Download or read book When Politics Becomes Personal written by Alexa Bankert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-31 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we be good partisans without demonizing our political opponents? Using insights from political science and social psychology, this book argues for the distinction between positive and negative partisanship. As such, strong support for a political party does not have to be accompanied by the vilification of the opposing party and its members. Utilizing data from five different countries, Bankert demonstrates that positive and negative partisanship are independent concepts with distinct consequences for political behavior, including citizens' political participation and their commitment to democratic norms and values. The book concludes with the hopeful message that partisanship is an essential pillar of representative and liberal democracy.

Download or read book Personal Politics written by Sara Evans and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1980-01-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The women most crucial to the feminist movement that emerged in the 1960's arrived at their commitment and consciousness in response to the unexpected and often shattering experience of having their work minimized, even disregarded, by the men they considered to be their colleagues and fellow crusaders in the civil rights and radical New Left movements. On the basis of years of research, interviews with dozens of the central figures, and her own personal experience, Evans explores how the political stance of these women was catalyzed and shaped by their sharp disillusionment at a time when their skills as political activists were newly and highly developed, enabling them to join forces to support their own cause.

Download or read book Moved to Action written by Hahrie Han and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines how the underprivileged become motivated to participate in politics even though they lack the educational, financial, and civic resources commonly assumed to be necessary for participation.

Download or read book Why America Needs a Left written by Eli Zaretsky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.

Download or read book Intimate Politics written by James Stanyer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often remarked that politicians’ private lives are becoming a feature of political communication in many advanced industrial democracies. However, there have so far been no genuinely comparative studies examining the personalized nature of political communication. Intimate Politics provides for the first time a systematic comparative analysis of such developments in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, it assesses the extent to which the private lives of politicians have become a feature of political communication in each democracy. The book provides a comprehensive account of the shifting boundaries between the public and private, and whether any developments are universal or more advanced in some democracies than others, and seeks to explain why this might be. Intimate Politics will be of great value for students and scholars of communication and media studies and political science and is required reading for anyone who wants a fuller understanding of the transformation of mediated politics in advanced industrial democracies.

Download or read book Uncivil Agreement written by Lilliana Mason and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The psychology behind political partisanship: “The kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world but how you think about yourself.” —Ezra Klein, Vox Political polarization in America has moved beyond disagreements about matters of policy. For the first time in decades, research has shown that members of both parties hold strongly unfavorable views of their opponents. This is polarization rooted in social identity, and it is growing. The campaign and election of Donald Trump laid bare this fact of the American electorate, its successful rhetoric of “us versus them” tapping into a powerful current of anger and resentment. With Uncivil Agreement, Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one other with distrust and to work for party victory over all else. Although the polarizing effects of social divisions have simplified our electoral choices and increased political engagement, they have not been a force that is, on balance, helpful for American democracy. Bringing together theory from political science and social psychology, Uncivil Agreement clearly describes this increasingly “social” type of polarization, and adds much to our understanding of contemporary politics.

Download or read book Planners in Politics written by Louis Albrechts and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative book, ten executive politicians with backgrounds in planning from around the world dissect their own political careers. Reflecting on the often structural impact of their work in political decision-making, they also consider the translation of their experiences back into academic life or professional practice.

Download or read book Making Politics Work for Development written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Download or read book Politics Lost written by Joe Klein and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-06-19 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People on the right are furious. People on the left are livid. And the center isn’t holding. There is only one thing on which almost everyone agrees: there is something very wrong in Washington. The country is being run by pollsters. Few politicians are able to win the voters’ trust. Blame abounds and personal responsibility is nowhere to be found. There is a cynicism in Washington that appalls those in every state, red or blue. The question is: Why? The more urgent question is: What can be done about it? Few people are more qualified to deal with both questions than Joe Klein. There are many loud and opinionated voices on the political scene, but no one sees or writes with the clarity that this respected observer brings to the table. He has spent a lifetime enmeshed in politics, studying its nuances, its quirks, and its decline. He is as angry and fed up as the rest of us, so he has decided to do something about it—in these pages, he vents, reconstructs, deconstructs, and reveals how and why our leaders are less interested in leading than they are in the “permanent campaign” that political life has become. The book opens with a stirring anecdote from the night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Klein re-creates the scene of Robert Kennedy’s appearance in a black neighborhood in Indianapolis, where he gave a gut-wrenching, poetic speech that showed respect for the audience, imparted dignity to all who listened, and quelled a potential riot. Appearing against the wishes of his security team, it was one of the last truly courageous and spontaneous acts by an American politician—and it is no accident that Klein connects courage to spontaneity. From there, Klein begins his analysis—campaign by campaign—of how things went wrong. From the McGovern campaign polling techniques to Roger Ailes’s combative strategy for Nixon; from Reagan’s reinvention of the Republican Party to Lee Atwater’s equally brilliant reinvention of behind-the-scenes strategizing; from Jimmy Carter to George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W.—as well as inside looks at the losing sides—we see how the Democrats become diffuse and frightened, how the system becomes unbalanced, and how politics becomes less and less about ideology and more and more about how to gain and keep power. By the end of one of the most dismal political runs in history—Kerry’s 2004 campaign for president—we understand how such traits as courage, spontaneity, and leadership have disappeared from our political landscape. In a fascinating final chapter, the author refuses to give easy answers since the push for easy answers has long been part of the problem. But he does give thoughtful solutions that just may get us out of this mess—especially if any of the 2008 candidates happen to be paying attention.

Download or read book Politics Is for Power written by Eitan Hersh and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant condemnation of political hobbyism—treating politics like entertainment—and a call to arms for well-meaning, well-informed citizens who consume political news, but do not take political action. Who is to blame for our broken politics? The uncomfortable answer to this question starts with ordinary citizens with good intentions. We vote (sometimes) and occasionally sign a petition or attend a rally. But we mainly “engage” by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. We soak in daily political gossip and eat up statistics about who’s up and who’s down. We tweet and post and share. We crave outrage. The hours we spend on politics are used mainly as pastime. Instead, we should be spending the same number of hours building political organizations, implementing a long-term vision for our city or town, and getting to know our neighbors, whose votes will be needed for solving hard problems. We could be accumulating power so that when there are opportunities to make a difference—to lobby, to advocate, to mobilize—we will be ready. But most of us who are spending time on politics today are focused inward, choosing roles and activities designed for our short-term pleasure. We are repelled by the slow-and-steady activities that characterize service to the common good. In Politics Is for Power, pioneering and brilliant data analyst Eitan Hersh shows us a way toward more effective political participation. Aided by political theory, history, cutting-edge social science, as well as remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who got off their couches and took political power seriously, this book shows us how to channel our energy away from political hobbyism and toward empowering our values.

Download or read book Activism Feminism Politics and Parliament written by Margaret Wilson and published by Bridget Williams Books. This book was released on 2021-08-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Wilson has always lived a political life. From her days as a child growing up in the Waikato in a Catholic family attuned to fairness, an unlikely law student in the 1960s in a class with a few other women, and an emerging socialist feminist who read radical texts and attended women's conventions, her key concerns became cemented early: the rights of women and equality for all under the law. This is the story of one of New Zealand's most eminent political actors. A policy-focused campaigner, reluctant to join a political tribe and uncomfortable with the combative attitudes and personal jockeying that politics seemed to entail, Wilson nevertheless rose to become the president of the Labour Party during the turbulent mid-1980s. Going on to become a central, far-sighted, occasionally controversial minister in the Clark government, Wilson held significant roles as Attorney-General and Speaker of the House. Activism, Feminism, Politics and Parliament is a powerful analysis of political life in New Zealand over four decades. From pay equity to a home-grown Supreme Court, employment relations legislation to paid parental leave, the policies Wilson championed were based always in the long-held principles of a true conviction politician.

Download or read book How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics written by Laura Briggs and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today all politics are reproductive politics, argues esteemed feminist critic Laura Briggs. From longer work hours to the election of Donald Trump, our current political crisis is above all about reproduction. Households are where we face our economic realities as social safety nets get cut and wages decline. Briggs brilliantly outlines how politicians’ racist accounts of reproduction—stories of Black “welfare queens” and Latina “breeding machines"—were the leading wedge in the government and business disinvestment in families. With decreasing wages, rising McJobs, and no resources for family care, our households have grown ever more precarious over the past forty years in sharply race-and class-stratified ways. This crisis, argues Briggs, fuels all others—from immigration to gay marriage, anti-feminism to the rise of the Tea Party.

Download or read book Love Your Enemies written by Arthur C. Brooks and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? Wrong. In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

Download or read book Why Nations Fail written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Currency. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

Download or read book Politics Who Gets What When How written by Harold D. Lasswell and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-05 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, which was first published in 1936, is the classic analysis of power and manipulation by ruling elites and counter-elites. The themes that occur throughout this essay have become the guideposts for most modern research in techniques of propaganda and political organization. “It is unquestionably one of the most influential treatments of politics published in this century.”—David B. Truman, Prof.of Public Law and Government, Columbia University “This book is a landmark of modern political science.”—Daniel Lerner, Professor of Sociology, M.I.T. “For over three decades the students of politics have had their intellectual horizons constantly broadened by Harold Lasswell. There is probably no man in American political science who has brought to bear as many new approaches to the analysis of political behaviour as he has. There is perhaps no better way to get the essence of Lasswell’s thought than in his book, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How.”—Seymour Martin Lipset, Department of Sociology, U.C. Berkeley

Download or read book Private Government written by Elizabeth Anderson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments—and why we can’t see it One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers’ speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.

Download or read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics written by Richard Hofstadter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, ” The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.