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- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy abstract "The Life and Death of Democracy is a 2009 book by John Keane and published by Simon & Schuster. Keane claims his book is the first attempt to write a full history of democracy for well over a century - the last such attempt he states on this scale was by the American Nahum Capen, whose first volume was published in 1874. Some have claimed to have already provided such a comprehensive history, but Keane has rejected this claim.Keane’s book deals with the meaning and institutions of democracy, historical roots and its present-day trends. The starting point in Keane’s history is to re-consider democracy’s roots. Fifth century BCE Athens (Greece), for many the cradle of democracy, was an important stage of the development process of democracy, but certainly not its point of origin, its first. The origins of the idea of this new way of governing stretch beyond the Peloponnesus’ coasts and date back to the ancient civilizations of Syria-Mesopotamia (ca. 2500 BCE).This and other discoveries that the book unearths are not a merely antiquarian exercise, for it is argued that these are historical facts that force us to rethink some of the core ideas that have influenced historians of the past, and, more importantly, shape the politics of the present. Not only does Keane propose that democratic assemblies have Eastern origins, Keane also strongly questions the old assumption that democracy is a universal norm that reflects Western values; hence, he argues that the future of democracy is not tied neither to the West, nor to representative democracy, its current most widely adopted form. See for instance, the history of India, which shows the possibilities of multiethnic democracies – Keane calls it “banyan democracy”, and of Islam, that many consider the antithesis of democracy and instead has a neglected democratic tradition.Ideally, Keane writes, “the democratic ideal thinks in terms of government of the humble, by the humble, for the humble, everywhere, any time. Its universality, the applicability of this ideal across borders, in a wide variety of settings, whether in South Africa, China, Russia or the European Union, stems from its active commitment to what might be called ‘pluriversality’,” that is “the yearning of the democratic ideal to protect the weak and to empower people everywhere, so that they can get on with living their diverse lives on earth freed from the pride and prejudice of moguls and magnates, tyrants and tycoons.” But ideals often do not conform to reality, and in this book Keane considers all the ways in which democracies have gone wrong over the course of history. The book begins with a rather radical examination of the origins of the family of terms to which the word democracy belongs; the author goes onto explore the evolution and mutations of the language and institutions of democracy through the centuries, and its often hotly disputed meanings. Looking beyond the Athens-Runnymede-Philadelphia axis, Keane traces democracy's roots back to Sumeria and follows its tendrils as far afield as Pitcairn Island and Papua New Guinea. At the core of Keane’s book is the author’s belief that history is a necessary key for understanding democracy in the present time. Keane’s worldwide perspective is an important corrective to the (mainly Western) idea that democracy has one and only distinctive form; one type of model that can be brought as a gift to peoples with different attitudes and histories. There is no such a thing as a singular form of democracy. Following the line of thinking that history is the only way we can make sense of what democracy means, The Life and Death of Democracy provides fresh details of the obscure origins of old institutions and ideals like government by public assembly, female enfranchisement; the secret ballot, trial by jury, and parliamentary representation.Keane’s book shows as well that ideas of democratic governance have flourished in many different places and, ironically, were often sparked by undemocratic ideas and actions. The road to democracy was often paved by opposite intentions. For instance, Keane shows that one effect of the early Islamic expansion was the creation of self-governing communities that needed to exist independently from the metropolis. The first experiments in female suffrage were made on the fringes of the British Empire: for imperial reasons, women were given the vote on Pitcairn Island in 1838. Furthermore, Keane’s historical works shows that those fringes were important laboratories of democracy. Australia is a case in point: “In the colony of South Australia, first settled in 1836 and later called by many the Paradise of Dissent, the spirit of aristocracy was extinguished by settlers who thought of themselves as fair-minded, God-respecting men and women of the improving classes”. And Australians were the first to experiment with ideas of proportional representation and the secret ballot. The book attempts to explain democracy’s global spread in modern times, the contrasting criticisms it attracts and the serious, perhaps fatal, problems afflicting it. As the Times of London columnist, David Aaranovitch wrote: “One of the many strengths of Keane's enterprise is its challenge to democratic parochialism, and the time it takes to examine democratic forms in the developing and post-colonial worlds. Who cannot benefit from a description of the early 20th-century Uruguayan system of the “double simultaneous vote”, in which you could vote for a party and for a faction within that party? And Keane's primary example of postwar democracy is not European or North American, but the messy miracle of Indian democracy.” Keane stresses that the idea that people could govern themselves was not a simple one. On the contrary it implied something that continues to have a radical bite in the present time: that humans could invent and use institutions specially designed to allow them to decide for themselves, as equals, is a thought that may seem very common nowadays but was extraordinarily innovative at its conception. Following this line of thinking, the book challenges the common view of democracy as a timeless fulfilment of our political destiny with built-in historical guarantees, emphasising that democracy is not a way of doing politics that has always been with us or will unquestionably be with us forever, but instead it is an evolving, adaptable political form of a rather frail nature, especially at times when there are signs of mounting disagreement about its meaning, its efficacy, and desirability. An important mainstay of Keane’s account of the history of democracy is the need to understand the inner fragility of democracy – in fact for the author that is a precondition for the survival of democracy. Democracy is by no means indestructible. By 1941, in fact as Keane points out, there were only 11 functioning democracies left in the world. In less than 50 years the work of many dictators and demagogues in the name of ‘the people’ had almost succeeded in wiping democracy from the pages of our history books. The present time is no different, Keane warns: “the enemies of democracy are on the rise, and even pundits and panjandrums half sympathetic to it are openly cynical about claims that it is a desirable way of life for all the people of the planet”.From Keane’s history, democracy emerges less as a set of fixed principles and much more as a culture and mindset—pragmatic, antiauthoritarian, accepting of change and contingency and the ability of ordinary people to shape them. Democracy is first and foremost a uniquely humble and humbling way of life. “Democracy” writes Keane “thrives on humility” not on the arrogance of first principles. However the humility in this case, the author warns us, should never be confused with “docile meekness or submission”. Humility in fact is for Keane “the cardinal democratic virtue, the antidote of arrogant pride: it is the quality of being aware of one’s own and others’ limits.” This is a crucial element of democratic life: “People who are humble try to live without illusions. They dislike vanity and dishonesty; nonsense on stilts and lies and bullshit sitting on thrones are not their scene.” Unyielding, humility is what gives individuals “inner strength to act upon the world”. Humility dislikes hubris. For Keane to think “of democracy as a uniquely humble and humbling ideal is to give up on the old-hat idea that democracy rests upon some or other First Principle– the Nation, History, God, Truth, Utility, the Market, the infallible Sovereign People or its Leader.” To think of democracy as a uniquely humble and humbling ideal is – Keane remarks – “to see instead that democracy is a precondition of the flourishing of different values and ways of life around the world is to rid democracy of its connotations of moral arrogance, sectional rule, bullying and force.” Democracy is therefore a “codeword for humility” that in turns means “to say goodbye to the worn-out nineteenth- and twentieth-century European liberal rejection of democracy as a headstrong and perilous ideal that ‘by the help of a demagogue and a mystical faith in “the people” or “the masses” leads to tyranny and the rule of the sword’. Above all, for Keane, it is crucial to “rid democracy of its demons” and speak of it only in terms of humbling, that is a crucial point in our present understanding of democracy: it is “to redescribe the democratic ideal as a potentially universal check against every form of humbug and hubris, as a humble and humbling ideal that gathers strength from the vision that, although citizens and representatives require institutions to govern, no body should rule.”".
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- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy author John_Keane_(political_theorist).
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- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy publisher Simon_&_Schuster.
- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy releaseDate "2009".
- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy subject Democracy.
- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy subject Politics.
- The_Life_and_Death_of_Democracy subject "History".
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