The latest edition of Politics offers a comprehensive and comparative approach to the essential components of democratic politics in today's states. The book begins by addressing ways of thinking about politics, community, and society, offering broad outlines of political theory in a historical context. Johnston then provides a comparative framework for understanding basic democratic systems which is drawn upon in subsequent sections on institutions, the political process, and governing. The result is an accessible introduction to contemporary democratic politics that is also deeply theoretical and comparative in scope.

The fourth edition has been revised throughout and rewritten with a more focused narrative. The student-friendly design incorporates more visuals and sidebars, as well as chapter objectives and a glossary, in order to make the material easily digestible. In addition, a new companion website provides self-study support for students along with a wealth of materials for instructors to draw from when developing lectures, tutorials, assignments, and exams.

See www.johnstonpolitics.com for more information.

This book provides a concise overview of the institutions of government in modern democracies, including constitutions, legislatures, heads of state and of government, variations of federalism, and electoral systems. The Institutions of Liberal Democratic States presents four excerpted chapters from Politics: An Introduction to Democratic Government, second edition.

Ideologies offers a fresh treatment of liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, as well as an examination of contemporary social movements such as feminism and environmentalism. Professor Johnston treats each ideology as a product of the intersection of ideas and particular socio-historical contexts. Thus liberalism, conservatism, and socialism are discussed first in the context of the transition from feudal society to liberal modernity, and again as they have evolved within the shifting contexts provided by ascendant liberalism. In this way it is possible to distinguish the often diverse bodies of opinion that employ a common ideological label, and at the same time, sketch and emerging ideological consensus that frequently cuts across ideological lines. Ideologies contains separate chapters on the liberal democratic consensus that has developed around conceptions of justice and democracy on the one hand, and the utility of the market economy on the other. Challenges to this twentieth century consensus from within the liberal democratic tradition are represented by anarchism, populism, feminism, and environmentalism. External challenges from currents of authoritarianism, nationalism, and fundamentalism are also discussed, along with ideologies once powerful but currently out of favour-fascism and Marxist-Leninism. In the final chapter, the strengths and weaknesses of ideology are judged, and its future prospects assessed.