This volume describes and analyzes the proliferation of new mechanisms for participation in Latin American democracies and considers the relationship between direct participation and the consolidation of representative institutions based on traditional electoral conceptions of democracy. Encompassing case studies of Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela, the book draws on original fieldwork to assess how institutions operate in practice, thus illuminating the conditions under which direct participation enhances broader aims of democratic participation. In so doing, it conveys fresh perspectives on the quality of democracy in Latin America today and about future prospects for deepening democratic citizenship.

Appointments to the United States Supreme Court are now central events in American political life. Every vacancy unleashes a bitter struggle between Republicans and Democrats over nominees; and once the seat is filled, new justices typically vote in predictable ways. However, this has not always been the case. As late as the middle of the twentieth century, presidents invested little time and effort in finding and vetting nominees, often selecting personal cronies, who senators briskly confirmed. Media coverage was desultory, public opinion was largely non-existent, and the justices often voted independently and erratically. In Making the Supreme Court, Charles M. Cameron and Jonathan P. Kastellec examine 90 years of American political history to show how the growth of federal judicial power from the 1930s onward inspired a multitude of groups struggling to shape judicial policy. Over time, some groups moved beyond lobbying the Court to changing who sits on it. Other groups formed expressly to influence appointments. These activists and organized groups penetrated the national party system so that after about 1980, presidential candidates increasingly pledged to select and confirm nominees who conformed to specific policy and ideological litmus tests. Once in office, these presidents re-shaped the executive selection system to deliver on their promises. Moreover, the selection process for justices turned into media events, often fueled by controversy. As Cameron and Kastellec argue, the result is a new politics aimed squarely at selecting and placing judicial ideologues on the Court. They make the case that this new model gradually transformed how the Court itself operates, turning it into an ideologically driven and polarized branch. Based on rich data and qualitative evidence, Making the Supreme Court provides a sharp lens on the social and political transformations that created a new American politics.

Events on the battlefields of the Pacific War were not only outgrowths of technology and tactics, but also products of cultural myth and imagination. American Samurai offers a bold and innovative approach to military history by linking combat activity to cultural images. Marines projected ideas and assumptions about themselves and their enemy onto people and events throughout the war--giving life to formerly abstract myths and ideas and molding their behavior to expectations. This fascinating book concludes by considering what happened to the myths and images and how they have been preserved in American society to the present.

The last two decades have witnessed a substantial change in the media environment, growing polarization of the two dominant parties, and increasing inequality of wealth and income. These profound changes necessitate updating our understanding of political accountability. Accountability Reconsidered examines how political accountability functions in the US today given the dramatic changes in voting behavior, media, congressional dynamics, and relations between branches. With particular attention to policymaking, this volume uses original research to analyze micro-foundations of voter behavior, examining its implications for incentives and offering insight into the accountability relationships among voters, interest groups, legislators, and government bureaucracy. Combining contributions from leading experts who write about the political system synoptically with those who focus on specific elements, Accountability Reconsidered brings together distinct perspectives to focus on the effect of the informational environment on government officials, bridging up-to-date knowledge about accountability mechanisms with our overall understanding of political accountability.

The practice of slavery has been common across a variety of cultures around the globe and throughout history. Despite the multiplicity of slavery's manifestations, many scholars have used a simple binary to categorize slave-holding groups as either 'genuine slave societies' or 'societies with slaves'. This dichotomy, as originally proposed by ancient historian Moses Finley, assumes that there were just five 'genuine slave societies' in all of human history: ancient Greece and Rome, and the colonial Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South. This book interrogates this bedrock of comparative slave studies and tests its worth. Assembling contributions from top specialists, it demonstrates that the catalogue of five must be expanded and that the model may need to be replaced with a more flexible system that emphasizes the notion of intensification. The issue is approached as a question, allowing for debate between the seventeen contributors about how best to conceptualize the comparative study of human bondage.

The practice of slavery has been common across a variety of cultures around the globe and throughout history. Despite the multiplicity of slavery's manifestations, many scholars have used a simple binary to categorize slave-holding groups as either 'genuine slave societies' or 'societies with slaves'. This dichotomy, as originally proposed by ancient historian Moses Finley, assumes that there were just five 'genuine slave societies' in all of human history: ancient Greece and Rome, and the colonial Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South. This book interrogates this bedrock of comparative slave studies and tests its worth. Assembling contributions from top specialists, it demonstrates that the catalogue of five must be expanded and that the model may need to be replaced with a more flexible system that emphasizes the notion of intensification. The issue is approached as a question, allowing for debate between the seventeen contributors about how best to conceptualize the comparative study of human bondage.

This volume describes and analyzes the proliferation of new mechanisms for participation in Latin American democracies and considers the relationship between direct participation and the consolidation of representative institutions based on more traditional electoral conceptions of democracy.