By Roslyn Fuller
Democracy is offered to us on its skill to convey equivalent chance, and to provide each citizen an equivalent voice. but many times we see that this isn't the case: strength and spoils alike stream to the few, whereas the numerous are left with out recourse. what's wrong with democracy?
Nothing, says Roslyn Fuller: what we have now easily isn’t democracy—it’s a perversion of it, created via poorly designed electoral platforms, susceptible crusade legislation, and wide obstacles on participation and illustration at approximately each point. Backing her argument with copious empirical info studying a large choice of vote casting tools throughout twenty countries, Fuller makes her end irrefutable: if we need real democracy, we need to go back to the philosophical insights that initially underpinned it, and punctiliously reexamine the ambitions and strategies of democracy and democratic participation. an intensive, damning, but whilst fiercely hopeful paintings, Beasts and Gods goals to reconfigure the very foundations of contemporary society.</div>
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Additional info for Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose
Sample text
The first coloured ball to fall through the tube delivered a positive (white) or negative (black) answer regarding all those whose cards were in the first row of grooves on whether they were selected to serve as officials or jurors; the colour of the second ball determined the fate of the next row and so on. The process was very quick and very public. Different machines were used for the various lotteries, depending on how big the pool of candidates was and how many positions needed to be filled.
They are completely wasted. In the United States, this is mitigated by the de facto two-party system, but still present. 1 or 55 per cent of the vote are not uncommon, either. In these cases, approximately 45 per cent of voters also cast wasted votes that are not reflected in the composition of Congress. These voters drop off the electoral stage and have no voice in future political decisions until the next election. Debate in Congress occurs only among the winners. The losers (a substantial proportion of the entire population) are excluded.
In making this decision, the jurors were often free to exercise considerable discretion, as Athenian law tended to leave some leeway for interpretation. 3 As this makes clear, the law set out the circle of possible victims, but failed to define what hybris actually was, except for the literal meaning of the word, which is ‘something outrageous’. Whether or not the accused had actually done something outrageous was left to the interpretation of the jurors. As one historian put it: [I]t would be more in accordance with Athenian habits to devise a criminal procedure without having any specific charge in mind.