Author: Joshua Aaron ChafetzPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Publisher Description
Democracy's Privileged Few
Author: Joshua Aaron ChafetzPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Publisher Description
Democracy's Privileged Few
Author: Joshua A. ChafetzPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300134894
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Placing legislative privilege in historical context, Josh Chafetz compares the freedoms and protections of members of the United States Congress with those of Britain's Parliament.
Producing Politics
Author: Daniel LaurisonPublisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807025062
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
The first book to uncover the hidden and powerful role campaign professionals play in shaping American democracy by delving into the exclusive world of politicos through off-the-record interviews We may think we know our politicians, but we know very little about the people who create them. Producing Politics will change the way we think about our country’s political candidates, the campaigns that bolster them, and the people who craft them. Political campaigns are designed to influence voter behavior and determine elections. They are supposed to serve as a conduit between candidates and voters: politicos get to know communities, communicate their concerns to candidates, and encourage individuals to vote. However, sociologist Daniel Laurison reveals a much different reality: campaigns are riddled with outdated strategies, unquestioned conventional wisdom, and preconceived notions about voters that are more reflective of campaign professionals’ implicit bias than the real lives and motivations of Americans. Through over 70 off-the-record interviews with key campaign staff and consultants, Laurison uncovers how the industry creates a political environment that is confusing, polarizing, and alienating to voters. Campaigns are often an echo chamber of staffers with replicate backgrounds and ideologies; most political operatives are white men from middle- to upper-class backgrounds who are driven more by their desire to climb the political ladder than the desire to create an open conversation between voter and candidate. Producing Politics highlights the impact of national campaign professionals in the US through a sociological lens. It explores the role political operatives play in shaping the way that voters understand political candidates, participate in elections, and perceive our democratic process—and is an essential guide to understanding the current American political system.
State of Crisis
Author: Zygmunt BaumanPublisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745685293
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Book Description
Today we hear much talk of crisis and comparisons are often made with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but there is a crucial difference that sets our current malaise apart from the 1930s: today we no longer trust in the capacity of the state to resolve the crisis and to chart a new way forward. In our increasingly globalized world, states have been stripped of much of their power to shape the course of events. Many of our problems are globally produced but the volume of power at the disposal of individual nation-states is simply not sufficient to cope with the problems they face. This divorce between power and politics produces a new kind of paralysis. It undermines the political agency that is needed to tackle the crisis and it saps citizens’ belief that governments can deliver on their promises. The impotence of governments goes hand in hand with the growing cynicism and distrust of citizens. Hence the current crisis is at once a crisis of agency, a crisis of representative democracy and a crisis of the sovereignty of the state. In this book the world-renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and fellow traveller Carlo Bordoni explore the social and political dimensions of the current crisis. While this crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the turmoil following the financial crisis of 2007-8, Bauman and Bordoni argue that the crisis facing Western societies is rooted in a much more profound series of transformations that stretch back further in time and are producing long-lasting effects. This highly original analysis of our current predicament by two of the world’s leading social thinkers will be of interest to a wide readership.
The Privileged Few
Author: R. R. DeBenedictisPublisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1496954750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 637
Book Description
This is a story of the class struggle between money, politics, and heart. In 1973, the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned only 13% of the countrys assets. Those assets included the equity in homes, businesses, stocks, bonds and property. Forty years, three poorly conceived wars and two major financial disasters later, that figure has risen to nearly 50% at the expense of the average American. Where did this windfall of wealth come from and why did the real income and personal assets of the vast majority of working Americans decline during this same period? Were they just smarter ... or did they just outsmart us? Once thought of as the land of opportunity with a standard of living envied around the world, America has become the land of political manipulations and unconscionable acts in favor of a select few. This factbased fiction novel tells the story of a generation of men and women who sought the elusive American Dream during the decline of the middle class and the deliberate war against those in poverty who can only afford to dream. Richard DeBenedictis story is told through the lives and adventures of four main characters, whom, although of diverse backgrounds, ideologies and social status, are influenced by the self-serving acts of those who want it all. Is this trend reversable or is America, as feared by the authors of our Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, on its way to becoming ruled by and for The Priviliged Few?
When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People
Author: Dara Z. StrolovitchPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679881X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421
Book Description
A deep and thought-provoking examination of crisis politics and their implications for power and marginalization in the United States. From the climate crisis to the opioid crisis to the Coronavirus crisis, the language of crisis is everywhere around us and ubiquitous in contemporary American politics and policymaking. But for every problem that political actors describe as a crisis, there are myriad other equally serious ones that are not described in this way. Why has the term crisis been associated with some problems but not others? What has crisis come to mean, and what work does it do? In When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People, Dara Z. Strolovitch brings a critical eye to the taken-for-granted political vernacular of crisis. Using systematic analyses to trace the evolution of the use of the term crisis by both political elites and outsiders, Strolovitch unpacks the idea of “crisis” in contemporary politics and demonstrates that crisis is itself an operation of politics. She shows that racial justice activists innovated the language of crisis in an effort to transform racism from something understood as natural and intractable and to cast it instead as a policy problem that could be remedied. Dominant political actors later seized on the language of crisis to compel the use of state power, but often in ways that compounded rather than alleviated inequality and injustice. In this eye-opening and important book, Strolovitch demonstrates that understanding crisis politics is key to understanding the politics of racial, gender, and class inequalities in the early twenty-first century.
Democracy and Political Ignorance
Author: Ilya SominPublisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804789312
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
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.
Government Is Good
Author: Douglas J. AmyPublisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 1457506580
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Why a book defending government? Because for decades, right-wing forces in this country have engaged in a relentless and irresponsible campaign of vicious government bashing. Conservatives and libertarians have demonized government, attacked basic safety net programs like Medicare, and undermined vital regulations that protect consumers, investors, workers, and the environment. This book takes on this anti-government movement and shows that most of its criticisms of this institution are highly exaggerated, misleading, or just plain wrong. In reality, American government - despite its flaws - plays a valuable and indispensable role in promoting the public good. Most government programs are working well and are actually improving the lives of Americans in innumerable ways. Democratic government is a vital tool for making our world a better place; and if we want an America that is prosperous, healthy, secure, well-educated, just, compassionate, and unpolluted, we need a strong, active, and well-funded public sector. Part I: Why Government is Good. The section of the book describes how government acts as a force for good in society. One chapter chronicles a day in the life of an average middle-class American and identifies the myriad ways that government programs improve our lives. Other chapters describe the forgotten achievements of government; how government is the only way to effectively promote public values like justice and equality; and how a free market economy would be impossible without the elaborate legal and regulatory infrastructure provided by government. Part II: The War on Government. This section of the book chronicles the unrelenting assault on government being waged by conservative forces in this country. Chapters describe how cuts in social programs and rollbacks of regulations have harmed the health, safety, and welfare of millions of Americans and how these assaults have taken place on many fronts - in Congress, the administrative branch, and the federal courts, as well as on the state and local level. Also addressed: how the right's radical anti-government agenda is out of touch with the views and priorities of most Americans, and what the real truth is about government deficits. Part III: How to Revitalize Democracy and Government. There are, in fact, some problems with American government, and we need to address these if we are to restore Americans' faith in this institution. One of the main problems with our government is that it is not accountable and responsive enough to the public. Moneyed special interests too often win out over the public interest. Chapters in this section describe this problem and how we can fix it. There are several reforms - including public financing of elections - that could help our government live up to its democratic ideals. The final chapter discusses strategies for building a pro-government coalition in this country.
Global Health and International Relations
Author: Colin McInnesPublisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745663079
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.
The Class Ceiling
Author: Friedman, SamPublisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447336100
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Politicians continually tell us that anyone can get ahead. But is that really true? This important, best-selling book takes readers behind the closed doors of elite employers to reveal how class affects who gets to the top. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful 'class pay gap’ exists in Britain’s elite occupations. Even when those from working-class backgrounds make it into prestigious jobs, they earn, on average, 16% less than colleagues from privileged backgrounds. But why is this the case? Drawing on 175 interviews across four case studies – television, accountancy, architecture, and acting – they explore the complex barriers facing the upwardly mobile. This is a rich, ambitious book that demands we take seriously not just the glass but also the class ceiling.