Popular Politics : Renewing Democracy for a Sustainable World

Written from a universal human rights perspective, this text confronts the elitism of contemporary government and the dangers of empire in the next century. It proposes opposition policies for a transition to democracy and sustainable development.

George Shepherd provides a popular democratic theory and strategy for democratic transition in the world. He demonstrates how popular democratic ideas have created universal human rights uprisings and popular movements, and he shows how real opposition is building to elite rule. Building on the old liberal and new associative rights of the democratic tradition of the Western world from Harold Laski and Jacques Maritain in Europe to the moral realism of Martin Luther King Jr., John Rawls, and David Brower in America, Professor Shepherd proposes numerous reforms in the economic and political systems that can occur through popular politics and participatory economics. Of considerable interest to activists, concerned citizens, and scholars involved in the debates over democracy and current economic-political policies.