If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities

Barber, Benjamin R.

ISBN 10: 030016467X / ISBN 13: 9780300164671

Published by Yale University Press, USA, 2013

About this Item

Stated First edition with full number line. All fine. Like new. the Dust Jacket is bright and clean with no nicks, tears or shelf wear. The pages of the book are bright and clean and the spine is tight. Being sold by a long established bookseller and not a mass lister., which infers that this book is just as described with no nasty surprises. KINDLY note that an overseas order will incur a small amount of extra postage due to weight. A fine copy of a superbly researched book.

Seller Inventory # 003748

Bibliographic Details

• Title: If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities
• Publisher: Yale University Press, USA
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030016467X
• ISBN 13: 9780300164671
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time—climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people—the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big, too interdependent, too divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy's best hope, today democratically dysfunctional? Obsolete? The answer, says Benjamin Barber in this highly provocative and original book, is yes. Cities and the mayors who run them can do and are doing a better job.

 

Barber cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation, and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. Featuring profiles of a dozen mayors around the world—courageous, eccentric, or both at once—If Mayors Ruled the World presents a compelling new vision of governance for the coming century. Barber makes a persuasive case that the city is democracy’s best hope in a globalizing world, and great mayors are already proving that this is so.

About the Author

Benjamin R. Barber is senior research scholar at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. He is also president and founder of the Interdependence Movement and the author of seventeen books, including Jihad vs. McWorld and Strong Democracy. Barber’s project for a Global Parliament of Mayors has attracted scores of urban leaders and intercity networks and is on course for a pilot convening in 2016. He lives in New York City.