Customer Reviews

An exelent reference book to understand what is democracy. - By: zostric@zamir.net, 26 Jun 2001
I am from Croatia, a republic of former Yugoslavia. I was engagedin a struggle for a democracy against communist regimein 1980s. The communist party argued that what we had as "socialism", &in particular "self-management" is the best form of democracy. In reality, we understand that it is not true.

David Held's book "Models of Democracy" was translated into Slovenian, one of south-Slavic languages,in a year of the fall of Berlin wall, Jun 1989. Few years later, it was publishedin Croatian also, with a special preface of D. Held personally.

The book was an excellent reference for all of us, who struggled for democracy, to understand what we are standing for. It is still important today, for we are still at the beginning of struggle for democratic institutions, procedures & culture. We had to struggle against a hard violence of human rightsin the time of a nationalistic regime headed by Franjo Tudjman, 1990-1999. Today, we have problems with "politocracy", a strong power of politicians, who argued: "after elections, we have right to rule. Participation? What to hell is it?"

In addition, I can estimate that it is important for a peoplein countries with more democratic traditions, too. Historically, modern democracy is still a new system & we need to learn & to think about it's future development & defence.

Mir i dobro (Peace & good) from Croatia!

Zoran Ostric