Reviews for Democracy

The average rating for Democracy based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-09-09 00:00:00 Stanley Tate Weale tries to argue for a system of government that he names "representational government" and that more or less resembles Mill's notion of representative government, only "without the fancy franchise and the metaphysics about national character" (p.213). Having read other books about political philosophy, I could not help but think that "Democracy" might have been improved by some structured analysis of theoretic arguments: comparing it to "An Introduction to Political Philosophy", it seems weak when arguing that direct democracy should not be favoured because of practical reasons (there are so much other cool activities to spend time on) or in its attempt to defend democracy against Plato's famous ship analogy (the ruling class simply have no incentives to care for the ruled - really? why?). This weakness, however, is also the strength of the book: in all matters, Weale takes a deliberately practical approach, which complements the more theoretical approach of other books. For example, the discussion of Concordet cycles and the problems of unanimity rule (culminating in the conclusion that the issue-by-issue meridian is the best way to find majority interests) were fascinating.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-03 00:00:00 Richard Chappell I'm glad I actually picked this book to write my essay on. It's got a clear and easy to read style, for a start, which sticks in the mind better than the more confusing pontificating some philosophers do. Arblaster also raises some important points about to the extent to which Britain is democratic -- to be honest, I have to feel after reading the book and thinking about it, that Britain is hardly democratic at all. Very, very interesting to think about.