Democratic Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies - by E Ugarriza & D Caluwaerts (Hardcover)

About the Book

"What does a deliberative democracy look like in a divided society? What obstacles and opportunities are there for the promotion of a deliberative democracy at the institutional and citizen levels? Through case-analysis and cross-sectional assessment of nine countries, this unique and important collection provides a detailed and insightful exploration into these problematic questions. A roll call of leading experts on deliberative democracy explores some of the most deeply divided societies in the world today, ranging from Northern Ireland to Nigeria and Belgium to the Basque Country, specifying conditions under which deliberative democracies could realistically emerge in unpropitious contexts. This collection is recommended reading for students and scholars of deliberative democracy and of politics in divided societies"--

Book Synopsis

Through case-analysis and cross-sectional assessment of eleven countries this collection explores the most deeply divided societies in the world in order to highlight what deliberative democracy looks like in a deeply divided society and to understand the conditions that deliberative democracies could realistically emerge in difficult circumstances

About the Author

Juan E. Ugarriza earned his PhD from the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Previously, he received an MA in history at the University of North Carolina, United States. His areas of academic interest are the deepening of democracy in contexts of conflict and the role of ideology in the twenty-first century. His work has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the International Journal of Conflict Management and the Journal of Public Deliberation. Currently, he is a faculty professor and researcher at El Rosario University (Bogota) and leads a team of researchers exploring the use of deliberative practices as a political reconciliation strategy in postconflict Colombia.

Didier Caluwaerts is a Democracy fellow at the Ash Center of the Harvard Kennedy School and a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research focuses on deliberative and participatory democracy in ethnically divided societies, and his work has been published in the European Political Science Review and the Journal of Public Deliberation.