Poisoned Chalice of US Democracy
Subtitle: Studies from the Horn of Africa
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2024
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9781350374584
Subjects: Africa, history
Description: US-style democracy has failed the world. To understand why this is so and where we can go from here, it makes sense to look to the Global South, where US-style democracy has never developed strong roots, and where alternative models have already begun to emerge.  Drawing on three decades of personal, on-the-ground experience as well as on extensive research, renowned investigative journalist John Young offers a groundbreaking new account of that failure and of the emerging alternatives. Focusing on the countries in which his expertise is most authoritative-Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan-Young shows that US democracy's fatal flaw is that it is not democratic at all. Its exclusive focus on the supremacy of market capitalism necessarily entails a loss of national sovereignty and a truncated notion of human rights that leaves little room for citizens' engagement or socio-economic justice. These shortcomings explain much of the struggle and conflict that have plagued the Horn of Africa since the 1970s, they lie at the heart of similar problems across the globe, and they have long since been particularly apparent in problems faced across Global South. It is little wonder, then, that the Global South leads the way in developing new and innovative grassroots struggles to overcome national oppression, end unequal development, and raise living standards.  For its rich first-hand accounts of grassroots social and economic developments in the Horn of Africa, and for its theoretical rigor in extrapolating the lessons of those developments to interactions between US market-democracy and democratic movements in the Global South, this book is a must-read for researchers and students interested in international development, international political economy, African studies, and politics and international relations.