Overview

Athens gave us the word democracy (literally translated as people power ) and for them it really did mean people power. The public themselves took responsibility for their own governance and those who qualified as fully fledged citizens; would vote on the creation of laws or participate in carrying out justice. The system of democracy meant that anyone could propose new laws or decisions. Even the civil servants who made sure that government ran smoothly were either elected from among the public or chosen at random using a lottery. Fast forward thousands of years to the 21st century and people power appears to be experiencing something of a renaissance. The US elected its first black president; dictatorships across the world have fallen like dominoes in the face of popular uprisings from Tunisia all the way through to Myanmar. Most of the former communist states have shaken off their tyrants and the European Union continues to bring former soviet states into the fold of democratic nations. Yet there is something wrong with this picture. Under closer scrutiny, the future of democracy is actually rather more fragile than it may first appear. For a start, only about 1 in 10 of us actually lives in a functioning democracy. Moreover, the process of democratization seems to have stalled, with the proportion of people living within a functioning democracy largely unchanged over the last few years. In other words, despite all the progress that has been made since the defeat of fascism and communism, the vast bulk of humanity still has little or no say in the way that they were governed. Democracy is under assault even within democratic countries from the USA and UK to France and Canada. The populations of most so called democracies are increasingly feeling marginalized and left out by out-dated and out of touch governments. Many people are disengaging from the political process altogether, while others are bypassing the ballot box and taking to the street. While playing lip-service to democracy, a handful of dominant political parties monopolize government, pursuing their own agendas and the agenda of few with the resources to fund and lobby politicians. This book is set against the backdrop of mass surveillance by 'democratic' governments, economic crisis, growing inequality and sponateous uprisings. Richard Thorne demonstrates that Democracy is failing and power is shifting from the electorate into the hands of an elite few. He sets out the urgent need for wholesale reform of the current democractic model, to rebalance power back to where it belongs - The People.

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9781494969943

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