Democracy and Crisis Democratising Governance in the Twenty-First Century

by Isakhan, Benjamin; Slaughter, Steven

• ISBN13: 9781137326034
• ISBN10: 1137326034
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-05-30
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Recent years have seen near constant reports on the failures of governance and the crisis of democracy. The critical nexus between the ever-increasing array of crises that modern representative democracies face and the widening reliance on an array of undemocratic governance mechanisms and networks to meet and manage these crises needs urgent and in-depth scholarly attention. This book therefore seeks to investigate the ways in which representative democracy might better handle environmental, political, social and economic crises in the twenty-first century by making the mechanisms of governance more democratic. By examining cases such as the global financial crisis, the arab revolutions, Wikileaks and climate change, this volume highlights the tensions between governance and democracy during times of crisis and examines the prospects of democratising governance in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Author Biography

Benjamin Isakhan is Australian Research Council (DECRA) Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of Democracy in Iraq: History, Politics and Discourse and the editor of several books, including The Secret History of Democracy.

Steven Slaughter is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. His main publications are Liberty Beyond Neo-liberalism: A Republican Critique of Liberal Governance in a Globalising Age (2005) and Globalisation and Citizenship: The Transnational Challenge (co-edited with Wayne Hudson 2007).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Crisis and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century; Benjamin Isakhan and Steven Slaughter

PART I: RECONSIDERING GOVERNANCE

1.Decentreing Governance: A Democratic Turn?; Mark Bevir
2.The Democratic Accountability of Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector; Jacob Torfing

PART II: THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS AND DEMOCRACY

3.The Financial Crisis as a Crisis of Public Reasoning; Matthias Goldmann
4.Neo-Liberal Governance and the Protest Politics of the Occupy Movement; Daniel Bray
5.Governance and Democratic Legitimacy: The European Union's Crisis of De-Politicisation; Natalie J. Doyle
6.Disintegrating European Austerity in Greece and Germany; Roderic Pitty

PART III: TRANSITIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL ATTEMPTS TO DE3MOCRATISE GOVERNANCE

7.Democratising Governance after the Arab Revolutions: The People, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Governance Networks of Egypt; Benjamin Isakhan
8.WikiLeaks and the Limits of Representative Democracy and Transnational Democratisation; Steven Slaughter

PART IV: GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRATIC CRISES

9.Global Governance, Constitutionalism and Democracy; Roland Axtmann
10. Global Unionism and Global Governance; Andrew Vandenberg
11. Climate Crises and the Limits of Liberal Democracy? Germany, Australia and India Compared; James Goodman and Tom Morton
Conclusion: The Future of Democratic Governance ; Benjamin Isakhan and Steven Slaughter