This path-breaking text deals with the effects of federal civil rights legislation on the behavior and attitudes of the inhabitants of a single county in Mississippi--Panola County. These effects are examined in the three civil rights areas of voting, education, and economic opportunities. By using this smaller example, Frederick M. Wirt's broader interest is to show how legislation can be used to effect social change on a large scale.

The need to substitute empirical knowledge for abstract speculation motivates Wirt's study. Wirt restricts his study to one county but with conclusions on comparative studies that illumine the emerging political sociology of the South. The author sketches the historical setting of Panola County, emphasizing on the demographic, economic, and political developments in recent decades. He then examines what has actually happened in race relations as an effect of civil rights laws affecting votes, schools, and jobs.

Wirt utilizes documentary material from federal, state, and county sources; local newspapers; and records from business and other groups. But his closer understanding comes from personal interviews. Because federal law is the dynamic factor setting the social system in movement, the author explains the interactions between public opinion, the President, and the Congress, which in the end resulted in the laws on votes, schools, and jobs. He also deals with the differing machinery of sanctions and enforcement. Law has a huge effect on social change; and Wirt draws from his empirical study a systematic, inclusive statement of the factors affecting compliance with law, in conditions of conventional biases.

In contemporary life, the marketplace has emerged as an important arena for the practice of politics. Concerns about personal and family well-being as well as ethical or political assessment of favorable and unfavorable business and government practices become part and parcel of the marketplace of politics. This volume, now in paperback, describes this phenomenon as political consumerism, reflecting an understanding of politics as a product embedded in a complex social and normative context.

Politics, Products, and Markets is the first general study of political consumerism. It asks fundamental questions, including what is new and what is old about the phenomenon. The authors discuss the mediating role of political consumerism in the problematic relationship between markets and morality. They explore whether institutional arrangements have been developed to permit consumers and producers to assume ethical responsibility for their choices and behavior. They ask why political consumerism is presently on the rise. And they investigate the relationship between globalization and political consumerism. Part 1, "Making Money Morally," discusses how political consumerism challenges the perceived division between private interests pursued by private actors in the market and public interests pursued through political means. Part 2, "Consumer Choices and Setting of the Agenda of Politics," contains examples of how political consumerism sets the agenda of politics and discusses its democratic quality. Part 3, "Building Responsible Institutions in Multi-Risk Society," has as its central theme the development of new political consumer institutions. Part 4, "Politicizing Consumers and Change in Politics," studies the characteristics of political consumers and raises the question of whether political consumerism really is politics.

Michele Micheletti is associate professor of political science at Stockholm University, and former member of the SNS Democratic Audit.

Andreas Follesdal is professor of philosophy and director of research at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, and research professor at the ARENA research program on Europeanization of the Nation-State. He is a 2003 Fulbright New Century Scholar.

Dietlind Stolle is assistant professor in political science at McGill University in Montreal.

In contemporary life, the marketplace has emerged as an important arena for the practice of politics. Concerns about personal and family well-being as well as ethical or political assessment of favorable and unfavorable business and government practices become part and parcel of the marketplace of politics. This volume describes this phenomenon as political consumerism, reflecting an understanding of politics as a product embedded in a complex social and normative context. Politics, Products, and Markets is the first general study of political consumerism. It asks fundamental questions, including what is new and what is old about the phenomenon. The authors discuss the mediating role of political consumerism in the problematic relationship between markets and morality. They explore whether institutional arrangements have been developed to permit consumers and producers to assume ethical responsibility for their choices and behavior. They ask why political consumerism is presently on the rise. And they investigate the relationship between globalization and political consumerism. Part 1, "Making Money Morally," discusses how political consumerism challenges the perceived division between private interests pursued by private actors in the market and public interests pursued through political means. Part 2, "Consumer Choices and Setting of the Agenda of Politics," contains examples of how political consumerism sets the agenda of politics and discusses its democratic quality. Part 3, "Building Responsible Institutions in Multi-Risk Society," has as its central theme the development of new political consumer institutions. Part 4, "Politicizing Consumers and Change in Politics," studies the characteristics of political consumers and raises the question of whether political consumerism really is politics. This volume will be of interest to social scientists, social activists, and policy institutes.

This path-breaking text deals with the effects of federal civil rights legislation on the behavior and attitudes of the inhabitants of a single county in Mississippi--Panola County. These effects are examined in the three civil rights areas of voting, education, and economic opportunities. By using this smaller example, Frederick M. Wirt's broader interest is to show how legislation can be used to effect social change on a large scale. The need to substitute empirical knowledge for abstract speculation motivates Wirt's study. Wirt restricts his study to one county but with conclusions on comparative studies that illumine the emerging political sociology of the South. The author sketches the historical setting of Panola County, emphasizing on the demographic, economic, and political developments in recent decades. He then examines what has actually happened in race relations as an effect of civil rights laws affecting votes, schools, and jobs. Wirt utilizes documentary material from federal, state, and county sources; local newspapers; and records from business and other groups. But his closer understanding comes from personal interviews. Because federal law is the dynamic factor setting the social system in movement, the author explains the interactions between public opinion, the President, and the Congress, which in the end resulted in the laws on votes, schools, and jobs. He also deals with the differing machinery of sanctions and enforcement. Law has a huge effect on social change; and Wirt draws from his empirical study a systematic, inclusive statement of the factors affecting compliance with law, in conditions of conventional biases.

San Francisco is a uniquely favored city, but its politics are beset with extraordinary problems. Power is divided among traditional and new minorities, a mayor with modest authority, and a large city bureaucracy guided by insensitive professional norms. The special San Francisco "politics of profit" and ethnic conflict are complicated and profoundly influenced by such external forces as regional, state, and federal government, and by the force of a national economy. Frederick Wirt's fascinating study is based on personal interviews with knowledgeable observers and participants, on an extensive review of special reports, and on a firsthand study of the transaction patterns in the political, business, labor, ethnic, and historical life of the city. In the end, the 125-year political history of San Francisco provides solid new insights on the politics of large American cities in the 1970s. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

San Francisco is a uniquely favored city, but its politics are beset with extraordinary problems. Power is divided among traditional and new minorities, a mayor with modest authority, and a large city bureaucracy guided by insensitive professional norms. The special San Francisco "politics of profit" and ethnic conflict are complicated and profoundly influenced by such external forces as regional, state, and federal government, and by the force of a national economy. Frederick Wirt's fascinating study is based on personal interviews with knowledgeable observers and participants, on an extensive review of special reports, and on a firsthand study of the transaction patterns in the political, business, labor, ethnic, and historical life of the city. In the end, the 125-year political history of San Francisco provides solid new insights on the politics of large American cities in the 1970s. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

When officials of the U.S. Department of Justice came in 1961 to Panola County in the Mississippi delta, they found a closed society in which race relations had not altered significantly since Reconstruction. Much has changed, however, in Mississippi in the past three decades, as Frederick Wirt demonstrates in "We Ain't What We Was," a remarkable look inside the New South. In this follow-up to his highly praised 1970 study of Panola County, The Politics of Southern Equality, Wirt shows how the implementation of civil rights law over the past quarter-century has altered racial reality that in turn altered white perceptions, and thus behavior and attitudes in a section of the country where segregation and prejudice had been most thoroughly entrenched. Wirt uses multiple indicators-interviews with leaders, attitude tests of children, content analysis of newspapers, school records, and voting and job data-to record what has changed in the Deep South as a result of the 60s revolution in civil rights. Although racism continues to exist in Panola, Wirt maintains that the current generation of southerners is sharply distinguished from its predecessors, and he effectively documents the transformations in individuals and institutions. In a time of increasing popular challenges to the use of law in support of civil liberties, or the place of the federal government to effect necessary social change, this book testifies to the great changes, both public and personal, that were brought about by the strong implementation of civil rights law over thirty years ago. "We Ain't What We Was" shows that adaptation to change was not overnight, not final, but gradual and always persistent.