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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes
The "sequel" to his best-selling Classes and Cultures, Ross
McKibbin's latest book is a powerful reinterpretation of British
politics in the first decades of universal suffrage. What did it
mean to be a "democratic society?" To what extent did voters make
up their own minds on politics or allow elites to do it for them?
Winner of the 2007 SANA Book Award Complete List of Authors: View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface. aLocal Democracy Under Siege argues persuasively that American
democracy is at a pivotal moment where the forces of exclusion and
the ideology of market rule contest with new forms of political
activism and engaged citizenship. Readers will see many of the same
issues that North Carolina faces in their own communities and will
take away new perspectives on power, race, class, and activism from
this cogent and timely analysis.a aProduces new insights into the amakeovera of local governmenta--"Choice" aDebates about democracy often get stuck at the national scale.
But the capacity for ordinary people to shape the conditions of
their lives through politics and public speech is often greatest at
the local level. This important book opens up anthropological
perspectives on how this happens. It situates the challenges of
local politics amid the constraints of neoliberalism, but also
reports on the creative solutions different communities have
developed to the distinctive problems they face.a aThis book opens up the crucial questions of what democracy
means in the U.S. today and the ways in which everyday Americans
struggle to make themselves heard. Conceptually, methodologically,
and theoretically this book realizes the potential for
anthropological analysis as a way tounderstand the dangers of
increasing inequality in the contemporary U.S. It is a major
contribution.a "A luminous work about everyday citizens that should free up
local democratic energies across the land!" "This unique study provides a vital enquiry into the troubled
times of local democracy and poses critical questions about its
future in the USA." aNicely illustrate the problems that plaue local
democracya What is the state of democracy at the turn of the 21st century? To answer this question, seven scholars lived for a year in five North Carolina communities. They observed public meetings of all sorts, had informal and formal interviews with people, and listened as people conversed with each other at bus stops and barber shops, soccer games and workplaces. Their collaborative ethnography allows us to understand how diverse members of a community-not just the elite-think about and experience "politics" in ways that include much more than merely voting. This book illustrates how the social and economic changes of the last three decades have made some new routes to active democratic participation possible while making others more difficult. Local Democracy Under Siege suggests how we can account for the current limitations of U.S. democracy and how remedies can be created that ensure more meaningful participation by a greater range of people. Complete List of Authors (pictured)
China is in the midst of dramatic economic and social reform--reform that may well suggest a long-term developmental trend toward modernization and democracy. This evolution in the structure of Chinese society means that the authoritarian social control system in China must change if loss of community ties, dislocation, and social disintegration are to be avoided in the coming years. This book provides a blueprint for the social architecture of China and offers an argument for how change in the essential structure of Chinese society must be implemented. Shaw's investigation of work units--the building blocks of contemporary China--pinpoints them as the primary sites of social control and as the most important components of any efforts at reform.
The term "intergovernmental relations" refers to the way in which the different spheres of a government hierarchy relate to each other. This concept is of vital importance where there is a division of power at both administrative and legal levels among different spheres of government. Intergovernmental relations in South Africa examines the South African government's quest to enhance effective and efficient service delivery to the people. Case studies are included in all chapters to provide a hands-on approach to relate theory to practice. This book discusses four distinct approaches to the subject: the constitutional/legal approach, the democratic approach, the financial approach and the normative/operational approach. It culminates in a delineation of practical steps for the promotion of well-grounded intergovernmental relations, sustainable capacity building and trustworthy political accountability. The book also focuses on intergovernmental relations network and cooperative governance in South Africa as well as governmental relations in the BRICS countries. Intergovernmental relations in South Africa is suitable not only for academics but also for practitioners in the fields of public administration and management, political sciences, social sciences, law and other related disciplines.
Citizens, political theorists, and politicians alike insist that political or partisan motives get in the way of real democracy. Real democracy, we are convinced, is embodied by an ability to form collective judgments in the interest of the whole. The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy: How Deliberative Ideals Undermine Democratic Politics, by Scott Welsh, argues instead that it is our easy rejection of political motives, individual interests, and the rhetorical pursuit of power that poses the greatest danger to democracy. Our rejection of politics understood as a rhetorical contest for power is dangerous because democracy ultimately rests upon the perceived public legitimacy of public, political challenges to authority and the subsequent reconstitution of authority amid the impossibility of collective judgment. Hence, rather than searching for allegedly more authentic democracy, rooted in the pursuit of ever-illusive collective judgments, we must find ways to come to terms with the persistence of rhetorical, political contests for power as the essence of democracy itself. Welsh argues that the impossibility of any kind of public judgment is the fact that democracy must face. Given the impossibility of public judgment, rhetorical competitions for political power are not merely poor substitutes for an allegedly more authentic democratic practice, but constitute the essence of democracy itself. The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy is an iconoclastic investigation of the democratic process and public discourse.
Parliamentary Democracy provides a comparative study of the parliamentary regimes since 1789. The book covers the road to parliamentarization of former constitutional monarchies and the creation of parliamentary regimes by exercising the constitution-making power of the people. What has been called democratization in most of the 'transitology' literature was until 1918 mostly only 'parliamentarization'. Democratization of the regimes frequently caused a certain destabilization of the parliamentary regimes by new parties and extremist movement entering the political arena. This is the first book to cover the entire range of parliamentary systems, including the semi-presidential systems.
The International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations in the 21st century. It seeks to secure the equal and effective enjoyment of human rights for the estimated 650 million persons with disabilities in the world. It does so by tailoring gerneral human rights norms to their circumstances. It reflects and advances the shift away from welfare to rights in the context of disability. The Convention itself represents a mix between non-discrimination and other substantive human rights and gives practical effect to the idea that all human rights are indivisible and interdependent. This collection of essays examines these developments from the global, European and Scandinavian perspectives and the challenge of transposing its provisions into national law. It marks the coming of age of disabilty as a core human rights concern.
How the Supreme Court's decision to treat unreasonable policing as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment has shortened the distance between life and death for Black people The summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality. Published on the second anniversary of the global protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law-and the U.S. Constitution-play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people. In this crucially timely book, celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct-more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process. Fourth Amendment law determines when and how the police can make arrests, and it determines the precarious line between stopping Black people and killing Black people. A leading light in the critical race studies movement, Carbado looks at how that text, in the last four decades, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect police officers, not African Americans; how it sanctions search and seizure as well as profiling; and how it has become, ultimately, an amendment of life and death. Accessible, radical, and essential reading, Unreasonable sheds light on a rarely understood dimension of today's most pressing issue.
Beginning in 1898, the United States won overseas colonies as the spoils of the Spanish-American War: Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba. Guam and Hawaii were also acquired in that year, and in 1917, the Danish Antilles became the United States Virgin Islands. The racial heritage of the territorial inhabitants paralled that of nonwhite groups in the United States: Native Americans, Africans, Asians, Hispanics, and mixed-race people. The nonwhite race of domestic and overseas colonial people established important links between American domestic racial policies and the racial policies and the racial dimension of American overseas colonies. This book is about these links, as shaped by the prevailing "racial tradition" and social structure in the United States itself. Crucial to examining these links is the little-known role of Booker T. Washington in shaping American overseas colonial policy. It is argued that following colonial acquisition at the turn of the century, the American "racial tradition" was exported to overseas territories, thereby largely determining colonial policy and administrative practices, the nature of social and racial conflict, and the direction and pace of political evolution in the territories.
Bringing to light a long-neglected aspect of Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy - the "ward republic" - Gary Hart here offers a wholly original blueprint for republican restoration in which every citizen can participate democratically in the governing of his or her own life. Of crucial relevance for contemporary society, including its startlingly prescient plan for homeland security, Restoration of the Republic provides original insights into issues of national urgency as well as the timeless questions that bedevil the American democratic experiment.
Phillips assesses prospects for post-national social coherence transcending the traditional nation-state, with a focus on events in Germany. European institutional integration has been seen as a stabilizing alternative to the nation-state system, a system that resulted in two devastating world wars. However, economic interests appear to have been more effective instruments of transnational integration in Europe. Further, until 1989, part of this alternative vision was a divided Germany. He explicitly links a focus upon the Federal Republic, central to post-Cold War Europe's future, with a study of private business, perhaps the most indispensable agent of Germany's post-1945 rehabilitation. Business support has been imperative to European integration. Nonetheless, if the European Union is attractive to members or potential members only for economic reasons, then no matter how wealthy its constituent parts may be, potential harmful effects of interstate competition will continue to pose a threat to social coherence of the EU, the Continent, and the world beyond. With the aid of analysis of companies largely perceived as being German, but which are increasingly transnational, Phillips shows how interdependent business needs may overcome nationalist and institutional conceptions in the transnational integration processes. For scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with European integration, international relations, and German Studies.
In the quarter century that has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, fanciful establishment intellectuals have advanced the idea that an "end of history" has somehow arrived. The model of "democratic capitalism" is said to be the final stage in the development of political economy. It is often suggested that it is simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up, and at that point the Western model will have achieved a final and eternal triumph. In this work, the anarchist philosopher Keith Preston expresses skepticism of these presumptions. Expounding upon the critique of modernity advanced by Friedrich Nietzsche well over a century ago, Preston argues that the historical cycle associated with the rise of modernity is winding down. The forces of globalism, liberalism, capitalism, democracy, and Americanization are closer to achieving universal hegemony than ever before. Yet Preston subjects all of these to relentless criticism, and challenges virtually every presumption of the present era's dominant ideological model. Drawing upon a wide range of ideological currents and intellectual influences, Preston observes how the hegemony of what he calls the "Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahhabist" axis is being challenged within the realm of international relations by both emerging blocks of rival states and insurgent non-state actors. Citing thinkers as diverse as Ernst Junger and Emma Goldman, Max Stirner and Alain de Benoist, Hans Hermann Hoppe and Kevin Carson, Preston offers an alternative vision of what the future of postmodern civilization might bring.
This collection examines the political themes and strategies utilized by candidate Bush in 1988 and President Bush in 1992, as told by the actual players as well as presidential and political scholars. Also considered are the role of the Vice President, the Cabinet, relations with Congress and the Supreme Court, the presidency and the media, and the role of the First Lady. This volume focuses on the political world inside the Bush White House. Domestic political actors and institutions such as the vice president, chief of staff, Congress, and the Supreme Court all interact to create a president's political world. In George Bush's inaugural speech he spoke of the keys to success, saying these ideas are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment. These themes are seen by many of the writers in the collection as characterizing the political world of George Bush. Equal consideration is given to the political themes and strategies utilized by candidate Bush in 1988 and President Bush in 1992. Also considered are the role of the Vice President, the Cabinet, relations with Congress and the Supreme Court, the presidency and the media, and the role of the First Lady. Essential reading for scholars and other researchers of the Bush presidency and American history of the late 1980s.
Colonial Women is the first comprehensive study to explore the interpenetrating discourses of gender and race in Stuart drama. Hutner argues that in drama, as in historical accounts, the symbol of the native woman is used to justify and promote the success of the English appropriation, commodification, and expoitaion of the New World and its native inhabitants, Hutner analyzes the figure of the native woman in the plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Davenant, Dryden, Behn and other playwrights, Furthermore, Hutner suggests that representation of native women function as a means of self-definition for the English, and the seduction of the native woman is, in this respect, a symbolic strategy to stabilize the turbulent sociopolitical and religious conflicts in Restoration England under the inclusive ideology of expansion and profit.
Few would disagree that since 1990 Sub-Saharan Africa has undergone a process of political transformation. Where one-party systems once stood, multi-parties are now dominant; where heads of state once ruled autocratically, open elections have emerged. In this study, both African and non-African scholars take a critical look at the evolution and contradictions of democratization in seven African nations: Malawi, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, and Gabon, each at a different stage in the democratization process. Some of these countries historically have not received much attention in North America. For example, little is known about Malawi, and Gabon has escaped notice outside the Francophone world. While other works have focused primarily upon the role that institutions have played in the democratization process, this study looks at individual leaders. Some of the authors were themselves participants in the reform movements in their home countries, and they examine the role that the military and the church played in the process. This volume also includes a discussion of why democratization has stagnated or been reversed in some nations.
The Fifth Amendment is typically equated in both popular and legal discourse with the privilege against self-incrimination. This concept, Garcia reminds us, represents an incomplete view of the amendment. Often forgotten are the other two criminal clauses embodied in the text of the amendment: the right to a grand jury indictment for a serious crime and the freedom from double jeopardy for the same offense. Garcia emphasizes the relationship among these criminal protections. Historical developments suggest that these seemingly disparate provisions have common threads: to provide constitutional protection for all trial-related rights. Underlying these constitutional provisions is the need to check the potential abuse of governmental power over the individual. Indeed, this theme permeated the historical backdrop to the Fifth Amendment. Finally, Garcia examples the practical ties of these clauses. The right to a grand jury indictment, the privilege against self-incrimination and the protection against double-jeopardy represent points in the continuum of the criminal justice process. An important resource for scholars and students involved with Amerian constitutional law, criminal justice, and criminology.
"An outstanding biography of the most unusual and controversial king of the 20th century. Highly recommended."--"CHOICE" "Vivid and atmospheric, but based on solid and scrupulous
research, this is an outstanding account of one of the most
intriguing figures in twentieth-century Balkan history.
Non-specialists will read it with pleasure and fascination, and
even specialists in Albanian history will find much to learn here
from Jason Tomes's marvelously lucid analysis of the politics and
diplomacy of the period." "Very well researched, critical yet balanced, this is the best
book about Zog to have appeared in any language." Shortly before 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 1, 1928, Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslim king: 32-year-old Zog I of the Albanians. Few foreign journalists were present in the Parliament House in Tirana to hear him swear his oath on the Koran and the Bible, yet the birth of the Kingdom of Albania--a native monarchy, not an alien imposition--did not go unnoticed abroad. King Zog (1895-1961) was a curiosity, and so he has remained: the most atypical European monarch of the twentieth century, a man entirely without royal connections who created his own kingdom. By contemporaries, he was variously labeled "the last ruler of romance," "an appalling gangster," "the modern Napoleon," "the finest patriot," and "frankly a cad." Even today his reputation is disputed, but Zog is undeniably one of the foremost figures in Albanian history. Though notorious for cut-throat political intrigue, he promised tobring order and progress to a land that had long known little of either. "It was I who made Albania," he claimed. Zog's reign ended in 1939; Italian Fascists forced him into exile and post-war Stalinists kept him there despite his best efforts to return. In this first full biography, Jason Tomes explores the reality behind the man described in "The Times" as "the bizarre King Zog" and shows him to have been the product of a unique time and place. Tomes invites readers to set aside their assumptions about modern European monarchy and meet a king who fired back at assassins and paid his bills with gold bullion.
This volume examines letters, newspaper articles, and eyewitness accounts from 1776-1794, documenting James Monroe's time in the Continental Army, in state and national government, and as an attorney, while also revealing aspects of his personal life. These rarely seen documents provide great insight into both Monroe's public activities and his private life. Read letters he wrote from the battlefield to George Washington. Better understand his political views by reading the correspondence he had with Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Read a letter Monroe wrote to his wife--the only letter he did not destroy after her death. This extraordinary collection is ideal for undergraduate students, as well as for scholars interested in learning more about James Monroe's personal life. |
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