Download or read book Democracy A Very Short Introduction written by Bernard Crick and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-10-10 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No political concept is more used, and misused, than that of democracy. Nearly every regime today claims to be democratic, but not all 'democracies' allow free politics, and free politics existed long before democratic franchises. This book is a short account of the history of the doctrine and practice of democracy, from ancient Greece and Rome through the American, French, and Russian revolutions, and of the usages and practices associated with it in the modern world. It argues that democracy is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for good government, and that ideas of the rule of law, and of human rights, should in some situations limit democratic claims. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Education and Democratic Citizenship in America written by Norman H. Nie and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-11-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education affects these two dimensions in distinct ways, influencing democratic enlightenment through cognitive proficiency and sophistication, and political engagement through position in social networks. For characteristics of enlightenment, formal education simply adds to the degree to which citizens support and are knowledgeable about democratic principles.
Download or read book Learn about the United States written by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.
Download or read book Toward an Ethic of Citizenship written by William K. Dustin and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2000-01-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea for this book arose out of a little known political scandal, known as "phonegate", that occurred in Minnesota in the early 1990's in which a number of legislators were found to have been abusing their phone privileges. The hubris of the legislature in response to the discovery of this abuse not only made me rather angry, but, since I had been called for jury duty the year before, gave me the idea that service in the legislature ought to be a duty of citizenship like jury duty. Although the idea of the citizen legislature goes back to Aristotle, serious consideration of it raises the question of what is meant by citizenship and representation. This book addresses that question. It is an attempt to develop a model of citizenship in which representation is simultaneously a fundamental right and the highest obligation. After developing these ideas at a rather high level of abstraction, the book concludes with a proposed constitutional amendment for the State of Minnesota to illustrate how the model will work in practice.
Download or read book Citizen N and Democracy written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book helps the reader to understand what is democracy. Democracy is more than simply voting in elections, it is a system of self-governmemt and a way of life that holds the promise of a better future for all.
Download or read book Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship written by Sigal R. Ben-Porath and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-11-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship, scholars from a wide range of disciplines reflect on the transformation of the world away from the absolute sovereignty of independent nation-states and on the proliferation of varieties of plural citizenship. The emergence of possible new forms of allegiance and their effect on citizens and on political processes underlie the essays in this volume. The essays reflect widespread acceptance that we cannot grasp either the empirical realities or the important normative issues today by focusing only on sovereign states and their actions, interests, and aspirations. All the contributors accept that we need to take into account a great variety of globalizing forces, but they draw very different conclusions about those realities. For some, the challenges to the sovereignty of nation-states are on the whole to be regretted and resisted. These transformations are seen as endangering both state capacity and state willingness to promote stability and security internationally. Moreover, they worry that declining senses of national solidarity may lead to cutbacks in the social support systems many states provide to all those who reside legally within their national borders. Others view the system of sovereign nation-states as the aspiration of a particular historical epoch that always involved substantial problems and that is now appropriately giving way to new, more globally beneficial forms of political association. Some contributors to this volume display little sympathy for the claims on behalf of sovereign states, though they are just as wary of emerging forms of cosmopolitanism, which may perpetuate older practices of economic exploitation, displacement of indigenous communities, and military technologies of domination. Collectively, the contributors to this volume require us to rethink deeply entrenched assumptions about what varieties of sovereignty and citizenship are politically possible and desirable today, and they provide illuminating insights into the alternative directions we might choose to pursue.
Download or read book Citizen now written by Elizabeth C. Matto and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-10 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Citizen now offers a comprehensive description of the composition and behavior of young adults, an explanation and critique of the study of youth engagement, and a unique approach and methodology for appreciating how and why “citizen now” engages in politics and democracy. Citizen now considers youth political participation from the perspective of young adults themselves – specifically, young adults who’ve organized around an issue of great concern to Millennials, their economic well-being. The perfect text for undergraduates exploring the fundamentals of government, political behavior, and citizenship, this text’s fresh take on the important subject of youth engagement offers both a path for future research and practical guidance on how to engage “citizen now” in politics and democracy.
Download or read book Every Citizen a Statesman written by David Allen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As US power grew after WWI, officials and nonprofits joined to promote citizen participation in world affairs. David Allen traces the rise and fall of the Foreign Policy Association, a public-education initiative that retreated in the atomic age, scuttling dreams of democratic foreign policy and solidifying the technocratic national security model.
Download or read book Citizenship in Hard Times written by Sara Wallace Goodman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do citizens do in response to threats to democracy? This book examines the mass politics of civic obligation in the US, UK, and Germany. Exploring threats like foreign interference in elections and polarization, Sara Wallace Goodman shows that citizens respond to threats to democracy as partisans, interpreting civic obligation through a partisan lens that is shaped by their country's political institutions. This divided, partisan citizenship makes democratic problems worse by eroding the national unity required for democratic stability. Employing novel survey experiments in a cross-national research design, Citizenship in Hard Times presents the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of citizenship norms in the face of democratic threat. In showing partisan citizens are not a reliable bulwark against democratic backsliding, Goodman identifies a key vulnerability in the mass politics of democratic order. In times of democratic crisis, defenders of democracy must work to fortify the shared foundations of democratic citizenship.
Download or read book The Gardens of Democracy written by Eric Liu and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “10 Books Everyone Should Read” This fascinating study of democracy in the 21st century is a much-needed call for citizens to reach across the aisle and put power back into the hands of individuals—not Big Government Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer outline a simple but revolutionary argument for why our most basic assumptions about democracy need updating for the 21st century. They offer a roadmap for those looking for a way forward from an American life marked by divisive conversations. In a world with widespread political upheaval, a deep wellspring of civic engagement and collective action is emerging. America is finding that our cultural and political dialogue is spiking over everything from racial and social justice to fighting the ever-widening income gap, to climate change—even how we might best collaborate as active citizens to heal our democracy. Timely, inspiring, and highly charged, The Gardens of Democracy is a much-needed call to action for citizens to embrace their roles in a democratic society. To model positivity and good citizenship, plus ensure liberty and justice for all, we must achieve compromise by reaching across the aisle and putting the power to execute programs back in the hands of individuals, not big government. We must redefine how we view prosperity in order to move from a dog-eat-dog mentality that perpetuates the top 1% to a communal and inclusive movement that illustrates that we’re all better off when we’re all better off.
Download or read book Arresting Citizenship written by Amy E. Lerman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The numbers are staggering: One-third of America’s adult population has passed through the criminal justice system and now has a criminal record. Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens. A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable—and growing—group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship—even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging—and pernicious—and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life.
Download or read book What Kind of Citizen written by Joel Westheimer and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What kind of citizen is no ordinary education book. By drawing on accessible and engaging discussions around the goals of schooling, it is imminently readable by a broad public. Neither fluff nor polemic, the theory and practice described in the book are based in solid empirical research and come out of the most influential frameworks for citizenship and democratic education of the last several decades (the "Three Kinds of Citizens" framework that emerged from collaboration between the author and Dr. Joseph Kahne as well as consultations with thousands of school teachers and civic leaders.) - This framework has been used in 67 countries to help teachers and school reformers think about how to structure educational programs and how schools can strengthen democratic societies. - This book pulls together a decade of research on schools into one place giving the reader a comprehensive look at why schools should be at the forefront of public engagement and how we can make that happen"--
Download or read book Democratic Citizenship and War written by Yoav Peled and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores the theoretical and practical implications of war and terror situations for citizenship in democratic states. Citizenship is a key concept in Western political thought for defining the individual’s relations with society. The specific nature of these rights, duties and contributions, as well the relations between them, are determined by the citizenship discourses that prevail in each society. In wartime, including low-intensity wars, democratic societies face different challenges than the ones facing them during peacetime, in areas such as human rights, the status of minorities, the state’s obligations to its citizens, and the meaning of social solidarity. War situations can affect not only the scope of citizenship as an institution, but also the relations between the prevailing discourses of citizenship and between different groups of citizens. Since 9/11 and the declaration of the 'war on terror', many democracies have been grappling with issues rising out of the interface between citizenship and war. This volume examines the effects of war on various aspects of citizenship practice, including: immigration and naturalization, the welfare state, individual liberties, gender relations, multiculturalism, social solidarity, and state – civil society relations. This book will be of great interest to students of military studies, political science, IR and security studies in general.
Download or read book Citizenship A Very Short Introduction written by Richard Bellamy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in citizenship has never been higher. But what does it mean to be a citizen in a modern, complex community? Richard Bellamy approaches the subject of citizenship from a political perspective and, in clear and accessible language, addresses the complexities behind this highly topical issue.
Download or read book Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions Catching the Deliberative Wave written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-10 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.
Download or read book A Theory Of Citizenship written by Herman R. Van Gunsteren and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does vital citizenship require moral consensus? Or is it the ability to organize their differences that allows people to live together as citizens in a republic? Whereas liberal, republican, and communitarian theories of citizenship analyzed the conditions of citizenship, the central message of this book is that the practical exercise of citizenship, under conditions that are far from ideal, is the main source of its vitality. Instead of arguing for more participation, it focuses on the citizenship of those who, for whatever reason, are already active in the public sphere. Herman van Gunsteren develops a theory of citizenship well suited to the era of political reform that was inaugurated by the revolutions of 1989.
Download or read book The Good Citizen written by David Batstone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Good Citizen, some of the most eminent contemporary thinkers take up the question of the future of American democracy in an age of globalization, growing civic apathy, corporate unaccountability, and purported fragmentation of the American common identity by identity politics.
