The democratic drift: political malaise in the age of democracy
[...]if the narrative of the twentieth century, which the historian Eric Hobsbawm described as the "age of extremes", was dominated by dictators - not just Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, but also the likes of Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokasa, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Jorge Videla,...
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Published in | OpenDemocracy (London) |
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Main Author | |
Format | Magazine Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
OpenDemocracy
30.07.2014
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | [...]if the narrative of the twentieth century, which the historian Eric Hobsbawm described as the "age of extremes", was dominated by dictators - not just Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, but also the likes of Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokasa, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Jorge Videla, Rafael Trujillo, Mao Zedong, to name only a very few among the very many - then the twenty-first century may well be the age of democracy. The US political process is in gridlock; in France, the president has beaten all records with an 18 percent approval rating; widespread dissatisfaction and serious risks of social unrest in Brazil emerged during the World Cup and may return to disrupt the Olympics; the Arab spring, with the exception of Tunisia, seems a forlorn hope; Zuma is a very distant cry from Mandela; Russian democracy has been hijacked by Putin; the legacy of Chavez lingers with Maduro. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-News-1 content type line 24 SourceType-Magazines-1 |
ISSN: | 1476-5888 |