Democratic Decline and Democratic Renewal

Ian Marsh is Professor in the Australian Innovation Research Centre at the University of Tasmania. Raymond Miller is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Auckland.

• Part I. Introduction: 1. The decline and renewal of democratic governance: a theoretical framework; Part II. Political Change in Britain: The Development of a Strategy Gap: 2. The mass party system and state strategic capacity in Britain; 3. Neo-liberalism and the decline of state strategic capacity; 4. Why the gap in strategic capacity poses a systemic challenge; Part III. Political Change in Australia: The Development of a Representation Gap: 5. Everyman is king: representation and strategic capacity in Australia's mass party period; 6. Pluralised society, individualised politics: the gap between citizens and the formal political system; 7. Why a representation gap poses a systemic challenge (and the populist alternative); Part IV. Political Change in New Zealand: Voting Reform, Multi-Party Politics and Minority Government: 8. Identities and capabilities in the mass party era in New Zealand; 9. Neo-liberalism, social change and democracy; 10. Is electoral reform sufficient?; Part V. Democratic Renewal: 11. Reconnecting citizens to the political system; 12. The prospect for democratic renewal.

'The decline of political parties as vehicles of social representation, especially in Westminster type democracies, has been both noted and bemoaned for decades. We know a lot about why this has happened, but less about what to do about it. Now we do. In Democratic Decline and Democratic Renewal Marsh and Miller make the case for an enhanced role for parliamentary committees as the institutions best adapted for twenty-first-century democracy. Building citizen identities through mobilizing ideas and institutions, they make a powerful case for a new form of post-neoliberal representation that renews the democratic spirit.' Mark Blyth, Professor of International Political Economy, Brown University