Description
Book SynopsisGood Government? Good Citizens? explores the evolving concept of the citizen in Canada at the beginning of this century. Three forces are at work in reconstituting the citizen in this society: courts, politics, and markets. Many see these forces as intersecting and colliding in ways that are fundamentally reshaping the relationship of individuals to the state and to each other.
How has Canadian society actually been transformed? Is the state truly in retreat? Do individuals, in fact, have a fundamentally altered sense of their relationship to government and to each other? Have courts and markets supplanted representative politics regarding the expression of basic values? Must judicialized protection of human rights and minority interests necessarily mean a diminished concern for the common good on the part of representative politics? To what extent should markets and representative politics maintain a role in the protection of human rights and minority interests? Will
Trade Review
In Good Government? Good Citizens? W.A. Bogart provides a thoughtful analysis of the drama of social and political change in Canada over the last several decades. -- Mike Hogeterp * The Catalyst, Summer 2006 *
Bogart offers an important thesis about the power of judges and rights that demands further inquiry both in Canada and elsewhere in the West. -- Richard A. Brisbin, Jr., Dept of Political Science, West Virginia University * Law and Politics Book Review *
Any reader who would cares about the future of democracy in Canada would do well to read this broad-ranging and thought-provoking book. -- Miriam Smith, Department of Political Studies, Trent University * Canadian Public Policy, vol. XXXII. No. 1, 2006 *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: The Society that Was
1 Before the Transformation
Part 2: Courts, Politics, and Markets in a Society in Transition
2 The Ascendance of Courts
3 Representative Politics in Disarray
4 Chasing Choice: The Market Abounding
Part 3: Some Examples of a Changing Canada
5 Aboriginals: Two Row Wampum, Second Thoughts, and Citizens Plus
6 Citizens in Cyberspace: The Internet and Canadian Democracy
7 The Youngest Citizens and Education as a Public Good?
8 Evermore Citizens Who Are Senior: An Ageing Canada Conclusion: "The Dance of Adjustment"
Notes
Index
