What Kind of Government?

This book seeks to develop an understanding of the changes in contemporary forms of government and explores the nature and structure of the various corrupt, undemocratic, oppressive, and abusive governments that continue to emerge around the globe. While proceeding from Hannah Arendt's well-known thesis of the break in (political) tradition that occurred with the totalitarianisms of the 20th century, it addresses some main conceptual frameworks and a number of key trends in existing forms of government and their relations to historical forms.

The primary intended audience includes educators, scholars, and researchers with an interest in contemporary democracy and anti-democratic movements, government, questions of power, political theory / philosophy, and conceptual history, as well as and students enrolled in various disciplines of the social sciences. Moreover, it will be of interest to Arendt scholars and those researching the contemporary challenges to democracy and constitutional rule worldwide.

Chapters 1, 4, 6 and 13 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Challenges the notion of government and power as domination and addresses questions of political agency Explores changes in forms of government and the nature of emerging undemocratic and oppressive governments Provides analyses of several classical and modern political concepts

Autorentext

Dr. Vlasta Jalusic is a senior researcher, one of the founders of the Peace Institute - Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, and a Full Professor at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia).

Dr. Wolfgang Heuer is a senior researcher at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), and managing editor of "HannahArendt.net, Journal for Political Thinking".

Inhalt

Chapter 1. Thinking Contemporary Forms of Government after the Broken Tradition.- Part I: Between Past and Present.- Chapter 2. An Unholy Trinity Populism, Illiberalism, Authoritarianism.- Chapter 3. Bonapartism: Obsolescence of the Forms of Government.- Chapter 4. Illiberal Democracy as Revolutionary Action: The Case of the 20202022 Jana Government in Slovenia.- Chapter 5. Neither Ruling nor Being Ruled.- Chapter 6. The Politics of Crisis and Contemporary Forms of Government.- Chapter 7. Bureaucracy as a Pervasive Phenomenon of Contemporary Governments.- Chapter 8. Understanding Political Change with Montesquieu.- Part II: New Beginnings.- Chapter 9. Revitalizing Democracy: Citizen Assemblies, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom.- Chapter 10. Federalism and Deconstruction in Hannah Arendt.- Chapter 11. In the Face of Global Upheavals Re-sharpening the Dimensions of Plurality in Arendt's Republican Thinking.- Chapter 12. Taking Care of the Eternal: Politics between Two Homes.- Chapter 13. Courage against Domination in Republican Democracy.