01625     2200253   4500001002100000005001500021035002000036008004100056020001800097041000800115082001000123084001600133100001800149245003900167250001000206260005100216300003300267500002100300504002900321520095500350650001401305990002601319990002601345INLIS00000000000134920221024025320  a0010-0520001349221024                |          | eng    a0-521-53431-3  aeng  a321.8  a321.8 MAC d0 aMackie, Gerry1 aDemocracy Defended /cGerry Mackie  aCet.1  aCambridge :bCambridge University Press,c2003  avi,483 hlm ;22,5cm ;c22,5cm  aIndeks : 468-467  aBibliography hlm 450-467  aIs there a public good? A prevalent view in political science is that democracy is unavoidably chaotic, arbitrary, meaningless, and impossible. Such scepticism began with Condorcet in the eighteenth century, and continued most notably with Arrow and Riker in the twentieth century. In this powerful book, Gerry Mackie confronts and subdues these long-standing doubts about democratic governance. Problems of cycling, agenda control, strategic voting, and dimensional manipulation are not sufficiently harmful, frequent, or irremediable, he argues, to be of normative concern. Mackie also examines every serious empirical illustration of cycling and instability, including Rikers famous argument that the US Civil War was due to arbitrary dimensional manipulation. Almost every empirical claim is erroneous, and none is normatively troubling, Mackie says. This spirited defence of democratic institutions should prove both provocative and influential. 4aDemocracy  a07597/MKRI-P/XII-2007  a07597/MKRI-P/XII-2007