Democracy under Threat: A Crisis of Legitimacy? [Paperback]

This book addresses some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is democracy threatened by globalisation? Is there a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies?  Is the welfare state in individual countries under pressure from global trends? What are the implications of high-level migration and rising populism for democracy?  Does authoritarianism pose a challenge?

The volume builds on a cross-cultural study of democracy conducted by the Transformation Research Unit (TRU) at Stellenbosch University in South Africa for nearly twenty years. Three of the countries studied  South Africa, Turkey and Poland  receive individual attention as their respective democracies appear to be the most vulnerable at present. Germany, Sweden, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan are assessed in their regional contexts. Further insights are gained by examining the impact on democracy of the global screen culture of Television and the Internet, and by pointing out the lessons democracy should learn from diplomacy to fare better in the future. The book will appeal to both students and practitioners of democracy as well as the general reader.          

Preface; Ursula van Beek.- Part I: Theoretical aspects and overview.- Chapter 1: Globalization, Populism and Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracy; Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann.- Chapter 2: Temporal Models of Political Development; Laurence Whitehead.- Chapter 3: Democratic Quality and Legitimacy in the TRU Countries; Ursula Hoffmann-Lange and Dirk Berg-Schlosser.- Part II: Critical cases.- Chapter 4:  The Return of Nationalist Ethos: The Loss of Liberal Democracy in Poland?; Ursula van Beek.- Chapter 5:  Identity politics: Extreme polarization and loss of capacity to compromise in Turkey; Yilmaz Esmer.- Chapter 6:  Political Radls