Defenders of the Status Quo? Energy Protests and Policy (In)Action in Sweden

Uba, Katrin and Cassandra Engeman. 2024. Defenders of the Status Quo? Energy Protests and Policy (In)Action in Sweden. Social Forces, soae166. DOI:10.1093/sf/soae166

indicators of democracy

The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of elections and an overarching mission of serving the will and well-being of a country’s citizens. But how do we hold politicians accountable for such a mission? How are we to understand the efficacy of the policies they put forth? In Indicators of Democracy Diana Graizbord exposes the complex, often-hidden world of the institutions that are meant to ensure democratic accountability and transparency. Taking the case of Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), Graizbord provides a deep theory of what happens when democratic aspirations intersect with technocratic ambitions. Analyzing what it takes to establish and sustain monitoring and evaluation as a form of official state expertise, Graizbord is able to put forward the contours of technodemocracy—a democratic political project that hinges on the power of experts to shape politics in unexpected but profound ways.

Degenerations of Democracy

Calhoun, Craig, Dilip Gaonkar, and Charles Taylor. 2022. Degenerations of Democracy. Harvard University Press. 

Three leading thinkers analyze the erosion of democracy’s social foundations and call for a movement to reduce inequality, strengthen inclusive solidarity, empower citizens, and reclaim pursuit of the public good.

degenerations of democracy

Democracy is in trouble. Populism is a common scapegoat but not the root cause. More basic are social and economic transformations eroding the foundations of democracy, ruling elites trying to lock in their own privilege, and cultural perversions like making individualistic freedom the enemy of democracy’s other crucial ideals of equality and solidarity. In Degenerations of Democracy three of our most prominent intellectuals investigate democracy gone awry, locate our points of fracture, and suggest paths to democratic renewal.

Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies

Reed, Isaac Ariail. 2020. Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Power in Modernity

In Power in Modernity, Isaac Ariail Reed proposes a bold new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination.  Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alliances, subordinations, redistributions, and violent exclusions. Reed traces the common action of “sending someone else to do something for you” as it expands outward into the hierarchies that control territories, persons, artifacts, minds, and money.