Deformations of Democracy

This book builds on the work of David Beetham, a renowned scholar of democracy and human rights, to demonstrate the relevance of that work to key problems of contemporary politics and to explore present-day challenges to democracy. It surveys the range of Beetham’s work and analyses his definition of democracy as requiring popular control of decision-makers and equality in the exercise of that control. The book critically probes this way of defining and justifying democracy. Further chapters of the book develop those ideas to investigate present-day deformations of democracy, pointing to the ways in which contemporary democracies have undergone democratic backsliding which has taken them away from the ideal of popular power and equality in exercising democratic control. These deformations include the growth of corporate power and undermining of democratic institutions. The book discusses dangerous trends of democratic degeneration and the erosion of human rights in supposedly democratic regimes, as well as the challenges to women’s rights by authoritarian leaders. The book examines such phenomena as the danger of fascism in contemporary politics, the threat of populism, the decline of parliaments and the problem of legitimising the exercise of power in the nation-state and beyond the state. It discusses questions of how to assess and evaluate democratic institutions, examining forms of ‘democratic audit’ as applied to political systems world-wide. The book’s concluding chapters suggest pathways for democratic renewal and for new forms of participatory politics which could mitigate the threat to democracy and combat its deformations.