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- The Life and Death of Democracy is a 2009 book by John Keane and consists of the first attempt to write a life and times of democracy for well over a century (2009). The book, in essence, asks a series of questions about democracy: is democracy to be seen as just one – dispensable – ideal among many others? Is it worth defending? Is it really a universal norm or, reflecting Western values, just a tool useful in the struggle by some for mastery over others? Beginning with a rather radical examination of the origins of the concept, the book explores the evolution and mutations of democracy along the centuries, and its often hotly disputed meanings. In doing so, The Life and Death of Democracy provides fresh details of the obscure origins of old institutions and ideals like government by public assembly, female enfranchisement, the secret ballot, trial by jury, and parliamentary representation while sketching some extraordinary characters whose lives have been directly involved with the making of democracy. It also attempts to explain democracy’s global spread in modern times, the contrasting criticisms it attracts and the serious, perhaps fatal, problems afflicting it. At the same time, new democratic institutions and innovations of 20th century’s last half and beginning of the 21st, aiming to revitalise the standard institutions of representative government, are examined. The Life and Death of Democracy stresses that, understood simply as people governing themselves, democracy implied something that continues to have a radical bite: it supposed that humans could invent and use institutions specially designed to allow them to decide for themselves, as equals, a thought that may seem very common now but was extraordinarily innovative at its conception. Following this path, the book challenges the common view of democracy as a timeless fulfilment of our political destiny with built-in historical guarantees, emphasising that democracy is not a way of doing politics that has always been with us or will unquestionably be with us forever, but instead an evolving, adaptable concept of a rather frail nature, especially at times when there are signs of mounting disagreement about its meaning, its efficacy, and desirability.
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