A01=John Keane
Author_John Keane
Category=JPF
eq_bestseller
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780860919179
- Weight: 320g
- Dimensions: 134 x 215mm
- Publication Date: 17 May 1988
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book examines an age-old European theme - democracy. It reconsiders the central themes in modem democratic thought and soberly assesses the serious dangers now facing democratic institutions throughout Europe.
When Edmund Burke remarked in 1790 that a perfect democracy was the most shameless thing in the world, he was summarizing two thousand years of resistance by the powerful to both the legitimacy and advance of democracy. Since that time, the concept of 'democracy' has gained in respectability while coming, paradoxically, under threat from all sides. One of the most alarming threats, argues Keane, is the failure of the democratic imagination itself.
John Keane's work gives new life to that democratic imagination. In his brilliant use of the essay form, he has produced a book which is uncompromisingly pluralist, cosmopolitan and historically informed. Its scope extends from such topics as sovereignty, revolution, ideology, 'invisible' state power and neo-conservatism, to new issues. including unemployment, the erosion of party politics. and the growth of social movements.
When Edmund Burke remarked in 1790 that a perfect democracy was the most shameless thing in the world, he was summarizing two thousand years of resistance by the powerful to both the legitimacy and advance of democracy. Since that time, the concept of 'democracy' has gained in respectability while coming, paradoxically, under threat from all sides. One of the most alarming threats, argues Keane, is the failure of the democratic imagination itself.
John Keane's work gives new life to that democratic imagination. In his brilliant use of the essay form, he has produced a book which is uncompromisingly pluralist, cosmopolitan and historically informed. Its scope extends from such topics as sovereignty, revolution, ideology, 'invisible' state power and neo-conservatism, to new issues. including unemployment, the erosion of party politics. and the growth of social movements.
John Keane is the author of Public Life and Late Capitalism and After Full Employment (with John Owens), as well as the editor and translator of Claus Offe's Contradictions of the Welfare State. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman. He has taught and researched at Monash University. University of Toronto. the Free Universitat, Berlin, and Cambridge University; he teaches at The Polytechnic of Central London.
