Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 202
•
Trim: 5¾ x 8½
978-1-78660-427-9 • Hardback • January 2019 • $123.00 • (£95.00)
978-1-78660-428-6 • Paperback • January 2019 • $41.00 • (£35.00)
Jeff Noonan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor. He is the author of Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference (2003), Democratic Society and Human Needs (2006), and Materialist Ethics and Life-Value (2012), and more than 50 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.
Introduction: Democracy Today
Chapter One: Democracy and Self-Determination
Chapter Two: Liberalism and Democracy
Chapter Three: The Real Contradiction Between Inequality and Democracy
Chapter Four: Right-Wing Populism as a Threat to Democracy
Chapter Five: Radical Democracy: Agonistic Theory and Horizontalist Practice
Chapter Six: Shared Life-Interests and Democratic Self-Determination
Further Reading
Bibliography
The Troubles with Democracy is synoptic and wide-ranging in its command of the relevant research, deep-structurally original in the literature in seeking a shared life capacity ground of democracy's contested meaning, and in all a lucid bellwether for contemporary democratic studies.
— John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, University of Guelph
Jeff Noonan’s rearticulation of democratic politics away from political abstraction and systems description, and towards it being embedded in social life values and resources, provides a convincingly critical discussion of the current malaise of ‘liberal’ democracies. Where Noonan is most valuable is in providing a cogent, clear and critical engagement with the idea of democracy that keeps human freedoms and their material sustenance at the core of his political analysis. He both lays bare the failings of ‘liberal’ democracies and specifies the transformative agendas required to underpin democracy that is participative, respectful of difference and intolerant to structural inequalities, and genuinely delivers democracy in its enabling social context. A persuasive, eloquent and highly readable contribution towards democratic solidarity and renewal.
— Paul Reynolds, Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy, Edge Hill University