New book: "Le prix de la démocratie" by Julia Cagé"

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Actualité Sciences Po

"Le prix de la démocratie"

New book edited by Julia Cagé, co-director of LIEPP's "Evaluation of Democracy" reserach group

Le prix de la démocratie, Julia Cagé, Fayard, 2018, 464p.

One person, one voice: democracy is based on a promise of equality that too often comes crashing down on the wall of money. Financing campaigns, donations to political parties, taking control of the media: for decades, the democracy is increasingly captured by private interests.

Based on an unprecedented study of private and public political financing in a dozen countries over more than fifty years, Julia Cagé studies the state of democracy, dissects national models, and narrates attempts - often unsuccessful, but always instructive - regulating the relationship between money and politics.

In the United States, where all the regulation of democracy has been swept away by ideology, the political staff no longer responds to the preferences of the most favored. In France, the state has put in place a system of tax reductions allowing the richest to be reimbursed the bulk of their donations to political parties, while the poorest, they pay full price.

These drifts do not come from a conspicuously orchestrated plot but from our collective lack of involvement. The question of the financing of democracy has never really been raised; that of the representation of the popular classes must be on a more radical mode. To break the impasse, here are proposals that revolutionize the way of thinking politics and innovative reforms for a new democracy.

The book's website: http://www.leprixdelademocratie.fr/