Democracy
Subtitle: a history
By: John Dunn.
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 246
Subjects: Democracy -- History
Description: "In Democracy: A History, political theorist John Dunn sets out to explain the extraordinary presence of democracy in today's world. The story begins in Greece, where democracy started as an improvised remedy for a very local difficulty twenty-five hundred years ago. Athens gave democracy a name (demokratia) and worked out an elaborate, highly distinctive, and astonishingly thorough interpretation of the political conditions required to achieve it. However, democracy's tenure was short-lived, flourishing briefly and then fading away almost everywhere for nearly two thousand years. Democracy reappeared with the founding of the new American republic and amid the struggles of the French Revolution.
The word democrat suddenly became a partisan label and a badge of political honor, lending credibility to the idea of transforming human collective life, anywhere and everywhere, to fit the requirements of democracy that are so familiar to us today."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Why democracy?; title: Democracy's first coming; title: Democracy's second coming; title: The long shadow of Thermidor; title: Why democracy?