Download or read book Democracy in a Dim Light written by Michael Colin Dougal and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines the ability of the media to monitor politicians and the ability of voters to acquire politically relevant information. The dissertation is primarily made up of three separate papers. The first paper (Chapter 2) asks why citizens routinely fail to vote out of step representatives out of office and what institutions can help voters hold politicians accountable. To the extent that politicians exploit voters' lack of information to win at the ballot box despite shirking in Congress, the press could foster democratic accountability by sounding the alarm on out of step representatives and alerting otherwise inattentive voters that it is time for change. In the first paper in my dissertation I collect an original dataset of local newspaper coverage of candidates in the 2010 House election in order to find out whether newspapers play this role for voters and act as a watchdog of incumbent representatives. After working with research assistants to provide human classification of a random subset of these articles, I use a text as data machine learning approach to measure the content of the much larger volume of articles that we cannot read. After validating an ensemble ``SuperLearner'' by demonstrating out-of-sample classification accuracy that for many features approaches human inter-coder agreement, I show that challengers receive less coverage than incumbents in competitive districts, horse race coverage displaces policy coverage, and newspapers do not sound the alarm on out of step incumbents. Newspapers do provide a whiff of scandal when representatives are referred to the House Ethics Committee for potential ethics violations, but they do not criticize representatives accused of some form of corruption at significantly higher rates. Even in congressional districts that closely correspond to newspaper markets, journalists act as neither watchdog nor lapdog, but instead provide overwhelmingly neutral coverage, failing to criticize incumbents who vote against a majority of their constituents on landmark legislation. The second paper (Chapter 3) provides experimental evidence that candidate appearance influences vote choice. According to numerous studies, candidates' looks predict voters' choices--a finding that raises concerns about voter competence and about the quality of elected officials. This potentially worrisome finding, however, is observational and therefore vulnerable to alternative explanations. To better test the appearance effect, we conducted two experiments. Just before primary and general elections for various offices, we randomly assigned voters to receive ballots with and without candidate photos. Simply showing voters these pictures increased the vote for appearance-advantaged candidates. Experimental evidence therefore supports the view that candidates' looks could influence some voters. In general elections, we find that high-knowledge voters appear immune to this influence, while low-knowledge voters use appearance as a low-information heuristic. In primaries, however, candidate appearance influences even high-knowledge and strongly partisan voters. The third paper (Chapter 4) examines which major events in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign saw only a brief spike in coverage and which became a more permanent feature of campaign coverage. In particular, I analyze coverage of six major events in the presidential campaign to test the hypothesis that news outlets of all persuasions will cover major events as news, but only partisan outlets will continue to discuss negative stories about their opponents long after the event that made the topic news. Broadly, I find that all outlets do indeed pick up major stories temporarily, but that the more tradition news news organization in my study does not stick with a higher level of coverage of any topic after a seven day window following the related event. Partisan outlets, in contrast, either continue to cover negative stories about the opposing candidate at a higher rate or were already on the story before a related event caused everyone else to temporarily pick up the story. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the implications of my findings for democratic accountability and the health of American democracy. I conclude that for the most part democracy is conducted in a dim light.
Download or read book Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy written by Bradley C. S. Watson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Bradley Watson demonstrates the paradox of liberal democracy: that its cornerstone principles of equality and freedom are principles inherently directed toward undermining it. Modernity, beyond bringing definition to political equality, unleashed a whirlwind of individualism, which feeds the soul's basic impulse to rule without limitationincluding the limitation of consent. Here Watson begins his analysis of the foundations of liberalism, looking carefully and critically at the moral and political philosophies that justify modern civil rights litigation. He goes on to examine the judicial manifestations of the paradox of liberal democracy, seeking to bring a broad philosophical coherence to legal decision making in the United States and Canada. Finally, Watson illuminates the extent to which this decision making is in tension with liberal democracy, and outlines proposals for reform.
Download or read book Foreword Whitman s life and work 1846 1847 Democracy Humanity Slavery and the Mexican War 2 Politics Essays personalities short editorials Literature book reviews drama etc Two short stories not included in Whitman s published works written by Walt Whitman and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Theories of Democracy written by Ronald J. Terchek and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2000-07-31 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theories of Democracy builds on Robert Dahl's observation that there is no single theory of democracy; only theories. Beyond the broad commitment to rule by the majority, democracy involves a set of contentious debates concerning the proper function and scope of power, equality, freedom, justice, and interests. In this anthology, Ronald J. Terchek and Thomas C. Conte have brilliantly assembled the works of classical, modern, and contemporary commentators to illustrate the deep and diverse roots of the democratic ideal, as well as to provide materials for thinking about the way some contemporary theories build on different traditions of democratic theorizing. The arguments addressed in Theories of Democracy appear in the voices of authors who have championed influential theories concerning the opportunities and dangers associated with democratic politics. In this collection, Terchek and Conte have selected excerpts not as a means for promoting a particular way of looking at democracy, but rather they have wisely chosen works that will enable students to carry on an informed discourse on the meaning and purposes of democratic principles and practices. Theories of Democracy is a must for every student of democracy's past, present, and future.
Download or read book Teaching Democracy by Being Democratic written by Ted Becker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1996-10-30 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best way to teach democracy has been the subject of an ongoing debate for 2,500 years. Unlike most books about teaching democracy, this one spends more time on how to teach democracy than the what and why of teaching democracy. It punctures the irony of teaching democracy by lectures and superior teachers. In its place, this book provides a variety of illustrations for the teaching of democracy in an experiential and egalitarian fashion. The introduction presents a theoretical and analytical framework of democracy and democratic pedagogy. The six chapters cover topics such as structuring a democratic classroom; democratic practices that empower students; problem solving and community service that make the classroom a laboratory for democracy; and university-based programs of democratic alternatives that serve the community. The volume's treatment of community organization, students as collaborators, personal empowerment, the community of need and response, and the democratic organization expresses its preference for direct democratic participation.
Download or read book a short history of democracy written by and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Practicing Democracy written by Daniel Peart and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Practicing Democracy, eleven historians challenge conventional narratives of democratization in the early United States, offering new perspectives on the period between the ratification of the Constitution and the outbreak of the Civil War. The essays in this collection address critical themes such as the origins, evolution, and disintegration of party competition, the relationship between political parties and popular participation, and the place that parties occupied within the wider world of United States politics. In recent years, historians of the early republic have demolished old assumptions about low rates of political participation and shallow popular partisanship in the age of Jefferson—raising the question of how, if at all, Jacksonian politics departed from earlier norms. This book reaffirms the significance of a transition in political practices during the 1820s and 1830s but casts the transformation in a new light. Whereas the traditional narrative is one of a party-driven democratic awakening, the contributors to this volume challenge the correlation of party with democracy. They both critique constricting definitions of legitimate democratic practices in the decades following the ratification of the Constitution and emphasize the proliferation of competing public voices in the buildup to the Civil War. Taken together, these essays offer a new way of thinking about American politics across the traditional dividing line of 1828 and suggest a novel approach to the long-standing question of what it meant to be part of "We the People." Contributors:Tyler Anbinder, George Washington University · Douglas Bradburn, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon · John L. Brooke, The Ohio State University · Andrew Heath, University of Sheffield · Reeve Huston, Duke University · Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University · Kenneth Owen, University of Illinois, Springfield · Graham A. Peck, Saint Xavier University · Andrew W. Robertson, Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Lehman College, CUNY
Download or read book Democracy and Solidarity written by James Davison Hunter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-developing cultural divisions beneath our present political crisis Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment.” James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” thirty years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved. While a deepening political polarization is the most obvious sign of this, the true problem is not polarization per se but the absence of cultural resources to work through what divides us. The destructive logic that has filled the void only makes bridging our differences more challenging. In the end, all political regimes require some level of unity. If it cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed by force. Can America’s political crisis be fixed? Can an Enlightenment-era institution—liberal democracy—survive and thrive in a post-Enlightenment world? If, for some, salvaging the older sources of national solidarity is neither possible sociologically, nor desirable politically or ethically, what cultural resources will support liberal democracy in the future?
Download or read book The Future of Democracy written by Norberto Bobbio and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norberto Bobbio is the foremost political theorist in Italy today. Written with verve and passion as well as erudition, this important work will make a major contribution to current debates in social and political theory. It will be of great interest to students of sociology, politics and philosophy, as well as to anyone concerned with the nature and future of democracy.
Download or read book The History of Democracy in the United States written by Nahum Capen and published by . This book was released on 1852 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plato s Animals written by Jeremy Bell and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A unique and intriguing point of entry into the dialogues and a variety of concerns from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics, politics, and aesthetics.” —Eric Sanday, University of Kentucky Plato’s Animals examines the crucial role played by animal images, metaphors, allusions, and analogies in Plato’s dialogues. These fourteen lively essays demonstrate that the gadflies, snakes, stingrays, swans, dogs, horses, and other animals that populate Plato’s work are not just rhetorical embellishments. Animals are central to Plato’s understanding of the hierarchy between animals, humans, and gods and are crucial to his ideas about education, sexuality, politics, aesthetics, the afterlife, the nature of the soul, and philosophy itself. The volume includes a comprehensive annotated index to Plato’s bestiary in both Greek and English. “Plato’s Animals is a strong volume of beautifully written paeans to postmodern themes found in premodern thought.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews “Shows readers of Plato that he remains significant to issues currently pursued in Continental thought and especially in relation to Derrida and Heidegger.” —Robert Metcalf, University of Colorado, Denver “Will provide fertile ground for future work in this area.” —Jill Gordon, author of Plato’s Erotic World
Download or read book Culture and Democracy written by Hugh Dalziel Duncan and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work by the late and great sociologist Hugh Dalziel Duncan, paints the great panorama of the Middle West, where egalitarianism is the most cherished value, and money is the most important vehicle of life. How art finds a place in this society is shown in the specific struggle between the architects, businessmen, unionists, and educators of Chicago. Into such specifics Duncan reveals the place of supposedly abstract theories developed by John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Thorstein Veblen, and above all, Louis H. Sullivan, whose school of architecture presents both a new form of physical design and a new order of society. The rise, seeming defeat, and final triumph of Sullivan's principles of order in architecture are related to his social and aesthetic theories of form in society. In democratic society, all individuals must be capable of art, just as all individuals share in art as experience. Sullivan's description of the development within the individual of the idea of architecture is treated as an allegory of such development in the spirit of democratic values. His life is offered as a parable of the problem facing American artists as they attempt to root art in democratic culture. In Sullivan's words: "The critical study of architecture becomes not merely the direct study of art, but "in extenso, a "study of the social conditions producing it. The study of a newly shaping type of civilization. By this light, the study of architecture becomes naturally and logically a branch of social science. . . ." Duncan's exceptional volume, written with grace and clarity, registers the achievements of this Chicago School, showing how culture and democracy reached a special moment of consensus with the money-based economy of our time.
Download or read book Democracy in America Volume 1 2 written by Alexis de Tocqueville and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America in the 1830s: a fledgling democracy bursting with innovation and potential. But beneath the surface, Alexis de Tocqueville, a keen French observer, delves deeper. Democracy in America – Volume 2 is your exclusive invitation to explore the soul of this young nation. Will the tides of equality sweep away tradition? Can faith flourish in a world of free thought? And what hidden dangers lurk within the very ideals of liberty? Unveil the forces shaping America's destiny in this captivating audiobook.
Download or read book The Opium Queen written by Gabrielle Paluch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-04-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publishers Weekly calls the book "a jaw dropping study of a lesser-known yet larger-than-life figure.” Opium Queen is the true story of the widely mythologized genderqueer Burmese opium-pioneer of noble Chinese descent, Olive Yang, who secretly ran an anti-communist rebel army supported by the CIA in the 1950s heyday of the Golden Triangle. Olive Yang was a widely mythologized genderqueer lesbian opium-pioneer in the 1950s heyday of the Golden Triangle. After escaping an arranged marriage with a noble cousin, Olive felt that she had no choice but to lead a life of banditry with an anti-communist rebel army supported by the CIA. As her smuggling empire grew, she became so powerful and infamous, novelists were inspired to write about her evil ruthlessness and beauty. Yet, Olive’s real life and identity remained a mystery to many. To the Kokang people whom the Yang family once ruled, Olive was both folk-hero and villain. To the communists Olive’s men harassed, she was the saboteur of the historic Sino-Burmese border agreement. To the generals who jailed her at the dawn of the Burmese military era, she was a national security threat. And to at least one man at the CIA, she was “Miss Hairy Legs.” Opium Queen is a journey to uncover the true story behind the propaganda and legends. Declassified intelligence documents portray Olive as a critical operator in one of the most important fronts of the clandestine Cold War against China. Through extensive interviews with the Yang family, Olive emerges as a complex anti-hero, searching for a way to live as an open homosexual, in an era when such a lifestyle was considered deeply shameful in Burma. The great military alliances that facilitate narcotics traffic in Myanmar today are Olive’s lasting legacy in the Golden Triangle, as is the disenfranchisement of the people of Kokang. Through the story of Olive’s formidable life, Opium Queen examines historic events that underpinned critical diplomatic relationships between the U.S., Myanmar, and China; and were at the root of Myanmar’s current political crisis.
Download or read book Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America LOA 147 written by Alexis de Tocqueville and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2004-02-09 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exclusive new translation of the most perceptive and influential book ever written about American politics and society—“the bible on democracy” (The Texas Observer) This Library of America volume presents de Tocqueville’s masterpiece in an entirely new translation—the first to fully capture his style and provide a rigorous, faithful rendering of his profound ideas and observations Alexis de Tocqueville, a young aristocratic French lawyer, came to the United States in 1831 to study its penitentiary systems. His nine-month visit and subsequent reading and reflection resulted in this landmark masterpiece of political observation and analysis. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville vividly describes the unprecedented social equality he found in America and explores its implications for European society in the emerging modern era. His book provides enduring insight into the political consequences of widespread property ownership, the potential dangers to liberty inherent in majority rule, the vital role of religion in American life, and the importance of civil institutions in an individualistic culture dominated by the pursuit of material self-interest. He also probes the deep differences between the free and slave states, writing prophetically of racism, bigotry, and prejudice in the United States. Brought to life by Arthur Goldhammer’s clear, fluid, and vigorous translation, this volume of Democracy in America is the first to fully capture Tocqueville’s achievements both as an accomplished literary stylist and as a profound political thinker.
Download or read book A Sudden Blaze of Light written by Daniel George Skinner and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This dissertation investigates the political reforms initiated by the Hong Kong colonial government between 1978-1996 in light of Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty on Juy 1, 1997." --Abstract.
