The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy

No-Nonsense Guides

by Richard Swift

Swift explores how democracy is constricted and deformed by economic power-brokers and a self-serving political class from Birmingham to Bangalore. Including chapter-length discussions of topics such as eco-democracy, democratizing the economy, and democracy in the southern hemisphere, the book is also a guide to the rich diversity of forms of elected government and contains practical ideas for empowering today‘s voters around the world.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Richard Swift was co-editor for the New Internationalist magazine from1984 to 2007 and is based in Toronto. He has written and broadcast on questions of ecology and democracy for many years. In 2011 he won the Daniel Singer Millennium Prize for an original essay which helps further socialist ideas.

Reviews

[Melissa]

Required reading for an english class at college. The professor made me hate the class so my view on the book may be bias-ly negative.

[Matthew Newton]

Overall not bad. Swift basically defends what he calls 'strong democracy' (in which people participate fully and actively in decision-making and power is distributed to enable this) against 'weak democracy' which he associates with some theorists of liberal democracy and its Western champions. I sometimes felt he was a bit unfair on the theorists of liberal democracy but overall his argument is quite compelling.

[Brian]

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[Joseph]

I skimmed the last 40 or so pages, thereby exercising my democratic right to waste as little of my time as possible.

[Victoria]

Carefully argued and straightforward. A good introduction to economic and social justice and democratic practices.

[Harvey Molloy]

Sound enough but a tad dry. My edition has practically no margins which I don't find attractive.