Democracy in Practice - by S Rai & R Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

"This collection highlights the ways in which parliaments create and maintain powerful symbols of democracy and power. It explores how political and social hierarchies operate within parliaments through ceremonial spectacles, formal and informal rules and rituals, art and architecture. Members are socialized through everyday practices but such institutional disciplining is also challenged performatively - by refusal to participate, by subversion of norms or by rejection of rules. The contributions to this volume highlight that the everyday ritual practices as well as institutional ceremonies have significant political meaning, whether their focus is upon the spectacular or the quotidian. Chapters on opening ceremony, Prime Minister's Questions, on performance of debate and disruption, on the architecture and space of suggest that what has often been seen as the banal backdrop to politics proper, accumulated tradition or necessary rules of procedure, should in fact be the starting-point for our analyses of modern democratic parliaments"--

Book Synopsis

This collection makes a compelling case for the importance of studying ceremony and ritual in deepening our understanding of modern democratic parliaments. It reveals through rich case studies that modes of behaviour, the negotiation of political and physical spaces and the creation of specific institutional cultures, underpin democracy in practice

Review Quotes

'An imaginative and most valuable collection of high quality essays exploring the role of rituals and ceremonies in articulating the identity and shaping the popular perception of Parliament, and more generally of democracy and political life. I know no other that comes anywhere near it in its range and depth.'

Bhikhu Parekh, University of Westminster, UK, and House of Lords

'This book sets an exciting new agenda for understanding the gendered nature of political institutions through taking performance, symbol, ritual and rhetoric seriously. The book is an interdisciplinary intervention that simultaneously pays attention to empirical detail and to comparative method. It is a compelling read.'

Shireen Hassim, Professor of Politics, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

About the Author

Faith Armitage, University of Manchester, UK Bairavee Balasubramaniam, University of Warwick, UK Sarah Childs, University of Bristol, UK Emma CreweUniversity of Hertfordshire, UK Victoria Hasson's, the Democratic Alliance, South Africa Joni Lovenduski, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK Nirmal Puwar, Goldsmiths, London University, UK Carole Spary, University of York, UK Georgina Waylen, University of Manchester, UK