Deliberative Democracy in a Diverse Europe - From Theory to Practice
Autor: Carmen Gabriela GREAB
Editura Lumen
www.edituralumen.ro
www.librariavirtuala.com
Iasi, 2008
Nr. pag. 106
ISBN 978-973-166-048-6
The nature of democracy has been debated for several millennia as philosophers and other thinkers have speculated about what it is, what might become, and what is supposed to be. Compared to competing forms of government and methods of organizing society, democracy worked rather well by the values most theorists and idealists have held to be important. Consequently, democracy produced societies that have been humane, flexible, productive, and vigorous. Still, democracy did not come out looking the way many theorists and idealists imagined it should and it could. (Mueller, 1999) In addition to all these, over the past century, citizens, public interest groups, and political elites in advanced industrial democracies have displayed growing doubts about whether the principals and institutions of representative democracy are sufficient mechanisms of democratic self-government. These signs point a spreading dissatisfaction with the institutions and processes of representative democracy. Consequently, there were an increasing number of demands for political reforms and restructure of democratic political systems.
Editura Lumen