Best of
Political-Science
2007
Bastiat Collection
Frédéric Bastiat - 2007
This restoration project has yielded a collection to treasure. After years of hard work and preparation, we can only report that it is an emotionally thrilling moment to finally offer to the general public. Claude Frédéric Bastiat was an economist and publicist of breathtaking intellectual energy and massive historical influence. He was born in Bayonne, France on June 29th, 1801. After the middle-class Revolution of 1830, Bastiat became politically active and was elected Justice of the Peace in 1831 and to the Council General (county-level assembly) in 1832. He was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848. Bastiat was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France. Bastiat wrote sporadically starting in the 1830s, but in 1844 he launched his amazing publishing career when an article on the effects of protectionism on the French and English people was published in the Journal des Economistes which was held to critical acclaim. The bulk of his remarkable writing career that so inspired the early generation of English translators and so many more is contained in this collection. If we were to take the greatest economists from all ages and judge them on the basis of their theoretical rigor, their influence on economic education, and their impact in support of the free-market economy, then Frédéric Bastiat would be at the top of the list. These volumes bring together his greatest works and represents the early generation of English translations. These translators were like Bastiat himself, people from the private sector who had a love of knowledge and truth and who altered their careers to vigorously pursue intellectual ventures, scholarly publishing, and advocacy of free trade. The collection consists of three sections, the first of which contains his best-known essays. In That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, Bastiat equips the reader to become an economist in the first paragraph and then presents the story of the broken window where a hoodlum is thought to create jobs and prosperity by breaking windows. Bastiat solves the quandary of prosperity via destruction by noting that while the apparent prosperity is seen, what is unseen is that which would have been produced had the windows not been broken. The second section is Bastiat s Economic Sophisms, a collection of 35 articles on the errors of protectionism broadly conceived. Here Bastiat shows his mastery of the methods of argumentation, using basic logic and taking arguments to their logical extreme to demonstrate and ridicule them as obvious fallacies. In his Negative Railroad Bastiat argues that if an artificial break in a railroad causes prosperity by creating jobs for boatmen, porters, and hotel owners, then there should be not one break, but many, and indeed the railroad should be just a series of breaks a negative railroad. The third section is Bastiat's Economic Harmonies which was hastily written before his death in 1850 and is considered incomplete. Here he demonstrates that the interests of everyone in society are in harmony to the extent that property rights are respected. Because there are no inherent conflicts in the market, government intervention is unnecessary. Here we find a powerful but sadly neglected defense of the main thesis of old-style liberalism: that society and economy are capable of self-managing. Unless this insight is understood and absorbed, a person can never really come to grips with the main meaning of liberty.
The Betrayal Of The American Right
Murray N. Rothbard - 2007
It shows that the corruption of American "conservatism" began long before George W. Bush ballooned the budget and asserted dictatorial rights over the country and the world. The American Right long ago slid into the abyss. Betrayal of the American Right is the full story, and the author is none other than Murray N. Rothbard, who witnessed it all first hand. He tells his own story and reveals that machinations behind the subversion of an anti-state movement into one that cheers statism of the worst sort. The book was written in the mid-1970s and is only now published for the first time. Each time a prospective publisher promised to go ahead, the deal fell through. Even so, it has been privately circulated for the 30 years since it was written - and everyone lucky enough to own a copy of the manuscript knew he had a treasure. People who have read it swear that it is the best account ever how the old right was subverted to become a propaganda branch of the state, not just recently but fifty years ago. So Rothbard's account is not only a critical historical document; it also has explosive explanatory power. According to Rothbard, the corruption of the right began in the ten years after the end of the Second World War. Before then, a strong movement of journalists, writers, and even politicians had formed during the New Deal and after. There was a burgeoning literature to explain why New Deal-style central planning was bad for American liberty. They also saw that central planning and war were linked as two socialistic programs. The experience of war was telling. Prices were controlled by central edict. Businesses were not free to buy and sell. Government spending went through the roof. The Fed's money machine ran constantly. The war was a continuation of the New Deal by others means. They learned that a president dictatorial enough to manipulate the country into war would think nothing of ending liberty at home. There were wonderful intellectuals in this movement: Frank Chodorov, John T. Flynn, Garet Garrett, Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, and dozens of others. This movement didn't want to conserve anything but liberty. They wanted to overthrow the alien regime that had taken hold of the country and restore respect for the Constitution. They believed in the free market as a creative mechanism to improve society. They favored a restoration of the gold standard, decentralized government, and peace and friendship with all nations (as George Washington wanted). Murray Rothbard recounts all this, and then enters into the picture. He was a central player in the unfolding events. As a young man, he first encountered the new generation of people on the right who departed dramatically from the old. They were the first "neoconservatives." They favored war as a means. They were soft on executive dictatorship. They considered economics rather trivial compared with the struggle against international foes. They found new uses for the state in the domestic realm as well. They like the CIA, the FBI, and no amount of military spending was enough for them. A leader of the movement William F. Buckley even called for a "totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" so long as Russia, which had been an alley in the war, had a communist system. This transformation was formative for Rothbard. He began an intellectual journey that would lead to a break from the movement that was now calling itself conservative. He studied with Ludwig von Mises during and after his graduate school years. He wrote a seminal book on economics. He wrote at a fevered pace for the popular press. By 1965, he found that he was pretty much alone in carrying on the Old Right vision. Most everyone else had died or had entered
A Nation of Sheep
Andrew P. Napolitano - 2007
Napolitano, Fox News Channel's Senior Judicial Analyst, holds a straightforward "conversation" with the American voter, in which he asks questions and gives answers that no one else will:Why do our taxes continue to rise, government services stay worse than ever, and we just pay the taxes and re-elect those who raised them?Why do people in government never acknowledge a mistake, and why do we accept that?Why does the government continue to regulate private behavior?Why do both Republicans and Democrats bring about bigger and more expensive government?Whatever happened to our individual inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that are guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, yet ignored by the governments elected to protect them?Why does Congress keep telling the States what to do?Why does every public office holder swear allegiance to the Constitution, yet very few follow it?Why are we afraid of the governments we have hired to protect our freedoms?
The Essential Writings of Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli - 2007
Refreshingly accessible, these superb new translations are faithful to Machiavelli’s original, beautifully crafted writings.The volume features essays that appear in English for the first time, such as “A Caution to the Medici” and “The Persecution of Africa.” Also included are complete versions of the political treatise, The Prince, the comic satire The Mandrake, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, and the classic story “Belfagor”, along with selections from The Discourses, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. Augmented with useful features–vital and concise annotations and cross-references–this unique compendium is certain to become the standard one-volume reference to this influential, versatile, and ever timely writer.“Machiavelli's stress on political necessity rather than moral perfection helped inspire the Renaissance by renewing links with Thucydides and other classical thinkers. This new collection provides deeper insight into Machiavelli’s personality as a writer, thus broadening our understanding of him.”–Robert D. Kaplan, author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos “Constantine’s selection is not only intelligent; his translations are astonishingly good. Thoughtfully introduced by Albert Russell Ascoli, this edition belongs in everyone’s library.”–John Jeffries Martin, professor and chair, department of history, Trinity University“If one were to assign a single edition of Machiavelli's works, this most certainly would be it.”–John P. McCormick, professor, department of political science, University of Chicago
Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide
Jacques Semelin - 2007
Jacques Semelin achieves this, in part, by leading his readers through the three examples simultaneously, the unraveling of which sometimes converges but most often diverges.Semelin's method is multidisciplinary, relying not only on contemporary history but also on social psychology and political science. Based on the seminal distinction between massacre and genocide, Purify and Destroy identifies the main steps of a general process of destruction, both rational and irrational, born of what Semelin terms "delusional rationality." He describes a dynamic structural model with, at its core, the matrix of a social imaginaire that, responding to fears, resentments, and utopias, carves and recarves the social body by eliminating "the enemy." Semelin identifies the main stages that can lead to a genocidal process and explains how ordinary people can become perpetrators. He develops an intellectual framework to analyze the entire spectrum of mass violence, including terrorism, in the twentieth century and before. Strongly critical of today's political instrumentalization of the "genocide" notion, Semelin urges genocide research to stand back from legal and normative definitions and come of age as a discipline in its own right in the social sciences.
Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System
Douglas S. Massey - 2007
While other developed countries face similar challenges from globalization and technological change, none rivals America’s singularly poor record for equitably distributing the benefits and burdens of recent economic shifts. In Categorically Unequal, Douglas Massey weaves together history, political economy, and even neuropsychology to provide a comprehensive explanation of how America’s culture and political system perpetuates inequalities between different segments of the population.Categorically Unequal is striking both for its theoretical originality and for the breadth of topics it covers. Massey argues that social inequalities arise from the universal human tendency to place others into social categories. In America, ethnic minorities, women, and the poor have consistently been the targets of stereotyping, and as a result, they have been exploited and discriminated against throughout the nation’s history. African-Americans continue to face discrimination in markets for jobs, housing, and credit. Meanwhile, the militarization of the US-Mexican border has discouraged Mexican migrants from leaving the United States, creating a pool of exploitable workers who lack the legal rights of citizens. Massey also shows that women’s advances in the labor market have been concentrated among the affluent and well-educated, while low-skilled female workers have been relegated to occupations that offer few chances for earnings mobility. At the same time, as the wages of low-income men have fallen, more working-class women are remaining unmarried and raising children on their own. Even as minorities and women continue to face these obstacles, the progressive legacy of the New Deal has come under frontal assault. The government has passed anti-union legislation, made taxes more regressive, allowed the real value of the federal minimum wage to decline, and drastically cut social welfare spending. As a result, the income gap between the richest and poorest has dramatically widened since 1980. Massey attributes these anti-poor policies in part to the increasing segregation of neighborhoods by income, which has insulated the affluent from the social consequences of poverty, and to the disenfranchisement of the poor, as the population of immigrants, prisoners, and ex-felons swells.America’s unrivaled disparities are not simply the inevitable result of globalization and technological change. As Massey shows, privileged groups have systematically exploited and excluded many of their fellow Americans. By delving into the root causes of inequality in America, Categorically Unequal provides a compelling argument for the creation of a more equitable society.
A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation's Centennial Series
Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
John Rawls - 2007
Offers readers an account of the liberal political tradition from a scholar viewed by many as the greatest contemporary exponent of the philosophy behind that tradition.
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
Chalmers Johnson - 2007
The tragic aftereffects of war; social consequences; medical; financial; all catastrophic and lingering problems."...in Nemesis, the final volume in what has become the Blowback Trilogy, he (Chalmers Johnson) shows how imperial overstretch is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically...Nemesis offers a striking description of the trap into which the grandiose dreams of America's leaders have taken us." Inside book cover comments.
The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
Drew Westen - 2007
For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest. In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…
The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War
John J. Dwyer - 2007
With more than 530 illustrations, nearly 100 biographical sketches, and his attention-grabbing style, John J. Dwyer has radically transformed the tedious, uninspiring textbook rendering of the Civil War into what it should be America's greatest epic. Respected historians George Grant, J. Steven Wilkins, Douglas Wilson, and Tom Spencer are contributing editors to the The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War, and over two dozen of renowned historical artist John Paul Strain's greatest works appear. The book offers 700 action-packed pages of war-time drama that will forever change the way Americans view the Civil War.
War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History
Colin S. Gray - 2007
In fifteen clear and concise chapters, this book hits the high and low points of international politics over a two hundred year period, plus a brief foray into the future out to 2025. War, Peace and International Relations serves as an excellent introduction to the international history of the past two centuries, showing how those two centuries were shaped and reshaped extensively by war. This book takes a broad view of what was relevant to the causes, courses, and consequences of wars.This upper-level textbook is an invaluable resource for students of strategic studies, security studies, international relations and international history.
God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics
Charles W. Colson - 2007
How should Christians live their faith in the public arena? This updated edition of Charles Colson's blockbuster Kingdoms in Conflict includes a new foreword, new stories and recent court cases in place of older examples, and a revised opening that depicts today's current international climate marked by terrorism and the conflict with radical Islam.
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s
Edmund Wilson - 2007
With this volume and a companion volume devoted to the 30s and 40s--the first two entries in what will be a series devoted to Wilson's work--The Library of America pays tribute to the writer who first conceived the idea of a publishing series dedicated to "bringing out in a complete and compact form the principal American classics." "Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s and 40s" gives us Wilson at the midpoint of his extraordinary career as critic and scholar, and includes in complete form three of his most significant books. "The Triple Thinkers" (1938, revised 1948) and "The Wound and the Bow" (1941) give us Wilson at the height of his powers, in a series of extended literary studies marked by his unique combination of criticism, biographical narrative, and psychological analysis. Here are his dazzling portraits of Pushkin and Flaubert, Dickens and Henry James, Kipling and Casanova, equally sensitive to historical context and his subjects' inner lives; his scintillating reader's guide to the mysteries of Finnegans Wake and his celebrated exploration of the nature of creativity through the figure of Sophocles' wounded hero Philoctetes. "Classics and Commercials" (1950) is Wilson's gathering of the best of his reviews from the 1940s, a collection that exemplifies the range and omnivorousness of his interests. In the exact and fluent prose that makes him an unfailing delight to read, Wilson takes on everything from Gogol and Tolstoy to contemporaries like James M. Cain, Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Parker, and William Faulkner. Whether registering his qualms about detective novels, parsing the etiquette manuals of Emily Post, or paying tribute to the comic genius of Evelyn Waugh, Wilson turns any critical occasion into the highest kind of pleasure. The volume is completed with a selection of uncollected reviews from this period, including Wilson's observations on the work of William Maxwell, Saul Bellow, and Anais Nin.
The Almanac of American Politics 2008 (Almanac of American Politics)
Michael Barone - 2007
When America’s votes were tallied this past November, Democrats had won Election Day majorities in both the Senate and the House for the first time since 1992. The House Democrats’ margin of victory, furthermore, was very similar to the House Republicans’ popular vote margin in 1994—a harbinger, perhaps, of a new political era.In the wake of such an eventful election, it’s no surprise that pundits on both sides of the fence are clamoring for the 2008 edition of The Almanac of American Politics—the gold standard for anyone who wants to understand the American political landscape. Once again, renowned journalists Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen present the ultimate reference guide for everyone involved, invested, or interested in American politics. As in previous editions, the 2008 Almanac includes colorful, fascinating profiles of every member of Congress and every governor. It also includes in-depth and up-to-date political profiles of all fifty states and 435 House districts—covering everything from economics to history to, of course, politics.Specific to this latest edition of the nation’s leading political resource is coverage of all special elections in the 109th Congress and redistricting changes in Georgia and Texas. Barone and Cohen also provide a comprehensive look at the early maneuvering and likely battlegrounds of the 2008 presidential campaign.Complete with maps, census data, and indispensable information on topics ranging from campaign expenditures to voting records to interest group ratings, this latest edition of the Almanac of American Politics presents everything you need to know about current American politics, related in snappy prose and framed by cogent analysis.
They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration
Aviva Chomsky - 2007
Chomsky dismantles twenty of the most common assumptions and beliefs underlying statements like "I'm not against immigration, only illegal immigration" and challenges the misinformation in clear, straightforward prose.In exposing the myths that underlie today's debate, Chomsky illustrates how the parameters and presumptions of the debate distort how we think—and have been thinking—about immigration. She observes that race, ethnicity, and gender were historically used as reasons to exclude portions of the population from access to rights. Today, Chomsky argues, the dividing line is citizenship. Although resentment against immigrants and attempts to further marginalize them are still apparent today, the notion that non-citizens, too, are created equal is virtually absent from the public sphere. Engaging and fresh, this book will challenge common assumptions about immigrants, immigration, and U.S. history.
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)
David Cay Johnston - 2007
From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunches—but of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.Johnston’s many revelations include:• How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world.• How homeowners? title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly.• How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses.• How Paris Hilton’s grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children.• How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds.In these instances and many more, Free Lunch shows how the lobbyists and lawyers representing the most powerful 0.1 percent of Americans manipulated our government at the expense of the other 99.9 percent.With his extraordinary reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives—and shows us how we can finally make things better.
Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler
Roger Griffin - 2007
In this ambitious book, renowned expert on fascism Roger Griffin analyzes Western modernity and the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler and offers a pioneering new interpretation of the links between these apparently contradictory phenomena. Using a wealth of examples, Griffin describes how modernism's roots lay in part in the fundamental human need to perceive a transcendent meaning and purpose to life - and to restore this purpose in times of experienced decay and social breakdown. This sense of revolution and rebirth provided the context in which fascism sought a new world based on the health and strength of the nation or race. Modernism and Fascism is an original and fascinating synthesis of data and ideas which will be of interest to art and intellectual historians, specialists in the study of modernity and modernism, and experts in fascist studies. It also offers stimulating new insights to all those concerned with the many contemporary movements (e.g. Al-Qaeda, Christian fundamentalists) prepared to fight for their belief in the transcendental meaning of life against the inroads of an increasingly globalized materialism. This is a book which promises to have a resonance far beyond the already broad academic parameters of the project, and will inspire a new wave of scholarly interest in modernity.
Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches
John W. Dean - 2007
Dean, an outspoken and perceptive critic of the current Bush administration and author of the New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse Than Watergate, faults Republican mismanagement for the current government crises.
Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation
Victor C. Shih - 2007
Drawing from interviews, statistical analysis, and archival research, this book is the first to develop a framework with which to analyze how elite politics impact both monetary and banking policies. This book serves as an important reference point for all subsequent work on Chinese banking.
Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right
Paul Edward Gottfried - 2007
It began in the 1950s as the invention of journalists and men of letters reacting to the early Cold War and trying to construct a rallying point for likeminded opponents of international Communism. The resulting movement has exaggerated the permanence of its values; while its militant anti-Communism, instilled in its followers, and periodic suppression of dissent have weakened its capacity for internal debate. Their movement came to power at least partly by burying an older anti-welfare state Right, one that in fact had enjoyed a social following that was concentrated in a small-town America. The newcomers played down the merits of those they had replaced; and in the 1980's the neoconservatives, who took over the postwar conservative movement from an earlier generation, belittled their predecessors in a similar way. Among the movement's major accomplishments has been to recreate its own past. The success of this revised history lies in the fact that even the movement's critics are now inclined to accept it.
America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power
Nicholas Spykman - 2007
In America's Strategy in World Politics, Spykman examined world politics from a realist geopolitical perspective. The United States, he explained, was fighting for its very survival as an independent country because the conquests of Germany and Japan raised the specter of our geopolitical encirclement by hostile forces controlling the power centers of Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Spykman warned that the United States could not safely retreat to a defensive position in the Western Hemisphere.Spykman looked beyond the immediate strategic requirements of the Second World War, envisioning a postwar world in which the United States would help shape the global balance of power to meet its security needs. Even though Soviet Russia was our wartime ally, Spykman recognized that a geopolitically unbalanced Soviet Union could threaten to upset the postwar balance of power and thereby endanger U.S. security. Spykman also foresaw the rise of China in postwar Asia, and the likely need for the United States to ally itself with Japan to balance China's power. He also recognized that the Middle East would play a pivotal role in the postwar world.Spykman influenced American postwar statesmen and strategists. During the Cold War, the U.S. sought to deny the Soviet Union political control of Western Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Spykman's geopolitical vision of U.S. security, supported by a balanced Eurasian land mass, coupled with his focus on power as the governing force in international relations, makes America's Strategy in World Politics relevant to the twenty-first century.
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution: How the Integral Worldview is Transforming Politics, Culture, and Spirituality
Steve McIntosh - 2007
Through its enlarged understanding of the evolution of consciousness and culture, the emerging perspective known as integral consciousness provides realistic and pragmatic solutions to our growing global problems, both environmental and political. As McIntosh convincingly demonstrates, the integral worldview's transformational potential provides a way to literally become the change we want to see in the world. This is really two books in one: the first half serves as an accessible and highly readable introduction to the power of integral consciousness, with the second half making a variety of original contributions to the integral perspective and breaking new ground in the application of integral philosophy to politics and spirituality. Moreover, McIntosh provides a much-needed contextualization and critique of the integral worldview's leading author, Ken Wilber, which helps make integral philosophy relevant to a larger audience.
Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society
Ghassan Hage - 2007
Hage brings insights from political economy and psychoanalysis, defining societies as mechanisms for the production and distribution of hope.
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics
Carles Boix - 2007
Part I includes chapters surveying the key research methodologies employed in comparative politics (the comparative method; the use of history; the practice and status of case-study research; the contributions of field research) and assessing the possibility of constructing a science of comparative politics. Parts II to IV examine the foundations of political order: the origins of states and the extent to which they relate to war and to economic development; the sources of compliance or political obligation among citizens; democratic transitions, the role of civic culture; authoritarianism; revolutions; civil wars and contentious politics. Parts V and VI explore the mobilization, representation and coordination of political demands. Part V considers why parties emerge, the forms they take and the ways in which voters choose parties. It then includes chapters on collective action, social movements and political participation. Part VI opens up with essays on the mechanisms through which political demands are aggregated and coordinated. This sets the agenda to the systematic exploration of the workings and effects of particular institutions: electoral systems, federalism, legislative-executive relationships, the judiciary and bureaucracy. Finally, Part VII is organized around the burgeoning literature on macropolitical economy of the last two decades.
Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science
John G. West - 2007
In criminal justice, these experts denied the existence of free will and proposed replacing punishment with invasive “cures” such as the lobotomy. In welfare, they proposed eliminating the poor by sterilizing those deemed biologically unfit. In business, they urged the selection of workers based on racist theories of human evolution and the development of advertising methods to more effectively manipulate consumer behavior. In sex education, they advocated creating a new sexual morality based on “normal mammalian behavior” without regard to longstanding ethical and religious imperatives. Based on extensive research with primary sources and archival materials, John G. West’s captivating Darwin Day in America tells the story of how American public policy has been corrupted by scientistic ideology. Marshaling fascinating anecdotes and damning quotations, West’s narrative explores the far-reaching consequences for society when scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between human beings and the rest of nature. It also exposes the disastrous results that ensue when experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong. West concludes with a powerful plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts.
Diaries of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, 1966-1972
Mohammad Ayub Khan - 2007
Ayub's diary presents his views and interpretations of the events of the period for which it was kept. The diary was discontinued when declining health preventing him from writing.In his introductory note he stated that the diary must be withheld from publicatoin for an unspecified time as his comments may contain sensitive material. Accordingly, the diary has been withheld from publication for 30 years, although it does include material that is critical of many personalities and events. Ayub also stated that the material contained in the diary might serve as the basis of a sequel to his book, Friends, not Masters.The editor has included additional notes that pertain to many of the persons and events of this turbulent time in Pakistan's history. The diary will therefore provide essential material for those studying the period, and also provide a means for those who lived through these times to understand the views of Ayub
Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective
Kenneth F. Greene - 2007
Greene shows that dominant parties turn public resources into patronage goods to bias electoral competition in their favor and virtually win elections before election day without resorting to electoral fraud or bone-crushing repression. Opposition parties fail not because of limited voter demand or institutional constraints but because their resource disadvantages force them to form as niche parties with appeals that are out of step with the average voter. When the political economy of dominance-- a large state and a politically quiescent public bureaucracy--erodes, the partisan playing field becomes fairer and opposition parties can expand into catchall competitors that threaten the dominant party at the polls. Greene uses this argument to show why Mexico transformed from a dominant party authoritarian regime under PRI rule to a fully competitive democracy. He also shows that this argument can account for single-party dominance in other countries where the surrounding regime is authoritarian (Malaysia and Taiwan) and where it is democratic (Japan and Italy). The findings have implications for Mexico's political future, the formation of new political parties, transitions to democracy, and the study of competitive authoritarianism. Kenneth F. Greene is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research on regimes, political parties, and voting behavior has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, Pol�tica y Gobierno, Foreign Affairs en Espa�ol, and edited volumes. He has served as Co-Principal Investigator on two National Science Foundation grants for elite and voter survey research in Mexico, won a Fulbright-Garc�a Robles fellowship, and held visiting positions at the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.
Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present
M.S.S. Pandian - 2007
a major new study by leader in subaltern studies movement.In South India, the categories ‘Brahmin’ and ‘non-Brahmin’ are frequently treated as self-evident, both within contemporary Tamil politics and in mainstream academic discourses. Departing from this political and academic ‘common sense’, the present book historicizes the complex processes by which these categories came into being and acquired political power over the past century. Using archival, regional-language and unconventional sources, M.S.S. Pandian unsettles the ‘self-evident’ quality of these two categories and opens up a rich theoretical-critical space to rethink and understand them. In the process of unravelling and historicizing the so-called ‘naturalness’ of ‘Brahmin’ and ‘non-Brahmin’, this book also offers a new perspective on colonialism in South India. Stepping away from mainstream nationalist accounts of colonialism, it shows the ways in which colonialism was, for various strata of Tamil society, both a moment of crisis as well as one of possibilities. The book argues that it was this dual and ambiguous quality of colonial rule which facilitated new ways of looking at the figure of the Brahmin, even as it enabled the making of a non-Brahmin identity. The importance of this book for understanding politics and society in Tamil South India over the past hundred and more years can scarcely be exaggerated. The Non-Brahmin writings and discursive strategies of E.V. Ramasamy ‘Periyar’, Maraimalai Adigal and Iyothee Thoss, alongside those of a wide array of Brahminic thinkers and propagandists (both within Congress and outside), are presented here with a degree of sophistication and analytic skill not available in other works of political, social and intellectual history on the Indian South. This book will interest every historian, sociologist and political analyst of India, as well as all who wish to understand anti-Brahmin and anti-upper-caste social movements.
The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior
Russell J. Dalton - 2007
The recent expansion of democracy has both given new rights and created new responsibilities for the citizenry. These political changes are paralleled by tremendous advances in our empirical knowledge of citizens and their behaviors through the institutionalization of systematic, comparative study of contemporary publics--ranging from the advanced industrial democracies to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, to new survey research on the developing world. These essays describe how citizens think about politics, how their values shape their behavior, the patterns of participation, the sources of vote choice, and how public opinion impacts on governing and public policy.This is the most comprehensive review of the cross-national literature of citizen behavior and the relationship between citizens and their governments. It will become the first point of reference for scholars and students interested in these key issues.
Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics
Gerardo L. Munck - 2007
Munck and Richard Snyder trace key developments in the field during the twentieth century.Organized around a broad set of themes--intellectual formation and training; major works and ideas; the craft and tools of research; colleagues, collaborators, and students; and the past and future of comparative politics--these in-depth interviews offer unique and candid reflections that bring the research process to life and shed light on the human dimension of scholarship.Giving voice to scholars who practice their craft in different ways yet share a passion for knowledge about global politics, Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics offers a wealth of insights into contemporary debates about the state of knowledge in comparative politics and the future of the field.
Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad
John R. Schindler - 2007
Where were they in the 90s? Unholy Terror provides the answer, with all its terrifying implications for our world today. This book provides the missing piece in the puzzle of al-Qa’ida’s transformation from an isolated fighting force into a lethal global threat: the Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995. John R. Schindler reveals the unexamined role that radical Islam played in that terrible conflict--and the ill-considered contributions of American policy to al-Qa’ida’s growth. His book explores a truth long hidden from view: that, like Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia in the 1990s became a training ground for the mujahidin. Unholy Terror at last exposes the shocking story of how bin Laden successfully exploited the Bosnian conflict for his own ends--and of how the U. S. Government gave substantial support to his unholy warriors, leading to blowback of epic proportions.
Unequal under Law: Race in the War on Drugs
Doris Marie Provine - 2007
Illuminating this elusive relationship, Unequal under Law lays out how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts.Doris Marie Provine’s engaging analysis traces the history of race in anti-drug efforts from the temperance movement of the early 1900s to the crack scare of the late twentieth century, showing how campaigns to criminalize drug use have always conjured images of feared minorities. Explaining how alarm over a threatening black drug trade fueled support in the 1980s for a mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of unprecedented severity, Provine contends that while our drug laws may no longer be racist by design, they remain racist in design. Moreover, their racial origins have long been ignored by every branch of government. This dangerous denial threatens our constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law and mutes a much-needed national discussion about institutionalized racism—a discussion that Unequal under Law promises to initiate.
Contract and Domination
Carole Pateman - 2007
Since the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, contract theory has once again become central to the Western political tradition. But gender justice is neglected and racial justice almost completely ignored. Carole Pateman and Charles Mills's earlier books, The Sexual Contract (1988) and The Racial Contract (1997), offered devastating critiques of gender and racial domination and the contemporary contract tradition's silence on them. Both books have become classics of revisionist radical democratic political theory. Now Pateman and Mills are collaborating for the first time in an interdisciplinary volume, drawing on their insights from political science and philosophy. They are building on but going beyond their earlier work to bring the sexual and racial contracts together. In Contract and Domination, Pateman and Mills discuss their differences about contract theory and whether it has a useful future, excavate the (white) settler contract that created new civil societies in North America and Australia, argue via a non-ideal contract for reparations to black Americans, confront the evasions of contemporary contract theorists, explore the intersections of gender and race and the global sexual-racial contract, and reply to their critics.This iconoclastic book throws the gauntlet down to mainstream white male contract theory. It is vital reading for anyone with an interest in political theory and political philosophy, and the systems of male and racial domination.
Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy
Bruce E. Levine - 2007
We've all heard them, there's no denying the fact that these ads have made each of us wonder: Do I suffer from depression? Would I be happier and healthier if I simply consulted my physician and requested (insert drug name here)?The rate of clinical depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. Is this epidemic properly being addressed by the insurance, pharmaceutical, and governmental powers-that-be or exacerbated by a failing system focused on instant results and high profit margins? Dr. Bruce E. Levine, a highly respected clinical psychologist, argues the latter and provides a compelling alternative approach to treating depression that makes lasting change more likely than with symptom-based treatment through medication.Surviving America's Depression Epidemic delves into the roots of depression and links our increasingly consumer-based culture and standard-practice psychiatric treatments to worsening depression, instead of solving it. In an easy-to-understand narrative style, Dr. Levine prescribes antidotes to depression including the keys to building morale and selfhealing. Unlike short-term, drug-based solutions, these antidotes foster a long-term cycle where people rediscover passion and purpose, and find meaning in acting on their societal concerns.A groundbreaking work, atypical of the shelf-loads of "pep-talk" based self help books on the market, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic provides the knowledge and counsel of a practicing psychologist in a digestible format that will improve your future. A must read for guidance and pastoral counselors; non-dogmatic psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers; and those tired of the TV ads shilling for better living through chemistry.
An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. Designed To Shew How The Prosperity Of The British Empire May Be Prolonged
William Playfair - 2007
You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan
Leora Kahn - 2007
There are 3.5 million people who are hungry, 2.5 million who have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 individuals who have died since the crisis began in 2003. The international community has failed to take steps to protect civilians, or to influence the Sudanese government to intervene. The spread of violence, rape, and hate-fueled killings across the border into Chad is simply the latest atrocity. Call it war. Call it genocide. Call it famine. There is no single word to describe the plight of these people. They face all of these horrors at once. In answer, Proof: Media for Social Justice, Amnesty International, and the Holocaust Museum of Houston have partnered to create
Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan
. The book covers three periods in the Sudan crisis, including images shot in 1988, when an estimated 250,000 Sudanese died of starvation; images from 1992 and 1995 that capture the atrocities of a civil war, when hundreds of thousands fled their homes to other destinations in Sudan or left the country altogether; and images from 2005 and more recently, bringing to light the severity of the humanitarian crisis underway, with the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias committing systematic violence on the people of Darfur. A handbook is included that provides website links and additional resources for readers to pursue. It specifies measures they can take to make their voices heard so the people of Darfur do not feel forgotten. All proceeds from the book will benefit Amnesty International and Genocide Intervention Network.
The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism
John Witte Jr. - 2007
Calvin's original teachings were periodically challenged by major crises - the French Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, American colonization, and American Revolution. In each such crisis moment, a major Calvinist figure emerged - Theodore Beza, Johannes Althusius, John Milton, John Winthrop, John Adams, and others - who modernized Calvin's teachings and translated them into dramatic new legal and political reforms. This rendered early modern Calvinism one of the driving engines of Western constitutionalism. A number of basic Western laws on religious and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and constitutionalism, and more owe a great deal to this religious movement. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of history, law, religion, politics, ethics, human rights, and the Protestant Reformation.
Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror
Bruce Holsinger - 2007
Far from just a gaffe, however, such medievalism has become a dominant paradigm for comprehending the identity and motivations of America’s perceived enemy in the war on terror. Yet as Bruce Holsinger argues here, this cloying post-9/11 rhetoric has served to obscure the more intricate ideological machinations of neomedievalism, the global idiom of the non-state actor: non-governmental organizations, transnational corporate militias, and terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror addresses the role of neomedievalism in contemporary politics. While international-relations theorists promote neomedievalism as a model for understanding emergent modes of global sovereignty, neoconservatives exploit its conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends. Holsinger concludes with a careful parsing of the Bush administration’s torture memos, which enlist neomedievalism’s model of feudal sovereignty on behalf of the abrogation of human rights.
International Law Stories
John E. Noyes - 2007
It showcases sixteen essays by leading international law experts. The essays, written in an accessible form, are organized in three groupings: stories about the development of international human rights law, stories about the use of international law in the U.S. legal system, and stories about international law's impact on interstate politics and the global economy. Experienced international law scholars, teachers, and practitioners will discover valuable new insights, and readers new to international law will find that the book quickly immerses them in the core controversies and most significant developments in the field.
Virtue and Terror
Maximilien Robespierre - 2007
Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment. So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshaling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous.
The Courage to Survive
Dennis Kucinich - 2007
It is a book that sets the tone for the national debate as we choose new leadership in a time of great crisis and great opportunity.
While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers
William G. Howell - 2007
The question of whether Congress has effectively limited the president's power to do so has generally met with a resounding no. In While Dangers Gather, William Howell and Jon Pevehouse reach a very different conclusion.The authors--one an American politics scholar, the other an international relations scholar--provide the most comprehensive and compelling evidence to date on Congress's influence on presidential war powers. Their findings have profound implications for contemporary debates about war, presidential power, and Congress's constitutional obligations.While devoting special attention to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this book systematically analyzes the last half-century of U.S. military policy. Among its conclusions: Presidents are systematically less likely to exercise military force when their partisan opponents retain control of Congress. The partisan composition of Congress, however, matters most for proposed deployments that are larger in size and directed at less strategically important locales. Moreover, congressional influence is often achieved not through bold legislative action but through public posturing--engaging the media, raising public concerns, and stirring domestic and international doubt about the United States' resolve to see a fight through to the end.
Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy
Adam David Morton - 2007
Adam David Morton examines in detail the themes of hegemony, passive revolution, and uneven development to provide a useful way of analyzing the contemporary global political economy, neoliberalism, state formation, and practices of resistance. The book explores the theoretical and practical limitations to the use of Gramsci's ideas today.
"Powerful and clarifying . . . a landmark volume."---John Agnew, University of California, Los Angeles
"Morton draws upon an impressive knowledge of Gramsci's writings to provide new insights into key processes in today's world order."---Anne Showstack Sassoon, Kingston University and Birbeck College, University of London.
Clausewitz and Contemporary War
Antulio J. Echevarria II - 2007
This book lays out Clausewitz's methodology in a brisk and straightforward style. It then uses that as a basis for understanding his contributions to the ever growing body of knowledge of war. The specific contributions this study addresses are Clausewitz's theories concerning the nature of war, the relationship between war and politics, and several of the major principles of strategy he examined.These theories and principles lie at the heart of the current debates over the nature of contemporary conflict. They also underpin much of the instruction that prepares military and civilian leaders for their roles in the development and execution of military strategy. Thus, they are important even in circles where Clausewitz is only briefly studied. While understanding On War is no more a prerequisite for winning wars than knowledge is a requirement for exercising power, Clausewitz's opus has become something of an authoritative reference for those desiring to expand their knowledge of war. By linking method and concept, this book contributes significantly to that end.
Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival
João Biehl - 2007
But anthropologist Jo�o Biehl also tells why this policy, hailed as a model worldwide, has been so difficult to implement among poor Brazilians with HIV/AIDS, who are often stigmatized as noncompliant or untreatable, becoming invisible to the public. More broadly, Biehl examines the political economy of pharmaceuticals that lies behind large-scale treatment rollouts, revealing the possibilities and inequalities that come with a magic bullet approach to health care.By moving back and forth between the institutions shaping the Brazilian response to AIDS and the people affected by the disease, Biehl has created a book of unusual vividness, scope, and detail. At the core of Will to Live is a group of AIDS patients--unemployed, homeless, involved with prostitution and drugs--that established a makeshift health service. Biehl chronicled the personal lives of these people for over ten years and Torben Eskerod represents them here in more than one hundred stark photographs.Ethnography, social medicine, and art merge in this unique book, illuminating the care and agency needed to extend life amid perennial violence. Full of lessons for the future, Will to Live promises to have a lasting influence in the social sciences and in the theory and practice of global public health.
The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment
John Conyers Jr. - 2007
For that reason, Representative Conyers of Michigan commissioned his staff to put together the report that became The Constitution in Crisis. It chronicles the deceptions, manipulations, and retributions of President George W. Bush and his administration. Did the President mislead the country in order to invade Iraq? Have suspected “evil-doers” been tortured in violation of U.S. and international laws? Has the National Security Agency eaves-dropped on American citizens in violation of wire tapping laws? This report is a must-read for anyone concerned about the direction of our nation!
An Introduction to the Modern Middle East: History, Religion, Political Economy, Politics
David S. Sorenson - 2007
Sorenson provides a complete and accessible introduction to the modern Middle East. While emphasizing politics, the text dedicates separate chapters specifically to the history, religions, and political economy of the region. These introductory chapters together constitute an important thematic overview and orientation for each of the book’s individual country chapters, including countries of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa. In each country chapter, a brief political history is followed by discussions of democratization, religious politics, women’s issues, civil society, economic development, privatization, and foreign relations. Throughout the book, “Images”-short vignettes based on the author’s personal observations during his extensive travels in the Middle East-offer readers a chance for personal reflection on the topics discussed in each chapter.
Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia: From the 16th to the 21st Century
Thomas Gibson - 2007
Through a detailed analysis of sacred scriptures, epic narratives and oral histories from the region, this book shows how Southeast Asian Muslims combined cosmopolitan Islamic models of knowledge and authority with local Austronesian models of divine kingship to first resist and then to appropriate Dutch colonial models of rational bureaucracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these models continue to shape regional responses to contemporary trends such as the rise of global Islamism.
W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet
Edward J. Blum - 2007
E. B. Du Bois was one of the foremost African American intellectuals of the twentieth century. While Du Bois is remembered for his monumental contributions to scholarship and civil rights activism, the spiritual aspects of his work have been misunderstood, even negated. W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, the first religious biography of this leader, illuminates the spirituality that is essential to understanding his efforts and achievements in the political and intellectual world.Often labeled an atheist, Du Bois was in fact deeply and creatively involved with religion. Historian Edward J. Blum reveals how spirituality was central to Du Bois's approach to Marxism, pan-Africanism, and nuclear disarmament, his support for black churches, and his reckoning of the spiritual wage of white supremacy. His writings, teachings, and prayers served as articles of faith for fellow activists of his day, from student book club members to Langston Hughes.A blend of history, sociology, literary criticism, and religious reflection in the model of Du Bois's best work, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet recasts the life of this great visionary and intellectual for a new generation of scholars and activists.Honorable Mention, 2007 Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards
Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation
Barbara Slavin - 2007
She takes into account deeply imbedded cultural habits and political goals to illuminate a struggle that promises to remain a headline story over the next decade. In this fascinating look, Slavin provides details of thwarted efforts at reconciliation under both the Clinton and Bush presidencies and opportunities rebuffed by the Bush administration in its belief that invading Iraq would somehow weaken Iran's Islamic government. Yet despite the dire situation in Iraq, the Bush administration appears to be building a case for confrontation with Iran based on the same three issues it used against Saddam Hussein's regime: weapons of mass destruction, support for terrorism, and repression of human rights. The U.S. charges Iran is supporting terrorists inside and outside Iraq and is repressing its own people who, in the words of U.S. officials, "deserve better." Slavin believes the U.S. government may be suffering from the same lack of understanding and foresight that led it into prolonged warfare in Iraq. One of the few reporters to interview Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as his two predecessors and scores of ordinary Iranians, Slavin gives insight into what the U.S. government may not be taking into account. She portrays Iran as a country that both adores and fears America and has a deeply rooted sense of its own historical and regional importance. Despite government propaganda that portrays the U.S. as the "Great Satan," many Iranians have come to idolize staples of American pop culture while clinging to their own traditions. This is clearly not a relationship to be taken a face value. The interplay between the U.S. and Iran will only grow more complex as Iran moves toward becoming a nuclear power. Distrustful of each other's intentions yet longing at some level to reconcile, neither Tehran nor Washington know how this story will end.
Statistical Methods for Human Rights
Jana Asher - 2007
They define the expectations by which nations are judged and affect the policy of governments, corporations, and foundations. Statistics is central to the modern perspective on human rights. It allows researchers to measure the effect of health care policies, the penetration of educational opportunity, and progress towards gender equality.This book describes the statistics that underlie the social science research in human rights. It includes case studies, methodology, and research papers that discuss the fundamental measurement issues.
The Architecture of Government
Daniel Treisman - 2007
It is thought to bring government 'closer to the people', nurture civic virtue, protect liberty, exploit local information, stimulate policy innovation, and alleviate ethnic tensions. Inspired by such arguments, and generously funded by the major development agencies, countries across the globe have been racing to devolve power to local governments. This book re-examines the arguments that underlie the modern faith in decentralization. Using logical analysis and formal modeling, and appealing to numerous examples, it shows that most are based on vague intuitions or partial views that do not withstand scrutiny. A review of empirical studies of decentralization finds these as inconclusive and mutually contradictory as the theories they set out to test.
Fighting for Political Freedom: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex and Political Change
Terence C. Halliday - 2007
Nations that have never enjoyed a liberal political society are constrained or inspired by international institutions to create one. Nations that have advanced towards and then retreated from political liberalism are pressed to regain lost ground. Nations that have recently shifted from authoritarian to liberal political systems are encouraged to lock in the transition through institutions and constitutions. Mature democracies are being encouraged to recover diminished freedoms in the face of terrorism and domestic conflict. This book tests, for the contemporary world, the proposition that lawyers are active agents in the construction of liberal political regimes. It examines the efficacy of a framework that postulates that legal professions not only orient themselves to a market for their services, but they frequently can be seen in the forefront of actors seeking to institutionalize political liberalism. On the basis of some sixteen case studies from across the world, the authors present a theoretical link between lawyers and political liberalism having wide-ranging application over radically diverse situations in Asia, the Middle East, North America, South America, and Europe. They argue that it is not the politics of lawyers alone, but the politics of a 'legal complex' of legally-trained occupations, centered on lawyers and judges, that drives advances or retreats from political liberalism. Political liberalism itself is in play everywhere, in countries with established democracies and those without liberal politics. It is now clear that the legal arena is a central field of struggle over the shape of political power. The case studies presented here provide powerful evidence that the nexus of bar and bench in transitions towards or away from political liberalism is a force which has universal application. (Series: Onati International Series in Law and Society)
Reproductive Restraints
Sanjam Ahluwalia - 2007
Sanjam Ahluwalia draws attention to the history of Indian birth control by including western activists such as Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes alongside important Indian campaigners. In revealing the elitist politics of middle-class feminists, Indian nationalists, Western activists, colonial authorities, and the medical establishment, Ahluwalia finds that they all sought to rationalize procreation and regulate women while invoking competing notions of freedom, femininity, and family. _x000B__x000B_Ahluwalia's remarkable interviews with practicing midwives in rural northern India fills a gaping void in the documentary history of birth control and shows that the movement has had little appeal to nonelite groups in India. She argues that elitist birth control efforts failed to account for Indian women's values and needs and have worked to restrict reproductive rights rather than liberate subaltern Indian women since colonial times. _x000B__x000B_
A Theology of Public Life
Charles T. Mathewes - 2007
This book defends and details Christian believers' engagement in contemporary pluralistic public life not from the perspective of some neutral 'public', but from the particular perspective of Christian faith, arguing that such engagement enriches both public life and Christian citizens' faith themselves. As such it offers not a 'public theology', but a 'theology of public life', analysing the promise and perils of Christian public engagement, discussing the nature of civic commitment and prophetic critique, and the relation of a loving faith to a liberal politics of justice. Theologically rich, philosophically rigorous, politically, historically and sociologically informed, this book advances contemporary discussion of 'religion and public life' in fundamental ways.
Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization
Jason Brownlee - 2007
Applying more than a year of original fieldwork in Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, and the Philippines, in this book Jason Brownlee shows that the mixed record of recent democratization is best deciphered through a historical and institutional approach to authoritarian rule. Exposing the internal organizations that structure elite conflict, Brownlee demonstrates why the critical soft-liners needed for democratic transitions have been dormant in Egypt and Malaysia but outspoken in Iran and the Philippines. By establishing how ruling parties originated and why they impede change, Brownlee illuminates the problem of contemporary authoritarianism and informs the promotion of durable democracy.
Thailand's Political History: From the 13th century to recent times
B.J. Terwiel - 2007
While the first edition began with a portrait of late Ayutthayan society, the new edition steps back to the thirteenth century, tackling some of the most topical and pressing historical debates at present. It discusses the development and evolution of the Siamese state from the early Sukhothai period through the fall of Ayutthaya to the rise of the Chakri dynasty in the late eighteenth century and its consolidation of power in the nineteenth. Moving into the twentieth century it traces the emergence of the Thai nation state, the large-scale investments in modern infrastructure and the concomitant economic expansion that have occurred since the 1950s onwards.A new final chapter brings the reader up-to-date and addresses Thailand’s current political situation spanning the rise and fall of Thaksin Shinawatra to the divisive and at times violent polarisation of Thai society. It traces the emergence of the rival Yellow and Red shirt protest groups, the takeover of Suvarnabhumi International Airport by the PAD and the occupation of Ratchaprasong intersection by the UDD and their eventual violent dispersal by the Thai military.Often at variance with the more dominant interpretations of nationalistichistory and with a strong reliance upon primary sources, Barend J. Terwiel’sThailand’s Political History makes a refreshing assessment of past events possible.
The Evolving Presidency: Landmark Documents, 1787-2008
Michael Nelson - 2007
Judicious editing and contextual headnotes give students a look at the personalities and ideas that have shaped the institution, as well as insight into significant cases and events that have played pivotal roles in American political history. Based on extensive feedback from users, the third edition includes new selections that feature both historical and recent pieces from FDR s court-packing speech to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case dramatically showing students how presidents chart U.S. history.
William E. Connolly: Democracy, Pluralism and Political Theory
Samuel A. Chambers - 2007
Connolly's writings have pushed the leading edge of political theory, first in North America and then in Europe as well, for more than two decades now. This book draws on his numerous influential books and articles to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of his significant contribution to the field of political theory.The book focuses in particular on three key areas of his thinking:Democracy: his work in democratic theory - through his critical challenges to the traditions of Rawlsian theories of justice and Habermasian theories of deliberative democracy - has spurred the creation of a fertile and powerful new literaturePluralism: Connolly's work utterly transformed the terrain of the field by helping to resignify pluralism: from a conservative theory of order based on the status quo into a radical theory of democratic contestation based on a progressive political visionThe Terms of Political Theory: Connolly has changed the language in which Anglo-American political theory is spoken, and entirely shuffled the pack with which political theorists work.
China-Europe Relations: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects
David Shambaugh - 2007
China-Europe Relations takes an innovative and insightful look at this phenomenon, examining:- the state of Chinese studies in Europe and European studies in China- the decision-making behind the EU 's China policy, and what the Chinese perceptions and assessments are of Europe that shape China 's Europe policy- the recent rapid growth of bilateral commercial and technological relations- the global context of the bilateral Sino-European relationship, in particular the interaction of China, the EU, and the United States- prospects for the future evolution of these relationships.The most systematic and comprehensive study on the subject to date, written by a stellar team of international contributors from China, Europe and the US, China-Europe Relations will appeal to students, academics and policy makers alike who are interested in international relations, comparative foreign policy and Chinese and European politics.
Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: Destroying the Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future
Thomas Sherlock - 2007
Encompassing reform under Mikhail Gorbachev and retrenchment under Vladimir Putin, it explains the political, social, and cultural importance of a polity's myths. Charting the rise of anti-Soviet and anti-communist narratives under perestroika, and their eventual marginalization in post-Soviet Russia, the book argues that changes in symbolic politics must be examined within cultural, socio-political, and international contexts. Of particular relevance is the interactive relationship between state and society. The study of historical discourse must focus not only on how and why the state imposes its discursive preferences on society, thereby shaping public memory, but also on why and how the state itself is constructed by prevailing narratives in society.
After the Peace
Carolyn Gallaher - 2007
However, almost a decade later, Loyalist paramilitaries were still on the battlefield. After the Peace examines the delayed business of Loyalist demilitarization and explains why it included more fits than starts in the decade since formal peace and how Loyalist paramilitary recalcitrance has affected everyday Loyalists.Drawing on interviews with current and former Loyalist paramilitary men, community workers, and government officials, Carolyn Gallaher charts the trenchant divisions that emerged during the run-up to peace and thwart demilitarization today. After the Peace demonstrates that some Loyalist paramilitary men want to rebuild their communities and join the political process. They pledge a break with violence and the criminality that sustained their struggle. Others vow not to surrender and refuse to set aside their guns. These units operate under a Loyalist banner but increasingly resemble criminal fiefdoms. In the wake of this internecine power struggle, demilitarization has all but stalled.Gallaher documents the battle for the heart of Loyalism in varied settings, from the attempt to define Ulster Scots as a language to deadly feuds between UVF, UDA, and LVF contingents. After the Peace brings the story of Loyalist paramilitaries up to date and sheds light on the residual violence that persists in the post-accord era.
A Coup for the Rich? Thailand's Political Crisis
Ji Ungpakorn - 2007
The Political Economy of Grand Strategy
Kevin Narizny - 2007
Instead, every strategic choice benefits some domestic groups at the expense of others. When groups with different interests separate into opposing coalitions, societal debates over foreign policy become polarized along party lines. Parties then select leaders who share the priorities of their principal electoral and financial backers. As a result, the overarching goals and guiding principles of grand strategy, as formulated at the highest levels of government, derive from domestic coalitional interests. In The Political Economy of Grand Strategy, Kevin Narizny develops these insights into a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of security policy.The focus of this analysis is the puzzle of partisanship. The conventional view of grand strategy, in which state leaders act as neutral arbiters of the national interest, cannot explain why political turnover in the executive office often leads to dramatic shifts in state behavior. Narizny, in contrast, shows how domestic politics structured foreign policymaking in the United States and Great Britain from 1865 to 1941. In so doing, he sheds light on long-standing debates over the revival of British imperialism, the rise of American expansionism, the creation of the League of Nations, American isolationism in the interwar period, British appeasement in the 1930s, and both countries' decisions to enter World War I and World War II.
Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy
Amitai Etzioni - 2007
Yet Etzioni’s concern is not to lay blame for past mistakes but to address the future: What can now be done to improve U.S. relations with the rest of the world?What should American policies be toward recently liberated countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, or rogue states like North Korea and Iran? When should the United States undertake humanitarian intervention abroad? What must be done to protect America from nuclear terrorism? The author asserts that providing basic security must be the first priority in all foreign policy considerations, even ahead of efforts to democratize. He sets out essential guidelines for a foreign policy that makes sense in the real world, builds on moral principles, and creates the possibility of establishing positive relationships with Muslim nations and all others.Etzioni has considered the issues deeply and for many years. His conclusions fall into no neat categories—neither “liberal” nor “conservative”—for he is guided not by ideology but by empirical evidence and moral deliberation. His proposal rings with the sound of reason, and this important book belongs on the reading list of every concerned leader, policy maker, and voter in America.
Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies
Johan Galtung - 2007
They have forged a transdisciplinary and professional identity distinct from security studies, political science, and international relations.The volume is divided into four sections:understanding and transforming conflict creating peace supporting peace peace across the disciplines. Each section features new essays by distinguished international scholars and professionals working in peace studies and conflict resolution and transformation. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and political positions, the editors and contributors offer topical and enduring approaches to peace and conflict studies.The Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies will be essential reading for students of peace studies, conflict studies and conflict resolution. It will also be of interest and use to practitioners in conflict resolution and NGOs, as well as policy makers and diplomats.
Locke
Edward Feser - 2007
He is quoted in the Declaration of Independence and has had a lasting influence on many of our political systems, shaping our ideas on rights, government by consent, religious toleration, psychology and empirical science. Thought by many to be the quintessential philosopher of the modern age, his ideas are the key to understanding society and politics in the West. In this accessible introduction, Edward Feser explores Locke in historical context as well as his lasting influence, and looks critically at his legacy. In this, the author argues, we find the origins of many of the conflicts that dominate modern Western social and political life.
Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil
James Holston - 2007
This book examines the insurgence of democratic citizenship in the urban peripheries of S�o Paulo, Brazil, its entanglement with entrenched systems of inequality, and its contradiction in violence.James Holston argues that for two centuries Brazilians have practiced a type of citizenship all too common among nation-states--one that is universally inclusive in national membership and massively inegalitarian in distributing rights and in its legalization of social differences. But since the 1970s, he shows, residents of Brazil's urban peripheries have formulated a new citizenship that is destabilizing the old. Their mobilizations have developed not primarily through struggles of labor but through those of the city--particularly illegal residence, house building, and land conflict. Yet precisely as Brazilians democratized urban space and achieved political democracy, violence, injustice, and impunity increased dramatically. Based on comparative, ethnographic, and historical research, Insurgent Citizenship reveals why the insurgent and the entrenched remain dangerously conjoined as new kinds of citizens expand democracy even as new forms of violence and exclusion erode it.Rather than view this paradox as evidence of democratic failure and urban chaos, Insurgent Citizenship argues that contradictory realizations of citizenship characterize all democracies--emerging and established. Focusing on processes of city- and citizen-making now prevalent globally, it develops new approaches for understanding the contemporary course of democratic citizenship in societies of vastly different cultures and histories.
The Parliamentary System: What We Have Made Of It, What We Can Make Of It
Arun Shourie - 2007
With 99 percent of legislators getting elected by a minority of electors with scores of them getting elected on 15 to 20 per cent of the votes cast that is, by 7 - 10 per cent of the population, how representative is our parliamentary system not induce political parties to go on splintering our people? Can the country cohere when the people are splintered? Are those in government accountable to parliament? Or are they the government precisely because they and those who control them, control Parliament?
Party Politics in New Democracies
Paul D. Webb - 2007
The General Editors are Professor Alfio Mastropaolo, University of Turin and Kenneth Newton, University of Southampton and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research.The sister volume to Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, this book offers a systematic and rigorous analysis of parties in some of the world's major new democracies. Drawing on a wealth of expertise and data, the book assesses the popular legitimacy, organizational development and functional performance of political parties in Latin America and post-communist Eastern Europe. It demonstrates the generational differences between parties in the old and new democracies, and reveals contrasts among the latter. Parties are shown to be at their most feeble in those recently transitional democracies characterized by personalistic, candidate-centered forms of politics, but in other new democracies--especially those with parliamentary systems--parties are more stable and institutionalized, enabling them to facilitate a meaningful degree of popular choice and control. Wherever party politics is weakly institutionalized, political inequality tends to be greater, commitment to pluralism less certain, clientelism and corruption more pronounced, and populist demagoguery a greater temptation. Without party, democracy's hold is more tenuous.
National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements
Balazs Trencsenyi - 2007
The 67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and national identity. The end of the eighteenth century and first decades of the nineteenth were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt upon the established moral and social norms of the old corporate society. The dramatic convulsions of the French Revolution revealed roads for the future development of European society. In arts and culture a new trend, Romanticism, was successfully asserting itself against Classicism. And, above all, a new group identity was announced, which elevated the nation as the supreme value. National Romanticism sought affiliation with this new community, the nation, which was easy to endow with a certain emotional attractiveness.
Defending the Society of States: Why America Opposes the International Criminal Court and Its Vision of World Society
Jason Ralph - 2007
By clearly outlining a theoretical framework to interpret these issues, Ralph makes a significant contribution to the English School's study of international society. More specifically, he offers a concise definition of world society and thus helps to resolve a longstanding problem in international theory. This groundbreaking conceptual work is supported by an in-depth empirical analysis of American opposition to the ICC. Ralph goes beyond the familiar arguments related to national interests and argues that the Court has exposed the extent to which American notions of accountability are tied to the nation-state. Where other democracies are willing to renegotiate their social contract because they see themselves as part of world society, the US protects its particular contract with the people because it offers a means of distinguishing America and its democracy from the rest of the world. This sovereigntist, or more accurately Americanist, influence is further illustrated in chapters on the sources of law, universal jurisdiction, transatlantic relations and US policy on international humanitarian law in the war on terror. The book concludes by evoking E.H. Carr's criticism of those great powers who claim that a harmony exists between their particular interests and those of wider society. It also recalls his argument that great powers sometimes need to compromise and in this context, Ralph argues that support for the ICC is a more effective means of fulfilling America's purpose and a less costly sacrifice than that demanded by the Americanist policy of nation-building.
Environmental Justice and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: International and Domestic Legal Perspectives
Laura Westra - 2007
Yet despite ever-growing pressures on their lands, environment and way of life through outside factors such as climate change and globalization, their rights in these and other respects are still not fully recognized in international law. In this incisive book, Laura Westra deftly reveals the lethal effects that damage to ecological integrity can have on communities. Using examples in national and international case law, she demonstrates how their lack of sufficient legal rights leaves indigenous peoples defenceless, time and again, in the face of governments and businesses who have little effective incentive to consult with them (let alone gain their consent) in going ahead with relocations, mining plans and more. The historical background and current legal instruments are discussed and, through examples from the Americas, Africa, Oceania and the special case of the Arctic, a picture emerges of how things must change if indigenous communities are to survive. It is a warning to us all from the example of those who live most closely in tune with nature and are the first to feel the impact when environmental damage goes unchecked."
Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism
David Ciepley - 2007
The New Deal began as a revolution in favor of progressive governance--executive-centered and expert-guided. But as David Ciepley shows, by the late 1930s, intellectuals and elites, reacting against the menace of totalitarianism, began to shrink from using state power to guide the economy or foster citizen virtues. All of the more statist governance projects of the New Deal were curtailed or abandoned, regardless of success, and the country placed on a more libertarian-corporatist trajectory, both economically and culturally. In economics, attempts to reorient industry from private profit to public use were halted, and free enterprise was reaffirmed. In politics, the ideal of governance by a strong, independent executive was rejected--along with notions of central planning, social control, and state imposition of values--and a politics of contending interest groups was embraced. In law, the encounter with totalitarianism brought an end to judicial deference, the embrace of civil rights and civil liberties, and the neutralist reinterpretation, and radicalization, of both. Finally, in culture, the encounter sowed the seeds of our own era--the era of the culture wars--in which traditional America has been mobilized against these liberal legal advances, and against the entire neutralist, relativist, secular humanist reinterpretation of America that accompanies them.
The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment, third, revised
Vincent Ostrom - 2007
Through meticulous textual analysis, the logical principles of federalism_the extended and compound republic envisioned by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton_are revealed as thirteen propositions broadly applicable to any effort to design the institutions of a self-governing polity. The final chapters, expanded and revised by Vincent Ostrom and Barbara Allen, turn to the American experiment in constitutional choice at the threshold of the twenty-first century. In this revised edition, Ostrom and Allen consider the continuing story of federal institutional development by focusing on two current concerns: the 'imperial presidency' and the ideal of universal human rights. This third, revised and expanded edition of The Political Theory of a Compound Republic continues to be of interest to scholars of federalism, institutional analysis and development, political economy and public choice, and students of the American founding. It is also useful in undergraduate and graduate courses on American government and political thought.
Explaining Politics: Culture, Institutions, and Political Behavior
Oliver H. Woshinsky - 2007
Drawing on a multitude of factors to explain politics and political behaviour, Woshinsky shows that political outcomes depend on a complex interplay between individuals and their environment. Psychology, personality, and ideology, together with culture, institutions, and social context shape political behaviour. Explaining Politics offers a wealth of comparative examples and practical applications through a lively and engaging narrative.
Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances
Seyla Benhabib - 2007
Pre-eminent scholars examine the changing character of identities, affiliations, and allegiances in a variety of contexts: the evolving character of the European Union and its member countries, the Balkans and other new democracies of the post-1989 world, and debates about citizenship and cultural identity in the modern West. These essays are essential reading for anyone interested in the political and intellectual ferment that surrounds debates about political membership and attachment, and will be of interest to students and scholars in the social sciences, humanities, and law.
The New Right in the New Europe: Czech Transformation and Right-Wing Politics, 1989-2006
Seán Hanley - 2007
Sean Hanley considers the different varieties of right-wing politics that emerged in post-communist Europe, exploring in particular detail the origins of the Czech neo-liberal right, tracing its genesis to the reactions of dissidents and technocrats to the collapse of 1960s reform communism. He argues that, rather than being shaped by distant historical legacies, the emergence of centre-right parties can best be understood by examining the responses of counter-elites, outside or marginal to the former communist party-state establishment, to the collapse of communism and the imperatives of market reform and decommunization. This volume goes on to consider the emergence of right-wing forces in the disintegrating Civic Forum movement in 1990, the foundation of the ODS, the right's period in office under Klaus in 1992-97, and its subsequent divisions and decline. It concludes by analyzing the ideology of the Czech Right, and its growing euroscepticism.
The Sage Handbook of Political Geography
Murray Low - 2007
Edited by key scholars, with international contributions from acknowledged authorities on the relevant research, The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography is divided into six sections: Scope and Development of Political Geography; Geographies of the State; Participation and Representation; Political Geographies of Difference; Geography, Policy, and Governance; and Global Political Geographies.
Top Incomes Over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast Betweem Continental European and English-Speaking Countries
Anthony B. Atkinson - 2007
This rapidly growing field of economic research investigates the top segment of the income distribution by using data from income tax records over the past century. As well as describing the source data and methods employed, the authors also discuss the dramatic changes that have occurred at the top of the income scale throughout the 20th century.This fascinating study is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive historic overview of top income distribution over the last century. It looks at why top incomes shares fell markedly in the first half of the 20th century and why, more recently, there has been a striking difference in the top income distribution between continental Europe and English-speaking OECD countries, like the UK, USA, and Australia. Written by Thomas Piketty, New York Times best-selling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and noted member of the Conseil d'Analyse Economique, A. B. Atkinson, this seminal work provides rich pickings for those with an interest in inequality, development, the economic impact of war, taxation, economic history, and executive compensation.
Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide
Chollet Derek - 2007
In each chapter conservative and liberal experts jointly outline their points of agreement on many of the most pressing issues in U.S. foreign policy, pointing the way toward a more constructive debate.In doing so, the authors move past philosophical differences and identify effective approaches to the major national security challenges confronting the United States. An outgrowth of a Stanley Foundation initiative, this book shows what happens when specialists take a fresh look at politically sensitive issues purely on their merits and present an alternative to the distortions and oversimplifications of today's polarizing political environment.
Judith Butler's Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters
Terrell Carver - 2007
This edited volume draws leading international political theorists into dialogue with her political theory.Each chapter is written by an acclaimed political theorist and concentrates on a particular aspect of Butler's work. The book is divided into five sections which reflect the interdisciplinary nature of Butler's work and activism:Butler and Philosophy: explores Butler s unique relationship to the discipline of philosophy, considering her work in light of its philosophical contributionsButler and Subjectivity: covers the vexed question of subjectivity with which Butler has engaged throughout her published historyButler and Gender: considers the most problematic area, gender, taken by many to be primary to Butler s workButler and Democracy: engages with Butler s significant contribution to the literature of radical democracy and to the central political issues faced by our post-cold warButler and Action: focuses directly on the question of political agency and political action in Butler s work.Along with its companion volume, Judith Butler and Political Theory, it marks an intellectual event for political theory, with major implications for feminism, women s studies, gender studies, cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, queer theory and anyone with a critical interest in contemporary American great power politics."
Human Rights in a Post Human World: Critical Essays
Upendra Baxi - 2007
It is an analysis of the state of human rights in a 'post human' and 'machinistic' world almost overwhelmed by security concerns, 'terrorist threats', and technoscience. It begins with a series of questions: Are there now two different realms of human rights: human rights in times of peace and human rights in the 'state of exception'? Does such a distinction affect the nascent jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court? In what way do these impacts on global social policy concern development? The book goes on to present a critique of approaches towards a theory of human rights proposed by Amartya Sen and Sen's emphasis on the ethical, as opposed to juridical, nature of such rights. Focusing on the human right to development, the author examines why the UN Declaration on the Human Right to Development has not attracted more attention and goes on to highlight the work of Arjun Sengupta and its implications for the human right to development. It goes on to examine how in the current world scenario the 'emancipatory potential' of human rights may be carried forward in theoretical work and through activism.
Where Nation-States Come from: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism
Philip G. Roeder - 2007
Why do a few such endeavors come to fruition while most fail? Standard explanations have pointed to national awakenings, nationalist mobilizations, economic efficiency, military prowess, or intervention by the great powers. Where Nation-States Come From provides a compelling alternative account, one that incorporates an in-depth examination of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and their successor states.Philip Roeder argues that almost all successful nation-state projects have been associated with a particular political institution prior to independence: the segment-state, a jurisdiction defined by both human and territorial boundaries. Independence represents an administrative upgrade of a segment-state. Before independence, segmental institutions shape politics on the periphery of an existing sovereign state. Leaders of segment-states are thus better positioned than other proponents of nation-state endeavors to forge locally hegemonic national identities. Before independence, segmental institutions also shape the politics between the periphery and center of existing states. Leaders of segment-states are hence also more able to challenge the status quo and to induce the leaders of the existing state to concede independence. Roeder clarifies the mechanisms that link such institutions to outcomes, and demonstrates that these relationships have prevailed around the world through most of the age of nationalism.
Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party
Paul Frymer - 2007
labor union members were African American. By 1980, the figure was more than one in five. Black and Blue explores the politics and history that led to this dramatic integration of organized labor. In the process, the book tells a broader story about how the Democratic Party unintentionally sowed the seeds of labor's decline.The labor and civil rights movements are the cornerstones of the Democratic Party, but for much of the twentieth century these movements worked independently of one another. Paul Frymer argues that as Democrats passed separate legislation to promote labor rights and racial equality they split the issues of class and race into two sets of institutions, neither of which had enough authority to integrate the labor movement.From this division, the courts became the leading enforcers of workplace civil rights, threatening unions with bankruptcy if they resisted integration. The courts' previously unappreciated power, however, was also a problem: in diversifying unions, judges and lawyers enfeebled them financially, thus democratizing through destruction. Sharply delineating the double-edged sword of state and legal power, Black and Blue chronicles an achievement that was as problematic as it was remarkable, and that demonstrates the deficiencies of race- and class-based understandings of labor, equality, and power in America.
Class, Power and the State in Capitalist Society: Essays on Ralph Miliband
Paul Wetherly - 2007
His writings remain highly influential in contemporary work on the state and related areas of political theory and political sociology. This collection of new essays re-examines and evaluates the central themes in Miliband's work. It provides an essential reference point for research within the Marxist tradition, and a valuable resource for students on a range of courses in political and social theory.
Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics
Samuel A. Chambers - 2007
This original study is the first to take a thematic approach to Butler as a political thinker. Starting with an explanation of her terms of analysis, Judith Butler and Political Theory develops Butler's theory of the political through an exploration of her politics of troubling given categories and approaches. By developing concepts such as normative violence and subversion and by elaborating her critique of heteronormativity, this book moves deftly between Butler's earliest and most famous writings on gender and her more recent interventions in post-9/11 politics.This book, along with its companion volume, Judith Butler's Precarious Politics, marks an intellectual event for political theory, with major implications for feminism, women's studies, gender studies, cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, queer theory and anyone with a critical interest in contemporary American 'great power' politics.
Politics and Society in the Developing World
Peter Calvert - 2007
Eighty per cent of the world's population lives in the developing world. This popular, concise introduction scrutinises the developing world, its varied political institutions and the key social, economic and environmental issues at the heart of contemporary debates.Wide-ranging and clearly written, Politics and Society in the Developing World begins by providing a brisk survey of the major theoretical and methodological interpretations of the social impact of development. It then details the factors which determine the parameters of the developing world before moving on to examine its infrastructure and the crises currently facing it. The book also covers the social and economic contexts of developing societies, the international arena and its impact on the developing world, state-building and the tension between dictatorship and democratization. The book focuses on four policy areas: aid, trade, tourism and the environment.
Legal Ethics and Human Dignity
David Luban - 2007
In this collection of his most significant papers he ranges over such topics as the moral psychology of organisational evil, the strengths and weaknesses of the adversary system, and jurisprudence from the lawyer's point of view. His discussion combines philosophical argument, legal analysis and many cases drawn from actual law practice, and he defends a theory of legal ethics that focuses on lawyers' role in enhancing human dignity and human rights. In addition to an analytical introduction, the volume includes two major previously unpublished papers, including a detailed critique of the US government lawyers who produced the notorious 'torture memos'. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both philosophy and law.
Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition
Herbert Kitschelt - 2007
However, there are many countries where politicians win elections by giving money, jobs, and services in direct exchange for votes. This is not just true in the developing world, but also in economically developed countries - such as Japan and Austria - that clearly meet the definition of stable, modern democracies. This book offers explanations for why politicians engage in clientelistic behaviours and why voters respond. Using newly collected data on national and sub-national patterns of patronage and electoral competition, the contributors demonstrate why explanations based on economic modernization or electoral institutions cannot account for international variation in patron-client and programmatic competition. Instead, they show how the interaction of economic development, party competition, governance of the economy, and ethnic heterogeneity may work together to determine the choices of patrons, clients and policies.
Exploring International Human Rights: Essential Readings
Rhonda L. Callaway - 2007
The reader has been carefully designed to enhance students' understanding not only of human rights, but also of differing perspectives on the topic. This title offers a comprehensive and accessible set of readings on the major themes and issues in the field of international human rights.
The Balance of Power in World History
Stuart J. Kaufman - 2007
This book redresses this imbalance. The authors present eight new case studies of balancing and balancing failure in pre-modern and non-European international systems. The collective, multidisciplinary and international research effort yields an inescapable conclusion: much of the conventional wisdom about the balance of power does not survive intact with non-European evidence.
Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change
Alf Hornborg - 2007
Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Joan Martinez-Alier have brought together a group of the prominent social scientists, historians, and geographical scientists to provide a historical overview of the ecological dimension of global economic processes. Readers are challenged to integrate studies of the Earth-system with studies of the world-system, and to reconceptualize the relations between human beings and their environment, as well as the challenges of global sustainability.
America Works: Thoughts on an Exceptional U.S. Labor Market: Thoughts on an Exceptional U.S. Labor Market
Richard B. Freeman - 2007
labor market is the most laissez faire of any developed nation, with a weak social safety net and little government regulation compared to Europe or Japan. Some economists point to this hands-off approach as the source of America’s low unemployment and high per-capita income. But the stagnant living standards and rising economic insecurity many Americans now face take some of the luster off the U.S. model. In America Works, noted economist Richard Freeman reveals how U.S. policies have created a labor market remarkable both for its dynamism and its disparities.America Works takes readers on a grand tour of America’s exceptional labor market, comparing the economic institutions and performance of the United States to the economies of Europe and other wealthy countries. The U.S. economy has an impressive track record when it comes to job creation and productivity growth, but it isn’t so good at reducing poverty or raising the wages of the average worker. Despite huge gains in productivity, most Americans are hardly better off than they were a generation ago. The median wage is actually lower now than in the early 1970s, and the poverty rate in 2005 was higher than in 1969. So why have the benefits of productivity growth been distributed so unevenly? One reason is that unions have been steadily declining in membership. In Europe, labor laws extend collective bargaining settlements to non-unionized firms. Because wage agreements in America only apply to firms where workers are unionized, American managers have discouraged unionization drives more aggressively. In addition, globalization and immigration have placed growing competitive pressure on American workers. And boards of directors appointed by CEOs have raised executive pay to astronomical levels. Freeman addresses these problems with a variety of proposals designed to maintain the vigor of the U.S. economy while spreading more of its benefits to working Americans. To maintain America’s global competitive edge, Freeman calls for increased R&D spending and financial incentives for students pursuing graduate studies in science and engineering. To improve corporate governance, he advocates licensing individuals who serve on corporate boards. Freeman also makes the case for fostering worker associations outside of the confines of traditional unions and for establishing a federal agency to promote profit-sharing and employee ownership.Assessing the performance of the U.S. job market in light of other developed countries’ recent history highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the free market model. Written with authoritative knowledge and incisive wit, America Works provides a compelling plan for how we can make markets work better for all Americans.
A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation's Centennial Series
Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections
Markus Prior - 2007
Today in the United States, the average viewer can choose from hundreds of channels, including several twenty-four hour news channels. News is on cell phones, on iPods, and online; it has become a ubiquitous and unavoidable reality in modern society. The purpose of this book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and new survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behavior.
The Lost Promise of Civil Rights
Risa L. Goluboff - 2007
Goluboff offers a provocative new account of the history of American civil rights law.
A Republic Divided
Annenberg Democracy Project - 2007
Commissions of the nation's leading scholars as well as practitioners directly involved with each of these institutions gathered together to discuss the important issues being debated within each. Led by a stellar national advisory board, the first five volumes were published in late 2005 and focused on the executive branch, legislative branch, judicial branch, public schools, and the press.This sixth volume in the series assesses the state of American democracy by taking a close look at how people see these five core institutions. Through an analysis of opinion surveys commissioned by the APPC, A Republic Divided compares the views of the general population with those of the insiders. Topics addressed include the separation of powers, trust, knowledge, effectiveness, and many other issues. In addition to chapters on each institution, there are also cross-institutional analyses on separation of powers and on trust and performance, including a discussion of the tensions that each institution has with the press. An appendix includes technical details about the surveys, and the book concludes with an index. All of the toplines and data sets for the surveys are available on the APPC Web site: www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.orgThis is a much needed report on the state of American democracy during a time of deep political and cultural division. It is the perfect final volume for this important series.
When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil, and the Ogoni Struggle for Self-Determination. by Ike Okonta
Ike Okonta - 2007
The Ogoni story, the author argues, is a classic case of a people who in order to secure their civic rights as citizens in a state increasingly resorting to rapine despotism, became 'tribesmen' in their struggle to become citizens.