The Democracy Sourcebook

The Democracy Sourcebook offers a collection of classic writings and contemporaryscholarship on democracy, creating a book that can be used by undergraduate and graduate students ina wide variety of courses, including American politics, international relations, comparativepolitics, and political philosophy. The editors have chosen substantial excerpts from the essentialtheorists of the past, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, andthe authors of The Federalist Papers; they place them side by side with the work of such influentialmodern scholars as Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Przeworski, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel P. Huntington,Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen.The book is divided into nine self-contained chapters: "DefiningDemocracy," which discusses procedural, deliberative, and substantive democracy; "Sources ofDemocracy," on why democracy exists in some countries and not in others; "Democracy, Culture, andSociety," about cultural and sociological preconditions for democracy; "Democracy andConstitutionalism," which focuses on the importance of independent courts and a bill of rights;"Presidentialism versus Parliamentarianism"; "Representation," discussing which is the fairestsystem of democratic accountability; "Interest Groups"; "Democracy's Effects," an examination of theeffect of democracy on economic growth and social inequality; and finally, "Democracy and the GlobalOrder" discusses the effects of democracy on international relations, including the propensity forwar and the erosion of national sovereignty by transnational forces.

Robert A. Dahl, a leading authority on democracy, is the author of many books, including A Preface to Democracy, Democracy and Its Critics, and How Democratic Is the American Constitution? He is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University.