What are the unique features of the governing structures and political systems of the small states and former British colonies of the East Caribbean? Are they truly democratic? Do the decision makers manipulate their peoples? And what can we learn about the political modernization of developing countries through an in-depth study of the governing of Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts/Nevis and Montserrat? This is the most comprehensive analysis to date of these little-known democracies, one that will interest students in comparative government and Latin American studies. This study provides a conceptual framework for comparing East Caribbean governments with other Western political systems, for assessing the democratic and authoritarian characteristics of seven small states, and for analyzing the impact of modernization on the political development of these developing nations. The study describes the political institutions in the East Caribbean, the role of political parties, the church, and class, and shows how the particular social and economic problems affect the governments and people in the region.

Most studies of political participation among young people focus on formal political arenas and conclude that young people are politically apathetic. In contrast, this book aims to establish how young people understand and live politics, using innovative research methods. As such, it treats age, class, gender and ethnicity as political 'lived experiences'. It concludes that young people are alienated, rather than apathetic, and that their interests and concerns are rarely addressed within mainstream political institutions.

The book extends research on the territorial structure of party systems (party nationalisation) to 20 post-communist democracies. It explains party nationalisation as a consequence of ethnically oriented politics, and shows how party nationalisation can increase our understanding of electoral systems.

Democratization involves far more than instituting a few democratic practices, such as universal sufferage. Instead, people must be able to debate issues, have access to diverse sources of information, be able to tolerate viewpoints that are disliked, and have access to every aspect of government. But before today's society can be considered truly democratic, the entire culture must be democratized. Thus persons will demand autonomy and the freedom required to be self-governed.

Yet, as Murphy and Peck and the analysts brought together for this collection point out, self-government or democracy does not occur in a vacuum. Democracy will occur only when personal autonomy, critical thought, and the desire for self-government are encouraged by social institutions. In this collection, these and other considerations related to real, participatory democracy are the focus of attention. As such the volume will be of concern to political sociologists and those interested in social change.

In this book, Marcio Goldman provides an interpretation of a 'big' theme - the functioning of a modern political system - based on the ethnographic analysis of a 'small' one - the political involvement of a group of African-Brazilian people living in the town of Ilheus in the north-east of Brazil, and belonging to Afro-Brazilian religions, black movement factions, families and neighbourhoods. By giving a description 'from the native's point of view' he leads us to a truly anthropological perception of modern democracies, showing how we need to take seriously the actions and the reflections of those generally viewed as passive, manipulated, ignorant and not really interested in the political game. Only this can lead us to an 'ethnographic theory of politics' A ground-breaking work of real importance - not only to the anthropology of politics, but to the continuing development of theory and epistemology in anthropology and the social sciences at large. - Prof. Christina Toren, University of St Andrews Goldman has masterfully analysed the terrain of politics in this town, illuminating not only its local specifics.... but what he calls the 'constitutive ambiguities' of democracy in Brazil - and indeed of democracy as a whole. In the process he robustly challenges various accepted wisdoms about poor people's political choices, gives new life to classic anthropological ideas like 'segmentation', and strips away the veil that, for many of us, obscures 'how democracy works'. He achieves this ambitious task with consummate skill, combining fine-grained detail with bold theoretical insight.- Prof. Deborah James, London School of Economics If the intellectual contemplation of collectively instituted irrationality is what got anthropology going in the first place, then it must, at some point, address such entities as politicians, and why people vote for them. Read this book and learn. - Prof. Peter Gow, University of St Andrews

This book centres on the effects of the political and later economic crisis which seriously affected the European Union and its impact on the seemingly endless UK debate over Britain's position within the EU.

The dissolution of the USSR marked also the end of the Communist party monopoly. However, its replacement by a working democracy is not assured. First a "civil society", built upon a pluralistic infrastructure, has to be established. This requires the achievement of a "law-based state", pluralism in the political arena, unshackled media, and freedom of religion. The distinguished experts in these fields, brought together in this book, question whether such an infrastructure is firm enough as yet to preclude reversion to an authoritarian system. Current development in Russia will have an incalculable impact on the international system. Russian Pluralism? -- Now Irreversible? offers a lucid, stimulating assessment of the current experiment's chances for success.

In the seventies, countries lauded American education as one of the best systems in the world. Then came the accountability movement. What was measured was what counted. Those who measured low were punished. Those who measured high were rewarded. With measurements came the loss of emphasis on the critical thought so necessary to the preservation of American democracy and improving the American way of life. Where do children learn the skills, practice and habits of democracy? Sharron Goldman Walker s second volume on democracy in education asks educators, especially teachers and principals, to contemplate their roles in education and its connections with the preservation of American democracy. Do we send children to school to learn only how to achieve high scores on high stakes tests? If democracy is not learned by practice in the schoolhouse, how will children recognize it when they leave it? Will they be able to critically reflect upon the issues presented to them? Today s politics have descended into mutual shouting matches, name-calling, hate and fear. Without the ability to critically reflect upon divergent views through reasoned discourse what will be the quality of the democracy? If democracy in education is not practiced in the schoolhouse, democracy in America will vanish.

Proposes both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Straddles multiple subject areas, including political philosophy, political history, democratization, and populism.

This edited volume offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the historical role of radical journalism, its present iterations, and plans for the future of a journalism that is committed to liberatory movements and politics. At a time of profound crisis and stagnation for mainstream journalism, radical journalism seems to be riding a wave. New outlets, including those – like Jacobin – with a global reach, have sprung up, presenting a new generation of unapologetically progressive publications with an emancipatory agenda. Understanding the role and place of radical journalism becomes even more urgent given the current political climate in a (post) pandemic world with heightened inequalities and intensified pauperisation. Drawing on contributions from leading academics, this collection considers: • How new outlets fit in the genealogy of (radical) journalism and what their flourishing can tell us about the present and future of emancipatory politics and the role of the radical journalist; • What these new forms and publications mean for mainstream journalism and its persisting problems of financial sustainability and professional journalistic labour; • Important challenges presented by, for example, the resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism and the mainstreaming of the far right; • Essential questions of what radical journalism looks like today, what forms it takes or should take, and what its future might be. Radical Journalism is recommended reading for advanced students and journalists working at the intersection of journalism, politics, and sociology.

The European Union is often attacked for its 'democratic deficit', namely its deficiencies in representation, transparency and accountability, as well as its lack of popular support. Can these shortcomings be counteracted by the development of a viable European public sphere? This book assesses the possible formation of a communicative space that might enable and engender the creation of a transnational or a supranational public. The contributors consider the EU's democratic credentials and how well it communicates, and they also evaluate the major institutions and their links to general publics. The European Union and the Public Sphere emphasizes a 'deliberative democratic' perspective on the public sphere, addressing some key questions: * What are the prospects for a European public sphere? * Should we think in terms of the EU having a single public sphere, or are overlapping public spheres a more viable option? * What do this book's findings on the question of the public sphere tell us about the EU as a political entity? Students and scholars of European democracy, political communication, and the politics of institutions will all be greatly interested by this book.

WHAT SHOULD THE LEFT AIM TO ACHIEVE TODAY? This book addresses the challenges facing socialists and the recent shift from protest to politics. It examines the limits and possibilities for class, party and state transformation and the democratic and socialist insurgencies inside the Labour Party in Britain, and the Democratic Party in the USA. One of the most unexpected aspects of politics today is the coming to the fore of socialists at leadership level in the British Labour Party and the US Democratic Party. Their class-focused political discourse is directed against the power of capitalists, corporations and banks - and against the state policies which reflect and sustain that power. This is more than mere left populism - the focus is on addressing the dynamics, structure, inequalities, and contradictions in capitalism, confronting ruling class privilege and power, and the systemic core of neoliberal globalization. There is a new will: to build the power, cohesion, and capacities of the working class; to struggle for broader and deeper reforms. New socialist movements know that they must offer systematic political education to realise their great potential, and to overcome the barriers that they face. The authors provide essential historical, theoretical and critical perspective. They stress the need for renewing working-class politics through new kinds of socialist parties.

Like all professions, diplomacy has spawned its own specialized terminology, and it is this lexicon which provides A Dictionary of Diplomacy's thematic spine. However, the dictionary also includes entries on legal terms, political events, international organizations and major figures who have occupied the diplomatic scene or have written influentially about it over the last half millennium. All students of diplomacy and related subjects and especially junior members of the many diplomatic services of the world will find this book indispensable.

The war on drugs has opened up a discussion on whether Mexico is living a state of exception or even becoming a failed state. This book argues that sovereign exceptionality has always been central to Mexican modernity. The question is how to understand the way the sovereign exception has worked and continues to work in cultural, historical, and institutional terms since this holds the key to understanding the nature of contemporary democracy. Each chapter of "The Mexican Exception" examines an event or particular historical sequence that sheds light on the relation between culture, sovereign exceptionality, and the political. Drawing on literature, photography, critical theory, and the history of social movements and state formation, "The Mexican Exception" proposes a partial history of the state of exception by examining the electoral stand-off of 2006; Zapatismo past and present; the humanist representation of history; sovereignty and "caciquismo"; popular culture and the figure of the rogue; the events and political imagination of 1968; the 'dirty war' of the 1970's and the militarization of the social sphere in recent decades. In this book Williams maps out political and cultural counter-genealogies in order to shed light on the workings of the constitutive couple of democracy (equality and freedom) in modern and contemporary Mexico.

Struggling for Recognition posits that the drive for personal recognition is a prime motivation behind the pursuit of democracy. The book presents an alternative to the theories of social and political changes that fail to test the causal assumption they make about human psychology. The theory presented underscores a fundamental aspect of human nature: the pursuit of recognition, that is, the drive for positive self-esteem and status and the aversion of negative self-esteem and subordination. This pursuit of recognition becomes the impetus for action and is used to overcome fear as well as rational costs and benefits calculations involved in collective action. The book examines the mechanisms by which this disposition is triggered and converted into political pressures that eventually lead to democratic reforms. Struggling for Recognition will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in political science, including those researching social movements, social change, democracy, and democratic transitions. A unique multidisciplinary work, it will foster better understanding of key political events such as democratic transitions.

This book examines the struggle over public education in mid-twentieth century America through the lens of a joint biography of these two extraordinary women, Heffernan, the California Commissioner of Rural and Elementary Education between 1926 and 1965, and Seeds, the Director of the University Elementary school at UCLA between 1925 and 1957.

Venezuela's most important political figure of the twentieth century, and probably its most important since Simon Bolivar, is the subject of this volume of interviews and letters. Romulo Betancourt helped to form Venezuela's historic Accion Democratica group, twice served as his country's president, and in his many years in exile worked to inform the world about the political crises and dictatorships that plagued Venezuela. The material in this book covers more than three decades of exchanges between Betancourt and Robert Alexander, presenting details of Betancourt's career and the evolution of his thinking.

The material begins with Alexander's first meeting with Betancourt, in 1948, and continues up until the political leader's death forty years later. The interviews and personal exchanges, which Alexander transcribed from notes immediately following each meeting, focus largely on issues and events contemporary to the time of the conversations. In later years, however, when Alexander was compiling a biography of Betancourt, the conversations are directed toward the leader's earlier career, and provide an overview of the events and ideas that shaped Venezuela's political destiny. The letters from Betancourt are reproduced in full, and follow the same pattern of addressing contemporary and, later, biographical issues. This collection will serve as a complementary volume to Robert Alexander's two previous works on Romulo Betancourt, and will be an important resource for courses on the history, politics, and economic development of Latin America and Venezuela. Both public and academic libraries will also find it to be a valuable addition to their collections.

This book provides the first attempt to synthesise what is a pervasive phenomenon, and one that is mentioned tangentially in many political analyses, but nowhere receives the systematic and theoretical treatment that its significance to the working of 'democratic' political practice deserves. It will thus be a volume that should interest a range of scholars in government and political theory, in comparative politics and communications.

Major changes in citizenship and democracy have taken place in Scandinavia within the last two decades. Participation in conventional forms of politics has declined markedly, and political parties and trade unions are being questioned. Instead, Scandinavians are turning towards single issue participation and "small democracy" in the workplace or in public sector service institutions. This book deals with the details of these processes and in particular how they have affected political participation, identity, and social polarization.

The European Union is often attacked for its 'democratic deficit', namely its deficiencies in representation, transparency and accountability, as well as its lack of popular support. Can these shortcomings be counteracted by the development of a viable European public sphere?

This book assesses the possible formation of a communicative space that might enable and engender the creation of a transnational or a supranational public. The contributors consider the EU's democratic credentials and how well it communicates, and they also evaluate the major institutions and their links to general publics.

The European Union and the Public Sphere emphasizes a 'deliberative democratic' perspective on the public sphere, addressing some key questions:

- What are the prospects for a European public sphere?
- Should we think in terms of the EU having a single public sphere, or are overlapping public spheres a more viable option?
- What do this book's findings on the question of the public sphere tell us about the EU as a political entity?

Students and scholars of European democracy, political communication, and the politics of institutions will all be greatly interested by this book.

Mary P. Follett (1868-1933) brought new dimensions to the theory and practice of management and was one of America's preeminent thinkers about democracy and social organization. The ideas Follett developed in the early twentieth century continue even today to challenge thinking about business and civic concerns. This book, the first biography of Follett, illuminates the life of this intriguing woman and reveals how she developed her farsighted theories about the organization of human relations. Out of twenty years of civic work in Boston's immigrant neighborhoods, Follett developed ideas about the group basis of democracy and the foundations of social interaction that placed her among leading progressive intellectuals. Later in her career, she delivered influential lectures on business management that form the basis of our contemporary discourse about collaborative leadership, worker empowerment, self-managed teams, conflict resolution, the value of inclusivity and diversity, and corporate social responsibility.

This book explores how democracy has developed in Chile since the end of the military dictatorship in 1990. It brings together an examination of international influences on the country's political development with empirically based analyses of Chilean political institutions and change. Chapters one and two examine international aspects of the 1973 coup and how these influenced the development of politics inside Chile. Chapters three, four, and five provide empirical analyses of the 1989, 1993, and 1999/2000 presidential elections, respectively. Chapter six investigates how the Pinochet factor influenced developments after 1990 and the Chilean reaction to Pinochet's arrest in London in 1998. Chapter seven assesses changes in the Chilean party system and links these to similar processes elsewhere. The final chapter examines the paradox that despite economic and social advances, opinion polls report a low level of attachment to democracy and very low levels of confidence in political institutions.

This book looks at various aspects of electoral history in Europe and Latin America, from the late 17th century to 1930, including electoral culture and traditions, electoral participation, electoral fraud, the role of elections in the process of nation-building, and the role of important institutions, such as the Church, in shaping political values and therefore electoral behaviour. There are chapters devoted to the individual experiences of England, Mexico, Ecuador, Ireland, Germany, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Spain.

Drawing on political, legal, national, post-national, as well as American and European perspectives, this collection of essays offers a diverse and balanced discussion of the current arguments concerning deliberative democracy. Its contributions' focus on discontent, provide a critical assessment of the benefits of deliberation and also respond to the strongest criticisms of the idea of democratic deliberation. The essays consider the three basic questions of why, how and where to deliberate democratically. This book will be of value not only to political and democratic theorists, but also to legal philosophers and constitutional theorists, and all those interested in the legitimacy of decision-making in national and post-national pluralistic polities.