POL201Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Robert D. Putnam, Participatory Democracy, Bowling Alone
Document Summary
What we learned last week with pb was that people didn"t identify democracy as elections; they identified it in themselves in society, values, as a distinct set. 1980s: conception of democracy as elections: multi-party, rights based model of democracy that is exported by the us and the international financial institutions. People say they want prosperity, westernization and they believe that democracy will give them this. How did we get a new model of democracy: rejection of u. s. model. The old model of democracy as elections has been discredited, and people have been disillusioned with the idea that democracy could be located in institutions and constitutions. One reason why is because the us has been discredited, and its model of democracy has been rejected with it: elections produce few tangible benefits. People believe that power continues to rest in the hands in a few elites (even if they are elected) and people are mostly shut out of the process.
