Download or read book Downsizing Democracy written by Matthew A. Crenson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally publushed in 2002. In Downsizing Democracy, Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg describe how the once powerful idea of a collective citizenry has given way to a concept of personal, autonomous democracy. Today, political change is effected through litigation, lobbying, and term limits, rather than active participation in the political process, resulting in narrow special interest groups dominating state and federal decision-making. At a time when an American's investment in the democratic process has largely been reduced to an annual contribution to a political party or organization, Downsizing Democracy offers a critical reassessment of American democracy.
Download or read book Downsizing the Federal Government written by Chris Edwards and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2005-11-25 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government is running huge budget deficits, spending too much, and heading toward a financial crisis. Federal spending soared under President George W. Bush, and the costs of programs for the elderly are set to balloon in coming years. Hurricane Katrina has made the federal budget situation even more desperate. In Downsizing the Federal Government Cato Institute budget expert Chris Edwards provides policymakers with solutions to the growing federal budget mess. Edwards identifies more than 100 federal programs that should be terminated, transferred to the states, or privatized in order to balance the budget and save hundreds of billions of dollars. Edwards proposes a balanced reform package of cuts to entitlements, domestic programs, and excess defense spending. He argues that these cuts would not only eliminate the deficit, but also strengthen the economy, enlarge personal freedom, and leave a positive fiscal legacy for the next generation. Downsizing the Federal Government discusses the systematic causes of wasteful spending, and it overflows with examples of federal programs that are obsolete and mismanaged. The book examines the budget process and shows how policymakers act contrary to the interests of average Americans by favoring special interests.
Download or read book Outsourcing Sovereignty written by Paul R. Verkuil and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-19 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reliance on the private military industry and the privatization of public functions has left our government less able to govern effectively. When decisions that should have been taken by government officials are delegated (wholly or in part) to private contractors without appropriate oversight, the public interest is jeopardized. Books on private military have described the problem well, but they have not offered prescriptions or solutions this book does.
Download or read book Mobilizing Democracy written by Paul Almeida and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-08 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the conditions and factors that drive people to protest against government economic policies in the developing world? Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association (2015) Paul Almeida’s comparative study of the largest social movement campaigns that existed between 1980 and 2013 in every Central American country (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) provides a granular examination of the forces that spark mass mobilizations against state economic policy, whether those factors are electricity rate hikes or water and health care privatization. Many scholars have explained connections between global economic changes and local economic conditions, but most of the research has remained at the macro level. Mobilizing Democracy contributes to our knowledge about the protest groups “on the ground” and what makes some localities successful at mobilizing and others less successful. His work enhances our understanding of what ingredients contribute to effective protest movements as well as how multiple protagonists—labor unions, students, teachers, indigenous groups, nongovernmental organizations, women’s groups, environmental organizations, and oppositional political parties—coalesce to make protest more likely to win major concessions. Based on extensive field research, archival data of thousands of protest events, and interviews with dozens of Central American activists, Mobilizing Democracy brings the international consequences of privatization, trade liberalization, and welfare-state downsizing in the global South into focus and shows how persistent activism and network building are reactivated in these social movements. Almeida enables our comprehension of global and local politics and policy by answering the question, “If all politics is local, then how do the politics of globalization manifest themselves?” Detailed graphs and maps provide a synthesis of the quantitative and qualitative data in this important study. Written in clear, accessible prose, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars in the fields of political science, social movements, anthropology, Latin American studies, and labor studies.
Download or read book Shadow Elite written by Janine R. Wedel and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It can feel like we're swimming in a sea of corruption. It's unclear who exactly is in charge and what role they play. The same influential people seem to reappear time after time in different professional guises, pressing their own agendas in one venue after another. According to award-winning public policy scholar and anthropologist Janine Wedel, these are the powerful ''shadow elite,'' the main players in a vexing new system of power and influence. In this groundbreaking book, Wedel charts how this shadow elite, loyal only to their own, challenge both governments' rules of accountability and business codes of competition to accomplish their own goals. From the Harvard economists who helped privatize post-Soviet Russia and the neoconservatives who have helped privatize American foreign policy (culminating with the debacle that is Iraq) to the many private players who daily make public decisions without public input, these manipulators both grace the front pages and operate behind the scenes. Wherever they maneuver, they flout once-sacrosanct boundaries between state and private. Profoundly original, Shadow Elite gives us the tools we need to recognize these powerful yet elusive players and comprehend the new system. Nothing less than our ability for self-government and our freedom are at stake.
Download or read book Waiting for Democracy written by Jesse Craig Ribot and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: References pp. 115-132.
Download or read book Political Order and Political Decay written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of the bestselling landmark work on the history of the modern state Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Gress called Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order "magisterial in its learning and admirably immodest in its ambition." In The New York Times Book Review, Michael Lind described the book as "a major achievement by one of the leading public intellectuals of our time." And in The Washington Post, Gerard DeGrott exclaimed "this is a book that will be remembered. Bring on volume two." Volume two is finally here, completing the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West. A sweeping, masterful account of the struggle to create a well-functioning modern state, Political Order and Political Decay is destined to be a classic.
Download or read book Democracy Reinvented written by Hollie Russon Gilman and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Participatory Budgeting—the experiment in democracy that could redefine how public budgets are decided in the United States. Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called "revolutionary civics in action" by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds. Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, indepth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance. While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Reinvesting in Democracy also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance.
Download or read book The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy written by Beth A. Simmons and published by . This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyses the ways markets and democracy have diffused around the world through interdependent decision-making.
Download or read book Debating Democracy s Discontent written by Anita L. Allen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely and provocative volume, some of the world's leading political and constitutional theorists come together to debate Michael Sandel's celebrated thesis that the United States is in the the grip of a flawed public philosophy - "procedural liberalism". Beginning with an originalstage-setting introduction by Ronald Beiner, and ending with a reply by Michael Sandel, Sandel's liberal and feminist critics square off with his communitarian and civic republican sympathizers in a lively and wide-ranging discussion spanning constitutional law, culture, and political economy.Practical, topical issues of immigration, gay marriage, federalism, adoption, abortion, corporate speech, militias, and economic disparity are debated alongside theories of civic virtue, citizenship, identity, and community. Not only does this volume provide the most comprehensive and insightfulcritique of Sandel's Democracy's Discontent to date - it also makes a very significant, substantive contribution to contemporary political and legal philosophy in its own right. It will prove essential reading for all those interested in the future of American politics, law, and publicphilosophy.
Download or read book America Beyond Capitalism written by Gar Alperovitz and published by Democracy Collaborative Pres. This book was released on 2011 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America Beyond Capitalism is a book whose time has come. Gar Alperovitz's expert diagnosis of the long-term structural crisis of the American economic and political system is accompanied by detailed, practical answers to the problems we face as a society. Unlike many books that reserve a few pages of a concluding chapter to offer generalized, tentative solutions, Alperovitz marshals years of research into emerging "new economy" strategies to present a comprehensive picture of practical bottom-up efforts currently underway in thousands of communities across the United States. All democratize wealth and empower communities, not corporations: worker-ownership, cooperatives, community land trusts, social enterprises, along with many supporting municipal, state and longer term federal strategies as well. America Beyond Capitalism is a call to arms, an eminently practical roadmap for laying foundations to change a faltering system that increasingly fails to sustain the great American values of equality, liberty and meaningful democracy.
Download or read book American Credo written by Michael Foley and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-09-13 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American society may be hostile to the thought of ideologies, but it possesses a sophisticated but little understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development. The study asks how this occurs; how the sources, traditions and usages of core ideas and their derivative compounds animate political discourse and structure the basis of political conflict; and how it is possible to sustain a high incidence of competitive value-laden argument and principled political conflict within a stable political order. The fundamental aim of this study is to examine the traditions and usages of American political ideas within the arena of practical politics. By locating them in their respective contexts, it will be possible to assess both their changing meanings and their shifting relationships to one another. In surveying America's core ideas both in isolation and in combination, the book facilitates an informed awareness of their political and cultural leverage as forms of persuasion and sources of legitimacy. American Credo roots the examination of American political ideas firmly in the milieu of social drives, political movements and contemporary issues within which the ideas themselves are embedded. This not only allows the study to investigate the interior properties and traditional priorities of America's key values but permits the theoretical implications and practical consequences of these ideas to be traced and evaluated. By marshalling a wide variety of evidence from different disciplines and perspectives, and by employing innovative principles of organisation, the study offers clarity and depth in support of an inventive explanatory scheme. It concludes with a review of the current and likely future challenges to the protocols and conventions surrounding the matrix of ideational coexistence.
Download or read book Pragmatic Fashions written by John J. Stuhr and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on democracy, and focusing on love. He creates a space for a philosophy that is liable to failure and that is experimental, pluralist, relativist, radically empirical, radically democratic, and absurd. Full color illustrations enhance this lyrical commitment to a new version of pragmatism.
Download or read book One Market Under God written by Thomas Frank and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2001-09-18 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that has been raising hackles far and wide, the social critic Thomas Frank skewers one of the most sacred cows of the go-go '90s: the idea that the new free-market economy is good for everyone. Frank's target is "market populism"—the widely held belief that markets are a more democratic form of organization than democratically elected governments. Refuting the idea that billionaire CEOs are looking out for the interests of the little guy, he argues that "the great euphoria of the late nineties was never as much about the return of good times as it was the giddy triumph of one America over another." Frank is a latter-day Mencken, as readers of his journal The Baffler and his book The Conquest of Cool know. With incisive analysis, passionate advocacy, and razor-sharp wit, he asks where we are headed—and whether we're going to like it when we get there.
Download or read book The Twilight of Equality written by Lisa Duggan and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics. The Twilight of Equality?searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel. After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. In a series of political case studies, Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail. Ultimately,The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.
Download or read book Presidential Power written by Matthew A. Crenson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how American presidents--especially those of the past three decades--have increased the power of the presidency at the expense of democracy.
Download or read book Neighborhood Politics written by Matthew A. Crenson and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The setting for the author's book is Baltimore. In this surprising, powerful work, he finds that such neighborhood action does not arise from a strong sense of neighborliness or community feeling. Instead, it is precisely when neighbors dislike one another that some features of informal self-organization emerge.
