Managing Democracies in Turbulent Times - Shlomo Mizrahi and Eran Vigoda-Gadot

This book tries to offer some intellectual avenues for strengthening trust in democratic institutions as well as for improving trust and cooperation between the main actors in the democratic setting, i.e., politicians, bureaucrats and citizens, without compromising on the need to reinforce well-performing and effective governance. It discusses the main challenges facing modern democracies of our times. It suggests both theoretical and practical framework for dealing with some of the urgent problems that governments confront today. The originality of the book mainly builds on a two-fold rationale for restoring trust in the democratic state. We see trust as a main part of the chain that links political order and administrative wisdom, and propose models and empirical data about ways to better understand it and rebuild it. ​

More specifically, the book suggests that bureaucratic agencies are, normatively and practically, major proxies of democracy. This argument may seem at odds with mainstream literature which view the public sector as a key reason for inefficiency and reduced trust.

The book will also try to develop a trust-based theory for the reconciliation between bureaucratic mechanisms of the modern state and the values of democratic government. The theory will be supported by various empirical studies conducted by the authors. These studies indicate that bureaucratic agencies are usually more trusted by the public than elected officials. The 

analysis explores the complex relations between a variety of variables influencing, and influenced by, trust in administrative agencies and in democratic mechanisms. Based on this analysis, the book will offer mechanisms for re-structuring bureaucratic agencies in a way that will restore trust in the public sector and the democratic system. ​