Paradoxes of Democracy : Fragility, Continuity, and Change

by Eisenstadt, S. N.

• ISBN13: 9780801871399
• ISBN10: 0801871395
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

"The general as well as the more scholarly discourse on democracy has long been guided by two contradictory assumptions. On the one hand it has been assumed that there is a natural human predisposition to democracy, an assumption increasingly prevalent and popular following the breakup of the Soviet regime and many authoritarian regimes in Southern Europe and Latin America. On the other hand, it has been assumed from their very inception that democratic regimes were aware of their fragility. This awareness was built, to some degree, on the political discourse of antiquity, but it was rooted above all in the direct experience of the modern era."--from the introduction Paradoxes of Democracy is an essay on the inherent weaknesses and surprising strengths of democratic government by one of the most productive and learned scholars in the social sciences. Shmuel Eisenstadt opens with observations on divergent theories of democracy and closes with a discussion of mechanisms by which democratic regimes incorporate into their own structures the movements of protest that seem to challenge their existence. In between he courses through the roots of democratic theory in modern culture, the contradictions and tensions prompted by those roots, and some of the historical manifestations of contradiction. Eisenstadt focuses on the most important conditions -- especially on different patterns of collective identity -- which influence the extent to which democratic regimes are able to incorporate themes of protest and social movements and thus ensure their common survival.

Author Biography

Shmuel Eisenstadt is Rose Isaacs Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction: The Problem	1	(4)
Constitutional and Participatory Conceptions of Democracy	5	(9)
The Historical Roots of Constitutional Democratic Regimes	14	(4)
The Cultural and Political Programs of Modernity: Basic Premises	18	(9)
The Cultural Program of Modernity: Antinomies, Tensions, Contradictions, and Criticisms	27	(6)
The Political Program of Modernity: Tensions Between Pluralistic and Jacobin Tendencies	33	(9)
The Political Process in Modern Societies: Protest Movements and the Redefinition of the Political	42	(9)
Social Movements in Modern Constitutional Regimes	51	(14)
The Challenge of Incorporating Protest: The Non-Zero-Sum Game Conception of Politics and the Structuring of Trust in Modern Societies	65	(24)
Tendencies to Deconsolidation of Democracy in Contemporary Societies	89	(10)
Notes	99	(14)
Index	113