How Democracies Live

"That democracy is in crisis here and abroad is a staple of the daily news and scholarly writing. In How Democracies Live, Stein Ringen powerfully intervenes in this debate with a meditation on what democracy is, the challenges it faces, and the way it can be defended. Ringen argues that democracy must be strongly rooted in a culture that supports democratic values, protect and foster the ability of citizens to exchange views and information among themselves and with their rulers, and provide a government that both protects freedom and delivers effective governance that serves the needs of the citizens. The book is organized in five essays on core concepts in political theory: power, statecraft, freedom, poverty, and democracy. The logic is to explore how governance works, identify the benefits of democratic governance, and then meet the reality of democracy today. Ringen argues that power is the fuel of government, statecraft turns power into effective rule, freedom is the value to be maximized, poverty the ultimate unfairness to be minimized, and democracy the method to make these combinations possible"--