Downsizing Democracy
Subtitle: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: August 26, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 312
ISBN-13: 9780801871504
Subjects: Central government; Political structures: democracy; Politics/International Relations; Political Science; General; Politics / Current Events; Politics and government; USA; Political participation; Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights; Political Science / Constitutions; Democracy; United States; Political Ideologies - Democracy; Citizen participation
First sentence: IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, America was exceptional for the vitality of its democratic institutions-especially its political parties.
Description: "In Downsizing Democracy, Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg describe how the powerful idea of a collective citizenry has given way to a concept of personal, autonomous democracy, in which political change is effected through litigation, lobbying, and term limits, rather than active participation in the political process.

Mandatory taxes have replaced bonds as a means to fund military operations, career civil servants have replaced volunteers in the allocation of public services, and an elite, professional soldier has replaced the citizen-soldier. With citizens pushed to the periphery of political life, narrow special interest groups from across the political spectrum - largely composed of faceless members drawn from extended mailing lists - have come to dominate state and federal decision-making.

In the closing decade of the last century, this trend only intensified as the federal government, taking a cue from business management practices, rethought its relationship to its citizens as one of a provider of goods and services to individual "customers.""--BOOK JACKET.