Associative Democracy and the Crises of Representative Democracies

This book argues that we are in need of normative guidelines and a strong understanding of a range of institutional options and innovative experiments in associative democracy to address the structural problems of existing institutional arrangements whilst maintaining and strengthening democratic forms of government and governance.

Veit Bader is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and of Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he was also a member of the Institute of Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES). His research interests include critical political economy, critical social theory, social inequalities and collective action, democracy and the rule of law, legal theory, associative democracy, race, ethnicity and citizenship, multi-culturalism, ethics of migration and incorporation of minorities, global justice, and governance of religious diversity. He is author of several books, including Secularism or Democracy? Associational Governance of Religious Diversity (2007), and co-editor of Associative Democracy: The Real Third Way (Routledge, 2001), and Parties, Partisanship and Political Theory (Routledge, 2014). He has also led two European FP7 projects, RELIGARE (Religious Diversity and Models of Secularism in Europe 2009 - 2013) and ACCEPT (Tolerance, Pluralism and Cohesion 2009 - 2013). Marcel Maussen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he is also a member of the Challenges to Democratic Representation program group. His research interests include the accommodation of religious diversity, particularly that of Islam, in Western Europe, democratic theory, and the governance of diversity, including issues related to free speech, non-discrimination and anti-racism He is the author of several journal articles and chapters in edited volumes and is co-editor of Legal Practice and Cultural Diversity (Routledge, 2009), Regulation of Speech in Multicultural Societies (Routledge, 2015), and Religious Schools in Europe: Institutional Opportunities and Contemporary Challenges (Routledge, 2016).

Introduction 1. Crises of democratic capitalism and prospects for democracy 2. A theory of complex democracy: Setting the stage 3. Democracy or expertocracy? Ecological crises and ecological democracy 4. Crisis of political parties and representative democracies: Rethinking parties in associational, experimentalist governance 5. Democratizing healthcare 6. Democratizing the economy: Institutionalizing alternatives to 'capitalism as we know it'