Evolutionary Basic Democracy A Critical Overture [Hardcover]

No one in this world truly understands what democracy means. We operate democracy only through best guesses. This uncertainty has caused, and continues to cause, significant political troubles. This book offers a way forward. It provides a new tool that will allow us to understand democracy for the entire planet and all of humanity.Preface Introduction A New Analytic Tool 1. The Subalterns and Unknowns of Democracy 2. Arguments for Evolutionary Democracy 3. Arguments against Evolutionary Democracy 4. Schr?dinger's Democracy Notes

Gagnons work thrillingly blows open methodological and epistemological debates in the analysis of democracy. It deserves attention from all scholars and advanced students dissatisfied with contemporary conceptualisations and measurements of democracy. (Matthew Wood, Political Studies Review, Vol. 13 (4), 2015) 

Dr Jean-Paul Gagnon is University Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University.If you thought you knew what democracy is, think again - and again. Evolutionary Basic Democracy argues powerfully and provocatively for attending to the multiple roots and sites of democracy including nonhuman ones. Suddenly democracy looks like something very big indeed, not just a recent Western human invention.

John Dryzek, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University, Australia

Jean-Paul Gagnon's new book on democracy is definitely the most innovative, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work that will surely become a classic in the study of democracy and democratization all over the world. His concept of evolutionary basic democracy can be found not only in the nonhuman sector but also in human beings, implying that democracy has long been enjoying a life of its own that cut across borders, time and space. As such, the origins, concept, dimensions and meaning of democracy are questioned fundamentally. l^