Democracy And Social Policy

“This is an excellent study of a set of democratic practices, established by Chinese government, to manage the impact of the transition to a market economy on citizens and businesses: participatory pricing. Xuan Qin’s careful and methodologically wide-ranging analysis provides fascinating insight into the ways in which participatory pricing’s democratic implications are curated and limited by China’s authoritarian state. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the fuzzy boundary between democracy and authoritarianism.”
–Dr. Catherine Owen, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Politics, University of Exeter

This is a book about European integration and mainstream parties of the left, the main underlying question driving it being: Given that the communist left was fatally wounded by the collapse of the Berlin Wall; given that, since then, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ have not infrequently been attacked (especially by populists) as being no longer useful for making sense of politics; given that social democracy, understood as ‘national Keynesianism’ no longer appears to be viable (as reflected in its long-term electoral decline), what does it mean to be on the left in the early 21st century and what can be done to revive its fortunes? Its answer is that being on the left means embracing principles of equality and international solidarity, and that since the nation state is too small to respond effectively to climate change and the other most pressing issues of the present, no viable strategy for left-wing revival in Europe can dispense with European integration as a central element, of which European democratisation is a core component.

“Grounded in the urban politics of the 21st Century world-wide, this thoughtful volume hooks urban food – and especially its production – to social justice in a realistic and manageable way.”
—Diana Lee-Smith, Mazingira Institute, Kenya