Power and Humility
The Future of Monitory Democracy

An imaginative, radically new interpretation of the twenty-first-century fate of democracy by a distinguished scholar.

John Keane (Author)

9781108425223, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 August 2018

492 pages, 6 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.9 cm, 0.81 kg

'Like a Socratic wasp, John Keane's innovative book shows us how to look at democracy from a space–time perspective that detects multiple variations of the political form known as democracy and the cultures and traditions in which it takes root. The age we are in today entails that the power of the will (elections and deliberation) is no longer master in the field, while the negative power of judgment expands. The Internet facilitates this, with the paradox of enlarging citizens' indirect influence instead of direct participation. It is thus the meaning of participation that changes and makes contemporary democracy radically different from the ancient one, not merely in the institutions but above all the value of political autonomy. It seems that the age of monitory democracy is one of power dispersion and depersonalization in the fullest - a liberal age.' Nadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory, Columbia University, New York

Democracy urgently needs re-imagining if it is to address the dangers and opportunities posed by current global realities, argues leading political thinker John Keane. He offers an imaginative, radically new interpretation of the twenty-first-century fate of democracy. The book shows why the current literature on democracy is failing to make sense of many intellectual puzzles and new political trends. It probes a wide range of themes, from the growth of cross-border institutions and capitalist market failures to the greening of democracy, the dignity of children and the anti-democratic effects of everyday fear, violence and bigotry. Keane develops the idea of 'monitory democracy' to show why periodic free and fair elections are losing their democratic centrality; and why the ongoing struggles by citizens and their representatives, in a multiplicity of global settings, to humble the high and mighty and deal with the dangers of arbitrary power, force us to rethink what we mean by democracy and why it remains a universal ideal.

Introduction
Part I. Indigenisation: 1. Asia's orphan: democracy in Taiwan, 1895–2000
2. Indigenous peoples
Part II. Communications Revolution: 3. Monitory democracy 4. Wild thinking
5. Lying, truth and power
6. Silence, early warnings and catastrophes
Part III. Re-Imagining Equality: 7. Capitalism and civil society
8. The greening of democracy
9. Child citizens
Part IV. Democracy beyond Borders?: 10. Quantum metaphors
11. The European citizen
12. Antarctica: democracy at the end of the world
Part V. Violence, Fear, War: 13. Does democracy have a violent heart?
14. The triangle of fear
Part VI. Why Monitory Democracy?: 15. Is democracy a universal ideal?

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Political science & theory [JPA]