Reviving Faith in Democracy

Event Summary

In a new book, What Democracy is For: On Freedom and Moral Government (Princeton University Press, 2007), Stein Ringen points out the failure of the world's democracies, most specifically the United States and Britain, to live up to their own founding ideological values and expectations. Ringen, professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Oxford, argues that citizens are increasingly distrustful of their government and apathetic to participating in public affairs.

Governing Ideas

Event Information

When

Monday, April 30, 2007
3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Where

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC
Map

Event Materials

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On Monday, April 30, Stein Ringen joned Brookings Senior Fellows William Galston and Kent Weaver to discuss the policy solutions he proposed in his book that aim to restore faith in global democracy. Panelists also discussed Ringen's view that a global economy must be grounded in shared values of freedom and democracy.

This event was the fourth in the occasional series, "Governing Ideas," hosted by Brookings's Governance Studies program. The series is intended to broaden the discussion of governance issues through forums on timely and relevant books on history, culture, legal norms and practices, values and religion.

Transcript

WILLIAM GALSTON: Let me just take a minute or so to talk about some of the issues that animate Professor Ringen's book and ought to be, I think, ripe for discussion at this session. In the contemporary United States, there is I think palpable and rising concern about the future of our particular kind of welfare state, and also about the condition of our democratic institutions. Among its many virtues and accomplishments, Professor Ringen's book, What Democracy is For, demonstrates both that the United States is not alone in these worries and that there is an intimate connection between them.

As we work here in the United States over the next generation to renew as best we can our crumbling and increasingly outdated social contract, we will, at the same time, be reshaping in a fundamental way our democratic expectations.

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