Frank
M. Bryan |
"I
wish I had written this book. It is
witty (about Vermont village life) and wise (about everything from
Athenian democracy to the ecological fallacy). It deals with a
phenomenon that deserves attention from every American concerned about
the future of our polity. Town meetings are hardly the primary solution
to what ails our democracy, but understanding how they work could help
us design reforms on a larger canvas. Too few books are both fun and
important, but this one is." -- Robert D. Putnam, Harvard |
"Real Democracy is
a magnificent analysis of the New
England town meeting. It shoudl be read again and again over the next
hundred (indeed, the next thousand) years. Whether existing town
meetings flourish and provide a model for the rest of the world or
whether they lose their power and begin to wither, this book will
provide the scholarly world's only basis for their systematic
comparison in the future."
-- Jane Mansbridge, Harvard |
"Real
Democracy is
an outstanding book that should be
'must reading' for any citizen concerned about the well-being of
democracy in America and for all analysts interested in democratic
practice. Bryan's book is a towering achievement, a product of a
dedicated political scientist with a clear vision of the meaning of
democracy and how best to assess its health and actions."
-- Richard Winters, Dartmouth |
"[This]
is the best book I have ever read
on local government. It is, in unequal parts: careful consideration of
democrtatic theory; exploration of a great range of germane empirical
work; very rigorous, original quantitative research; vignette; personal
diary; and handbook on engaging students in real social science. The
writing, often in the first person, is direct and consistently
engaging. The social science--especially in the construction of indexes
to measure the phenomena under study--is creative and imaginative. And
I have rarely seen the results of systematic quantitative research so
clearly and accessibly explained."
-- Gerald Benjamin, SUNY, New Paltz for the Political Science Quarterly |
"Frank
Bryan has clearly produced the
definitive text on New England town hall democracy. In time, the book
may very well become a classic."
-- Anthony O'Halloran, University College Cork for Political Studies Review |
"Frank
Bryan, who writes tellingly and
thoroughly about Vermont's 210 annual town meetings over three decades,
concludes that 'town meetings come about as close to paragon status as
reasonable people would agree is possible within the limits of human
nature.'"
-- Robert I. Rotberg, Harvard for the Christian Science Monitor, reprinted in Participatory Democracy |
"[Bryan's]
remarkable comparative study of
Vermont town meetings analyzes data about real democracy never before
assembled. . . [His work will] challenge other scholars to venture
beyond representative democracy and join him in the search for and
understanding of the real democray that most modern-day political
scientists have bypassed."
-- G. Thomas Taylor, University of Maine for the American Political Science Review |