Theories of the Democratic State

by John S. Dryzek, Patrick Dunleavy

The major text begins by surveying the classical theories of the state. The core chapters then address the dominant pluralist and post-pluralist approaches to understanding the modern liberal democratic state, the main critiques from feminism, new elitism, green theory, neo-conservatism, and the challenges of globalization and postmodernism.

Genres: Politics, Political Science

392 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2009

Reviews

[Mohamed SaȜid]

الكتاب مكون من ١٥ فصلا اول خمس فصول واخر خمسة هم الأهم لولا الخمس الباقيين لكنت قيمته خمس نجوم

[Ian Sergeant]

This book reviews the field. If you are waiting for the authors conclusions you won't find them presented explicitly, but you problsbly won't miss them in the asides and in the citations of the authors' previous work.

I guess this is probably written as a text for first year uni students. I'm not a student of politics and was interested to find that many of the criticisms of government systems you may make over dinner are also the subject of academic research. The language of the text contains little jargon, and was easy to read.

I did feel the author went a bit far in the feminist critique, drawing attention to the sexual orientation of participants in the debate. a bit hard on the post-modernists too, some of which use post-modernist theory to explore perspectives and aren't just wreckers!

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it as an initial entry book into the academic approaches to government systems.

[Warren]

Meh ...