Practices of Democracy

Reviews / Votes

A timely and insightful contribution, this book offers a clear and systematic exploration of democracy through representative, direct, deliberative and technocratic models. It provides students, scholars and practitioners with a valuable framework for understanding how democracies really function in the 21st century, and how institutions can be strengthened to deal with new challenges. -- Eri Bertsou This textbook offers the first comprehensive account of diverse democratic practices and institutions, looking beyond representative democracy and including direct, deliberative and technocratic models of government. It offers novel perspectives of how democracy can be renewed in current disruptive times.


-- Andre Baechtiger This path-breaking textbook starts from the entirely correct premise that to understand contemporary democracy we need to move beyond the common framework of representative democracy. Many of the most significant developments in recent years have been in the areas of direct, deliberative and technocratic democracy. This is definitely going on my course guide! -- David Farrell This book about practices of democracy (institutions, actors, processes) is a timely introduction to democratic government in the 21st century. It goes beyond standard textbooks, because it reflects on most recent developments and provides students with a toolkit to understand and analyse contemporary democracies. -- Brigitte Geissel This book revitalizes comparative politics by organizing learning around democratic practices -representative, direct, deliberative, technocratic- paired with timely, worldwide examples. Students gain analytical traction; instructors gain a flexible structure that translates theory into applied teaching without sacrificing rigor. A welcome innovation. -- Sebastian Lavezzolo A new political science is needed for a new world', wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. This is true as much today as it was in the 19th Century. Combining case studies with grand tour d'horizons, this textbook provides an intelligent and highly readable introduction to the new approaches to the new political climate. This exciting volume not only deserves to be widely read, but it will provide a new standard for textbooks on democracy. -- Matt Qvortrup