Democracy Defended (Contemporary Political Theory)

Democracy Defended (Contemporary Political Theory)

Is there a public good? A prevalent view in political science is that democracy is unavoidably chaotic, arbitrary, meaningless, and impossible. Such scepticism began with Condorcet in the eighteenth century, and continued most notably with Arrow and Riker in the twentieth century. In this powerful book, Gerry Mackie confronts and subdues these long-standing doubts about democratic governance. Problems of cycling, agenda control, strategic voting, and dimensional manipulation are not sufficiently harmful, frequent, or irremediable, he argues, to be of normative concern. Mackie also examines every serious empirical illustration of cycling and instability, including Rikers famous argument that the US Civil War was due to arbitrary dimensional manipulation. Almost every empirical claim is erroneous, and none is normatively troubling, Mackie says. This spirited defence of democratic institutions should prove both provocative and influential.

Country	USA
Author	Gerry Mackie
Binding	Paperback
Brand	Brand: Cambridge University Press
EAN	9780521534314
Feature	Used Book in Good Condition
ISBN	0521534313
Label	Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer	Cambridge University Press
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	500
PublicationDate	2004-01-12
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
ReleaseDate	2003-11-27
Studio	Cambridge University Press

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