Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
"A welcome corrective to what has been a stampede in recent years toward blaming citizens... How we act is affected by how our government treats us, the processes for influencing decision-making that are available to us and the societal structures that provide us with more or less time, resources, incentive and opportunity to venture into the public sphere... But I don't think this book lets citizens off the hook... Crenson and Ginsberg have taken an important step in identifying and describing that relationship [between formal democracy and everyday democracy], and their work calls us to pay attention to whether institutional processes today support or undermine everyday democracy." -- Palma J. Strand, The Nation"A thoughtful and useful analysis of present-day democratic decline." -- Kerry Lauerman, Washington Post Book World"Downsizing Democracy has the marks of a book that will be remembered. It applies a master thesis to many different facets of American political life, inviting the reader to see a vast array of previously familiar material as if for the first time and as a whole. In the authors' view, we have come to the end of a centuries-long epoch during which government and political elites needed publicly engaged citizenry... The authors prosecute their thesis... with admirable insight and persuasiveness." -- Hugh Heclo, Political Science Quarterly"This fascinating book surveys the changing relationship between the U.S. government and the populace that constitutes its whole... Highly recommended." -- Choice