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What Is Democracy and How Do We Study It?

What Is Democracy and How Do We Study It?

Edited by Cameron D. Anderson and Laura Beth Stephenson

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

5 b&w illustrations

Digital download
9781487588595
Published: February 2021

Digital download
9781487588601
Published: February 2021

Description
Contents
Authors

There are many different ways to do political science research. This book takes a core question that motivates research in political science – what is democracy? – and presents, in a single volume, original research demonstrating a variety of approaches to studying it. The approaches and related methods covered by the chapters in this book include normative political theory, positivist quantitative analysis, behaviouralism, critical theory, post-structuralism, historical institutionalism, process tracing, case studies, and literature reviews. Readers are confronted with the different assumptions that researchers make when entering the research process and can compare and contrast the many different ways that a single question can be studied . This book will be enlightening for students of democracy as well as those interested in research design and methodological approaches.

1. Approaching the Study of Democracy
Cameron D. Anderson, Western University and Laura B. Stephenson, Western University

Part I – Democracy in Theory: Normative Approaches

2. Democracy: What and Why
Charles Jones, Western University

3. Is Majority Rule Democratic?
Richard Vernon, Western University

Part II – Analyzing Democracy: Positivist Approaches

4. Evaluating a Democracy: Are Citizens Engaged?
Cameron D. Anderson, Western University and Laura B. Stephenson, Western University

5. Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy
David Armstrong, Western University

6. A Democratic Continuum?
Bruce Morrison, Western University

7. Membership Rules for Democratic Communities: Canada and the United States
Andrew Sancton, Western University and Christopher Alcantara, Western University

8. Representation and the Practice of Politics
Rob Leone, Western University and Josh Morgan, City Councilor, London, Ontario

9. The Democratic Dimensions of Specialized Governments
Joseph Lyons, Western University

Part III – Interpreting Democracy: Critical and Post-modern Approaches

10. Hatred of Democracy
Dan Bousfield, Western University

11. Rethinking Democracy
Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Western University

Laura B. Stephenson is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.