Download or read book Policy Design for Democracy written by Anne Larason Schneider and published by Lawrence : University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretical work on how democracy can be improved when people are disenchanted with government. It summarizes four current approaches to policy theory - pluralism, policy sciences, public choice, and critical theory - and shows how none offer more than a partial view of policy design.
Download or read book Public Policy for Democracy written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Policy for Democracy written by Helen Ingram and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fundamental rethinking is under way about the roles of government, citizens, and community organizations in public policy. Can government be reconstructed to make public policies more responsive to citizens and thus more effective? This challenge is apparent in the activist policy agenda of the Clinton administration, which supports national service programs, government-voluntary collaborations, and community-based development projects. Public Policy for Democracy is an important and timely contribution to the current discussion of how to get people more involved in their own governance. In this book, contributors urge policymakers and policy analysts to promote a more vigorous and inclusive democracy by incorporating concerns about citizenship in their craft, rather than strictly emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness. The authors provide insight into how the social construction of politics affects the recipients of the policies and the public in general. They call attention to how policies reinforce negative stereotypes of some groups, such as welfare recipients, and often lead to political alienation and withdrawal. In addition, they discuss how polices using "clinical reason"—a term borrowed from medicine and used as a way to classify people—are increasingly applied to nonmedical situations, such as domestic violence, to restrict individual power and legitimacy. The authors argue that much needs to be done by the government itself to improve policy design and empower all citizens to participate in the democratic process. They identify concrete strategies for policymakers to enhance the role of citizens without sacrificing program effectiveness.
Download or read book Democracy and Political Ignorance written by Ilya Somin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.
Download or read book Public Policymaking in a Democratic Society written by Larry N. Gerston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While people profess a disdain for politics, in a democracy politics is the primary vehicle for citizens to influence the decisions and decision makers that shape public policy at every level. This widely acclaimed work provides an overview of public policymaking in all its aspects along with basic information, tools, and examples that will equip citizens to participate more effectively in the policymaking process. It is intended for use in internships and service-learning programs, but will serve equally as a resource for any organized effort to involve citizens in community service and the exercise of civic responsibility. This updated edition includes an all-new case study on the issue of immigration, and all other case studies have been revised.
Download or read book Connecting Democracy written by Stephen Coleman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global explosion of online activity is steadily transforming the relationship between government and the public. The first wave of change, e-government, enlisted the Internet to improve management and the delivery of services. More recently, e-democracy has aimed to enhance democracy itself using digital information and communication technology. One notable example of e-democratic practice is the government-sponsored (or government-authorized) online forum for public input on policymaking. This book investigates these online consultations and their effect on democratic practice in the United States and Europe, examining the potential of Internet-enabled policy forums to enrich democratic citizenship. The book first situates the online consultation phenomenon in a conceptual framework that takes into account the contemporary media environment and the flow of political communication; then offers a multifaceted look at the experience of online consultation participants in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; and finally explores the legal architecture of U.S. and E. U. online consultation. As the contributors make clear, online consultations are not simply dialogues between citizens and government but constitute networked communications involving citizens, government, technicians, civil society organizations, and the media. The topics examined are especially relevant today, in light of the Obama administration's innovations in online citizen involvement.
Download or read book Democratic Policymaking written by Charles Barrilleaux and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to public policy applies analytic models to key policymaking challenges, enabling students to independently evaluate core dilemmas.
Download or read book Fragmented Democracy written by Jamila Michener and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medicaid is the single largest public health insurer in the United States, covering upwards of 70 million Americans. Crucially, Medicaid is also an intergovernmental program that yokes poverty to federalism: the federal government determines its broad contours, while states have tremendous discretion over how Medicaid is designed and implemented. Where some locales are generous and open handed, others are tight-fisted and punitive. In Fragmented Democracy, Jamila Michener demonstrates the consequences of such disparities for democratic citizenship. Unpacking how federalism transforms Medicaid beneficiaries' interpretations of government and structures their participation in politics, the book examines American democracy from the vantage point(s) of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources.
Download or read book Democracy Deliberation and Education written by Robert Asen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The local school board is one of America’s enduring venues of lay democracy at work. In Democracy, Deliberation, and Education, Robert Asen takes the pulse of this democratic exemplar through an in-depth study of three local school boards in Wisconsin. In so doing, Asen identifies the broader democratic ideal in the most parochial of American settings. Conducted over two years across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, Asen’s research reveals as much about the possibilities and pitfalls of local democracy as it does about educational policy. From issues as old as racial integration and as contemporary as the recognition of the Gay-Straight Alliance in high schools, Democracy, Deliberation, and Education illustrates how ordinary folks build and sustain their vision for a community and its future through consequential public decision making. For all the research on school boards conducted in recent years, no other project so directly addresses school boards as deliberative policymaking bodies. Democracy, Deliberation, and Education draws from 250 school-board meetings and 31 interviews with board members and administrators to offer insight into participants’ varied understandings of their roles in the complex mechanism of governance.
Download or read book Democracy and Executive Power written by Susan Rose-Ackerman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A defense of regulatory agencies’ efforts to combine public consultation with bureaucratic expertise to serve the interest of all citizens The statutory delegation of rule-making authority to the executive has recently become a source of controversy. There are guiding models, but none, Susan Rose-Ackerman claims, is a good fit with the needs of regulating in the public interest. Using a cross-national comparison of public policy-making in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, she argues that public participation inside executive rule-making processes is necessary to preserve the legitimacy of regulatory policy-making.
Download or read book Open Democracy written by Hélène Landemore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, more than ever, urgently needed. -- Cover page 4.
Download or read book Social Media and Democracy written by Nathaniel Persily and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.
Download or read book Evaluating American Democracy and Public Policymaking written by William D. Schreckhise and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-03-02 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how well the American political systems performs by using multiple criteria, including the level of trust the public has towards the institutions of government, the abilities of the institutions to make good public policy, the extent to which policy is responsive to public opinion, and the extent to which public policy is fair.
Download or read book Engines of Democracy written by Alan Rosenthal and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State legislators have often been in the shadow of their national counterparts, but they drive the processes of democracy. Rosenthal brings together a lifetime of research and experience on state legislative politics into one eminently readable volume—a dynamic, inside view of the people involved, the politics that prevail, and the interest groups and lobbyists who advocate their causes. Building on earlier work with new data and recent interviews and observations, Rosenthal looks at the way representation works, Americans’ critical view of their legislatures, the role of legislative leaders, the dynamics of executive-legislative relationships, as well as norms and ethics. Both a complement and contrast to the policymaking process on Capitol Hill, Engines of Democracy proves that no one gives insight into state legislators and their work the way Alan Rosenthal can.
Download or read book Laboratories Against Democracy written by Jacob Grumbach and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the price Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy. Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments into the engines of American policymaking. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. The consequences don’t stop there, however. Drawing on a wealth of new data on state policy, public opinion, money in politics, and democratic performance, Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself. Required reading for this precarious moment in our politics, Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today’s state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time—or accelerating them.
Download or read book The Submerged State written by Suzanne Mettler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process.
Download or read book Enhancing Democracy written by Gonzalo Delamaza and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Pinochet regime, Chilean public policy has sought to rebuild democratic governance in the country. This book examines the links between the state and civil society in Chile and the ways social policies have sought to ensure the inclusion of the poor in society and democracy. Although Chile has gained political stability and grown economically, the ability of social policies to expand democratic governance and participation has proved limited, and in fact such policies have become subordinate to an elitist model of democracy and resulted in a restrictive form of citizen participation.
