Downsizing Democracy

A welcome corrective to what has been a stampede in recent years toward blaming citizens . . . How we act is affected by how our government treats us, the processes for influencing decision-making that are available to us and the societal structures that provide us with more or less time, resources, incentive and opportunity to venture into the public sphere . . . But I don't think this book lets citizens off the hook . . . Crenson and Ginsberg have taken an important step in identifying and describing that relationship [between formal democracy and everyday democracy], and their work calls us to pay attention to whether institutional processes today support or undermine everyday democracy.
—Palma J. Strand, The Nation
A thoughtful and useful analysis of present-day democratic decline.
—Kerry Lauerman, Washington Post Book World
Downsizing Democracy has the marks of a book that will be remembered. It applies a master thesis to many different facets of American political life, inviting the reader to see a vast array of previously familiar material as if for the first time and as a whole. In the authors' view, we have come to the end of a centuries-long epoch during which government and political elites needed publicly engaged citizenry . . . The authors prosecute their thesis . . . with admirable insight and persuasiveness.
—Hugh Heclo, Political Science Quarterly
This fascinating book surveys the changing relationship between the U.S. government and the populace that constitutes its whole . . . Highly recommended.
—Choice