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Disappointment and bitterness, mixed with envy and a desperate hope for a better future, are the night soil in which demagogues are hatched. But despite their populist bluster, demagogues are saboteurs of democracy, driven by an urge to ditch and destroy the checks and balances vital to restraining abuses of power. Unless checked, demagogues are the harbingers of a new, 21st-century form of despotism: a corrupted, phantom democracy in which periodic elections are held but the rich become super-rich and omnipotent—while most of the populace is gripped by feelings of powerlessness when it comes to the big decisions shaping everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this critical commentary, John Keane defends, extends, and reasserts the role of history in democratic theory through an articulation of seven methodological rules: (1) treat the remembrance of things past as vital for democracy's present and future; (2) regard the languages, characters, events, institutions, and effects of democracy as a thoroughly historical way of life and handling of power; (3) pay close attention to the ways in which the narration of the past by historians, leaders, and others is unavoidably a time-bound, historical act; (4) see that the methods that are most suited to writing about the past, present, and future of democracy draw attention to the peculiarity of their own rules of interpretation; (5) acknowledge that, until quite recently, most details of the history of democracy have been recorded by its critics; (6) note that the negative tone of most previous histories of democracy confirms the rule that tales of its past told by historians often harbor the prejudices of the powerful; and (7) admit that the task of thinking about the past, present, and future of democracy is by definition an unending journey. There can be no Grand Theory of Democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented greening of democracy during the past half-century runs far beyond spreading public talk of sustainability and climate justice and is more consequential than disputes about species extinction and the details of carbon pricing and emissions trading schemes, Keane argues. Proposing a new way of understanding the relationship among bio-environments, energy regimes, and democracy, he asks why people with green sympathies might be expected in our times to embrace democracy for more than tactical reasons, whether democracy (an anthropocentric norm that has always supposed selfgoverning humans are masters and possessors of "nature") and democratic principles can be "greened," and what that redefinition might imply for the way people imagine to be the "essence" or "spirit" of popular self-government in the age of monitory democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes that revisiting the historical relationship between indigenous peoples and popular self-government is important for several reasons. In surprising ways, it potentially alters our understanding of the violence encoded within the history of democracy in representative form. It prompts questions about whether and to what extent indigenous ways of handling and restraining the exercise of power helped shape, either positively or negatively, the resulting institutions of representative democracy. And it raises still unanswered questions about how functioning democracies today can best come to terms with their past, by means of new forms of restorative justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A correction to the article " David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History From Antiquity to Today" by John Keane, published online on March 14, 20222 is presented.

Megaprojects are systems of highly concentrated power whose footprints, or radius of effects, are without precedent in human history. Once upon a time, even under imperial conditions, most people on our planet lived and loved, worked and played within geographically limited communities. They never had to reckon with all of humanity as a factor in their daily lives. Whenever they acted recklessly within their environment, for instance, they had the option of moving on, safe in the knowledge that there was plenty of Earth and not many others. Whenever bad things happened, they happened within limits. Their effects were local. The politics of megaprojects radically alters this equation; it poses new questions about the governance of risk and the nature and limits of democratic politics. The politics of megaprojects-put simply-raises fundamental questions about the 'life and death of democracy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasizes the limits of market-biased thinking and the contradictions and injustices of neo-liberal policies. Philosophical and theoretical basis of the market; Criticism against the separation of the concept of markets with civil society precepts; Effect of neo-liberal economics on the accounts of civil society; Social rules and habits common to the market experience and other civil society institutions.

In exploring whether or not the free and equal communication of citizens is a feasible ideal at the end of the twentieth century, this article presents a new account of the importance of the media to democracy. It offers a revised interpretation of the public service model of communications, in a risk-ridden society, and spells out the implications of these arguments for conventional views of democracy. After considering and rejecting foundationalist and relativist accounts of democracy, it offers a novel conception of democracy as a project of flexibly controlling the exercise of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old language of `liberty of the press', shaped by the ethos of private market competition, is making a grand return to the centre stage of public debate about the future shape of the mass media. Policy discussions about the press and particularly broadcasting are shaped increasingly by old-fashioned talk of state censorship, individual choice, deregulation, market competition and the dawning of an age of communications marked by `freedom and choice, rather than regulation and scarcity.' Market liberals insist that the media system must be encouraged or herded down the road of commodification. It must become more competitive and cost efficient. Democracy is rule by publics who make judgements in public. That is why the public service model defended in this article would in practice not put a stop to public controversies about the meaning and scope of `liberty of the press'. Freedom of communication is not something which can be realized in a definitive or perfect sense; it is an ongoing project without an ultimate solution. It is a project which constantly generates new constellations of dilemmas and contradictions.

The new element in governance is social media. Inexorably, its fertile networks of shared information shift power from authorities to citizens and amateurs, including to the 'unknown' experts in the 'dorm rooms and edges of society' who drive innovation. Tweets may bust trust and undermine authority, but can social media also be a tool for building consensus through deliberation and negotiation among interests? When it comes to governance, is crowd-sourcing any better than populism at generating collective intelligence instead of disruptive 'dumb mobs?' Can networks aid the self-administration of society, or does that take institutions with governing authority? In this section, leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, technologists and network theorists from Google, Microsoft and the MIT Media Lab join with political scientist Francis Fukuyama and top thinkers from Asia to address these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the historical significance of representative democracy on indigenous peoples. The author examines the rise of the concept of representative democracy in the 18th and 19th centuries, resistance efforts against popular representation, and the possible contradictions among the adherents of representative government concerning indigenous peoples. The author discusses the terms civility and civilization as related to the introduction of representative democracy to indigenous peoples. The article examines the policies of British colonial authorities such as George Gray and Lord John Russell as well as political theories concerning representative democracy championed by political philosophers such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Hobbes, and Alexis de Tocqueville.