Democracy

Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratisation and de-democratisation at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years.

It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centres as crucial processes.

Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War II, this book makes the case for recasting current theories of democracy, democratisation, and de-democratisation.

About the Author

Charles Tilly (PhD Harvard, 1958) taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, and the New School for Social Research before becoming Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has published fifty books and monographs. His recent books from Cambridge University Press include Dynamics of Contention (with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow, 2001), Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (with Ronald Aminzade and others, 2001), The Politics of Collective Violence (2003), Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000 (2004), and Trust and Rule (2005).