Overdoing Democracy by ROBERT B TALISSE asks and answers a question that attracted me a lot - Why We Must Put Politics in its Place. It begins with an overview of the ills, politics lives with, while proclaiming, better politics cannot be the solution because politics is the problem. And it goes on to examine a lot of issues in this regard.
Like, can democracy be overdone? Is there a desirable degree of democracy? How, because of the ever-increasing reach of democracy, overdoing it becomes an internal, significant issue. On further diagnosis, political saturation and polarization are found to be critical issues, and the book goes on to prescribe remedies also. Not attending to these shall end up undermining democracy by overdoing it.
I find this an eye-opening study. How, a good ideal like the popularization of diversity in areas like race, or religion, has been accompanied by a not-so-good one like increased homogeneity of the same dimension, among the very same people. So, there is a need to put politics in its place, without derogating or reprimanding of democracy. As the book makes it clear, if we disregard these signs, an overdone democracy’s place shall lie with the privileged few.
No comments:
Post a Comment