Vital Democracy

For those who are involved in research and in teaching public administration (broadly defined), Hendriks has provided an accessible route into an important debate that has been badly neglected by the hegemony of those in the discipline who prefer a more economic or managerialist approach. With easy to follow diagrams and tables to explain the more theoretically complicated sections, it covers complex debates without obfuscation. This book should be included on the reading list for both advanced undergraduate programmes and for specialist postgraduate students. * Josie Kelly, Public Administration *
In a highly innovative fashion, Frank Hendriks juxtaposes the majoritarian-consensus distinction that I use in Patterns of Democracy with the direct-indirect distinction, which has been known in political science for a long time but which has rarely been used in a systematic way. The result is a parsimonious two-by-two matrix, which is completely original and which works very well for his comparative analysis. Variants of direct democracyof both the push-button type and the deliberative kind, which have been attracting a lot of attention in recent yearsare drawn into the comparative picture together with variants of representative democracy. The book concludes with some insightful perspectives on democratic reform, arguing persuasively in favor of contextually sensitive mixtures of models and against the one-best-model approach. A wonderful book. Compulsory reading for all those talking about democracy. * Arend Lijphart, University of California, San Diego *