Democracy and Complexity A Realist Approach
Democracy and Complexity: A Realist Approach by Danilo Zolo, published by Wiley on August 7, 1992, offers a thought-provoking examination of democratic theory. This 220-page book presents Zolo’s argument that the increasing complexity of modern societies poses significant challenges to the foundational assumptions of the Western democratic tradition, necessitating a reevaluation of key political questions.
In this work, Zolo explores how the complexities of contemporary life, particularly influenced by the information revolution, introduce new forms of evolutionary stress. He discusses the implications of these stresses, such as the rising autonomy of political parties and the evolving nature of political communication, which can create a façade of consensus. The book delves into the potential threats these developments pose to traditional democratic values, including individual rationality, autonomy, and the accountability of power.
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This book is a highly original and provocative contribution to democratic theory. Zolo argues that the increasing complexity of modern societies represents a fundamental challenge to the basic assumptions of the Western democratic tradition and calls for a reformulation of some of the key questions of political theory.
Zolo maintains that, as modern societies become more complex and more involved in the `information revolution’, they are subjected to new and unprecedented forms of evolutionary stress – as manifested, for instance, in the growing autonomy and power of political parties, and in new kinds of political communication which create and sustain the fiction of consensus. These forms of stress have become so serious that they threaten to undermine some of the values traditionally associated with democracy, such as the rationality and autonomy of the individual, and the visibility and accountability of power.
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