Democratic governance and social inequality

As we begin a new millennium, we confront challengers that in some ways are much less severe than those of the twentieth century and in other ways are new and more daunting. The likelihood of state-to state conflict, such as occurred with the two world wars of the previous century, has diminished dramatically. On the other hand, the potential reach of terrorist attack, by hijacked airplane, nuclear weapon, or biological agent, creates a widespread sense so malaise. In the past forty years, we have seen a notable label a "universalization" of this form of government - a trend in stark contrast with the once plausible prediction that totalitarianism would become the dominant political system in the world. The difficult choices that face societies today are no longer about war versus peace and the expansion of democracy, national concerns focus instead on how to improve governance and quality of life, and how to preserve national cohesion against centripetal forces that threaten to tear apart the social fabric. It is in this context that this volume examines the challenges that social inequalities present to democratic governance around the world. The authors in this work view the issues of poverty and social inequality, and the difficulties in dealing with term, not as lingering leftovers of the nineteenth century, but rather as issues that are becoming even more important in the twenty-first century. Among the themes that this volume seeks to address are the following: (1) the effects of globalization on the distribution of income and wealth within national frontiers;(2)the impact of inequality on the stability and / or the quality of of democratic governance;and (3) the future of democracies as redressers of social wrongs, especially in light of the apparent decline in the capacity of the public sector to take effective action to reduce inequality.