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.

Anger is a powerful mobilizing force in American politics on both sides of the political aisle, but does it motivate all groups equally? This book offers a new conceptualization of anger as a political resource that mobilizes black and white Americans differentially to exacerbate political inequality. Drawing on survey data from the last forty years, experiments, and rhetoric analysis, Phoenix finds that - from Reagan to Trump - black Americans register significantly less anger than their white counterparts and that anger (in contrast to pride) has a weaker mobilizing effect on their political participation. The book examines both the causes of this and the consequences. Pointing to black Americans' tempered expectations of politics and the stigmas associated with black anger, it shows how race and lived experience moderate the emergence of emotions and their impact on behavior. The book makes multiple theoretical contributions and offers important practical insights for political strategy.

This book analyzes both local and national House and Senate campaigns in the 2016 election to reveal how distinctive campaign dynamics have a collective national impact. Featuring detailed case studies of ten competitive House races and twelve high-profile U.S. Senate campaigns, the volume provides a deep analysis of campaign dynamics and the polarizing effects of the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. These studies are contextualized by four thematic chapters that cover the most salient talking points of the 2016 elections, including voter registration laws and congressional candidates' use of Twitter. As penetrating as it is comprehensive, this volume provides readers with a fuller understanding of the divided landscape of contemporary American political campaigns.

This book calls for new attention to non-traditional forms of emancipatory tactics and welcomes to the fold all manner of ‘everyday’ expressions of anti-authoritarianism. Capitalism has taken the mask off. Elites feel less obliged to pursue strategies of popular legitimization. The traditional institutions of representative democracies are thus hollowing out and stand before us corrupted and broken. In this milieu, the prospects for a democratic entering of the state are seen as increasingly fantastical, and the Left is advised instead to adopt a more tactical posture. These expressions can run the gamut, from the more obviously theatrical antics of ‘The Yes Men’ to those of ‘black bloc,’ and other direct-action militant groups, already well-known from their interventions in the cities of Berkeley and Charlottesville. This volume addresses this problem via the concept of tactics. The point is less to prescribe an ideal range of tactics but rather to consider a broader range of resistances—from the struggles of indigenous peoples to those who seek refuge from gender or citizenship-based discrimination to those who seek to defend “black lives” from militarized policing. Tactics and Emancipation in the Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism will be a beneficial read for students and scholars of Critical Political Science, International Relations, and International Political Economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of New Political Science.

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

Why do people living in different areas vote in different ways? Why does this change over time? How do people talk about politics with friends and neighbours, and with what effect? Does the geography of well-being influence the geography of party support? Do parties try to talk to all voters
at election time, or are they interested only in the views of a small number of voters living in a small number of seats? Is electoral participation in decline, and how does the geography of the vote affect this? How can a party win a majority of seats in Parliament without a majority of votes in
the country? Putting Voters in their Place explores these questions by placing the analysis of electoral behaviour into its geographical context. Using information from the latest elections, including the 2005 General Election, the book shows how both voters and parties are affected by, and seek to
influence, both national and local forces. Trends are set in the context of the latest research and scholarship on electoral behaviour. The book also reports on new research findings.

In politics, there are no prizes for second place. Luckily, seasoned campaign professionals Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield have distilled successful electoral tactics from around the globe into 101 bite-sized lessons to help steer you on the course to power. Learn how to pass the three-seconds test, why you should actually embrace online trolls, and why you must never, ever, forget the law of the left nostril. Packed with advice and practical tips, this new, fully updated third edition of the classic political guide reveals the insider secrets and skills you need to make sure you're in pole position on election day.

This Handbook analyzes elections in the Middle East and North Africa and seeks to overcome normative assumptions about the linkage between democracy and elections. Structured around five main themes, contributors provide chapters detailing how their case studies illustrate specific themes within individual country settings. Authors disentangle the various aspects informing elections as a process in the Middle East by taking into account the different contexts where the electoral contest occurs and placing these into a broader comparative context. The findings from this Handbook connect with global electoral developments, empirically demonstrating that there is very little that is “exceptional” about the Middle East and North Africa when it comes to electoral contests. Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine all aspects related to elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Through such comprehensive coverage and systematic analysis, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in politics, elections, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

This book examines the populist communication of mainstream parties in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain. For a long time, populist and radical right parties have been the main subject of investigation in academic research. Yet, how mainstream parties react to the rise of such actors is less known. Scholars assume a "populist Zeitgeist", a populist contagion claiming that the political mainstream actively engages in populist and nativist discourses. The author tests this widespread assumption analyzing whether center-left and center-right mainstream parties adopt populist messages, as well as content related to the leftist and right-wing host ideologies of populist actors. Therefore, this book is a must-read for scholars, students, and researchers of political science and electoral studies, as well as policy-makers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of populism and populist communication.

Once a prominent feature of most theories on the structure and function of political systems, in recent years, social class or status has become one of the most neglected variables in research on contemporary American politics. This study analyzes the relationship between social status and referendum voting in an effort to refocus attention on social stratification in political science.

What happens when the President of the United States engages in criminal activity? He runs for re-election. Donald Trump's campaign chairman went to jail. So did his personal lawyer. His long-time political consigliere was convicted of serious federal crimes, and his National Security Advisor pleaded guilty to several more. Multiple Russian spies were indicted in absentia. Career intelligence agents and military officers were alarmed enough by his actions as President that they alerted senior government officials and ignited the impeachment process. Yet despite all this, a years-long inquiry led by Robert Mueller, and the third Presidential impeachment trial in American history, Donald Trump survived to run for presidency again. Why? Jeffrey Toobin's highly entertaining, definitive account of the Mueller investigation and the impeachment of the President takes readers behind the scenes of the epic legal and political struggle to call Trump to account for his misdeeds. Toobin recounts the mind-boggling twists and turns in the case - Trump's son met with a Russian operative promising Kremlin support; Trump paid a porn star $130,000 to hush up an affair; Rudy Giuliani and a pair of shady Ukrainian-American businessmen got the Justice Department to look at Russian-created conspiracy theories. Toobin shows how Trump's canny lawyers used Mueller's famous integrity against him, and how Trump's bullying and bluster cowed Republican legislators into ignoring the clear evidence of the impeachment hearings. Based on dozens of interviews with prosecutors in Mueller's office, Trump's legal team, Congressional investigators, White House staffers, and several of the key players, including some who are now in prison, True Crimes and Misdemeanours is a revelatory narrative that makes sense of the seemingly endless chaos of the Trump years. Filled with never-before-reported details of the high-stakes legal battles and political machinations, the book weaves a tale of a rogue President guilty of historic misconduct, and how he got away with it.

The revised 2nd edition of this successful textbook explores Japanese politics in the postwar era from theoretical and comparative perspectives. After providing historical context, it offers an in-depth exploration of postwar political institutions, political reform in the 1990s, the policymaking process, and the politics of economic growth and stagnation. By delving into Japan's international relations, the book sheds light on Japan's security and foreign policies, and Japan's role in Asia. The textbook concludes by addressing what has changed since party alternation in 2009, the triple disaster in March 2011 and the global Covid pandemic. Themes and questions addressed throughout the text include: How and why did Japan modernize so successfully when so many other countries fell prey to colonialism and authoritarianism? What explains the Japanese economic miracle and its subsequent economic stagnation? What accounts for Japan's successful democratization? In the international realm, why has Japan achieved economic superpower status without achieving political superpower status? What is the future trajectory of Japanese politics? Connecting Japan to larger themes in comparative politics and linking Japan's history, institutions, policymaking process, and international relations to experiences and structures in other countries, this book is essential reading for students of Japanese or Asian Politics.

The new biography of President Joe Biden by National Book Award winner and New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos - A Financial Times, Guardian and Daily Express Book of the Year 'A thoroughly readable primer' Guardian 'Biden has overcome unimaginable tribulation, multiple presidential primary humiliations, a potentially crippling speech impediment and his own mediocrity. Now he carries the hopes of billions upon his shoulders' Sunday Times President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest - fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses that he has suffered. Yet even as Biden's life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors and reversals of fortune. His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship - an essential quality as he addresses a nation at its most dire hour in decades. Blending up-close journalism and broader context, Evan Osnos illuminates Biden's life and captures the characters and meaning of an extraordinary presidential election. He draws on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of progressive activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members. In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy - a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.

This collection examines the continuities and changes that have set the Dominican political system apart from its Latin American counterparts over the last couple of decades. Whereas traditional political parties have lost support throughout Latin America, and electoral systems have devolved into illiberal democracies, Dominican democracy remains flawed but vibrant with a popular embrace of party politics. Across eight chapters a collection of subject experts argue that the Dominican case offers valuable lessons to understand that even though traditional political parties are endangered throughout the region, they are not going anywhere. The book analyzes topics including electoral politics, the quality of Dominican democracy, political parties, corruption, relations with Haiti and the United States, migration, the Dominican diaspora, gender and politics, social movements, and civil participation and citizenship, to reveal how the Dominican case proves that traditional political parties can adapt in order to survive, turning themselves into major sources of patronage, appealing to personalistic politics, and tinkering with the constitution in order to stay relevant. Dominican Politics in the Twenty First Century will be a vital resource for understanding contemporary Dominican politics. It will appeal to political scientists, Latin Americanists, and students of democracy, comparative politics, and electoral politics in general.

Is the European Union still a viable project? The last few years have been difficult both economically and politically, while its integrative function and legitimacy have been seriously tested. For many social, economic and geo-political reasons, its expansionary moment has stopped abruptly. On the contrary, the Greek economic crisis and the Brexit referendum have raised the spectre of fragmentation and political disintegration. The promise of the EU as a possible model for legitimate governance beyond the nation state lies somewhat in tatters. Even if the EU may indeed survive most of its current crises, is the project of a EU as a normative project beyond rescue? Ever since Maastricht, the democratic legitimacy of the EU has been a key concern of policy makers, citizens and academics alike. This issue is essentially a normative one, and over the same period our work in this area has been at the forefront in exploring what has come to be known (following an early working paper we wrote with this title in 2000) 'the normative turn in EU studies'. The debate on the democratic form and legitimacy of the EU is one that has gone on for some time and to which we, together with other scholars, have tried to contribute in the course of the last twenty years or so. Collecting articles written over the course of this period is not just meant as the testimony of an intellectual journey, but also a way of tracing such a journey in retrospect and mapping the important moments of the intellectual and scholarly debates that have contributed to shaping both our understanding and our expectations of the EU's possible futures.

What is 'the American Dream, ' and why is it ubiquitous in today's political rhetoric? In this thought-provoking book, Ghosh analyzes the integral role of the American Dream in contemporary American politics. He argues that the Dream's central political function is its ability to offer a politics of democratic inclusion that traces a middle ground between multiculturalism and state-neutrality. One compelling reason for the popularity of the concept is that its roots can be traced back to the primordial values of the nation: work, virtue, and happiness. Political elites across the ideological spectrum refer to the Dream in their appeals, but Ghosh concludes that in doing so they rely on very different interpretations of the Dream's basic tenets. Clear and evocative, The Politics of the American Dream is essential reading for both scholars and observers of contemporary American political culture.

The 1987 election, which returned Mrs Thatcher for a record-breaking third term, was notable for a new level of campaigning professionalism. This book, the thirteenth in a series that has covered every election since the Second World War, examines in detail the nature of the Conservative victory, with its roots in recent history and social changes, but depending to the end on argument and presentation. The authors explore the way in which the party system adapted itself to and blunted the renewed Alliance challenge; the way in which the Labour party picked itself up from the disaster of 1983 to put on a brilliant but ultimately unsuccessful campaign; and the way in which Mrs Thatcher steered herself and her party back onto a winning course after the Westland disaster. The book describes how the Labour party adopted a modern communications strategy to promote Mr Kinnock and it examines the secret battle for control of the Conservative campaign between different groups and advertising agencies. The authors have been given exceptional access to persons and papers.

"A tremendous work of synthesis."
-- "H-Net Reviews"

"A well-written, clearly organized synthesis of the data and interpretations of participatory decline."
--"American Historical Review"

Public involvement in the electoral process has all but disappeared. Not since World War I has even half the electorate cast ballots in an off-year election. Even at the presidential level, voting has plummeted dismally. Nonvoting is, quite simply, systemic in American politics.

It was not always this way. With the integration of America's mass electorate into the electoral system in the 1830s, eligible voters were intensely participatory and remained highly mobilized throughout the nineteenth century. The turning point in American politics came during the first two decades of this century when, from unmatched heights in the 1890s, voter turnouts fell repeatedly election after election.

Examining mass political behavior in twenty successive national elections, Why America Stopped Voting is the first work to combine political analysis with social analysis, resulting in a truly interdisciplinary book that places electoral participation within the larger context of American culture and society. A milestone in the evolution of our understanding of electoral politics, Why America Stopped Voting shows that the enduring decline of voter mobilization was gradual, rather than drastic and not attributable to particular political events or simply the notion that "a happy citizenry is politically apathetic." Rather, Kornbluh shows that fundamental social changes that restructured virtually every aspect of American life at the turn of the century were at the heart of the decline in voterparticipation.

Vast fortunes grew out of the party system during the Gilded Age. In New York, party leaders experimented with novel ways to accumulate capital for political competition and personal business. Partisans established banks. They drove a speculative frenzy in finance, real estate, and railroads. And they built empires that stretched from mining to steamboats, and from liquor distilleries to newspapers. Control over political property-party organizations, public charters, taxpayer subsidies, and political offices-served to form governing coalitions, and to mobilize voting blocs. In Electoral Capitalism, Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer reappraises the controversy over wealth inequality, and why this period was so combustible. As ranks of the dispossessed swelled, an outpouring of claims transformed the old spoils system into relief for the politically connected poor. A vibrant but scorned culture of petty officeholding thus emerged. By the turn of the century, an upsurge of grassroots protest sought to dislodge political bosses from their apex by severing the link between party and capital. Examining New York, and its outsized role in national affairs, Broxmeyer demonstrates that electoral capitalism was a category of entrepreneurship in which the capture of public office and the accumulation of wealth were mutually reinforcing. The book uncovers hidden economic ties that wove together presidents, senators, and mayors with business allies, spoilsmen, and voters. Today, great political fortunes have dramatically returned. As current public debates invite parallels with the Gilded Age, Broxmeyer offers historical and theoretical tools to make sense of how politics begets wealth.

As standard bearer of the Progressive Party in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt played to enthusiastic crowds wherever he traveled. When he was targeted by an assassin while campaigning for president, a bullet passed through the speech in his breast pocket-pages that he then held aloft while assuring the crowd "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose . . . and you cannot escape listening to this speech "

This first full edition of his campaign speeches takes readers on the stump from New England to California, collecting thirty-five texts largely overlooked since they were first delivered. They offer a more nuanced picture of his third-party candidacy than has ever existed, providing a companion to Lewis Gould's recent Four Hats in the Ring and shedding new light on both the Progressive movement and the dynamics of an extraordinary campaign that changed American politics forever.

Culled from nation-wide newspaper archives, these speeches show TR at his most radical. He echoes the missionary spirit of the Progressives as they challenged partisan orthodoxy, advocating for "the plain people, for their right to rule, and for their duty to secure for themselves and for others social and industrial justice." All over the country, he speaks out on government regulation of business, social justice, the role of the president, the place of reform in national politics, and of course his differences with Woodrow Wilson.

Given the wide availability of Wilson's speeches, having Roosevelt's available makes the study of the 1912 campaign more meaningful-not only the debate between the New Nationalism and the New Freedom but also differences on such issues as tariffs and campaign contributions. These texts also reveal how Roosevelt massaged Wilson's words to serve his own polemical purposes.

"We do not propose to do anything that will interfere with prosperity," proclaimed Roosevelt, "but we want it passed around"; and these speeches show that, even in a new century, his words are as relevant as ever.

Although democracy is, in principle, the antithesis of dynastic rule, families with multiple members in elective office continue to be common around the world. In most democracies, the proportion of such "democratic dynasties" declines over time, and rarely exceeds ten percent of all legislators. Japan is a startling exception, with over a quarter of all legislators in recent years being dynastic. In Dynasties and Democracy, Daniel M. Smith sets out to explain when and why dynasties persist in democracies, and why their numbers are only now beginning to wane in Japan-questions that have long perplexed regional experts. Smith introduces a compelling comparative theory to explain variation in the presence of dynasties across democracies and political parties. Drawing on extensive legislator-level data from twelve democracies and detailed candidate-level data from Japan, he examines the inherited advantage that members of dynasties reap throughout their political careers-from candidate selection, to election, to promotion into cabinet. Smith shows how the nature and extent of this advantage, as well as its consequences for representation, vary significantly with the institutional context of electoral rules and features of party organization. His findings extend far beyond Japan, shedding light on the causes and consequences of dynastic politics for democracies around the world.

This book tackles the 2014 European Parliamentary election as an event, phenomenon and process from an interdisciplinary but coherent perspective. This edited volume includes research by prestigious academics from the former communist countries in question, all of which have only recently become EU members. The contributors consider whether there is a crisis of Euroscepticism, or, for that matter, extremism of any kind in each country discussed. In doing so, the volume seeks to analyse the future of the European Union itself. It will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in elections and voting behaviour, comparative European politics, and political communication.

The implications of the personalization of politics are necessarily widespread and can be found across many different aspects of contemporary democracies. Personalization should influence the way campaigns are waged, how voters determine their preferences, how officials (e.g., MPs) and institutions (e.g., legislatures and governments) function, and the place and operations of political parties in democratic life. However, in an effort to quantify the precise degree of personalization over time and to uncover the various causes of personalization, the existing literature has paid little attention to many of the important questions regarding the consequences of personalization. While the chapters throughout this volume certainly document the extent of personalization, they also seek to address some fundamental questions about the nature of personalization, how it is manifested, and its consequences for political parties, governance, representation, and the state of democracy more generally. Indeed, one of the primary objectives of this volume is to speak to a very broad audience about the implications of personalization. Those interested in election campaigns, voting, gender, governance, legislative behaviour, and political parties will all find something of value in the contributions that follow.

This book focuses on the varied support for the populist radical right in the Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Despite many common characteristics, right-wing populist parties have historically been more successful in the Netherlands and Flanders than in Luxembourg and Wallonia. This book argues that the variation in the success of right-wing populist parties depends to a large extent on the way in which they are perceived and received in a given polity. In the Netherlands and Flanders, mainstream parties and the media have contributed to politicising issues pertaining to immigration and national identity, thereby tilling the field for the populist radical right. In Luxembourg and Wallonia, mainstream parties and the media have resolutely limited the opportunities for right-wing populist challengers to influence the public debate. This volume will be of interest to practitioners as well as students and scholars of party politics, the media, the populist radical right and the Benelux region.

Bernie Sanders is one of the most influential figures of our time, a politician who inspires fervent love and, even among his enemies, a measure of grudging respect-yet we know comparatively little about this famously private left-wing firebrand. Now, Ari Rabin-Havt, a trusted Sanders aide, is able to take us where no press features or televised interviews have been able to go. The Fighting Soul is a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Sanders's meteoric 2020 campaign for president-from the first campaign meeting in Rabin-Havt's living room, to Sanders's heart attack and the end of the campaign as the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world-that deepens into an unforgettable portrait of Sanders. Rabin-Havt unfolds the history that drives his deep ideological commitments to the working class, his views of his young supporters, his sense of humour, which few outside his immediate circle ever witness, and the role his wife, Jane, plays in his success. In the tradition of What It Takes and other exuberant works of American political writing, The Fighting Soul shows the making of the rare politician motivated by principle, not power.