Download or read book Hijacking the Agenda written by Christopher Witko and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are the economic interests and priorities of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by the U.S. Congress, while the economic interests of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies favorable to their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating that such economic bias exists to illuminate precisely how and why economic policy is so often skewed in favor of the rich. The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by several hundred members of Congress to examine the influence of campaign contributions on how the national economic agenda is set in Congress. They find that legislators who received more money from business and professional associations were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those who received more money from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to lower- and middle-class constituents, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because issues discussed in Congress receive more direct legislative action, such as bill introductions and committee hearings. While unions use campaign contributions to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions. The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the financial influence of the wealthy enables them to advance their economic agenda. In each case, the authors examine the balance of structural power, or the power that comes from a person or company’s position in the economy, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. The authors show how big business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry sought deregulation in the late 1990s, resulting in the passage of a bill eviscerating New Deal financial regulations. Likewise, when business interests want to preserve the policy status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the agenda, as when inflation eats into the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves low-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, can use their resources to shape policy responses if conditions are right, they lack structural power and suffer significant resource disadvantages. As a result, wealthy interests have the upper hand in shaping the policy process, simply due to their pivotal position in the economy and the resulting perception that policies beneficial to business are beneficial for everyone. Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power operates through the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the interests of the wealthy and marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of inequality.
Download or read book The Singapore Citizens Agenda written by Kirsten Han and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is your handbook to the most important issues facing Singapore, as co-created by New Naratif's Singaporean community. In August 2019, New Naratif launched The Citizens' Agenda. As an independent, reader-funded publication, we wanted to find out what our Singaporean readers care about, and use those concerns to guide our coverage, commissioning evidence-based, in-depth articles on the issues they identified. We believe in our readers and we wanted to report faithfully and honestly on the issues that matter to them. We asked: "In your opinion, what issues do you consider important to Singapore? What do you think the candidates should be talking about as they compete for your votes in the upcoming election?" Following a multi-stage process, we then published articles on the top 6 issues. In this book, you will find analyses of the data gathered in The Citizens' Agenda, as well as the best articles that we produced. Please visit newnaratif.com/citizensagenda and newnaratif.com/electionsg for more information and data. We hope Singaporeans will find it useful as they head to the polls for Singapore's next General Election... and beyond!
Download or read book Citizens Politics and Social Communication written by R. Robert Huckfeldt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-27 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic politics is a collective enterprise, not simply because individual votes are counted to determine winners, but more fundamentally because the individual exercise of citizenship is an interdependent undertaking. Citizens argue with one another and they generally arrive at political decisions through processes of social interaction and deliberation. This book is dedicated to investigating the political implications of interdependent citizens within the context of the 1984 presidential campaign as it was experienced in the metropolitan area of South Bend, Indiana. Hence this is a community study in the fullest sense of the term. National politics is experienced locally through a series of filters unique to a particular setting and its consequences for the exercise of democratic citizenship.
Download or read book Activated Citizenship written by Marjan H. Ehsassi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-14 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To counter pervasive levels of citizen disengagement from political institutions, this book examines democratic innovations that meaningfully engage with citizens to address some of the deficits of Western representative democracies. Citizens’ assemblies provide one such innovation, offering opportunities for more consistent participation between elections, more meaningful input in government decision making, and more impactful platforms for participation. This cutting-edge book introduces a new definition for an Activated Citizen, along with a methodology to measure civic and political engagement. Relying on a mixed-methods approach and field research conducted in Paris, Brussels, Ottawa, and Petaluma (California), as well as participant observations, over 180 surveys, 61 in-depth interviews and storytelling, the book provides case studies and in-depth analysis of hotbutton topics including climate change, unhoused populations, democratic expression, assisted suicide and euthanasia. Each chapter weaves quantitative results with rich qualitative testimonies from participants, government representatives, and observers. Based on empirical evidence, the book explores the ways in which government-led citizens’ assemblies can promote a more Activated Citizen. To fully realize the transformative potential of deliberative platforms, a final chapter offers a blueprint for impact, outlining concrete measures along with recommendations for the design and implementation of future government-initiated deliberative platforms. Activated Citizenship urges the deliberative community to be more discerning and intentional to more positively impact participants’ knowledge, sense of community, enthusiasm, political engagement, as well as their sense of meaningful voice. It will be required reading for all students and scholars interested in political participation and democratic innovation.
Download or read book Legislative Assemblies written by Shane Martin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By whatever name they are known (Parliaments, Legislatures, or Assemblies, to name but three) legislative assemblies in democratic societies face the twin challenges of institutional capacity and accountability to their citizens. In addressing these challenges, assemblies vary in the extent to which they serve the respective interests of three critical sets of actors: their members, party leaders, and voters. In this book, Shane Martin and Kaare W. Strøm identify three ideal types of democratic assemblies - the members' assembly, the leaders' assembly, and the voters' assembly - and analyze national legislative assemblies in the world's 68 most populous democracies, from Finland to Papua New Guinea, in light of these models. Based on extensive new cross-national data, they trace the implications of the three assembly types for the design, internal organization, resources, and powers of democratic national assemblies, develop indices of each assembly type, and score each of the 68 legislative assemblies on these indices. The analysis of legislative re-election rates in these countries reveals that the fate of incumbents depends on member resources as well as on leadership control, but is ultimately constrained by voter confidence. In conclusion, the authors discuss the past and future trajectories of legislative assemblies, including their susceptibility to democratic backsliding.
Download or read book Citizens as Partners Information Consultation and Public Participation in Policy Making written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2001-10-11 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a wide range of country experiences, offers examples of good practice, highlights innovative approaches and identifies promising tools (including new information technologies)for engaging citizens in policy making. It proposes a set of ten guiding principles.
Download or read book Administrative Burden written by Pamela Herd and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2019-01-09 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award Presented by the Public and Nonprofit Section of the National Academy of Management Winner of the 2019 Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration Bureaucracy, confusing paperwork, and complex regulations—or what public policy scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan call administrative burdens—often introduce delay and frustration into our experiences with government agencies. Administrative burdens diminish the effectiveness of public programs and can even block individuals from fundamental rights like voting. In AdministrativeBurden, Herd and Moynihan document that the administrative burdens citizens regularly encounter in their interactions with the state are not simply unintended byproducts of governance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Because burdens affect people’s perceptions of government and often perpetuate long-standing inequalities, understanding why administrative burdens exist and how they can be reduced is essential for maintaining a healthy public sector. Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion is legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles. However, policymakers have sometimes reduced administrative burdens or shifted them away from citizens and onto the government. One example is Social Security, which early administrators of the program implemented in the 1930s with the goal of minimizing burdens for beneficiaries. As a result, the take-up rate is about 100 percent because the Social Security Administration keeps track of peoples’ earnings for them, automatically calculates benefits and eligibility, and simply requires an easy online enrollment or visiting one of 1,200 field offices. Making more programs and public services operate this efficiently, the authors argue, requires adoption of a nonpartisan, evidence-based metric for determining when and how to institute administrative burdens, with a bias toward reducing them. By ensuring that the public’s interaction with government is no more onerous than it need be, policymakers and administrators can reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state that works for all citizens.
Download or read book Creating European Citizens written by Willem Maas and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2007-02-03 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring a key aspect of European integration, this clear and thoughtful book considers the remarkable experiment with common rights and citizenship in the EU. Governments around the world traditionally distinguish insiders (citizens) from outsiders (foreigners). Yet over the past half-century, an extensive set of supranational rights has been created in Europe that removes member governments' authority to privilege their own citizens, a hallmark of sovereignty. The culmination of supranational rights, European citizenship not only provides individuals with choices about where to live and work but also forces governments to respect those choices. Explaining this innovation—why states cede their sovereignty and eradicate or redefine the boundaries of the political community by including "foreigners"—Willem Maas analyzes the development of European citizenship within the larger context of the evolution of rights. Imagining more than simply a free trade market, the goal of building a "broader and deeper community among peoples" with a "destiny henceforward shared"—creating European citizens—has informed European integration since its origins. The author argues that its success or failure will not only determine the future of Europe but will also provide lessons for political integration elsewhere.
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 Smart Citizens Smarter State written by Beth Simone Noveck and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left “the people” out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today’s complex challenges. Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter—if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens’ expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools—what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise—are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government. Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people’s knowledge and know-how.
Download or read book Expanding ESL Civics and Citizenship Education in Your Community written by U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2012-12-07 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlines a start-up process of gathering relevant information and resources to develop and sustain education programs in civics, citizenship, and ESL (English as a Second Language) in your community, as well as recruiting and training volunteers and recruiting students. It also includes basic recommendations and sample forms and materials. Appropriate for ESL programs, school and library tutoring programs for US citizenship and more. In EPUB eBook with reflowable text.
Download or read book Between Citizens and the State written by Christopher P. Loss and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political history of the United States in the twentieth century, and chronicles its transformation into a key mediating institution between citizens and the state. Framed around the three major federal higher education policies of the twentieth century--the 1944 GI Bill, the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and the 1965 Higher Education Act--the book charts the federal government's various efforts to deploy education to ready citizens for the national, bureaucratized, and increasingly global world in which they lived. Loss details the myriad ways in which academic leaders and students shaped, and were shaped by, the state's shifting political agenda as it moved from a preoccupation with economic security during the Great Depression, to national security during World War II and the Cold War, to securing the rights of African Americans, women, and other previously marginalized groups during the 1960s and '70s. Along the way, Loss reappraises the origins of higher education's current-day diversity regime, the growth of identity group politics, and the privatization of citizenship at the close of the twentieth century. At a time when people's faith in government and higher education is being sorely tested, this book sheds new light on the close relations between American higher education and politics.
Download or read book Model Rules of Professional Conduct written by American Bar Association. House of Delegates and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2007 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Download or read book De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens Assemblies written by Min Reuchamps and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Citizens’ Assemblies (CAs) are flourishing around the world. Quite often composed of randomly selected citizens, CAs, arguably, come as a possible answer to contemporary democratic challenges. Democracies worldwide are indeed confronted with a series of disruptive phenomena such as a widespread perception of distrust and growing polarization as well as low performance. Many actors seek to reinvigorate democracy with citizen participation and deliberation. CAs are expected to have the potential to meet this twofold objective. But, despite deliberative and inclusive qualities of CAs, many questions remain open. The increasing popularity of CAs call for a holistic reflection and evaluation on their origins, current uses and future directions. The De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies showcases the state of the art around the study of CAs and opens novel perspectives informed by multidisciplinary research and renewed thinking about deliberative participatory processes. It discusses the latest theoretical, empirical, and methodological scientific developments on CAs and offers a unique resource for scholars, decision-makers, practitioners, and curious citizens to better understand the qualities, purposes, promises but also pitfalls of CAs.
Download or read book Citizen Science written by Susanne Hecker and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Citizen science, the active participation of the public in scientific research projects, is a rapidly expanding field in open science and open innovation. It provides an integrated model of public knowledge production and engagement with science. As a growing worldwide phenomenon, it is invigorated by evolving new technologies that connect people easily and effectively with the scientific community. Catalysed by citizens’ wishes to be actively involved in scientific processes, as a result of recent societal trends, it also offers contributions to the rise in tertiary education. In addition, citizen science provides a valuable tool for citizens to play a more active role in sustainable development. This book identifies and explains the role of citizen science within innovation in science and society, and as a vibrant and productive science-policy interface. The scope of this volume is global, geared towards identifying solutions and lessons to be applied across science, practice and policy. The chapters consider the role of citizen science in the context of the wider agenda of open science and open innovation, and discuss progress towards responsible research and innovation, two of the most critical aspects of science today.
Download or read book Re energizing Citizenship written by T. Brannan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-10-09 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-energizing Citizenship examines the dual character of civil society. The book provides a critical examination of attempts to re-energize citizenship in a range of contexts and offers insights into what works.
