Using a range of critical perspectives, On the Question of Truth in the Era of Trump closely examines notions of "truth in crisis" leading up to and after the election of Donald Trump. The authors explore how truth is constructed along the lines of race, social class, and gender as filtered through the self-referential characteristics of social media in particular. The authors assert that the US left has shown itself inadequate to the task of confronting right wing ideologies, which have only intensified since the 2016 election, resulting in increased mobilization of white supremacist and nationalist groups. Whether underestimating Trump by downplaying the threat of his candidacy during the primaries, trivializing the concerns of women and minorities as "identity politics," or rushing to prioritize the free speech rights of the far-right, left academics and the media have found themselves unable to use their traditional arsenal of evidence, rational discourse, and appeals to diversity of viewpoints. The authors assert that political resistance to the right is not a matter of playful use of signs and symbols or discourse alone and has to be fought directly and in solidarity. At this point, it is clear that Trump and his supporters have not just deployed relativism as a form of strategy, but have fully weaponized it against their perceived enemies: women, immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ people along with educational, scientific, and journalistic institutions. It is hoped that this in-depth, critical dissection of truth in the current political reality will assist in the project of resistance. Contributors are: Faith Agostinone-Wilson, Mike Cole, Jeremy T. Godwin, Jones Irwin, Austin Pickup, Daniel Ian Rubin, and Eric C. Sheffield.

This landmark work surveys the major factors that influence voting behavior in Japan. It is the first comprehensive study of the Japanese voter to be written for English-speaking audiences. It is commonly believed that Japanese voting behavior cannot be compared to voting behavior in the West because it is not determined by the same kinds of group loyalties, interests, and attitudes but rather by unique patterns of personalistic networks and group mobilization. However this book demonstrates through a wide range of examples that there are recognizable bases of comparison between Japanese and Western voting behavior. It also produces a number of fascinating contrasts with voting in the West, because Japan is different, even if it is not unique. Thus we learn about the relative absence of economic voting, the weak role of the media, the continuing importance of cultural values, the enormous stability in voting patterns, and the effects of the unusual Japanese electoral system. Drawing on data from the 1950s onward, the book includes coverage of the most recent national elections in Japan.

In this important and timely volume, Dennis W. Johnson has assembled an outstanding team of political scientists and political professionals to examine one of the fiercest and most closely fought presidential elections of our time. Like its predecessor, Campaigning for President 2008, Campaigning for President 2012: Strategy and Tactics focuses on political management. It is written by both elections/campaign scholars and practitioners, who highlight the role of political consultants and campaigns while also emphasizing the strategy and tactics employed by the candidates, the national political parties, and outside interests. The contributors explore the general mood of the electorate in the 2012 election, the challenges Obama faced after his first term, the primaries, money, communication, the important issues of the election, and finally the election itself.

In this important and timely volume, Dennis W. Johnson has assembled an outstanding team of political scientists and political professionals to examine one of the fiercest and most closely fought presidential elections of our time. Like its predecessor, Campaigning for President 2008, Campaigning for President 2012: Strategy and Tactics focuses on political management. It is written by both elections/campaign scholars and practitioners, who highlight the role of political consultants and campaigns while also emphasizing the strategy and tactics employed by the candidates, the national political parties, and outside interests. The contributors explore the general mood of the electorate in the 2012 election, the challenges Obama faced after his first term, the primaries, money, communication, the important issues of the election, and finally the election itself.

This study examines the peculiar role and history of the New Hampshire primary in American presidential politics, through the 1996 election season. The work reviews the primary's history, analyzes the media's treatment of New Hampshire results, and provides a study of the phenomenon of "momentum," and the role played by local media such as the infamous Manchester Union Leader. There is also an examination of the strained relationship between New Hampshire's state parties and their national equivalents and of the efforts of Congress to reform the entire electoral system, with the express purpose of reducing New Hampshire's supposed power in determining nomination outcomes. Finally, the analysis addresses questions of the Granite State's suitability as a benchmark for testing and judging candidates. Is this tiny New England state "the last haven" for genuine interpersonal campaigning or a relic from a bygone political era which now distorts and oversimplifies candidate choice? And does the New Hampshire primary's increasing unpopularity with journalists and candidates reflect deeper changes in the nation's psyche? This book will be of interest to scholars and students of the American political process and 20th-century American history.

The vice presidency is the second highest office to which an American can be elected. This office should be an ideal place to launch a campaign to capture the presidency, yet only two incumbent vice presidents have thus far been able to win the ultimate prize. Vance Kincade analyzes this dilemma and offers some answers to why vice presidents have difficulties gaining credibility to pursue the presidency and why Vice Presidents John C. Breckinridge, Richard Nixon, and Hubert Humphrey each failed in their campaigns for the presidency.

Kincade's primary focus is on the two vice presidents who ascended to the presidency, Martin Van Buren and George Bush. He explores how these two were able to avoid the dilemma that baffled the others. Was it something in their backgrounds that brought success? Was it serving as vice president under Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan that helped turn the trick? Could their successes be seen as fulfilling an historical cycle that found Van Buren and Bush in the right place at the right time? In the last section of this intriguing study, Kincade uses political science models to explain their victories and offers a guide to future vice presidents who attempt to join the exclusive club of vice presidents to reach the presidency. Scholars, students, and the general public interested in American political history and the presidency will find this study of particular value.

An examination of the political participation of the six member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia paying particular attention to the popular demands within these countries for individual representation and the subsequent consequences of the establishment of national councils in response. The results of these actions have been mixed; in Kuwait and Bahrain the elected national assemblies have been suspended although the consultative councils in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman have afforded some measure of success. It concludes that despite their limitations, the national councils have performed a number of functions including state legitimation, legislative review, government accountability and the legitimation of minority political participation.

In The Gun Gap, Mark R. Joslyn advances gun owners as a new classification for understanding political behavior and attitudes. He demonstrates a "gun gap," which captures the differences between gun owners and non-gun owners, and shows how this gap improves conventional behavioral and attitudinal models. The gap represents an important explanation for voter choice, voter turnout, perceptions of personal and public safety, preferences for gun control policies, and support for the death penalty. Moreover, the 2016 presidential election witnessed the largest recorded gun gap in history. The Gun Gap thus affords a new and compelling vantage point to evaluate modern mass politics.

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What happened in Florida after the 2000 presidential election brought out the ugliest side of American politics. Now acclaimed journalist Jake Tapper takes us deep inside the post-Election Day vote-trolling and the battle for the presidency of the United States in a book that reveals, once and for all, what actually happened, who got away with what, and how both sides—Democrats and Republicans—plotted to steal the presidency.

Down & Dirty explains exactly how the Bush forces out-maneuvered the Gore team, from the courtrooms to the canvassing boards, from the press rooms to the corridors of the legislature. Tapper paints vivid portraits of the major players—Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Sanders Sauls, David Boies, Bill Daley, Jim Baker, Phil Beck, supreme court justices, local judges, lawyers, pols, spinners, activists, and voters—drawing upon exclusive insider information and interviews. He reveals shocking details about what happened behind closed doors, what deals were cut and who did what. And he gives us wickedly perceptive insight into the two men at the center of it all: Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Like a master detective, Tapper has pieced together the clues, followed up every lead, and kept going until he reached the dark heart of an American mystery. Anyone who thinks they know what really happened in Florida should prepare to be surprised. It is a landmark in investigative reporting and a book that will change forever the way we look at our president and our political process. Down & Dirty reads like a classic political thriller, with an ultimate revelation that hits with the power of a lightning bolt, and every word is true.

The first book-long analysis of the 'mediatization of politics', this volume aims to understand the transformations of the relationship between media and politics in recent decades, and explores how growing media autonomy, journalistic framing, media populism and new media technologies affect democratic processes.

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aA must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of law and politics. . . . [Hasenas] is an important framework against which election law scholars will react and upon which they will build for some time to come.a
--"Michigan Law Review"

"Hasen wrote this concise but substantive volume to assess the history, at least since 1901, of the Supreme Court's intervention in the political process."
--"The Law and Politics Book Review"

"A major contribution to the field of election law."
--Thomas E. Mann, The Brookings Institution

In the first comprehensive study of election law since the Supreme Court decided "Bush v. Gore," Richard L. Hasen rethinks the Court's role in regulating elections. Drawing on the case files of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist courts, Hasen roots the Court's intervention in political process cases to the landmark 1962 case, Baker v. Carr. The case opened the courts to a variety of election law disputes, to the point that the courts now control and direct major aspects of the American electoral process.

The Supreme Court does have a crucial role to play in protecting a socially constructed "core" of political equality principles, contends Hasen, but it should leave contested questions of political equality to the political process itself. Under this standard, many of the Court's most important election law cases from Baker to Bush have been wrongly decided.

Are American political parties really in decay? Have American voters really given up on the major parties? Taking issue with widely accepted theories of dealignment and party decay, Paulson argues that the most profound realignment in American history occurred in the 1960s, and he presents an alternative theory of realignment and party revival.

In the 1964-1972 period, factional struggles within the major American political parties were resolved, with conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats emerging as the majority factions within their parties. The result was a critical realignment in Presidential elections, in which the decisive realignment involved the movement of white voters in the south toward the Republican coalition. The impression of dealignment came from the fact that electoral change in Congressional elections moved at a much slower rate. The south continued to vote Democratic for congress, usually for incumbent conservative Democrats. The result was an electoral environment which produced divided government. Secular realignment in congressional elections produced the Republican majorities of 1994. Now the conservative Democrats who were the swing voters since the 1960s, were voting Republican. The result is that the coalitions for yet another realignment are in place at the turn of the twenty-first century. After three decades in which the swing voters were relatively conservative, the new swing voter is a genuine centrist; an independent who is ideologically moderate. The coming realignment, Paulson asserts, will consummate the birth of a new, ideologically, polarized party system with a greater potential for party government, which would be a fundamental change for American democracy. A major resource for scholars, students, and other researchers interested in American parties and elections.

This examination of the role of gender stereotyping in media coverage of executive elections uses nine case studies from around the world to provide a unique comparative perspective. In recent years, more and more high-profile women candidates have been running for executive office in democracies all around the world. Cracking the Highest Glass Ceiling: A Global Comparison of Women's Campaigns for Executive Office is the first study to undertake an international comparison of women's campaigns for highest office and to identify the commonalities among them. For example, women candidates often begin as front-runners as the idea of a woman president captures the public imagination, followed by a decline in popularity as stereotypes and gendered media coverage kick in to erode the woman's perceived credibility as a national leader. On the basis of nine international case studies of recent campaigns written by thirteen country specialists, the volume develops an overarching framework which explores how gender stereotypes shape the course and outcome of women's campaigns in the male-dominated worlds of executive elections in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Australasia. This comparative approach allows the authors to discriminate between the contingent effects of a particular candidate or national culture and the universal operation of gender stereotyping. Case studies include the campaigns for executive office of Hillary Rodham Clinton (United States, 2008), Sarah Palin (United States, 2008), Angela Merkel (Germany, 2005 and 2009), Ségolène Royal (France, 2007), Helen Clark (New Zealand, 1996-2008), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (Argentina, 2007), Michelle Bachelet (Chile, 2006), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia, 2005), and Irene Sáez (Venezuela, 1998).

Debate on public issues--and where candidates stand on them-- have traditionally represented the focal point of presidential campaigns. In recent decades, however, rather than asking where candidates stand on the issues, the public increasingly wants to know who they are. The issue of character has thus come to dominate presidential elections.

While there is increasing public awareness that the psychology, judgment, and leadership qualities of presidential candidates count, the basis on which these judgments should made remains unclear. Does it matter that Gary Hart changed his name or had an affair? Should Ed Muskie's loss of composure while defending his wife during a campaign speech, or Thomas Eagleton's hospitalization for depression, have counted against them?

Looking back over the past 25 years, Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst, provides the first comprehensive accounting of how character has become an increasingly important issue in a presidential campaign. He traces two related but distinctive approaches to the issue of presidential character and psychology. The first concerns the mental health of our candidates and presidents. Are they emotionally and personally stable? Is their temperament suitable for the presidency? The second concerns character. Is the candidate honest? Does he possess the necessary judgment and motivation to deal with the tremendous responsibilities and pressures of the office?

Drawing on his clinical and political science training, Renshon has devised a theory which will allow the public to better evaluate presidential candidates. Why are honesty, integrity, and personal ideals so important in judging candidates? Is personal and political ambition necessarily a bad trait? Do extra-marital affairs really matter? Finally, and most importantly, how can the public tell whether a candidate's leadership will be enhanced or impeded by aspects of his personality?

With this sweeping volume, Stanley Renshon has provided us with the most comprehensive account to date of how the public judges, and should judge, our future presidents.

This book, the last work of an eminent political scientist, is an innovative study of persuasion in a landmark political event: the 1787-88 campaign to ratify the United States Constitution. William Riker uses both historical and rational choice analysis to examine the rhetoric and strategic manipulations used in this campaign, and he points out patterns and principles that should be applicable to political campaigns in general. Riker examines the campaign's rhetoric and derives strategic principles that seem to guide campaigners. These principles explain, among other things, the frequent reliance on negative themes in campaigns. He also investigates what he calls "heresthetic" - how campaigners structured situations so that their preferred outcome was more likely to occur. He discusses several heresthetical maneuvers that made the Federalists' narrow victory possible, such as their proposal of a constitution that was broader than most citizens would have preferred, and their design of the ratification process as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, so that they could prevent any ratifying state from altering it. Riker concludes by examining the relationship between rhetoric and heresthetic. He shows that both were necessary for the Federalist victory: rhetoric, to build support for Federalist positions, and heresthetic, to structure the choice process so that this level of support would be sufficient. His analysis yields a new understanding of the ratification campaign, and the tools and approaches he develops lead toward the further development of the science of political campaigns, of political rhetoric generally, and of the art and science of heresthetic.

This timely study examines the increasing importance of the Sunbelt and its megastates--Florida, California, and Texas--in the U.S. election process. The purpose of the work is to provide a longitudinal analysis of partisan and gender election success and incumbency in the elections of 1986, 1988, 1992, and the realignment of 1994 (bringing up to date some of the classic studies from the 1970s and 1980s). In tracing the pattern of partisan success, the effect of incumbency, and the success of males and females in each party, the author is able to project the likely success of the two parties in the 1996 and subsequent elections in each megastate. This important election-year book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of politics.

Democracy is on the run, and elected governments are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. Legislatures are increasingly seen as unrepresentative. To give legitimacy to democratic government, experts argue that we need more democracy and more opportunities for direct citizen participation. Representative democracy needs to be complemented by forms of direct engagement, such as referendums, popular votes, the recall, citizens' juries, eDemocracy, etc. This is what we term Complementary Democracy. In this book experts from the worlds of practice and theory come together to explain - and occasionally critique - these complements to representative democracy. The volume provides an invaluable starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the new directions of democratic governance, and hopes to inspire those who seek to build stronger democracies.

The debate between the promotion of personal interest and the general good of society has engaged political, social, and ethical theorists throughout history, and this volume addresses the topic of the Israeli electoral process within that theoretical framework. Abraham Diskin's analysis of the voting process in Israel involves a definition of its ideological basis, profiles of voting constituents, an outline of prominent political issues, as well as recommendations for needed reform within the system.

Introductory material lays the foundation for the study by establishing as a point of departure the concept that democracy and its reliance on elections provides a viable answer to the basic social dilemma of self-interest versus the public good. An historical review that identifies how elections have reflected changes within Israel from 1949 to 1988 follows. Voting procedures and results, polling accuracy, and a close look at the significance of the Jewish ethnic and Arab votes (and the nature of the conflicts that have resulted) are the primary concerns of the text. This approach yields an evaluation of the Israeli electoral process that demonstrates the extent to which it succeeds in the exercise of democracy and thereby may help to outline a method of analysis for other voting systems as they search for constructive solutions to the social dilemma.

This study examines how the Electoral College actually works, how it is supposed to work, and how it might be reformed. Robert Hardaway first looks at the Constitutional Convention, the Twelfth Amendment, and historical elections where the Electoral College has come into play, providing the historical background to the present-day College. Next he examines the electors themselves--how they are chosen in the states and the laws relating to the obligations of electors in casting their votes. The election of the president and vice president by the House of Representatives is also examined. Finally, Hardaway discusses and analyzes the proposed reforms to the Electoral College, including those before the Congress at present. Professor Hardaway's book makes a strong case for the preservation of the federalist principles incorporated into the constitutional framers' plan for election of the president of the United States. The book richly documents its case with examples from past elections, while at the same time providing the reader with all information needed to make an independent judgment.

Can electoral and parliamentary arenas be used toward revolutionary ends? This is precisely the question that held Lenin's attention from 1905 to 1917, leading him to conclude that they could-and would. This book explores the time in which Lenin initiated his use of the electorate, beginning with the Marxist roots of Lenin's politics, and then details his efforts to lead the deputies of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the First and Second State Dumas, concluding with Russia's first experiment in representative democracy from 1906 to 1907. During this time, Lenin had to address issues such as whether to boycott or participate in undemocratic elections, how to conduct election campaigns, whether to enter into electoral blocs and the related lesser of two evils dilemma, how to keep deputies accountable to the party, and how to balance electoral politics with armed struggle. Lenin later said that the lessons of that work were 'indispensable' for Bolshevik success in 1917, which means that this detailed analysis of that period is crucial to any thorough understanding of Leninism.

Analyzes the communication processes in direct democratic campaigns and their effect on the opinion formation of the voters. Based on a detailed analysis of the politicians' strategies, media coverage and the opinion formation of the public in three campaigns, this book argues that the campaigns are more enlightening than manipulating.