Download or read book Polarization and Deep Contestations written by Tanja A. Börzel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book explores the deep contestations of the liberal script in the contemporary United States from a variety of perspectives. US democracy today is in crisis because of a profound ideological and affective polarization. The chapters in this volume show that Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party is a symptom and a catalyst, but not the cause, of the contemporary contestations of the liberal script in the US. To discern their major drivers from a longue durée perspective, each chapter takes a step back and asks three main questions: (1) How can we best describe the current contestations of the liberal script in the US, exploring the extent to which the US is unique in comparison to other liberal democracies facing similar contestations? (2) What are the main drivers and root causes that explain the current contestations and the crisis of American democracy they may precipitate? (3) What are the likely consequences for the future of American democracy? The conclusions do not lead us to expect a return to "the norm" of internal contestations of the liberal script that are common in liberal democracies and have characterized the US throughout its history. Political, economic, and cultural polarization is by now deeply entrenched in American society and is eroding "mutual toleration" as the basis of American democracy. In other words, the resilience of US liberal democracy is at stake. It is unlikely that we will see the US liberal script bounce back in the near future. This volume has emerged from research carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script - SCRIPTS", which analyzes the contemporary controversies about liberal ideas, institutions, and practices on the national and international level from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. It connects academic expertise in the social sciences and area studies and collaborates with research institutions in all world regions. Operating since 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), SCRIPTS unites eight major Berlin-based research institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the Hertie School, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Berlin branch of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).
Download or read book Polarized written by James E. Campbell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening look at how and why America has become so politically polarized Many continue to believe that the United States is a nation of political moderates. In fact, it is a nation divided. It has been so for some time and has grown more so. This book provides a new and historically grounded perspective on the polarization of America, systematically documenting how and why it happened. Polarized presents commonsense benchmarks to measure polarization, draws data from a wide range of historical sources, and carefully assesses the quality of the evidence. Through an innovative and insightful use of circumstantial evidence, it provides a much-needed reality check to claims about polarization. This rigorous yet engaging and accessible book examines how polarization displaced pluralism and how this affected American democracy and civil society. Polarized challenges the widely held belief that polarization is the product of party and media elites, revealing instead how the American public in the 1960s set in motion the increase of polarization. American politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not the top down, and this began much earlier than often thought. The Democrats and the Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center. Polarized also explains why the parties are polarized at all, despite their battle for the decisive median voter. No subject is more central to understanding American politics than political polarization, and no other book offers a more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the subject than this one.
Download or read book Why We re Polarized written by Ezra Klein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 One of Bill Gates’s “5 books to read this summer,” this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller shows us that America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed. In this “superbly researched” (The Washington Post) and timely book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us—and how we are polarizing it—with disastrous results. “The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.” “A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis” (The New York Times Book Review), Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. “Well worth reading” (New York magazine), this is an “eye-opening” (O, The Oprah Magazine) book that will change how you look at politics—and perhaps at yourself.
Download or read book The End of Illusions written by Andreas Reckwitz and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-28 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.
Download or read book Dead Center written by Jason Altmire and published by Sunbury Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2017 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fast-paced and easily-readable, Dead Center moves beyond the tired rhetoric that so often dominates our political discourse. Altmire draws upon his first-hand experience in the corridors of power to evaluate the root causes of polarization and offer novel solutions to break the gridlock and restore to Washington a spirit of cooperation.
Download or read book The Liberal Script at the Beginning of the 21st Century written by Tanja A. Börzel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-10 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. 21st-century liberalism is being contested on multiple fronts and by a wide range of actors. To understand these challengers, it is important to have a better grasp of their common target. This book introduces the "liberal script" as an analytical concept that allows us to analyze and problematize liberal thinking, as well as its different components and linkages and the tensions that they produce. What happens when the pursuit of market efficiency is incompatible with social justice? It is these tensions between the different components of the liberal script that are at the heart of the challenges against it. Different societies have resolved these tensions in different ways, leading to a variety of liberal subscripts and their contestations. The volume integrates theoretical and methodological perspectives from different disciplines, including political science, sociology, law, history, philosophy, post-colonial studies, and educational science. In demonstrating the theoretical and empirical added value of using the concept of "liberal script", the volume presents a multifaceted and nuanced picture of what is at stake in the challenges to liberalism in the early 21st century. This volume has emerged from research carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script - SCRIPTS", which analyzes the contemporary controversies about liberal ideas, institutions, and practices on the national and international level from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. It connects academic expertise in the social sciences and area studies and collaborates with research institutions in all world regions. Operating since 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), SCRIPTS unites eight major Berlin-based research institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the Hertie School, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Berlin branch of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).
Download or read book Framing Refugees written by Daniel Drewski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Across the world, the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes has more than doubled during the last decade. Although international law does not allow states to turn back refugees, some countries close their borders to refugees, some open their borders and grant extensive protection, while others admit some groups of refugees while excluding others. How can we make sense of these different responses to admitting refugees? In this book, Daniel Drewski and Jürgen Gerhards show that governments' refugee policy, as well as the stance adopted by opposition parties on the issue, is heavily dependent on how they frame their country's collective identity on the one hand and the identity and characteristics of the refugees on the other. By defining the "we" and the "others", politicians draw on collectively shared cultural repertoires, which vary by country and by political constituency within a country. The book is based on a discourse analysis of parliamentary debates. It explores the specific framing of nations' identities and the corresponding perceptions of otherness by focusing on six countries that have been confronted with large numbers of refugees: Germany, Poland, and Turkey, all responding to the exodus of Syrian and Middle Eastern refugees; Chile's reaction to the Venezuelan displacement; Singapore and its stance towards Rohingya refugees; and Uganda's response to the displacement from South Sudan. The study explores not only differences between governments of different countries but also the conflicting views of different political parties within the same country. This volume has emerged from research carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script - SCRIPTS", which analyzes the contemporary controversies about liberal ideas, institutions, and practices on the national and international level from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. It connects academic expertise in the social sciences and area studies and collaborates with research institutions in all world regions. Operating since 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), SCRIPTS unites eight major Berlin-based research institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the Hertie School, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Berlin branch of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).
Download or read book Contestation and Polarization in Global Governance written by Michelle Egan and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Building a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the limits of the international rules-based liberal order across a variety of issue areas, this topical book highlights how the discourse and values inherent in these long-established political arrangements are now facing a backlash, and how Europe is responding towards it.
Download or read book Polarized and Demobilized written by Dana El Kurd and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A frank assessment of how burgeoning authoritarianism among elites has divided Palestinians and divested them of political power.
Download or read book The New Class War written by Michael Lind and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In both Europe and North America, populist movements have shattered existing party systems and thrown governments into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking new analysis, Michael Lind, one of America’s leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry, traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines. On one side is the managerial overclass—the university-credentialed elite that clusters in high-income hubs and dominates government, the economy and the culture. On the other side is the working class of the low-density heartlands—mostly, but not exclusively, native and white. The two classes clash over immigration, trade, the environment, and social values, and the managerial class has had the upper hand. As a result of the half-century decline of the institutions that once empowered the working class, power has shifted to the institutions the overclass controls: corporations, executive and judicial branches, universities, and the media. The class war can resolve in one of three ways: • The triumph of the overclass, resulting in a high-tech caste system. • The empowerment of populist, resulting in no constructive reforms • A class compromise that provides the working class with real power Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy.
Download or read book The Politics of Resentment written by Katherine J. Cramer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An important contribution to the literature on contemporary American politics. Both methodologically and substantively, it breaks new ground.” —Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare When Scott Walker was elected Governor of Wisconsin, the state became the focus of debate about the appropriate role of government. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall, he was subsequently reelected. But why were the very people who would benefit from strong government services so vehemently against the idea of big government? With The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the puzzle: rural political consciousness and the resentment of the “liberal elite.” Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more fundamental: who we are as people and how closely a candidate’s social identity matches our own. Taking a deep dive into Wisconsin’s political climate, Cramer illuminates the contours of rural consciousness, showing how place-based identities profoundly influence how people understand politics. The Politics of Resentment shows that rural resentment—no less than partisanship, race, or class—plays a major role in dividing America against itself.
Download or read book Curbing the Court written by Brandon L. Bartels and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains when, why, and how citizens try to limit the Supreme Court's independence and power-- and why it matters.
Download or read book Queer Wars written by Dennis Altman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The claim that 'LGBT rights are human rights' encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to 'LGBT rights' to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarization over sexual rights, and the creative responses from social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. This book asks why sexuality and gender identity have become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change.
Download or read book Democracies Divided written by Thomas Carothers and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of contemporary democracies.”—Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Why divisions have deepened and what can be done to heal them As one part of the global democratic recession, severe political polarization is increasingly afflicting old and new democracies alike, producing the erosion of democratic norms and rising societal anger. This volume is the first book-length comparative analysis of this troubling global phenomenon, offering in-depth case studies of countries as wide-ranging and important as Brazil, India, Kenya, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The case study authors are a diverse group of country and regional experts, each with deep local knowledge and experience. Democracies Divided identifies and examines the fissures that are dividing societies and the factors bringing polarization to a boil. In nearly every case under study, political entrepreneurs have exploited and exacerbated long-simmering divisions for their own purposes—in the process undermining the prospects for democratic consensus and productive governance. But this book is not simply a diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Each case study discusses actions that concerned citizens and organizations are taking to counter polarizing forces, whether through reforms to political parties, institutions, or the media. The book’s editors distill from the case studies a range of possible ways for restoring consensus and defeating polarization in the world’s democracies. Timely, rigorous, and accessible, this book is of compelling interest to civic activists, political actors, scholars, and ordinary citizens in societies beset by increasingly rancorous partisanship.
Download or read book Reporting Elections written by Stephen Cushion and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How elections are reported has important implications for the health of democracy and informed citizenship. But, how informative are the news media during campaigns? What kind of logic do they follow? How well do they serve citizens?e Based on original research as well as the most comprehensive assessment of election studies to date, Cushion and Thomas examine how campaigns are reported in many advanced Western democracies. In doing so, they engage with debates about the mediatization of politics, media systems, information environments, media ownership, regulation, political news, horserace journalism, objectivity, impartiality, agenda-setting, and the relationship between media and democracy more generally. Focusing on the most recent US and UK election campaigns, they consider how the logic of election coverage could be rethought in ways that better serve the democratic needs of citizens. Above all, they argue that election reporting should be driven by a public logic, where the agenda of voters takes centre stage in the campaign and the policies of respective political parties receive more airtime and independent scrutiny. The book is essential reading for scholars and students in political communication and journalism studies, political science, media and communication studies.
Download or read book Polarization and Transformation in Zimbabwe written by Erin McCandless and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social movements and civic organizations often face profound strategy dilemmas that can hamper their effectiveness and prevent them from contributing to transformative change and peace. In Zimbabwe two particular dilemmas have fed into and fueled destructive processes of political polarization-dividing society, leadership, and decision-makers well beyond its borders. As conceptualized in this study, the first is whether to prioritize political or economic rights in efforts to bring about nation-wide transformative change (rights or redistribution). The second is whether and how to work with government and/or donors given their political, economic, and social agendas (participation or resistance). This book investigates these issues through two social movement organizations-the National Constitutional Assembly and the Zimbabwe National War Veterans' Association-and the movements they led to achieve constitutional change and radical land redistribution. Through in-depth case study analysis and peace and conflict impact assessment spanning the years 1997-2010, lessons are drawn for activists, practitioners, policy-makers, and scholars interested in depolarizing concepts underpinning polarizing discourses, transcending strategy dilemmas, and understanding how social action can better contribute to transformative change and peace.
Download or read book The Scramble for Europe written by Stephen Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the harrowing situation of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean in rubber dinghies to the crisis on the US-Mexico border, mass migration is one of the most urgent issues facing our societies today. At the same time, viable solutions seem ever more remote, with the increasing polarization of public attitudes and political positions. In this book, Stephen Smith focuses on ‘young Africa’ – 40 per cent of its population are under fifteen – anda dramatic demographic shift. Today, 510 million people live inside EU borders, and 1.25 billion people in Africa. In 2050, 450 million Europeans will face 2.5 billion Africans – five times their number. The demographics are implacable. The scramble for Europe will become as inexorable as the ‘scramble for Africa’ was at the end of the nineteenth century, when 275 million people lived north and only 100 million lived south of the Mediterranean. Then it was all about raw materials and national pride, now it is about young Africans seeking a better life on the Old Continent, the island of prosperity within their reach. If Africa’s migratory patterns follow the historic precedents set by other less developed parts of the world, in thirty years a quarter of Europe’s population will beAfro-Europeans. Addressingthe question of how Europe cancope with an influx of this magnitude, Smith argues for a path between the two extremes of today’s debate. He advocatesmigratory policies of ‘good neighbourhood’ equidistant from guilt-ridden self-denial and nativist egoism. This sobering analysis of the migration challenges we now face will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the great social and political questions of our time.
