Splitsville USA argues that it’s time for us to break up to save representative democracy, proposing a mutually negotiated, peaceful dissolution of the current United States of America into several new nations. Zurn begins by examining the United States’ democratic predicament, a road most likely headed for electoral authoritarianism, with distinct possibilities of ungovernability and violent civil strife. Unlike others who share this diagnosis, Zurn presents a realistic picture of how we can get to reform and what it would involve. It is argued that "Splitsville" represents the most plausible way for American citizens to continue living under a republican form of government. Despite recent talk of secession and civil war, this book offers the most extensive treatment yet of the issues we need to think through to enable a peacefully negotiated political divorce. Splitsville USA is a provocative conversation opener about the problems that have gotten us into our current political pickle and how to get out of it by seizing the reins of our own constitutional destiny. The book will appeal to readers of political science, American politics, history, political philosophy, and law, along with all general readers interested in the future of democracy in the United States.

In developing democracies, political parties built around charismatic personalities, coupled with populist campaigns, often ascend to power. This tactic has long been effective in Latin America, and has resulted in parties that rely heavily on personalistic appeals and vote-buying. The predominant view is that ethnic parties are an exception to this rule; they behave differently from traditional populist parties by attracting voters based on the expectation that they will create policies to provide for the groups that they represent. In Candidate Matters: A Study of Ethnic Parties, Campaigns, and Elections in Latin America, Karleen Jones West shows that under certain conditions, niche parties-such as ethnic parties-are not that different from their mainstream counterparts. Through a detailed examination of the Pachakutik party in Ecuador, she shows that the characteristics of individual candidates campaigning in their districts shapes party behavior. Ethnic parties that are initially programmatic can become personalistic and clientelistic because vote-buying is an effective strategy in rural indigenous areas, and because candidates with strong reputations and access to resources can create winning campaigns that buy votes and capitalize on candidates' personal appeal. Why do niche parties in developing democracies struggle to maintain programmatic and meaningful platforms? West argues that when candidates' legislative campaigns are personalistic and clientelistic in their districts, niche parties are unable to maintain unified programmatic support. By combining in-depth fieldwork on legislative campaigns in Ecuador with the statistical analyses of electoral results and public opinion, she demonstrates the importance of candidates and their districts for how niche parties compete, win, and become influential in developing democracies.

Taking Our Country Back presents the previously untold history of the uptake of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than fifty political staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 primaries and general election, and archival research, Daniel Kreiss shows how a group of young, technically-skilled internet staffers came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in organization, tools, and practice that have changed the campaign game. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency. In revealing this history, the book provides a rich empirical look at the communication tools, practices, and infrastructure that shape contemporary online campaigning. Through a detailed history of new media and political campaigning, Taking Our Country Back contributes to an interdisciplinary body of scholarship from communication, sociology, and political science. The book theorizes processes of innovation in online electoral politics and gives readers a new understanding of how the internet and its use by the Dean campaign have fundamentally changed the field of political campaigning. Kreiss shows how these innovations, exemplified by the Dean and Obama campaigns, were the product of the movement of staffers between industries and within organizational structures. Such movement provided a space for technical development and incentives for experimentation. Taking Our Country Back is a serious and vital analysis, both on-the-ground and theoretical, of how a small group of internet staffers transformed what campaigning means today and how cultural work mobilizes and motivates supporters to participate in collective action.

Even as more and more communications avenues open up, are Americans losing their political IQ? Some democratic theorists bemoan citizen apathy, ignorance, and incapacity to make sound political judgments. Renowned media scholar Doris Graber contends that such assessments are based on impractical and outmoded models of measuring citizen awareness and engagement. Using what she calls "reality-based " research methods and a sensitivity to contemporary trends, Graber finds that average people understand many political issues and can think about them in complex ways. She reports her new research on learning from entertainment offerings, emphasizing its novel aspects, including experiments, interviews, message board analyses, and stimulus dramas. The book includes companion studies carried out in the Netherlands and Greece designed to test whether the American findings are culture-specific or hold true across cultural settings. A capstone reflection by a communications authority, On Media offers new approaches to timeworn topics and projects an emerging image of public political knowledge that is at once encouraging, inspirational, and fascinating in its contour and detail.

This book offers the first comparative monograph on the management of elections. The book defines electoral management as a new, inter-disciplinary area and advances a realist sociological approach to study it. A series of new, original frameworks are introduced, including the PROSeS framework, which can be used by academics and practitioners around the world to evaluate electoral management quality. A networked governance approach is also introduced to understand the full range of collaborative actors involved in delivering elections, including civil society and the international community. Finally, the book evaluates some of the policy instruments used to improve the integrity of elections, including voter registration reform, training and the funding of elections. Extensive mixed methods are used throughout including thematic analysis of interviews, (auto-)ethnography, comparative historical analysis and, cross-national and national surveys of electoral officials. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners interested and involved in electoral integrity and elections, and more broadly to comparative politics, public administration, international relations and democracy studies. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138682412_oachapter01.pdf Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138682412_oachapter04.pdf

This book analyzes how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organizations into the digital world. The authors present an innovative empirical exploration of the democratic consequences and technical challenges of the digitalization of party organizations from a comparative perspective. They provide an original account of how party digital platforms are regulated and used, and a crucial discussion of the main technological and democratic issues that political parties face in their digital transition. Further, the authors assess the consequences of these digitalization processes for political participation and party membership, as well as the impact on party organizational models and electoral campaign potential. The book looks into one of the less-studied aspects of digital democracy, also presenting empirical evidence and case studies. It presents different parties and their adoption of digital participation platforms, from the Pirate Parties in Northern Europe to Podemos in Spain, La France Insoumise in France, the Five Stars Movement in Italy, or the German Greens. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars of political science, policy-makers, and practitioners, interested in a better understanding of the transition of political parties into the digital world.

The use of referendums around the world has grown remarkably in the past thirty years and, in particular, referendums are today deployed more than ever in the settlement of constitutional questions, even in countries with little or no tradition of direct democracy. This is the first book by a constitutional theorist to address the implications of this development for constitutional democracy in a globalizing age, when many of the older certainties surrounding sovereignty and constitutional authority are coming under scrutiny. The book identifies four substantive constitutional processes where the referendum is regularly used today: the founding of new states; the creation or amendment of constitutions; the establishment of complex new models of sub-state autonomy, particularly in multinational states; and the transfer of sovereign powers from European states to the European Union. The book, as a study in constitutional theory, addresses the challenges this phenomenon poses not only for particular constitutional orders, which are typically structured around a representative model of democracy, but for constitutional theory more broadly. The main theoretical focus of the book is the relationship between the referendum and democracy. It addresses the standard criticisms which the referendum is subjected to by democratic theorists and deploys both civic republican theory and the recent turn in deliberative democracy to ask whether by good process-design the constitutional referendum is capable of facilitating the engagement of citizens in deliberative acts of constitution-making. With the referendum firmly established as a fixture of contemporary constitutionalism, the book addresses the key question for constitutional theorists and practitioners of how might its operation be made more democratic in age of constitutional transformation.

In May 2019, Narendra Modi won the world's largest election. Defying expectations, he led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a resounding victory, with the highest vote share for any party in thirty years, and was re-elected as India's Prime Minister. What accounts for the scale of Modi's win? Why, despite economic hardship and social strife, did Indians vote so overwhelmingly for him and the BJP? This book explains the economic, social and cultural processes that shaped political passions in India during the spring and summer of 2019. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a stellar team of economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and geographers to explain Modi's win. Together, the contributors compel us to take seriously the 'structures of feeling' in politics. Love him or hate him, Modi secured for himself a decisive re-election as India's Prime Minister. Passionate politics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how that happened. -- .

America Afire is the powerful story of the election of 1800, arguably the most important election in America's history and certainly one of the most hotly disputed. Former allies Adams and Jefferson, president versus vice president, Federalist versus Republican, squared off in a vicious contest that resulted in broken friendships, scandals, riots, slander, and jailings in the fourth presidential election under the Constitution.

This edited volume maps the development of the use of political campaigning and marketing techniques in countries of the former Communist Bloc over the last thirty years. Focusing on the shift from propaganda to political marketing, and from manipulation to persuasion, the book consists of a series of case studies of countries in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and the Balkans that outline the history, development and current state of political marketing in each country. The authors explore political parties and their behaviour ahead of elections, and show the changes in political culture and practices that parties have undergone in order to create more or less successful campaigns.

New York Times bestselling author Newt Gingrich lays out the stakes of the 2020 elections and what the end results could mean for the future of American citizens. The 2020 election will be a decisive choice for America, especially as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis. Will the American people choose four more years of President Trump to lead us back to strong economic growth, a foreign and trade policy of putting American interests first, dismantling the deep state, and dramatically reforming the bureaucracies? Or will they reject Trumpism and elect the radical Democratic policies of big government, globalism, and socialist policies that Joe Biden represents? Not since the election of 1964 has the choice in an election been so stark. Trump and the American Future by Newt Gingrich will lay out the stakes of the 2020 election and provide a clarion call for all Americans on why it is vital to return President Trump to the White House for a second term. Featuring insights gleaned from the lifetime of experience and access only Newt Gingrich can bring, Trump and the American Future will be crucial reading for every citizen who wants to continue to make America great again.

Pay-to-Play Politics examines money and politics from different angles to understand a central paradox of American democracy: why, when the public and politicians decry money as the worst aspect of American politics, are there so few signs of change? Everyone from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz complains about the corrupting role of money and politics, but money is the lifeblood of their political survival. The public, too, deplores big money politics, despite regularly reelecting the richest candidates for office. The purpose of this book is to reconcile how—against many people's wishes—the connection between money and politics has come to define American democracy. Examining the issue from the perspective of the public, the courts, big business, Congress, and the presidency, Heath Brown argues that money can often be harmful to the political process, but not always in ways we expect or in ways we can directly observe. More money does not necessarily guarantee electoral, legislative, or executive victories, but money does greatly change political access, opportunity, and trust. Without a nuanced understanding of the nature of the problem, future reforms will be misguided and fruitless. Pay-to-Play Politics concludes by making concrete recommendations for reform, including feasible ways to reach bipartisan consensus.

The nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices has, in recent years, become a battleground like no other. Bruising Senate confirmation hearings for failed nominee Robert Bork and successful nominee Clarence Thomas left the reputation of all branches of government in disarray and the participants-and the nation-exhausted. The Senate's Constitutional prerogative to provide advice and consent to the President's nominations to the highest court in the land has given rise to political grandstanding and ideological battles. Less well known is how other players-interest groups, the news media, and, through their involvement, the general public-also affect the conduct and outcome of the Supreme Court nomination process. Electing Justice reveals how from the late 1960s on, the role of these other players grew in intensity to the point that the nomination process would be unrecognizable to its original devisers, the Framers of the Constitution. Over the past quarter century, live television coverage of Senate hearings, "murder boards" in preparation for those hearings, a flood of press releases, television and radio advertisements, and public opinion polls all characterize nominations. Unlike earlier, more elite-governed processes, the involvement of outside groups has become highly public and their effect on the outcome of some nominations is now widely accepted. How should we respond to this informal democratization of the selection process? The genie, Davis contends, cannot be put back into the bottle and we cannot return to a non-political, elite-driven ideal. Davis concludes with several controversial recommendations that preserve the public role while avoiding the excesses of past controversial nominations. By embracing the public's new role in the examination of nominees we can ensure a democratic process and secure an independent and accountable judicial branch.

This book focuses on the U.S. presidential election spectacle, from the primaries through to the November 2020 election and the subsequent events leading up to the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president. A follow-up to Political Marketing in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,it uniquely focuses on the political marketing and branding strategies of presidential candidates, with particular attention to how those strategies have changed since the 2016 election. The 2020 election was as much about a continuous strategy of targeting and maintaining voter enthusiasm as it was about swaying undecided voters in the electorate, distinguishing it from the horserace and implications of vote targeting in 2016. Donald Trump had a base of support that was unwavering. Likewise, Joe Biden and the Democrats counted on the same proportion of the electorate to vote against Trump. The election was also a harbinger of major new branding and marketing strategies, including innovative uses of social media and direct appeals to voters. This book presents diverse scholarly perspectives and research, with practitioner-relevant content on practices and discourses that will advance our current understandings of political marketing theories.

This book examines the structures and processes of political decision-making and governance in Nigeria. Since Nigeria returned to elected government in 1999, it has been observed that several factors account for the differences between the design of statutory structures and processes of political decision-making and how they operate in reality. In other words, there are wide gaps between statutes and practice of political decision-making. However, the nexus between the two remains largely understudied by political scientists. Instinctively, political scientists assume that informal influences in political decision-making are aberrations, episodic or temporary. This book is designed to interrogate the nexus between the formal and non-formal dimensions of the dynamics of political decision making in Nigeria and also provide evidence about the actual functioning of governmental structures in Nigeria. The thesis of the book is that the non-formal dimension of political decision making as evidenced in rising ethno-political patronages, religious sentiments, clientelism and factionalism, are interacting with formal decision-making structures in ways that largely undermine the latter and, by extension, the democratic system. The book pursues this thesis by examining the roles of actors and institutions including, electoral choices made by voters, legislations, which perhaps is the most fundamental form of political decision-making, policies made by the executive and administration, as well as decision making within political parties, since parties are sites for articulating and aggregating issues on which decisions are to be made.

This Handbook provides an overview of interdisciplinary research related to social choice and voting that is intended for a broad audience. Expert contributors from various fields present critical summaries of the existing literature, including intuitive explanations of technical terminology and well-known theorems, suggesting new directions for research. Each chapter presents an expository primer on a particular topic or theme within social choice, with the aim of making the material fully accessible to students and scholars in economics, political science, mathematics, philosophy, law and other fields of study. Topics covered include preference aggregation, voting rules, spatial models, methodology and empirical applications. Scholars, graduate students and even advanced undergraduates in a variety of disciplines will find this introductory and relatively non-technical book an indispensable addition to the field. Contributors: J.F. Adams, W.T. Bianco, A. Blais, P.J. Coughlin, K.L. Dougherty, D.S. Felsenthal, T.H. Hammond, C. Hare, J.C. Heckelman, R.G. Holcombe, C. Kam, M.M. Kaminski, M. Machover, B.C. McCannon, I. McLean, N.R. Miller, S. Moser, E.M. Penn, K.T. Poole, R. Ragan, D.G. Saari, I. Sened, R.A. Smyth, N. Tideman

This Handbook provides an overview of interdisciplinary research related to social choice and voting that is intended for a broad audience. Expert contributors from various fields present critical summaries of the existing literature, including intuitive explanations of technical terminology and well-known theorems, suggesting new directions for research. Each chapter presents an expository primer on a particular topic or theme within social choice, with the aim of making the material fully accessible to students and scholars in economics, political science, mathematics, philosophy, law and other fields of study. Topics covered include preference aggregation, voting rules, spatial models, methodology and empirical applications. Scholars, graduate students and even advanced undergraduates in a variety of disciplines will find this introductory and relatively non-technical book an indispensable addition to the field. Contributors: J.F. Adams, W.T. Bianco, A. Blais, P.J. Coughlin, K.L. Dougherty, D.S. Felsenthal, T.H. Hammond, C. Hare, J.C. Heckelman, R.G. Holcombe, C. Kam, M.M. Kaminski, M. Machover, B.C. McCannon, I. McLean, N.R. Miller, S. Moser, E.M. Penn, K.T. Poole, R. Ragan, D.G. Saari, I. Sened, R.A. Smyth, N. Tideman

Student political action has been a major and recurring feature of politics across the globe through the past century. Students have been involved in a full range of public issues, from anti-colonial movements, anti-war campaigns, civil rights and pro-democracy movements to campaigns against neoliberal policies, austerity, racism, misogyny and calls for climate change action. Yet student actions are frequently dismissed by political elites and others as 'adolescent mischief' or manipulation of young people by duplicitous adults. This occurs even as many working in governments, traditional media and educational organisations attempt to suppress student movements. Much of mainstream scholarly work has also deemed student politics as undeserving of intellectual attention. These three edited volumes of books help set the record straight. Written by scholars and activists from around the world, When Students Protest: Universities in the Global South is the second in a three-volume study that explores university student politics in the global south. The authors document and analyse how generations of university and college students in the Global South responded to issues such as problems in their own universities as well as standing up against violent military dictatorships, human rights abuses, oppressive poverty, foreign interference and the effects of neoliberal austerity regimes. Contributors to this this volume also reveal repeated moves by states and institutions to stigmatise and suppress student political action while highlighting how those students developed new kinds of political action further demonstrating why this rich and complex global phenomena is worthy of more attention.

Fifty years ago, academics and policymakers throughout the world agreed that it was impossible for certain sets of historically antagonistic groups to coexist peacefully on a long-term basis. This book examines the system of consociation, which was identified by Arend Lijphart and ended that pessimistic consensus. Lijphart's specific observations concerning the impact of consociation are assessed quantitatively and qualitatively, facilitated through careful operationalization of his descriptions of consociation's four components: grand coalition, minority veto, proportionality, and segmental autonomy. Insights derived from a dataset representing the experiences of eighty-eight countries are examined further through case study analysis of the seven societies most often discussed in relation to consociation: Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Switzerland. The components of consociation are found to promote lasting peace in divided societies most successfully when combined with additional incentives for the encouragement of cross-cutting cleavages and shared loyalties.

This book examines the effects of preferential voting on intraparty electoral competition and voting behavior. Using data covering 19 countries and over 200 elections, this study sheds light on a somewhat neglected aspect of electoral systems. The author demonstrates that the ability of voters to influence the selection and deselection of MPs under preferential voting systems is not as important as is often assumed. Instead, their ability to shape the election of a given candidate depends heavily on the balance between party power and voter power. In this way, this book advances the understanding of the effect of preferential voting on intra-party dynamics, parliamentary turnover, and voter behavior. Based on a rigorous, data-led methodological approach, the book contributes to both the theory and practice of the study of electoral systems, and should be read by scholars, students and practitioners interested in preferential voting systems.

A lively account of the general election of 2008 and of its profound significance for Italy and beyond. It gets to grips with the complexities of Italian politics in an exceptionally clear way. Covering the background to the election, the campaign, the parties, voting and the outcome, it is comprehensive in approach and tells a fascinating "story."

This book reveals the market research, strategy, branding and communication behind the unpredictable 2017 New Zealand election result which saw Jacinda Ardern elected Labour leader just 8 weeks before the election to become Prime Minister. Utilising rich data sources that include a 250,000 Vote Compass survey and interviews with key political advisors, it explores the alignment of the policy of National, Labour, the Greens and NZ First with party supporters, demographic segments and undecided voters. It also analyses the leadership communication and branding of the leaders Bill English, Jacinda Ardern and Andrew Little, as well as the advertising by minor parties ACT, the Greens, United Future and the Maori Party. The book provides advice for practitioners, such as: focus on being responsive, communicate delivery competence, differentiate in policy and advertising, build an energetic and charismatic leader brand and be flexible when planning.

This book explores the conflict between the Catalan project to become independent and the Spanish state's opposition to any attempt of secessionism. The volume addresses some of the key political and academic issues of contemporary European societies: nationalism, separatism and sovereignty. The banned referendum in Catalonia in October 2017 unveiled the existence of multiple crises, from territorial to economic and political. Indeed, the Catalan issue is about the crisis of sovereignty: who holds legitimacy to make decisions, and who is in power legally and politically? The book is structured according to three themes: sovereignty and its people, where the realignment to independence, populism and the definition of the demos are discussed; collective identities and actions, to account for the shaping of 'us', the importance of collective memory and the cross-alliances forged during the referendum; and internationalization, focusing on Europeanisation, international media and comparative constitutional perspectives.

Student political action has been a major and recurring feature of politics across the globe throughout the past century. Students have been involved in a full range of public issues, from anti-colonial movements, anti-war campaigns, civil rights and pro-democracy movements to campaigns against neoliberal policies, austerity, racism, misogyny and calls for climate change action. Yet their actions are frequently dismissed by political elites and others as 'adolescent mischief' or manipulation of young people by duplicitous adults. This occurs even as many working in governments, traditional media and educational organisations attempt to suppress student movements. Moreover, much of mainstream scholarly work has deemed student politics as unworthy of intellectual attention. These three edited volumes of books help set the record straight. Written by scholars and activists from around the world, When Students Protest: Universitiesin the Global North is the third in this three-volume study that explores university student politics in the global north. Authors explore university and college student political action, especially over the past decade. It is just over fifty years since May 1968 when student protests erupted at Universite Paris Nanterre in France and then spread across the globe. Contributors to this book demonstrate that despite repeated attempts by states, power elites and institutions to suppress and even criminalise student political action, student movements have always been part of the political landscape and remain a significant and potent source of political change and renewal.