Description
Book SynopsisIs democracy in crisis? Not according to this book! In this fascinating study, Professor Qvortrup shows that citizens are engaged in politics like never before by voting in referendums and participating in demonstrations and other forms of 'low politics'.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
A note on the data
PART I: THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF CITIZEN POLITICS
1. Understanding citizen politics: a methodological overview
2. Participation and democracy from the Greeks to our times
PART II: EMPIRICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CITIZEN POLITICS
3. An empirical approach to citizen politics
4. Bottom-up politics: riots and extra-parliamentary politics
5. Top-down initiated citizen politics: E-democracy, citizen juries and designer politics
6. Citizens as voters
7. Excursus: The power of the representatives
PART III: CASE STUDIES IN CITIZEN DEMOCRACY
8. Decisions to hold referendums in the UK
9. Voting by the people: the referendums on the European constitution
10. Absentee voting in a comparative perspective
11. Quo vadis democracy?
References