Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose [Paperback]

Democracy is sold to us on its ability to deliver equal opportunity, and to give every citizen an equal voice. Yet time and again we see that this is not the case: power and spoils alike flow to the few, while the many are left with no recourse. What is wrong with democracy?

Nothing, says Roslyn Fuller: what we have simply isn’t democracy—it’s a perversion of it, created by poorly designed electoral systems, weak campaign laws, and broad limitations on participation and representation at nearly every level. Backing her argument with copious empirical data analyzing a wide variety of voting methods across twenty nations, Fuller makes her conclusion irrefutable: if we want true democracy, we have to return to the philosophical insights that originally underpinned it, and thoroughly reexamine the goals and methods of democracy and democratic participation. A radical, damning, yet at the same time fiercely hopeful work, Beasts and Gods aims to reconfigure the very foundations of modern society.

Roslyn Fulleris a research associate at Waterford Institute of Technology and legal correspondent forRussia Today.

Preface: What is Democracy?
Introduction: People Power is Born

1. The Myth of Representation
2. The Cost of Delegated Power
3. The Competition to Participate in Modern Democracies
4. The International System
5. The Civil Society Chimera
6. The Roman Republican System and the Founding Fathers of America
7. The Way Forward
8. Misinformed is Disenfranchised
9. The Tyranny of the Majority Investigated
10. Open for Business

Conclusion

“Beast and Godsis a timely and provocative look behind the cliches of western politics. It recognises that government of the people, by the people, is not what our current democracies feel like to most of their citizens. Fuller returns to thel3“