See Sir Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: the Origins of Western Liberalism (2014)
Which of the Following Values are Important to Democracy?
- Rule of Law and an Impartial Judiciary
- A Constitution
- Human Rights and Fair Access to Trial and Good Representation
- Fair Representation and Moral Accountability of Political Leadership
- Freedom of the Press
- Freedom of Speech
- Separation of Church and State
- Right to Protest and Assemble, to Publicly Debate Key Issues
- Concern for the Common Good
- Peace and Civility
- Moral Leadership Employing Wisdom
- Fair Elections
- Fair Access to Higher Education
- Sound Religious Foundation for Political Discourse
- Proper and Fair Taxation System and Wealth Distribution
- Access to Good Healthcare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GR-9-nB-YE What is Democracy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBegL_V6AA Jonathan Haidt NYU and Jordan Peterson University of Toronto on why we need to preserve debate within the university for the sake of democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEiMYaQcAAU The Truth About Democracy
Jurgen Habermas, Three Normative Models of Democracy
Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, Dialectics of Secularization.
- Dahl, Robert A. (1989) Democracy and its Critics. London: Yale University Press. This is a seminal piece by one of the greats of Political Science. It charts the course of democracy through a series of ‘transformations’ from the city state through to the nation state. It provides a very nice exposition of the various elements of ‘democracy’ and the different ways in which democratic principles can be applied to systems of government.
- Achen, C. & Bartels, L. (2016) Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. This is one of the most important contributions to the study of democracy over the last decade. It makes for pretty uncomfortable reading: with empirical evidence, the authors really challenge some of our assumptions about the things we expect elections to do. It’s a good diagnosis of some of the problems with (a narrow focus on) electoral democracy, but sadly it doesn’t consider many substantive solutions.
- Van Reybrouck, D. (2016) Against Elections: The Case for Democracy. London: Random House. This isn’t an academic work. It channels some of the criticisms of electoral democracy made by Achen & Bartels, but it’s very accessible and makes quite a persuasive (and counter-intuitive) case for supplementing traditional institutions with more extensive citizen-based decision-making.
- Lijphart, A. (2007) Thinking about Democracy: Power Sharing and Majority Rule in Theory and Practice. Basingstoke: Routledge. Lijphart has been one of the key theorists on democracy as power-sharing (as opposed to the exercise of majority rule). His work significantly influenced the development of Northern Ireland’s political institutions as a form of conflict management, but his work has had a great deal of influence in a range of conflict and non-conflict contexts.
UBC Graduate & Faculty Christian Forum 