The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of American Government, Revised Edition

By James A. Morone

Book Overview

This prize-winning book reinterprets more than 200 years of American political history as the interplay between the public's dread of government power and its yearning for communal democracy. James Morone argues that Americans will never solve their collective problems as long as they instinctively fear all public power as a threat to liberty. This revised edition includes a new final chapter about contemporary populism, government bashing, and democratic wishes.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465016030
• ISBN13: 9780465016037
• Release Date: December 1990
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent!

The book is a kind of one-two punch. It surveys American history and boils it down to a very neat equation. Americans yearn for an idyllic democracy, images of bucolic grace and wonderful heartland values as much as hard-boiled grit in facing injustice. Because we yearn, we look to democratize bad or corrupt systems. This is when interests come together under the fragile bond of this Deomcratic Wish. The corrupt system is revamped. But lo, the interests have split--bedlam! Everyone is scrambling to fatten themselves with more power. The original sight is lost to power-hunger. As a result, we have more bureaucracy, pitted against itself. This only attenuates what started the whole thing, the "Democratic Wish." The original voices for reform are muffled by the pit-sessions of bureaucracy bidding for power, juiced up on the short-term. This text can be used just as much to gain insight into political science as into American history. It's actually quite brilliant, timely and certainly engaging.