REVIEWS FOR
Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen

"The effort to construct a positive alternative to social/rational choice theory is highly welcome....The scholarship is first-rate. This is the strength of the manuscript....The scope of the literature covered is broad, and there is also remarkable depth of coverage in all sections...a fresh approach to confronting social choice theorists and economic theorists of democracy who are sceptical of the democratic accuracy of voting, preference aggregation and interest-representation."—Richard Wellen, Professor of Social Sciences, York University (Canada)

 

"Behrouzi's Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen: Direct-Deliberative e-Democracy offers a careful account of how modern technology and existing socio-economic infrastructure can be harnessed to achieve genuine democracy in the United States. Building on the companion volume, Democracy as the Political empowerment of the Citizen: The Betrayal of an Ideal, Behrouzi argues that the ideal of democracy as the sovereignty of the people cannot be represented but can be empowered by individual citizens exercising their individuated sovereign powers directly. Through developments such as e-technologies, Behrouzi argues optimistically that our generation is in the unique position to be able to establish the first feasible democratic society in history."—Lesley Jacobs, Professor of Law & Society, Director, Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, York University

 

"Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen: Direct-Deliberative e-Democracy proposes a creative new way to reconcile participatory democracy with the reality of large-scale mass society at the beginning of the 21t century. It attempts to harness new interactive technologies to the existing representative institutions of liberal democracy. A useful addition to the literature on democratic theory."—Philip Resnick, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia



"Majid Behrouzi's exhaustive and illuminating account of democracy as the  rule by the people  takes on increased importance with new demands, in the U.S. and around the world, for citizens' substantive participation in the democratic process. Behrouzi puts pressure on democracy to live up to its full ideal and exposes those conceptions of democracy that betray its promise. In his second volume, he finds the solution in e-democracy-a stunning account backed by a genuinely illuminating and full theory."—Joseph P. DeMarco, Professor of Philosophy, Cleveland State University