Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time

Extract

Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time. By William Scheuerman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 312p. $42.00.

While the political ramifications of social acceleration have preoccupied thinkers in a variety of disciplines at least since the Industrial Revolution, and contemporary works by such thinkers as Paul Virilio, David Harvey, James Der Derian, and William Connolly have highlighted various modes of speed, many in political science have been slow to pay heed. William Scheuerman's book aims to redress this lag in the discipline, taking up the theme of social acceleration from these and other authors and using it to frame a wide-ranging assessment of transformations to liberal democratic legal and political institutions.