Democratic decision-making historical and contemporary perspectives

• Main Author: Schaefer, David Lewis
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: Lanham, Md The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 2012; Lexington Books; Bloomsbury Publishing USA
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Bureaucracy; Colonialism; Comparative politics; Decision making; Deliberative democracy; Democracy; Democracy > Decision making; Government; Judiciary; U.S.A
• ISBN: 0739142062; 9780739142066

Democratic Decision-Making: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives contains eight essays by political scientists addressing various aspects of the democratic decision-making process. The book is divided into four parts: democratic statesmanship, the extent to which limitations of the democratic principle of majority rule are desirable, the contemporary doctrine of “deliberative democracy,” and informal modes of democratic decision-making. Under these four headings, the contributors discuss a wide variety of issues, including the practice of “political opportunism” by such statesmen as Hamilton and Madison; the historical development of legal restraints on democracy in America ranging from judicial review (during the colonial period) to the filibuster; the operation of classical Athenian democracy, the defects of which may have been exaggerated by the American Founders; the significance of the reflections of Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt for the development of the American party system; the relation of deliberative-democracy theory to the thought of Rousseau; and the means by which cooperative land-use agreements have been arrived at in California, eliciting the voluntary consent of the affected parties instead of relying on judicial or bureaucratic dictates. The book is well-suited for use in courses on American political thought, democratic theory, American political development, and related subjects.