Civic Failure and Its Threat to Democracy

Operator Error

By (author) Chapman Rackaway

Not available to order

Publication date:

14 December 2016

Length of book:

218 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498514200

The greatest threat to American democracy is the voting public. Candidates for political office, organized interests, and political parties are often blamed for the ills of American democracy, but this book places the focus on the core issue in American politics: a disengaged, demanding, and often contradictory voting public. Structural reforms such as the direct primary, term limits, and campaign finance regime reforms make the problems worse rather than better because these structural reforms fail to address core issues that disengage the voting public from republican politics.

Chapter 1: Sowing the Seeds of Civic Failure
Chapter 2: A Primer on Republican Democracy
Chapter 3: Taking the Parties Out
Chapter 4: The Effects of Partisan Decline
Chapter 5: The Semi-Sovereign Media
Chapter 6: The State of the American Voter
Chapter 7: The Dream and the Nightmare of Term Limits
Chapter 8: The Promise and the Despair of Campaign Finance Reform
Chapter 9: Leading By Following, or The Unreasonable Expectations on the Political Class
Chapter 10: Look Forward, Angel
Chapter 11: A Pathway to American Revival

Rackaway stands the conventional wisdom on its head, arguing that reforms weakening political parties are the problem, not the solution to our democratic woes. With a broad historical sweep, he argues that parties link voters to policy choices in ways that no one else can—not the news media, not narrow interest groups, not direct democracy reforms such as the petition initiative. He advocates the abolition of the direct primary, the return of soft money, halving the size of Congressional districts, and experimenting with reforms like proportional representation that encourage the formation of strong third parties.