George Shepherd provides a popular democratic theory and strategy for democratic transition in the world. He demonstrates how popular democratic ideas have created universal human rights uprisings and popular movements, and he shows how real opposition is building to elite rule. Building on the old liberal and new associative rights of the democratic tradition of the Western world from Harold Laski and Jacques Maritain in Europe to the moral realism of Martin Luther King Jr., John Rawls, and David Brower in America, Professor Shepherd proposes numerous reforms in the economic and political systems that can occur through popular politics and participatory economics. Of considerable interest to activists, concerned citizens, and scholars involved in the debates over democracy and current economic-political policies.

Across the West, hard-right leaders are surging to power on platforms of ethno-economic nationalism, Christianity, and traditional family values. Is this phenomenon the end of neoliberalism or its monstrous offspring? In the Ruins of Neoliberalism casts the hard-right turn as animated by socioeconomically aggrieved white working- and middle-class populations but contoured by neoliberalism’s multipronged assault on democratic values. From its inception, neoliberalism flirted with authoritarian liberalism as it warred against robust democracy. It repelled social-justice claims through appeals to market freedom and morality. It sought to de-democratize the state, economy, and society and re-secure the patriarchal family. In key works of the founding neoliberal intellectuals, Wendy Brown traces the ambition to replace democratic orders with ones disciplined by markets and traditional morality and democratic states with technocratic ones. Yet plutocracy, white supremacy, politicized mass affect, indifference to truth, and extreme social disinhibition were no part of the neoliberal vision. Brown theorizes their unintentional spurring by neoliberal reason, from its attack on the value of society and its fetish of individual freedom to its legitimation of inequality. Above all, she argues, neoliberalism’s intensification of nihilism coupled with its accidental wounding of white male supremacy generates an apocalyptic populism willing to destroy the world rather than endure a future in which this supremacy disappears.

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (or Belfast Agreement) promises the people of Northern Ireland a fresh start underpinned by guarantees on human rights, equality, and participation. Scholars from Ireland and England examine developments in Northern Ireland stemming from the Agreement and identify key themes in the current law and politics of Northern Ireland. Topics discussed include Northern Ireland and the European Union, the role of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and policing in Northern Ireland. Harvey teaches constitutional and human rights law at the University of Leeds. Distributed by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.

Presents a selection of questions and answers covering the principles of democracy, including human rights, free and fair elections, open and accountable government, and civil society.