Download or read book In Search of Politics written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the noted sociologist confronts the decline of the public realm and the profound contradictions of freedom in present-day society. How can most of us consider ourselves free and yet believe equally firmly that there is little we can change--singly, severally, or all together--in the ways the affairs of the world are being run? Why has the growth of individual freedom coincided with the growth of collective impotence, insofar as there is no easy and obvious way to translate private worries into public issues and, conversely, to pinpoint public issues in private troubles? What, under these circumstances, can bring us together? Occasionally, our impulses toward sociality are released in short-lived explosions, sometimes in carnivals of compassion and charity, sometimes by outbursts of beefed-up aggression against a freshly discovered enemy. The trouble with these occasions is that they run out of steam quickly, and when we return to our daily business the shared world, brightly illuminated for a moment, seems if anything darker than before. The chance of changing this condition hangs on the agora--the space neither private nor public, but more exactly private and public at the same time. In this space, private problems meet in a meaningful way--not just to draw narcissistic pleasures or in search of some therapy through public display, but to seek collective levers powerful enough to lift individuals from their private miseries and create "public good," a "just society," or "shared values." The trouble is that little is left today of the old-style private/public spaces. In this book, the author both explores these problems and sketches the outlines of a solution for them. We cannot, he argues, overcome our collective impotence without resorting to politics and using the vehicle of political agency. In the latter part of the book, the author focuses on three orientation points for a reconstruction of politics: the republican model of the state and of citizenship, basic income as a universal entitlement, and an attempt to re-enable the institutions of autonomous society by catching up with the extraterritorial powers wielding control in an age of globalization.
Download or read book In Search of the Black Fantastic written by Richard Iton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the 1960s, when African Americans had little access to formal political power, black popular culture was commonly seen as a means of forging community and effecting political change. But as Richard Iton shows, despite the changes politics, black artists have continued to play a significant role in the making of critical social spaces.
Download or read book In Search of Climate Politics written by Matthew Paterson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the crucial - but oddly neglected - question of what it means to say climate change is political.
Download or read book Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics written by Ian Shapiro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-09 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of politics seems endlessly beset by debates about method. At the core of these debates is a single unifying concern: should political scientists view themselves primarily as scientists, developing ever more sophisticated tools and studying only those phenomena to which such tools may fruitfully be applied? Or should they instead try to illuminate the large, complicated, untidy problems thrown up in the world, even if the chance to offer definitive explanations is low? Is there necessarily a tension between these two endeavours? Are some domains of political inquiry more amenable to the building up of reliable, scientific knowledge than others, and if so, how should we deploy our efforts? In this book, some of the world's most prominent students of politics offer original discussions of these pressing questions, eschewing narrow methodological diatribes to explore what political science is and how political scientists should aspire to do their work.
Download or read book Negro Politics written by James Q. Wilson and published by Buccaneer Books. This book was released on 1980 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Search of Politics written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world which no longer questions itself, which lives from one day to another managing successive crises and struggling to brace itself for new ones, without knowing where it is going and without trying to plan the itinerary. And everything important in our lives - livelihood, human bonds, partnerships, neighbourhood, goals worth pursuing and dangers to avoid - feels transient, precarious, vulnerable, insecure, uncertain, risky. Is there a connection between the shape of the world we inhabit and the way we live our lives? Exploring that connection, and finding out just how close it is, is the main concern of this book. What is at stake in this inquiry is the possibility of re-building the"'private/public" space, where private troubles and public issues meet and where citizens engage in dialogue in order to govern themselves. Individual liberty can only be a product of collective work, it can only be collectively secured and guaranteed. And yet today we are moving towards a privatization of the means to secure individual liberty. If seen as a therapy for the present ills, this is bound to produce effects of a most sinister kind. The act of translating private troubles into public issues is in danger of falling into disuse and being forgotten. The argument of this book is that making the translation possible again is an urgent and vital imperative for the renewal of politics today. This new book by Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most original and creative thinkers of our time - will be of particular interest to students of sociology, politics and social and political theory.
Download or read book Politics and the Search for the Common Good written by Hans Sluga and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a vigorous reassessment of the nature of politics and political theorizing.
Download or read book The Politics of Information written by Frank R. Baumgartner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-01-02 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does the government decide what’s a problem and what isn’t? And what are the consequences of that process? Like individuals, Congress is subject to the “paradox of search.” If policy makers don’t look for problems, they won’t find those that need to be addressed. But if they carry out a thorough search, they will almost certainly find new problems—and with the definition of each new problem comes the possibility of creating a government program to address it. With The Politics of Attention, leading policy scholars Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones demonstrated the central role attention plays in how governments prioritize problems. Now, with The Politics of Information, they turn the focus to the problem-detection process itself, showing how the growth or contraction of government is closely related to how it searches for information and how, as an organization, it analyzes its findings. Better search processes that incorporate more diverse viewpoints lead to more intensive policymaking activity. Similarly, limiting search processes leads to declines in policy making. At the same time, the authors find little evidence that the factors usually thought to be responsible for government expansion—partisan control, changes in presidential leadership, and shifts in public opinion—can be systematically related to the patterns they observe. Drawing on data tracing the course of American public policy since World War II, Baumgartner and Jones once again deepen our understanding of the dynamics of American policy making.
Download or read book Seeking the Center written by Martin A. Levin and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-03 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past decade, Democrats and Republicans each have received about fifty percent of the votes and controlled about half of the government, but this has not resulted in policy deadlock. Despite highly partisan political posturing, the policy regime has been largely moderate. Incremental, yet substantial, policy innovations such as welfare reform; deficit reduction; the North American Free Trade Agreement; and the deregulation of telecommunications, banking, and agriculture have been accompanied by such continuities as Social Security and Medicare, the maintenance of earlier immigration reforms, and the persistence of many rights-based policies, including federal affirmative action. In Seeking the Center, twenty-one contributors analyze policy outcomes in light of the frequent alternation in power among evenly divided parties. They show how the triumph of policy moderation and the defeat of more ambitious efforts, such as health care reform, can be explained by mutually supporting economic, intellectual, and political forces. Demonstrating that the determinants of public policy become clear by probing specific issues, rather than in abstract theorizing, they restore the politics of policymaking to the forefront of the political science agenda. A successor to Martin A. Levin and Marc K. Landy’s influential The New Politics of Public Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), this book will be vital reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in political science and public policy, as well as a resource for scholars in both fields.
Download or read book The Transformation of Southern Politics written by Jack Bass and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stressing the relevance of The Transformation of Southern Politics as a background for understanding the South into the next century, Jack Bass and Walter De Vries write that the "themes of change in southern politics still involve the rise of the Republican Party, black political development and the Democratic response to it--and the interaction of these forces with social and economic issues." The Transformation of Southern Politics examines the post-World War II political evolution of the eleven southern states and traces the effects of such influences as Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, urban migration, the growth of the Republican Party, and the rise of African Americans in the political landscape. Relying on the methodology that V. O. Key used in his 1949 classic Southern Politics in State and Nation, the work draws on interviews with more than 360 politicians, scholars, journalists, and labor leaders, and includes a wealth of data on voting trends, political perceptions, and population flow to present a comprehensive portrait of the region up to the 1976 presidential election. In the preface to the Brown Thrasher edition, Bass and De Vries offer an overview of the region's current political climate, including an analysis of the 1994 mid-term elections. They also provide excerpts from their interview with Bill Clinton during his first campaign for political office.
Download or read book Time and world politics written by Kimberly Hutchings and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first authoritative guide to assumptions about time in theories of contemporary world politics. It demonstrates how predominant theories of the international or global ‘present’ are affected by temporal assumptions, grounded in western political thought, that fundamentally shape what we can and cannot know about world politics today. The first part of the book traces the philosophical roots of assumptions about time in contemporary political theory. The second part examines contemporary theories of world politics, including liberal and realist International Relations theories and the work of Habermas, Hardt and Negri, Virilio and Agamben. In each case, it is argued, assumptions about political time ensure the identification of the particular temporality of western experience with the political temporality of the world as such and put the theorist in the unsustainable position of holding the key to the direction of world history. In the final chapter, the book draws on postcolonial and feminist thinking, and the philosophical accounts of political time in the work of Derrida and Deleuze, to develop a new ‘untimely’ way of thinking about time in world politics.
Download or read book Unapologetically Moderate written by Bill King and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together the best of King's work, the book explores topics ranging from the demographic revolution sweeping America to the pressing need for Social Security reform to the place of religious faith in politics. King's reach extends from Houston's local government scene to the Austin statehouse and the halls of Congress. Whatever the subject, King's dispassionate, fact-driven approach to hot-button issues sets him apart from other political observers. His clear explanation of complex subjects provides welcome perspective on topics that have become muddled by partisan interpretations.
Download or read book State of Mind written by Chris Tufton and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-28 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An honest, unflinching look at Jamaican politics, Chris Tufton's grounded, accessible account of his first-hand experience in competitive party politics and in democratic governance offers a view of Jamaican politics that is rarely seen. From his political formation in high school, to his joining Young Jamaica at UWI, Mona, Tufton shares a detailed account of his involvement with the National Democratic Movement, his return to the Jamaica Labour Party and his subsequent successful run for a seat in parliament in 2007. The nuanced, reflective account of his time in office as a cabinet minister, alongside his role as a deputy leader of the JLP, gives an insider perspective on the challenges of leadership. The devastating loss of his seat by 13 votes in the 2011 elections, and the ensuing volatility of his political career, including near exile from the JLP, up until his unlikely comeback in 2016, are recounted with humility and self-awareness. In situating his own journey in the broader context of Jamaican political culture, State of Mind offers a realistic view of the weaknesses in Jamaica's democracy, and the factors that keep Jamaica from moving forward as it ought to. Throughout his telling of the details and dynamics of the nitty-gritty of Jamaican politics, Tufton candidly shares aspects of his own life, as he grapples with the role of the church, race and colour, gender, and other controversial issues, and brings to these topics an original perspective that is likely to stir lively debate
Download or read book In Search of Another Country written by Joseph Crespino and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s, Mississippi was the heart of white southern resistance to the civil-rights movement. To many, it was a backward-looking society of racist authoritarianism and violence that was sorely out of step with modern liberal America. White Mississippians, however, had a different vision of themselves and their country, one so persuasive that by 1980 they had become important players in Ronald Reagan's newly ascendant Republican Party. In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leaders strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of civil-rights activists and the federal government seeking to end Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative countermovement. Crespino explains how white Mississippians linked their fight to preserve Jim Crow with other conservative causes--with evangelical Christians worried about liberalism infecting their churches, with cold warriors concerned about the Communist threat, and with parents worried about where and with whom their children were schooled. Crespino reveals important divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican South. This book lends new insight into how white Mississippians gave rise to a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that recast American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
Download or read book In Search of Democracy written by Larry Diamond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book evaluates the global status and prospects of democracy, with an emphasis on the quality of democratic institutions and the effectiveness of governance as key conditions for stable democracy. Bringing together a wide range of the author’s work over the past three decades, it advances a framework for assessing the quality of democracy and it analyzes alternative measures of democracy. Drawing on the most recent data from Freedom House, it assesses the global state of democracy and freedom, as of the beginning of 2015, and it explains why the world has been experiencing a mild but now deepening recession of democracy and freedom since 2005. A major theme of the book across the three decades of the author’s work is the relationship between democratic quality and stability. Democracies break down, Diamond argues, not so much because of economic factors but because of corrupt, inept governance that violates individual rights and the rule of law. The best way to secure democracy is to ensure that democracy is accountable, transparent, genuinely competitive, respectful of individual rights, inclusive of diverse forms and sources of participation, and responsive to the needs and aspirations of ordinary citizens. Viable democracy requires not only a state that can mobilize power to achieve collective goals, but also one that can restrain and punish the abuse of power—a particularly steep challenge for poor countries and those with natural resource wealth. The book examines these themes both in broad comparative perspective and with a deeper analysis of historical trends and future prospects in Africa and Asia,. Concluding with lessons for sustaining and reforming policies to promote democracy internationally, this book is essential reading for students and scholars interested in democracy, as well as politics and international relations more generally.
Download or read book In Search of Theory written by Richard W. Mansbach and published by . This book was released on 1983-03 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Search of Poetry in the Politics of Power written by George Liska and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culminating work of a lifetime of scholarship, In Search of Poetry in the Politics of Power is an intellectual autobiography of George Liska, a distinguished scholar of foreign policy. Integrating personal memoir with a discussion of world politics and international relations, this book includes selections from Liska's most important writings from the past 50 years. Topics discussed include realism and world politics; historicism; historicist realism and statesmanship; and the prospects for scholarship in the next half century. This is a valuable book for scholars of international relations, world politics, and political history.
