This book examines the crisis of liberal democracy in the West, contrasting it with China's unified leadership and rising middle class demands for accountability. It argues for a new model of "intelligent governance" that combines the best practices of both East and West to address the challenges of a diverse, multi-polar world.
The rise of populism in the West and the rise of China in the East have stirred a rethinking of how democratic systems work—and how they fail. The impact of globalism and digital capitalism is forcing worldwide attention to the starker divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” challenging how we think about the social contract. With fierce clarity and conviction, Renovating Democracy tears down our basic structures and challenges us to conceive of an alternative framework for governance. To truly renovate our global systems, the authors argue for empowering participation without populism by integrating social networks and direct democracy into the system with new mediating institutions that complement representative government. They outline steps to reconfigure the social contract to protect workers instead of jobs, shifting from a “redistribution” after wealth to “pre-distribution” with the aim to enhance the skills and assets of those less well-off. Lastly, they argue for harnessing globalization through “positive nationalism” at home while advocating for global cooperation—specifically with a partnership with China—to create a viable rules-based world order. Thought provoking and persuasive, Renovating Democracy serves as a point of departure that deepens and expands the discourse for positive change in governance.
A thought-provoking analysis of liberal democracy and argument for a new system of intelligent governance'. * The authors provide a comparative study of the consumer democracies' of the West and the meteoric rise of China and examine the effects of these systems of governance.