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An SSRC Essay Forum Collection
  • About
  • Contributors
  • Essays

Is Democracy Slipping Away?

February 7, 2017 By AOD Admin In Essays, History/Theory 0 Comments

Three Elements of Modern Democracy Before I get to what I mean by our democracy slipping away, I want to make three points about the nature of contemporary democracies. Firstly, modern democracy is constitutionally v ...

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“The Nearer Your Destination, the More You’re Slip-Sliding Away”: A Comment on Charles Taylor

February 7, 2017 By AOD Admin In Essays, History/Theory 0 Comments

Charles Taylor gives us a long view of democracy as “constitutionally vulnerable” once political representation became its central feature, for from then on democracies faced the unrelenting problem of deciding just ...

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Multilateralism and Democracy

November 30, 2014 By AOD Admin In Essays, Global Lenses, History/Theory 0 Comments

Most contemporary commentators posit a tension between multilateralism and democracy.[1. This paper draws on a number of previous publications, which cite the extensive literature on this subject. A selection includes th ...

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Anxieties of Democracy and Distribution

November 7, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Equality/Inequality, Essays, History/Theory 0 Comments

At least since Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, it has been routine to see democracy and equality as joined—if somewhat problematically—at the hip. Tocqueville saw democratic politics as the outgrowth of a rel ...

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Anxieties of Democracy: Who Counts? How? Why?

November 7, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Access, Essays, History/Theory 0 Comments

War and Democracy Humans have inflicted untold horrors on each other through wars of aggression and preemptive defense. It is therefore ironic to consider that wars and the threat of war have been responsible for som ...

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Why a Philosophy of History in which the Present Moment Is World-Altering Is Not Hubris and Is Politically Necessary

November 7, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Essays, History/Theory 0 Comments

The habitat of most contributors to the SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy initiative is the political maelstrom. They have studied and assessed it all—from the 1998 attempt to impeach a popular president to debt-ceiling ...

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Democratic and Institutional Anxieties

November 6, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Essays, Global Lenses, History/Theory 0 Comments

From its ancient provenance, democracy has always provoked anxieties of excess, lawlessness, and spontaneity, and thus also the anxiety of having within itself the disruptive energy to unsettle any stable regime of power ...

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Negotiation in the Crisis of Democracy

November 6, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Essays, Governance, History/Theory 0 Comments

The current crisis of democracy has many causes. The one I discuss here is the inability of our democratic institutions—and our understanding of those institutions—to keep up with our collective needs.[1. The followi ...

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Representative Democracy and Alternative Models: Notes on Latin America

November 6, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Essays, Global Lenses, History/Theory 0 Comments

1. In Latin America, the institutions of representative democracy have only very rarely been robust enough to successfully represent society. From these institutions' inception as republics, the capitalist economy of Lat ...

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In Defense of Permeability

November 6, 2014 By Kate Grantz In Essays, Global Lenses, History/Theory 0 Comments

Representative democracy is a matrix that engenders and sustains five connected, but distinct, principles of modern government: Popular sovereignty: citizens have a political voice, and their interests and preferenc ...

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The Democracy Papers

  • “The Nearer Your Destination, the More You’re Slip-Sliding Away”: A Comment on Charles Taylor

    Nancy Rosenblum
  • American Challenges and Legislative Institutional Barriers Today

    David Mayhew
  • Anxieties about Congress

    Nolan McCarty
  • Anxieties of Climate Change: Thoughts from the SSRC Working Group on Climate Change

    Nancy Rosenblum and Robert O. Keohane
  • Anxieties of Democracy and Distribution

    Ian Shapiro
  • Anxieties of Democracy: Who Counts? How? Why?

    Frances Rosenbluth
  • Anxiety about Democracy: Why Now?

    Peter A. Hall
  • Civic Engagement and America’s Racialized, Anti-Democratic Public Sphere

    Michael C. Dawson
  • Democratic and Institutional Anxieties

    Uday Singh Mehta
  • Four Observations about Democratic Anxieties (or their Absence) in Latin America

    Deborah Yashar
  • In Defense of Permeability

    Courtney Jung
  • Income, Inequality, and Participation

    Nolan McCarty
  • Inefficacy, Anxiety, and Leadership

    William Howell
  • Is Democracy Slipping Away?

    Charles Taylor
  • Multilateralism and Democracy

    Andrew Moravcsik
  • Negotiation in the Crisis of Democracy

    Jane Mansbridge
  • Political Inequality: Challenges and Opportunities

    Martin Gilens
  • Politics, Policy, and Participation

    Thomas B. Edsall
  • Preliminary Thoughts on Participation and Citizen Equality

    Samuel Issacharoff
  • Representative Democracy and Alternative Models

    Timothy Frye
  • Representative Democracy and Alternative Models: Notes on Latin America

    Claudio Lomnitz
  • The Politics of Policies to Promote Gender Justice

    Mala Htun
  • The Substance of Policy Areas and Representation: Some Observations about Social Policy and Tax Policy

    Andrea Louise Campbell
  • Thoughts on Access and Participation in Contemporary American Democracy

    Nathaniel Persily
  • Three Reasons Congress Is Broken

    Robert Kaiser
  • What We Are Anxious about When We Say We Are Anxious about Inequalities of Influence

    Dara Strolovitch
  • Why a Philosophy of History in which the Present Moment Is World-Altering Is Not Hubris and Is Politically Necessary

    Nancy Rosenblum

News and Announcements

  • RT @ssrc_org: #OpenAccess until March 18: “Populist Attitudes and Selective Exposure to Online News,” from an issue of The Intern… https://t.co/u55hBNrw5K, Mar 10
  • RT @ssrc_org: Who creates disinformation, and why? This literature review from @SSRC_mtp’s #MediaWell synthesizes the latest rese… https://t.co/JJxMHpV4dg, Mar 6
  • RT @jonlewallen: I wrote about my next big project on measuring and explaining policy conflict in congressional committees, funded b… https://t.co/97KX9BfbMh, Mar 3
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Funded By

The work of the SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program is possible due to generous funding from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Related Programs

The Inaugural Democracy Papers are part of the SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program.

The new Democracy Papers can be found on Items, the SSRC’s digital essay forum.

The Inaugural Democracy Papers were produced as part of the planning process for the SSRC’s Anxieties of Democracy program, which asks how democracies can capably address large problems in the public interest.

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