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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political science & theory
In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill
approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the
most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating
the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and
inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil
and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely
because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this
bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his
incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently
declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony
collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that
spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the
developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist
system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal
extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of
Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.
Turkey's Difficult Journey to Democracy provides a thorough
examination of the evolution of Turkey's democracy to the present
day. After the Second World War, Turkey was considered to have made
a highly successful transition from a single party authoritarian
state to political competition. Yet, within ten years, Turkey had
experienced its first military intervention. During the next forty
years, the country vacillated between democratic openings and
direct or indirect military interventions. The ascendance in the
importance of questions of economic prosperity has helped the
deepening and maturing of Turkish democracy, but some impediments
persist to produce malfunctions in the operation of a fully
democratic system. Through studying the Turkish experience of
democratization, Turkey's Difficult Journey to Democracy seeks to
provide understanding of the challenges countries that are trying
to become democracies encounter in this process. Oxford Studies in
Democratization is a series for scholars and students of
comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate
on the comparative study of the democratization process that
accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The
geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the
Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in
Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior
Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
With pervasive use of mobile devices and social media, there is a
constant tension between the promise of new forms of social
engagement and the threat of misuse and misappropriation, or the
risk of harm and harassment. Negotiating Digital Citizenship
explores the diversity of experiences that define digital
citizenship. These range from democratic movements that advocate
social change via social media platforms to the realities of online
abuse, racial or sexual intolerance, harassment and stalking. Young
people, educators, social service providers and government
authorities have become increasingly enlisted in a new push to
define and perform 'good' digital citizenship, yet there is little
consensus on what this term really means and sparse analysis of the
vested interests that drive its definition. The chapters probe the
idea of digital citizenship, map its use among policy makers,
educators, and activists, and identify avenues for putting the
concept to use in improving the digital environments and digitally
enabled tenets of contemporary social life. The components of
digital citizenship are dissected through questions of control over
our online environments, the varieties of contest and activism and
possibilities of digital culture and creativity.
Rhetoric, Humor, and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen
Colbert investigates classical and contemporary understandings of
satire, parody, and irony, and how these genres function within a
deliberative democracy. Elizabeth Benacka examines the rhetorical
history, theorization, and practice of humor spanning from ancient
Greece and Rome to the contemporary United States. In particular,
this book focuses on the contemporary work of Stephen Colbert and
his parody of a conservative media pundit, analyzing how his humor
took place in front of an uninitiated audience and ridiculed a
variety of problems and controversies threatening American
democracy. Ultimately, Benacka emphasizes the importance of humor
as a discourse capable of calling forth a group of engaged citizens
and a source of civic education in contemporary society.
'Any student undertaking a politics degree at graduate level will
find this book an indispensible introduction to the subject they
are approaching and it will also be useful for teachers seeking to
orientate themselves within the discipline as a whole. This is
particularly true because of the supporting detail the book
provides and the way it links up technical exposition to
fundamental philosophical questions. From a student point of view
it does not shrink from providing useful practical tips on how to
present and publish research results and how to check out
established themes with new data. This is a book which political
scientists at all levels will benefit from reading. It should also
stimulate them to take a fresh look both at their own work and that
of others - and - who knows? - perhaps forge some of that unity
across the discipline which is the main subject of its discussion.'
- Colin Hay, University of Sheffield, UK and L'Institut d'Etudes
Politiques at Sciences Po, France 'This Handbook provides the most
comprehensive and up-to-date account of the current state of
empirical-analytical political science. The contributions share a
systemic and multi-layered approach combining political actors,
organizations, and institutions. In addition, types of data and
data collection as well as advanced types of data analysis are
described and explained. Finally, much can be learned about the
evaluation of research output and publication strategies. The
editors have motivated a stellar set of 40 authors to contribute to
the 33 chapters of the Handbook. The index makes it easy to
navigate the vast ocean of results and ideas. The Handbook is a
''must have'' for scholars interested in what political science can
contribute to reliably answer the most important questions facing
the complex world of politics today.' - Hans-Dieter Klingemann,
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (Berlin Social Science Center), Germany
This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art
research methods and applications currently in use in political
science. It combines theory and methodology (qualitative and
quantitative), and offers insights into the major approaches and
their roots in the philosophy of scientific knowledge. Including a
comprehensive discussion of the relevance of a host of digital data
sources, plus the dos and don'ts of data collection in general, the
book also explains how to use diverse research tools and highlights
when and how to apply these techniques. With wide-ranging coverage
of general political science topics and systemic approaches to
politics, the editors showcase research methods that can be used at
the micro, meso and macro levels. Chapters explore applied and
fundamental knowledge, approaches and their usefulness,
meta-theoretical issues, and the art and practice of undertaking
research. This highly accessible book provides hands-on information
on research topics and methods, and offers the reader extensive
bibliographies for in-depth exploration of cutting edge techniques.
Finally, it discusses the relevance of political science research,
as well as the art of publishing, reporting and submitting your
research findings. An essential tool for researchers in political
science, public administration and international relations, this
book will be an important reference for academics and students
employing research methods and techniques across the social
sciences, including sociology, anthropology and communication
studies.
The first sweeping, legacy-defining history of the entire Obama
presidency. Finalist of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Biography
& Autobiography by the Association of American Publishers In
The Black President, the first interpretative, grand-narrative
history of Barack Obama's presidency in its entirety, Claude A.
Clegg III situates the former president in his dynamic,
inspirational, yet contentious political context. He captures the
America that made Obama's White House years possible, while
insightfully rendering the America that resolutely resisted the
idea of a Black chief executive, thus making conceivable the ascent
of the most unlikely of his successors. In elucidating the Obama
moment in American politics and culture, this book is also, at its
core, a sweeping exploration of the Obama presidency's historical
environment, impact, and meaning for African Americans-the tens of
millions of people from every walk of life who collectively were
his staunchest group of supporters and who most starkly experienced
both the euphoric triumphs and dispiriting shortcomings of his
years in office. In Obama's own words, his White House years were
"the best of times and worst of times" for Black America. Clegg is
vitally concerned with the veracity of this claim, along with how
Obama engaged the aspirations, struggles, and disappointments of
his most loyal constituency and how representative segments of
Black America engaged, experienced, and interpreted his historic
presidency. Clegg draws on an expansive archive of materials,
including government records and reports, interviews, speeches,
memoirs, and insider accounts, in order to examine Obama's
complicated upbringing and early political ambitions, his delicate
navigation of matters of race, the nature and impacts of his
administration's policies and politics, the inspired but also
carefully choreographed symbolism of his presidency (and Michelle
Obama's role), and the spectrum of allies and enemies that he made
along the way. The successes and the aspirations of the Obama era,
Clegg argues, are explicitly connected to our current racist, toxic
political discourse. Combining lively prose with a balanced,
nonpartisan portrait of Obama's successes and failures, The Black
President will be required reading not only for historians,
politics junkies, and Obama fans but also for anyone seeking to
understand America's contemporary struggles with inequality,
prejudice, and fear.
Drawing on a decade of their own research from the 2000 to 2012
U.S. presidential elections, Renita Coleman and Denis Wu explore
the image presentation of political candidates and its influence at
both aggregate and individual levels. When facing complex political
decisions, voters often rely on gut feelings and first impressions
but then endeavor to come up with a "rational" reason to justify
their actions. Image and Emotion in Voter Decisions: The Affect
Agenda examines how and why voters make the decisions they do by
examining the influence of the media's coverage of politicians'
images. Topics include the role of visual and verbal cues in
communicating affective information, the influence of demographics
on affective agenda setting, whether positive or negative tone is
more powerful, and the role of emotion in second-level agenda
setting. Image and Emotion in Voter Decisions will challenge
readers to think critically about political information processing
and a new way of systematically thinking about agenda setting in
elections.
Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince remains an influential book more
than five centuries after he wrote his timeless classic. However,
the political philosophy expressed by Machiavelli in his tome is
often misunderstood. Although he thought humans to be rational,
self-interested creatures, and even though he proposed an approach
to politics in which the ends justify the means, Machiavelli was
not, as some have argued, simply "a teacher of evil." The Prince's
many ancient and medieval examples, while relevant to sixteenth
century readers, are lost on most of today's students of
Machiavelli. Examples from modern films and television programs,
which are more familiar and understandable to contemporary readers,
provide a better way to accurately teach Machiavelli's lessons.
Indeed, modern media, such as Breaking Bad, The Godfather, The
Walking Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, House of Cards, Argo, and The
Departed, are replete with illustrations that teach Machiavelli's
critical principles, including the need to caress or annihilate,
learning "how not to be good," why it is better to be feared than
loved, and how to act as both the lion and the fox. Modern media
are used in this book to exemplify the tactics Machiavelli
advocated and to comprehensively demonstrate that Machiavelli
intended for government actors and those exercising power in other
contexts to fight for a greater good and strive to achieve glory.
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