational in its capacity to extend across state boundaries
Trade ReviewThe most remarkable and subtle part of Dryzek's argument is his attempt to contruct green theory of democratic communication, which takes account of agency and communication in the non-human natural world ... The argument is a bit like crossing a ravine on a bridge of eggshells, and is conducted with considerable intellectual excitement ... Dryzek's discussion is throughout careful, rigorous, detailed, and in dealing with views from which he distinguishes his own position, scrupulously sympathetic. * Rodney Barker, Democratizaton, Vol.8, 2001 *
Review from previous edition There is much to like and learn from this small but densely argued volume ... All scholars interested in the relationship between democracy and voluntary organizations in civil society will find important food for thought...richly argued and thoughtful...even though this book will raise many questions and criticisms, these are themselves a reflection not of Dryzek's failure as a political thinker, but of his strength as an interesting, provocative, and serious democratic theorist" * AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW *
Dryzek has convincingly argued the case for a more critical, insurgent, pluralistic, reflexive, transnational, ecological and dynamic discursive democracy. More than this, he has carved out an adventurous, distinctive path through much familiar terrain. * POLITICAL QUARTERLY *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Deliberative Turn in Democratic Theory ; Liberal Democracy and the Critical Alternative ; Minimal Democracy? The Social Choice Critique ; Difference Democracy: The Consciousness-Raising Group Against the Gentlemen's Club ; Insurgent Democracy: Civil Society and State ; Transnational Democracy: Beyond the Cosmopolitan Model ; Green Democracy ; Discursive Democracy in a Reflexive Modernity
