Josh’s Reviews > Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy > Status Update

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The exercise of political and economic agency is an important end of human life itself, apart from the effects of that exercise.

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A high degree of autonomy is what permits innovation, experimentation, and risk taking in a bureaucracy.

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Karl Marx's Communist utopia did not materialize in the developed world because his global proletariat turned into a global middle class.

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Regimes that balance strong states with legal and democratic constraints on power have become a normative standard around the world.

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Predictions that Arab societies will not be able to sustain liberal democracy may prove correct in the longer run.

NOTE:

Yes

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… most voters simply do not have the time, energy, or expertise to devote to the careful study of complex public policy issues. When higher levels of democratic participation are encouraged by putting more issues before voters through mechanisms like public referenda, the result is …

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Throughout human history, out-groups have fought in-groups, and once they succeeded in displacing the power holder became the new oppressive in-group. Accountable government, by contrast, means formal recognition of the principle of accountability to a broader public and the legitimacy of opposition.

NOTE:

A Hegelian thesis?

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like the United States in the nineteenth century, [the Philippines] democratized before it had a modern state and has therefore experienced substantial amounts of patronage and clientelism.

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The only way to solve the bad emperor problem and the associated evils of corruption and arbitrary rule in the long run is to increase the formal procedural constraints on the state.

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As in dynastic China, law remains an instrument of rule, and not an intrinsic source of legitimacy.