Designed for smaller libraries, this is a single‐volume version of Congressional Quarterly’s more scholarly four‐volume Encyclopaedia of Democracy (RR 96/405), and is intended to present a broad overview of democracy for the student and general reader. Some of its 288 unsigned articles are lifted from the parent work; others are either new or reworked. We are not told how many contributors were involved in its compilation, nor are the editors named. Beyond remarking that it is unusual, not too much should be made of this as the articles appear to be balanced and objective.
There can be no quarrel with the encyclopaedia’s coverage. Five types of article are included. Biographical sketches of individuals judged to be of crucial importance in the development of democratic theory or influential in establishing democratic government in the major countries of the world, among them philosophers, political theorists, and political leaders, ensure that the encyclopaedia does soar to an impossibly high level and retains a good measure of popular appeal. The second category consists of region and country profiles: apart from what are described as “very minor countries”, all the independent nations of the world are covered in comparative regional tables outlining their type of government, executive, legislature, party system, and summaries of contemporary political conditions. One of the most enlightening articles is that on Central America which pulls no punches as it summarises “the profound impact” of the USA on the region:
Along with the Caribbean, no other area is more dependent on the United States ... its biggest trading partner; its leading creditors are US banks; US monetary assistance to the region is large; and every 20th‐century military intervention by US troops in the hemisphere has occurred in Central America or the Caribbean ... To varying degrees in each country, it has sharply restricted both the development and the room to maneuver of domestic forces, often leaving them unaccustomed to defining their own interests, organizing autonomous parties or establishing the leadership credentials so essential in moments of transition.
Domestic institutions, mechanisms, and processes illustrating how democracy works in practice, and the fundamental assumptions supporting democracy, including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and religious freedom, are the subjects of thematic articles. Democracy’s links to nationalism, religion, civil and human rights, political ideologies, including antithetic totalitarian movements, are also examined. Acknowledging that its prime market is US‐based, the encyclopaedia’s historical overviews concentrate on the development of US democracy and institutions, whilst the fifth category of articles focuses in US Supreme Court judgments and decisions. Paradoxically, there is no single summary article on democracy itself. Instead we are referred to other articles on Consociational, Critiques of, Direct, Justification for, Participatory, Peoples, and Plebiscitarian Democracy. We must suppose this underlines the complex nature of a concept that is, at times, the subject of too much glib talk by politicians with their own agenda to obscure. Without doubt this is a satisfactory, credibly concise, and library budget‐friendly encyclopaedia. Those libraries lacking the full four‐volume encyclopaedia, and with little realistic hope of ever acquiring it, could do a lot worse than to take a close look at this concise version.
