Michael L Mezey – författare

Irina Khmelko, Frederick Stapenhurst, and Michael L. Mezey have assembled an authoritative guide to the declining institutional capacities of legislatures around the world.

Case studies represent a diverse sample of countries, ranging from newer democracies emerging from the post-communist world to more established but at times fragile democracies in Asia. Although largely focused on newer democratic systems, readers will be able to identify key factors that explain the general global trend toward the empowerment of executives at the expense of national legislatures. The cases, although different from one another, identify several factors that have explained the erosion of legislative power, including historical legacies, institutional design, economic factors, external factors, political polarization, personalization of politics, and the rise of populism. Original data and the presentation of testable theoretical propositions about the growing imbalance between executives and national legislatures moves the field in a promising new direction.

Legislative Decline in the 21st Century will be of interest to students and scholars of Legislative Studies and Comparative Politics. Lessons drawn from these case studies will allow policy makers to explore new solutions that can lead to the improved quality of democracy in countries around the world.

Irina Khmelko, Frederick Stapenhurst, and Michael L. Mezey have assembled an authoritative guide to the declining institutional capacities of legislatures around the world.

Case studies represent a diverse sample of countries, ranging from newer democracies emerging from the post-communist world to more established but at times fragile democracies in Asia. Although largely focused on newer democratic systems, readers will be able to identify key factors that explain the general global trend toward the empowerment of executives at the expense of national legislatures. The cases, although different from one another, identify several factors that have explained the erosion of legislative power, including historical legacies, institutional design, economic factors, external factors, political polarization, personalization of politics, and the rise of populism. Original data and the presentation of testable theoretical propositions about the growing imbalance between executives and national legislatures moves the field in a promising new direction.

Legislative Decline in the 21st Century will be of interest to students and scholars of Legislative Studies and Comparative Politics. Lessons drawn from these case studies will allow policy makers to explore new solutions that can lead to the improved quality of democracy in countries around the world.

Selecting political leaders by popular election is an unquestioned hallmark of representative democracies—the institutional manifestation of Lincoln’s promise of a government of the people and by the people. But in 2016, Lincoln’s promise seems to have given way to Hamilton’s nightmare—with his worries that popular elections would produce demagogues who paid an "obsequious court to the people," appealing to their passions and prejudices rather than to their reason. This book examines the commitment to the widest level of participation among the largest number of citizens in the selection of the president. It looks at two salient characteristics of our current presidential election environment that bring the wisdom of this commitment into question: the declining influence of political parties and the communication revolution in the form of the internet, social media, and cable television. Ultimately, Mezey asks whether our now fully democratized presidential selection process has in fact diminished the quality of our presidential candidates and the campaigns they run, whether the turn to demagoguery that the founders feared has materialized, what the consequences of our presidential selection process have been for American government, and whether or not it would be valuable to rethink our wholehearted commitment to popular election of the president. His answers do not topple our commitment to popular elections but rather point the way toward improving the quality of both participation and democracy.