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Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy

edited by Francis Fukuyama, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plattner

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The rise of populism in new democracies, especially in Latin America, has brought renewed urgency to the question of how liberal democracy deals with issues of poverty and inequality. Citizens who feel that democracy failed to improve their economic condition are often vulnerable to the appeal of political leaders with authoritarian tendencies. To counteract this trend, liberal democracies must establish policies that will reduce socioeconomic disparities without violating liberal principles, interfering with economic growth, or ignoring the consensus of the people.

Poverty, Inequality, and...

The rise of populism in new democracies, especially in Latin America, has brought renewed urgency to the question of how liberal democracy deals with issues of poverty and inequality. Citizens who feel that democracy failed to improve their economic condition are often vulnerable to the appeal of political leaders with authoritarian tendencies. To counteract this trend, liberal democracies must establish policies that will reduce socioeconomic disparities without violating liberal principles, interfering with economic growth, or ignoring the consensus of the people.

Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy addresses the complicated philosophical and moral issues surrounding the distribution of economic goods in free societies as well as the empirical relationships between democratization and trends in poverty and inequality. This volume also discusses the variety of welfare-state policies that have been adopted in different regions of the world.

The book’s distinguished group of contributors provides a succinct synthesis of the scholarship on this topic. They address such broad issues as whether democracy promotes inequality, the socioeconomic factors that drive democratic failure, and the basic choices that societies must make as they decide how to deal with inequality. Chapters focus on particular regions or countries, examining how problems of poverty and inequality have been handled (or mishandled) by newer democracies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy will prove vital reading for all students of world politics, political economy, and democracy’s global prospects.

Contributors: Dan Banik, Nancy Bermeo, Dorothee Bohle, Nathan Converse, Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Francis Fukuyama, Béla Greskovits, Stephan Haggard, Ethan B. Kapstein, Robert R. Kaufman, Taekyoon Kim, Huck-Ju Kwon, Jooha Lee, Peter Lewis, Beatriz Magaloni, Mitchell A. Orenstein, Marc F. Plattner, Charles Simkins, Alejandro Toledo, Ilcheong Yi

Reviews

Reviews

This text is well-crafted and is a challenging, thoughtful, and provocative treatise on the topic... This book offers a welcome, fresh insight to the consequences of democratic transitions in a variety of regions.

Starting from the phenomenon of growing inequality in much of the world, the book looks at the difference between poverty and inequality and the political effects of each of these on democracy, including the rise of authoritarian populism... Recommended for students of developing nations in general and Latin America in particular.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
216
ISBN
9781421405704
Illustration Description
1 map, 10 figures
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: What Are the Issues?
Chapter 1. Dealing with Inequality
Chapter 2. Does Electoral Democracy Boost Economic Equality?
Chapter 3. Why Democracies Fail
Chapter 4. Latin

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: What Are the Issues?
Chapter 1. Dealing with Inequality
Chapter 2. Does Electoral Democracy Boost Economic Equality?
Chapter 3. Why Democracies Fail
Chapter 4. Latin America: Democracy with Development
Part II: Latin America and Eastern Europe
Chapter 5. The Latin American Experience
Chapter 6. Aiding Latin America's Poor
Chapter 7. Postcommunist Welfare States
Chapter 8. East-Central Europe's Quandary
Chapter 9. How Regions Differ
Part III: Africa and Asia
Chapter 10. Growth Without Prosperity in Africa
Chapter 11. South African Disparities
Chapter 12. Growth and Hunger in India
Chapter 13. "Mixed Governance" and Welfare in South Korea
Index

Author Bios
Francis Fukuyama
Featured Contributor

Francis Fukuyama, Ph.D.

Francis Fukuyama is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The End of History and the Last Man (1992) and State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (2004). Dr. Fukuyama is director of SAIS's International Development Program, member...
Featured Contributor

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, codirector of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Featured Contributor

Marc F. Plattner

Marc F. Plattner is vice president for research and studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. Plattner and Diamond are coeditors of the Journal of Democracy.