Democracy's Place - Hardcover

Shapiro, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801433096 ISBN 13: 9780801433092

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1996

Synopsis

One of our nation's most prolific and widely discussed political theorists, Ian Shapiro speaks with a distinctive voice. His work is Deweyan in its inspiration, cosmopolitan in its concerns, and practical in its referents. In this book, he provides his first extended statement on contemporary democratic politics.

Democracy's Place includes seven essays in which Shapiro carefully integrates the theoretical and the applied. Four deal principally with democratic theory and its link to problems of social justice; the other three detail applications in the United States, the postcommunist world, and the author's native South Africa. All advance a view of democratic politics which rests on principled, yet nuanced, suspicion of hierarchical social arrangements and of political blueprints. Shapiro's writing is unified as well by a pervasive concern with the relations between the requirements of democracy and those of social justice. These themes, substantiated by complex yet accessible arguments, offer a constructive democratic perspective on contemporary debates about liberalism, communitarianism, and distributive justice.

About this title

About the Author:

Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Henry R. Luce Director at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. He is the author or editor of many books, including most recently The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences and Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth.

Review:

"The great strength of these essays is Ian Shapiro's commitment to drawing out the implications of theories of democracy and testing them against the evidence. There is food for thought here for both political theorists and students of comparative politics."

(Brian Barry, London School of Economics)

"What Ian Shapiro has to say is genuinely interesting and meets the highest standards of scholarly accomplishment."

(Jeffrey C. Isaac, Indiana University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0801433096
• ISBN 13: 9780801433092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288