What might a sensible community choose to do if its economy has fallen apart and becoming a ghost town is not an acceptable option? Unfortunately, answers to this question have long been measured against an implicit standard: the postwar economy of the 1950s. After showing why that economy provides an implausible standard—made possible by the lack of economic competition from the European and Asian countries, winners or losers, touched by the war—John Henry Schlegel attempts to answer the question of what to do.
While Waiting for Rain first examines the economic history of the United States as well as that of Buffalo, New York: an appropriate stand-in for any city that may have seen its economy start to fall apart in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. It makes clear that neither Buffalo nor the United States as a whole has had an economy in the sense of “a persistent market structure that is the fusion of an understanding of economic life with the patterns of behavior within the economic, political, and social institutions that enact that understanding” since both economies collapsed. Next, this book builds a plausible theory of how economic growth might take place by examining the work of the famous urbanist, Jane Jacobs, especially her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Her work, like that of many others, emphasizes the importance of innovation for economic growth, but is singular in its insistence that such innovation has to come from local resources. It can neither be bought nor given, even by well-intentioned political actors. As a result Americans generally, as well as locally, are like farmers in the midst of a drought, left to review their resources and wait. Finally, it returns to both the local Buffalo and the national economies to consider what these political units might plausibly do while waiting for an economy to emerge.
The party whips are essential components of the U.S. legislative system, responsible for marshalling party votes and keeping House and Senate party members in line. In The Whips, C. Lawrence Evans offers a comprehensive exploration of coalition building and legislative strategy in the U.S. House and Senate, ranging from the relatively bipartisan, committee-dominated chambers of the 1950s to the highly polarized congresses of the 2000s. In addition to roll call votes and personal interviews with lawmakers and staff, Evans examines the personal papers of dozens of former leaders of the House and Senate, especially former whips. These records allowed Evans to create a database of nearly 1,500 internal leadership polls on hundreds of significant bills across five decades of recent congressional history.
The result is a rich and sweeping understanding of congressional party leaders at work. Since the whips provide valuable political intelligence, they are essential to understanding how coalitions are forged and deals are made on Capitol Hill.
The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community
Today, fast food is disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods and marketed to Black Americans through targeted advertising. But throughout much of the twentieth century, fast food was developed specifically for White urban and suburban customers, purposefully avoiding Black spaces. In White Burgers, Black Cash, Naa Oyo A. Kwate traces the evolution in fast food from the early 1900s to the present, from its long history of racist exclusion to its current damaging embrace of urban Black communities.
Fast food has historically been tied to the country’s self-image as the land of opportunity and is marketed as one of life’s simple pleasures, but a more insidious history lies at the industry’s core. White Burgers, Black Cash investigates the complex trajectory of restaurant locations from a decided commitment to Whiteness to the disproportionate densities that characterize Black communities today. Kwate expansively charts fast food’s racial and spatial transformation and centers the cities of Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., in a national examination of the biggest brands of today, including White Castle, KFC, Burger King, McDonald’s, and more.
Deeply researched, grippingly told, and brimming with surprising details, White Burgers, Black Cash reveals the inequalities embedded in the closest thing Americans have to a national meal.
The relation of White House assistants to the president, their appropriate role in the governmental process, and the most effective means for organizing and managing the White House have been subjects of both public concern and academic dispute. White House Operations addresses these and related questions by providing the first thorough analysis of how the thirty-sixth president managed his staff. By grounding their study in original documents from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, the authors lift the veil of secrecy that clouds the inner workings of the White House. The result is an insightful elaboration of the complex, extensive, and diverse roles of White House aides—and av fascinating look at such key White House figures as McGeorge Bundy, Joseph Califano, Bill Moyers, George Reedy, Walt Rostow, Lawrence O’Brien, and Johnson himself.
This exploration of Johnson’s highly personalized White House operations provides far-reaching implications for the nature of effective presidential management. The comprehensive analysis of the range of work done under Johnson and the unique nature of White House assistance leads the authors to a strong and vigorous assertion for a positive role for the White House staff that clashes sharply with the thrust of many recommendations for reorganizing the presidency. Redford and McCulley convincingly demonstrate that management of the White House staff and other parts of the president’s advisory system will remain crucial for successful presidential performance.
The book is the fifth volume in a series designed to provide a comprehensive administrative history of the Johnson presidency. The book will be of interest to the informed general reader, presidential scholars, political scientists, U.S. historians, and students of public management and will be an important addition to academic library collections.
The reign of Emperor Jiaqing (1796–1820 CE) has long occupied an awkward position in studies of China’s last dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911 CE). Conveniently marking a watershed between the prosperous eighteenth century and the tragic post–Opium War era, this quarter century has nevertheless been glossed over as an unremarkable interlude separating two well-studied epochs of great transformation. White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates presents a major reassessment of this misunderstood period by examining how the emperors, bureaucrats, and foreigners responded to the two crises that shaped the transition from the Qianlong to the Jiaqing reign.
Wensheng Wang argues that the dramatic combination of internal uprising and transnational piracy, rather than being a hallmark of inexorable dynastic decline, propelled the Manchu court to reorganize itself through a series of modifications in policymaking and bureaucratic structure. The resulting Jiaqing reforms initiated a process of state retreat that pulled the Qing Empire out of a cycle of aggressive overextension and resistance, and back onto a more sustainable track of development. Although this pragmatic striving for political sustainability was unable to save the dynasty from ultimate collapse, it represented a durable and constructive approach to the compounding problems facing the late Qing regime and helped sustain it for another century. As one of the most comprehensive accounts of the Jiaqing reign, White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates provides a fresh understanding of this significant turning point in China’s long imperial history.
Ranging in age from twenty-six to eighty-six, the men whose stories are presented here include some of the elder statesmen of antiracism work as well as members of the newest generation of activists. They come from across the United States—from Denver, Nashville, and San Jose; rural North Carolina, Detroit, and Seattle. Some are straight; some are gay. A few—such as historian Herbert Aptheker, singer/songwriter Si Kahn, Stetson Kennedy (a Klan infiltrator in the 1940s), and Richard Lapchick (active in organizing the sports community against apartheid)—are relatively well known; most are not. Among them are academics, ministers, police officers, firefighters, teachers, journalists, union leaders, and full-time community organizers. They work with Latinos and African-, Asian-, and Native-Americans. Many ground their work in spiritual commitments. Their inspiring personal narratives—whether about researching right-wing groups, organizing Central American immigrants, or serving as pastor of an interracial congregation—connect these men with one another and with their allies in the fight against racism in the United States.
All authors’ royalties go directly to fund antiracist work. To read excerpts from the book, please visit http://www.whitemenchallengingracism.com/
Contributors. Rey Chow, Zhiyuan Cui, Michael Dutton, Gan Yang, Harry Harootunian, Peter Hitchcock, Rebecca Karl, Louisa Schein, Wang Hui, Wang Shaoguang, Xudong Zhang
Racial and gender employment inequalities are alive and well today. In 2000, the U.S. government offered $508 million to settle more than one thousand lawsuits brought against the federally funded Voice of America by female workers. At the same time, African American employees of Coca-Cola sued their employer, citing the large number of minorities in low-paying jobs, with just a handful at top levels. Even Alan Greenspan has urged firms to eliminate the “distortions that arise as a result of discrimination.”
The political agenda regarding this issue is polarized. Many conservative economists claim that financial considerations have led businesses to hire minorities because such practices increase profits. In opposition, many liberal economists believe businesses will hire minorities only if forced to do so by equal employment opportunity policies. Robert Cherry bridges these two positions, arguing that there is some truth to the positive effect of the profit motive, but that market forces alone are not enough to eliminate employment and earnings disparities.
Cherry surveys the political and economic forces that influenced labor market practices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the employment barriers African Americans, women, and immigrants encounter. He then assesses the effects of 1960s civil rights legislation and finds that improvements have been substantial, primarily for college-educated African Americans and women; therefore, he recommends that equal employment opportunity policies be strengthened. Cherry demonstrates how the promotion of full employment can further the advancement of working-class African Americans and women.
The continued spread of democracy into the twenty-first century has seen two-thirds of the almost two hundred independent countries of the world adopting this model. In these newer democracies, one of the biggest challenges has been to establish the proper balance between the civilian and military sectors. A fundamental question of power must be addressed—who guards the guardians and how?
In this volume of essays, contributors associated with the Center for Civil-Military Relations in Monterey, California, offer firsthand observations about civil-military relations in a broad range of regions including Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Despite diversity among the consolidating democracies of the world, their civil-military problems and solutions are similar—soldiers and statesmen must achieve a deeper understanding of one another, and be motivated to interact in a mutually beneficial way. The unifying theme of this collection is the creation and development of the institutions whereby democratically elected civilians achieve and exercise power over those who hold a monopoly on the use of force within a society, while ensuring that the state has sufficient and qualified armed forces to defend itself against internal and external aggressors. Although these essays address a wide variety of institutions and situations, they each stress a necessity for balance between democratic civilian control and military effectiveness.
After September 11, with New Yorkers reeling from the World Trade Center attack, Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch proclaimed that his staff would do more than confirm the identity of the individuals who were killed. They would attempt to identify and return to families every human body part recovered from the site that was larger than a thumbnail. As Jay D. Aronson shows, delivering on that promise proved to be a monumentally difficult task. Only 293 bodies were found intact. The rest would be painstakingly collected in 21,900 bits and pieces scattered throughout the skyscrapers’ debris.
This massive effort—the most costly forensic investigation in U.S. history—was intended to provide families conclusive knowledge about the deaths of loved ones. But it was also undertaken to demonstrate that Americans were dramatically different from the terrorists who so callously disregarded the value of human life.
Bringing a new perspective to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Who Owns the Dead? tells the story of the recovery, identification, and memorialization of the 2,753 people killed in Manhattan on 9/11. For a host of cultural and political reasons that Aronson unpacks, this process has generated endless debate, from contestation of the commercial redevelopment of the site to lingering controversies over the storage of unclaimed remains at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The memory of the victims has also been used to justify military activities in the Middle East that have led to the deaths of an untold number of innocent civilians.
Global warming has finally made clear the true costs of using our atmosphere as a giant sponge to soak up unwanted by-products of industrial activity. As nations, businesses, and citizens seek workable yet fair solutions for reducing carbon emissions, the question of who should pay -- and how -- looms large. Yet the surprising truth is that a system for protecting the atmosphere could be devised that would yield cash benefits to us all.
In Who Owns the Sky?, visionary entrepreneur Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of addressing climate change. He proposes a market-based institution called a Sky Trust that would set limits on carbon emissions and pay dividends to all of us, who collectively own the atmosphere as a commons. The Trust would be funded by requiring polluters to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide, and managed by a non-governmental agency. Dividends would be paid annually, in much the same way that residents of Alaska today receive cash benefits from oil companies that drill in their state.
Employing the same spirit of innovation that brought millions of dollars to the nonprofit sector through his company Working Assets, Barnes sets forth a practical new approach to protecting our shared inheritance -- not only the atmosphere, but water, forests, and other life-sustaining and economically valuable common resources. He shows how we can use markets and property rights to preserve and share the vast wealth around us, allowing us not only to profit from it, but to pass it on, undiminished, to future generations.
Who Owns the Sky? is a remarkable look at the future of our economy, one in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices. Peter Barnes draws on his personal experience as a successful entrepreneur to offer viable solutions to some of our most pressing environmental and social concerns.
In this new volume, two lawyers debate which kind of automobile insurance is the best, no-fault or tort liability. This book presents in one place all the legal, political, historical, and financial arguments about the two types of auto insurance.
Under the fault system currently used by thirty-seven states, tort law provides that the party at fault in the accident pays the full damages of accident victims. Jerry J. Phillips favors this system, arguing that it allows for fair compensation to the injured and deters drivers from dangerous behavior on the road.
Stephen Chippendale counters this claim with the argument that tort-law based insurance combines high cost and low benefits, and that those who truly profit from it are the lawyers representing injured clients, while their claims clog up the court system. A better solution, he proposes, would be "Auto Choice," a plan under which consumers would choose whether or not they wished to be eligible for damages from pain and suffering.
With civility and respect, these two legal scholars present thoughtful and thorough arguments on both sides of the debate, giving readers a balanced view of an issue that affects nearly every American. It will be of particular value to those in the fields of law, policy, and insurance.
The United States Congress appears to be in perpetual gridlock on environmental policy, notes Sara Rinfret, editor of the significant collection, Who Really Makes Environmental Policy? As she and her contributors explain, however, most environmental policy is not made in the halls of Congress. Instead, it is created by agency experts in federal environmental agencies and it is implemented at the state level. These individuals have been delegated the authority to interpret vague congressional legislation and write rules—and these rules carry the same weight as congressional law.
Who Really Makes Environmental Policy? brings together top scholars to provide an explanation of rulemaking processes and regulatory policy, and to show why this context is important for U.S. environmental policy. Illustrative case studies about oil and gas regulations in Colorado and the regulation of coal ash disposal in southeastern states apply theory to practice. Ultimately, the essays in this volume advance our understanding of how U.S. environmental policy is made and why understanding regulatory policy matters for its future.
Up-to-date yet rooted in history, Whose America? provides a sophisticated account of recent immigration policy while mapping the ideological struggle to answer an essential question: which people have the right to make America their home or refuge?
Contributors: Leisy Abrego, Carl Bon Tempo, Julio Capó, Jr., Carly Goodman, Julia Rose Kraut, Monique Laney, Carl Lindskoog, Yael Schacher, and Elliott Young
Europe's turn of fortune is humbling, humiliating and, perhaps, irreversible. What went wrong, and when? Europe's most audacious moment occurred sometime between 1989 and 1991, a brief period that encapsulated both the demise of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the bold steps forward on the path towards an 'ever-closer union' in Western Europe. Twenty years later, the dramatic failures of economic and political integration have forced Europeans to re-consider the underpinnings of their project. The economic crisis of 2010-11 also manifested itself as a crisis of European democracy. Old questions acquired new meaning: Is it possible to maintain conditions for self-government while undermining the nation-state? What are the limits of solidarity? Can Europe be truly united through its common history, or its common currency? Is further unity in Europe even desirable?
In Whose Liberty Is It Anyway? Stefan Auer exposes the limits of the current European project by interrogating some of its many incongruities, particularly when it comes to its commitment to freedom. The author argues that the calls for more European solidarity are not convincing when Europe's poor are asked to pay for the mistakes of those who are more fortunate. Europe's unity, Auer asserts, can only be maintained by accepting its limitations and by beginning to fulfill some of its many promises.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that all citizens have the right to vote without regard to their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” For almost a century the Fifteenth Amendment was a dead letter. Throughout the South millions of nonwhite Americans were excluded from the political process by poll taxes, literacy tests, and other devices. The landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to end that injustice.
In this absorbing book, political scientist Abigail Thernstrom analyzes the radical transformation of the Voting Rights Act in the years since its passage. She shows how a measure carefully crafted to open the polling booths to southern blacks has evolved into a powerful tool for affirmative action in the electoral sphere—a means to promote black and Hispanic officeholding by creating “safe” seats for minority candidates. What began as an effort to give minorities a fair shake has become a means of ensuring a fair share.
Thernstrom demonstrates how voting rights have created a “political thicket” in which Congress, the courts, and the justice Department have been lost. Why this should be true, how small statutory changes led to large and unexpected results, how civil rights groups prevailed against a conservative Senate, how Republicans have benefited from gerrymandering to increase black officeholding—these stories are all part of Thernstrom’s well-told tale.
Even though the concept of the right to vote retains an aura of moral simplicity, the issue of minority voting rights is perhaps the most complex, yet least studied, of all affirmative action issues. Whose Votes Count? should stimulate the overdue discussion that the subject deserves among all those concerned with American politics.
Some observers see American academia as a bastion of leftist groupthink that indoctrinates students and silences conservative voices. Others see a protected enclave that naturally produces free-thinking, progressive intellectuals. Both views are self-serving, says Neil Gross, but neither is correct. Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? explains how academic liberalism became a self-reproducing phenomenon, and why Americans on both the left and right should take notice.
Academia employs a higher percentage of liberals than nearly any other profession. But the usual explanations—hiring bias against conservatives, correlations of liberal ideology with high intelligence—do not hold up to scrutiny. Drawing on a range of original research, statistics, and interviews, Gross argues that “political typing” plays an overlooked role in shaping academic liberalism. For historical reasons, the professoriate developed a reputation for liberal politics early in the twentieth century. As this perception spread, it exerted a self-selecting influence on bright young liberals, while deterring equally promising conservatives. Most professors’ political views formed well before they stepped behind the lectern for the first time.
Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? shows how studying the political sympathies of professors and their critics can shed light not only on academic life but on American politics, where the modern conservative movement was built in no small part around opposition to the “liberal elite” in higher education. This divide between academic liberals and nonacademic conservatives makes accord on issues as diverse as climate change, immigration, and foreign policy more difficult.
Is infrequent voting the most we can expect from a free citizenry? Would democracy be more robust if our political discourse were more deliberative? John Medearis’s trenchant and trend-bucking work of political philosophy argues that democracies face significant challenges that go beyond civic lethargy and unreasonable debate. Democracy is inherently a fragile state of affairs, he reminds us. Revisiting fundamental questions about the system in theory and practice, Why Democracy Is Oppositional helps us see why preserving democracy has always been—and will always be—a struggle.
As citizens of democracies seek political control over their destinies, they confront forces that threaten to dominate their lives. These forces may take the form of runaway financial markets, powerful special interests, expanding militaries, or dysfunctional legislatures. But citizens of democracies help create the very institutions that overwhelm them. Hostile threats do not generally come from the outside but are the product of citizens’ own collective activities. Medearis contends that democratic action perpetually arises to reclaim egalitarian control over social forces and institutions that have become alienated from large numbers of citizens. Democracy is therefore necessarily oppositional. Concerted, contentious political activities of all kinds are fundamental to it, while consensus and easy compromise are rarities.
Recovering insights from political theorists such as Karl Marx and John Dewey, Why Democracy Is Oppositional addresses contemporary issues ranging from the global financial crisis and economic inequality to drone warfare and mass incarceration.
The earnest warnings of an impending "solid waste crisis" that permeated the 1980s provided the impetus for the widespread adoption of municipal recycling programs. Since that time America has witnessed a remarkable rise in public participation in recycling activities, including curbside collection, drop-off centers, and commercial and office programs. Recently, however, a backlash against these programs has developed. A vocal group of "anti-recyclers" has appeared, arguing that recycling is not an economically efficient strategy for addressing waste management problems.
In Why Do We Recycle? Frank Ackerman examines the arguments for and against recycling, focusing on the debate surrounding the use of economic mechanisms to determine the value of recycling. Based on previously unpublished research conducted by the Tellus Institute, a nonprofit environmental research group in Boston, Massachusetts, Ackerman presents an alternative view of the theory of market incentives, challenging the notion that setting appropriate prices and allowing unfettered competition will result in the most efficient level of recycling. Among the topics he considers are:
Backed by empirical data and replete with specific examples, the book offers valuable guidance for municipal planners, environmental managers, and policymakers responsible for establishing and implementing recycling programs. It is also an accessible introduction to the subject for faculty, students, and concerned citizens interested in the social, economic, and ethical underpinnings of recycling efforts.
A New Statesman Book of the Year
“America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college…A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.”
—Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us
Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence.
After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change.
“Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.”
—Michael Kazin, The Nation
“Rigorous and highly readable…shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.”
—Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement
This book looks beyond politics to show how the ability of the U.S. government to implement policies is strongly affected by various economic constraints. These include the credibility of the policies, the ability of government to commit to them, the extent to which firms and consumers rationally anticipate their effects, whether the success of a policy further encourages firms and individuals to behave in intended ways, and whether the behavior of such actors can be sustained without continued government intervention.
The authors apply these concepts to four areas of policy: macroeconomic policies to promote employment and economic growth, redistributive policies to benefit the poor and the elderly, production policies to provide goods and services, and regulatory policies to guide the behavior of firms and individuals. In doing so they provide plausible explanations of many puzzling phenomena—for example, why government has been successful in reducing cigarette smoking, but has failed to get people to install and maintain emission-control devices in their cars.
This book recasts debates about public policy, avoiding conventional “pro-government” or “anti-government” positions; rather, it helps to predict when public policy will succeed.
In 1934 Theodore Abel went to Germany and offered a prize, under the auspices of Columbia University, for autobiographies of members of the National Socialist movement. The six hundred essays he received constitute the single best source on grassroots opinion within the Nazi Party, and they form the empirical foundation for Abel’s fascinating yet curiously neglected 1938 book. Although a number of scholars have drawn on these reports, Abel’s own treatment has never been surpassed. Of particular value is his presentation of the life histories of a worker, a soldier, an anti-Semite, a middle-class youth, a farmer, and a bank clerk, all of whom explain in their own words why they joined the NSDAP. In the vast literature on National Socialism, no more useful or revealing testimony exists.
In a new Foreword, Thomas Childers discusses how the past half-century of research and writing on Nazi Germany has upheld Abel’s original insights into the broad appeal of the National Socialist movement, thereby reaffirming this work’s enduring value for students of the topic.
If Barack Obama had not won in Iowa, most commentators believe that he would not have been able to go on to capture the Democratic nomination for president. Why Iowa? offers the definitive account of those early weeks of the campaign season: from how the Iowa caucuses work and what motivates the candidates’ campaigns, to participation and turnout, as well as the lingering effects that the campaigning had on Iowa voters. Demonstrating how “what happens in Iowa” truly reverberates throughout the country, five-time Iowa precinct caucus chair David P. Redlawsk and his coauthors take us on an inside tour of one of the most media-saturated and speculated-about campaign events in American politics.
Considering whether a sequential primary system, in which early, smaller states such as Iowa and New Hampshire have such a tremendous impact is fair or beneficial to the country as a whole, the authors here demonstrate that not only is the impact warranted, but it also reveals a great deal about informational elements of the campaigns. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this sequential system does confer huge benefits on the nominating process while Iowa’s particularly well-designed caucus system—extensively explored here for the first time—brings candidates’ arguments, strengths, and weaknesses into the open and under the media’s lens.
Amid mounting fears of violent Islamic extremism, many Europeans ask whether Muslim immigrants can integrate into historically Christian countries. In a groundbreaking ethnographic investigation of France’s Muslim migrant population, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies explores this complex question. The authors conclude that both Muslim and non-Muslim French must share responsibility for the slow progress of Muslim integration.
“Using a variety of resources, research methods, and an innovative experimental design, the authors contend that while there is no doubt that prejudice and discrimination against Muslims exist, it is also true that some Muslim actions and cultural traits may, at times, complicate their full integration into their chosen domiciles. This book is timely (more so in the context of the current Syrian refugee crisis), its insights keen and astute, the empirical evidence meticulous and persuasive, and the policy recommendations reasonable and relevant.”
—A. Ahmad, Choice
Since its first appearance fifteen years ago, Why Parties? has become essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the nature of American political parties. In the interim, the party system has undergone some radical changes. In this landmark book, now rewritten for the new millennium, John H. Aldrich goes beyond the clamor of arguments over whether American political parties are in resurgence or decline and undertakes a wholesale reexamination of the foundations of the American party system.
Surveying critical episodes in the development of American political parties—from their formation in the 1790s to the Civil War—Aldrich shows how they serve to combat three fundamental problems of democracy: how to regulate the number of people seeking public office, how to mobilize voters, and how to achieve and maintain the majorities needed to accomplish goals once in office. Aldrich brings this innovative account up to the present by looking at the profound changes in the character of political parties since World War II, especially in light of ongoing contemporary transformations, including the rise of the Republican Party in the South, and what those changes accomplish, such as the Obama Health Care plan. Finally, Why Parties? A Second Look offers a fuller consideration of party systems in general, especially the two-party system in the United States, and explains why this system is necessary for effective democracy.
Why does peace fail? More precisely, why do some countries that show every sign of having successfully emerged from civil war fall once again into armed conflict? What explains why peace "sticks" after some wars but not others?
In this illuminating study, Charles T. Call examines the factors behind fifteen cases of civil war recurrence in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Latin America. He argues that widely touted explanations of civil war—such as poverty, conflict over natural resources, and weak states—are far less important than political exclusion. Call’s study shows that inclusion of former opponents in postwar governance plays a decisive role in sustained peace.
Why Peace Fails ultimately suggests that the international community should resist the temptation to prematurely withdraw resources and peacekeepers after a transition from war. Instead, international actors must remain fully engaged with postwar elected governments, ensuring that they make room for former enemies.
Confidence in American government has been declining for three decades. Three-quarters of Americans said they trusted the Federal government to do the right thing in 1964. Today, only a quarter do. Why the decline? Is this mistrust a healthy reflection of America's long-lasting skepticism of a strong state? Is mistrust a problem for the future of governance?
Bringing together essays by leading Harvard scholars, this book explores the roots of mistrust. It first examines government's current scope, its actual performance, and citizens' perceptions of its performance. It then assesses many possible explanations that have been offered for the decline of trust, including the end of the Cold War, elevated expectations following World War II, a weakened economy, the effects of globalization, resentment over political scandals, and incompetence of bureaucrats. The book clarifies thinking about the sources of public disaffection.
Mistrust, the contributors find, is largely unrelated to national economic conditions, to challenges of a global economy, to the Cold War, or to bumbling bureaucrats and venal politicians. Rather, they show that the most likely culprits are all around us—an interacting blend of cultural and political conflicts stirred by an increasingly corrosive news media.
This book tells the story of how the transition to democracy in South Africa enfranchised blacks politically but without raising most of them from poverty. It shows in detail how the continuing strength of the white establishment forces the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) to compromise plans for full political and economic transformation. Deferring the economic transformation, the new dispensation nurtures a small black elite. The new elite absorbs the economic interests of the established white elites while continuing to share racial identities with the majority of their countrymen, muffling the divisions between rich whites and poor blacks, thus ensuring political stability in the new South Africa.
Although democratic South Africa is officially "non-racial," the book shows that racial solidarities continue to play a role in the country's political economy. Ironically, racial identities, which ultimately proved the undoing of apartheid, have come to the rescue of contemporary democratic capitalism. The author explains how and why racial solidarities are being revamped, focusing particularly on the role of black economic empowerment, the black bourgeoisie, and how calls to represent the identities of black South Africans are having the effect of substituting the racial interests of black elites for the economic interests of the black poor.
In this timely book, Cass R. Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Attacking "political correctness" in all forms, Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if they do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure. He shows that unjustified extremism, including violence and terrorism, often results from failure to tolerate dissenting views. The tragedy is that blunders and cruelties could be avoided if people spoke out.
Sunstein casts new light on freedom of speech, showing that a free society not only forbids censorship but also provides public spaces for dissenters to expose widely held myths and pervasive injustices. He provides evidence about the effects of conformity and dissent on the federal courts. The evidence shows not only that Republican appointees vote differently from Democratic appointees but also that both Republican and Democratic judges are likely to go to extremes if unchecked by opposing views. Understanding the need for dissent illuminates countless social debates, including those over affirmative action in higher education, because diversity is indispensable to learning.
Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense. This is true for dissenters in boardrooms, churches, unions, and academia. It is true for dissenters in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. And it is true during times of war and peace.
Why do civilians suffer most during times of violent conflict? Why are civilian fatalities as much as eight times higher, calculated globally for current conflicts, than military fatalities? In Why They Die, Daniel Rothbart and Karina V. Korostelina address these questions through a systematic study of civilian devastation in violent conflicts. Pushing aside the simplistic definition of war as a guns-and-blood battle between two militant groups, the authors investigate the identity politics underlying conflicts of many types. During a conflict, all those on the opposite side are perceived as the enemy, with little distinction between soldiers and civilians. As a result, random atrocities and systematic violence against civilian populations become acceptable.
Rothbart and Korostelina devote the first half of the book to case studies: deportation of the Crimean Tatars from the Ukraine, genocide in Rwanda, the Lebanon War, and the war in Iraq. With the second half, they present new methodological tools for understanding different types of violent conflict and discuss the implications of these tools for conflict resolution.
“Lively and delightful…zooms in on the faces in the crowd to help us understand both the depth and the diversity of the women’s suffrage movement. Some women went to jail. Others climbed mountains. Visual artists, dancers, and journalists all played a part…Far from perfect, they used their own abilities, defects, and opportunities to build a movement that still resonates today.”
—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
“An intimate account of the unheralded activism that won women the right to vote, and an opportunity to celebrate a truly diverse cohort of first-wave feminist changemakers.”
—Ms.
“Demonstrates the steady advance of women’s suffrage while also complicating the standard portrait of it.”
—New Yorker
The story of how American women won the right to vote is usually told through the lives of a few iconic leaders. But movements for social change are rarely so tidy or top-heavy. Why They Marched profiles nineteen women—some famous, many unknown—who worked tirelessly out of the spotlight protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.
Ware shows how women who never thought they would participate in politics took actions that were risky, sometimes quirky, and often joyous to fight for a cause that mobilized three generations of activists.
The dramatic experiences of these pioneering feminists—including an African American journalist, a mountain-climbing physician, a southern novelist, a polygamous Mormon wife, and two sisters on opposite sides of the suffrage divide—resonate powerfully today, as a new generation of women demands to be heard.
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does.
In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior.
Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
The assumptions that military service helps candidates attract votes—while lacking it harms a candidate’s chances—has been an article of faith since the electoral coronation of George Washington in 1789. Perhaps the most compelling fact driving the perception that military service helps win votes is the large number of veterans who have held public office. Some candidates even exaggerate their military service to persuade voters. However, sufficient counter-examples undermine the idea that military veterans enjoy an advantage when seeking political office.
In Why Veterans Run, Jeremy Teigenexplains the tendency of parties to elevate those with armed forces experience to run for high office. He describes the veteran candidate phenomenon by examining the related factors and patterns, showing why different eras have more former generals running and why the number of veterans in election cycles varies. With both quantitative and qualitative analysis, Why Veterans Run investigates each postwar era in U.S. electoral history and elaborates why so many veterans run for office. Teigen also reveals how election outcomes with veteran candidates illuminate the relationship between the military and civilian spheres as well as the preferences of the American electorate.
Reexamining feminist sexual politics since the 1970s—the rivalries and the remarkable alliances
Since the historic #MeToo movement materialized in 2017, innumerable survivors of sexual assault and misconduct have broken their silence and called out their abusers publicly—from well-known celebrities to politicians and high-profile business leaders. Not surprisingly, conservatives quickly opposed this new movement, but the fact that “sex positive” progressives joined in the opposition was unexpected and seldom discussed. Why We Lost the Sex Wars explores how a narrow set of political prospects for resisting the use of sex as a tool of domination came to be embraced across this broad swath of the political spectrum in the contemporary United States.
To better understand today’s multilayered sexual politics, Lorna N. Bracewell offers a revisionist history of the “sex wars” of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Rather than focusing on what divided antipornography and sex-radical feminists, Bracewell highlights significant points of contact and overlap between these rivals, particularly the trenchant challenges they offered to the narrow and ambivalent sexual politics of postwar liberalism. Bracewell leverages this recovered history to illuminate in fresh and provocative ways a range of current phenomena, including recent controversies over trigger warnings, the unimaginative politics of “sex-positive” feminism, and the rise of carceral feminism. By foregrounding the role played by liberal concepts such as expressive freedom and the public/private divide as well as the long-neglected contributions of Black and “Third World” feminists, Bracewell upends much of what we think we know about the sex wars and makes a strong case for the continued relevance of these debates today.
Why We Lost the Sex Wars provides a history of feminist thinking on topics such as pornography, commercial sex work, LGBTQ+ identities, and BDSM, as well as discussions of such notable figures as Patrick Califia, Alan Dershowitz, Andrea Dworkin, Elena Kagan, Audre Lorde, Catharine MacKinnon, Cherríe Moraga, Robin Morgan, Gayle Rubin, Nadine Strossen, Cass Sunstein, and Alice Walker.
The world’s richer democracies all provide such public benefits as pensions and health care, but why are some far more generous than others? And why, in the face of globalization and fiscal pressures, has the welfare state not been replaced by another model? Reconsidering the myriad issues raised by such pressing questions, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza contend here that public opinion has been an important, yet neglected, factor in shaping welfare states in recent decades.
Analyzing data on sixteen countries, Brooks and Manza find that the preferences of citizens profoundly influence the welfare policies of their governments and the behavior of politicians in office. Shaped by slow-moving forces such as social institutions and collective memories, these preferences have counteracted global pressures that many commentators assumed would lead to the welfare state’s demise. Moreover, Brooks and Manza show that cross-national differences in popular support help explain why Scandinavian social democracies offer so much more than liberal democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
Significantly expanding our understanding of both public opinion and social policy in the world’s most developed countries, this landmark study will be essential reading for scholars of political economy, public opinion, and democratic theory.
Forests have been at the fault lines of contact between African peasant communities in the Tanzanian coastal hinterland and outsiders for almost two centuries. In recent decades, a global call for biodiversity preservation has been the main challenge to Tanzanians and their forests.
Thaddeus Sunseri uses the lens of forest history to explore some of the most profound transformations in Tanzania from the nineteenth century to the present. He explores anticolonial rebellions, the world wars, the depression, the Cold War, oil shocks, and nationalism through their intersections with and impacts on Tanzania’s coastal forests and woodlands. In Wielding the Ax, forest history becomes a microcosm of the origins, nature, and demise of colonial rule in East Africa and of the first fitful decades of independence.
Wielding the Ax is a story of changing constellations of power over forests, beginning with African chiefs and forest spirits, both known as “ax–wielders,” and ending with international conservation experts who wield scientific knowledge as a means to controlling forest access. The modern international concern over tropical deforestation cannot be understood without an awareness of the long–term history of these forest struggles.
This volume presents the results of a five-year study of wildlife-management policies in national parks. It synthesizes interviews with individuals inside and outside the National Park Service, provides a comprehensive review of published and unpublished literature, and draws on the collective experience of the authors with various units of the system over the past three decades. Among the topics examined are:
Never before has the idea of democracy enjoyed the global dominance it holds today, but neoliberalism has left the practice of democracy in deep crisis.
Marianne Maeckelbergh argues that the most promising model for global democracy is not coming from traditional political parties or international institutions, but from the global networks of resistance to neoliberal economics, known collectively as the Alter-globalisation movement. Through extensive ethnography of decision-making practices within these movements, Maeckelbergh describes an alternative form of global democracy in the making.
Perfect for activists and students of political anthropology, this powerful and enlightening book offers radical changes.
Born in Civil War–era Cincinnati in 1857, William Howard Taft rose rapidly through legal, judicial, and political ranks, graduating from Yale and becoming a judge while still in his twenties. In 1900, President William McKinley appointed Taft to head a commission charged with preparing the Philippines for US-led civil government, setting the stage for Taft’s involvement in US-Philippine relations and the development of his imperial vision across two decades. While biographies of Taft and histories of US-Philippine relations are easy to find, few works focus on Taft’s vision for the Philippines that, despite a twenty-year crusade, would eventually fail. William Howard Taft and the Philippines fills this void in the scholarship, taking up Taft’s vantage point on America’s imperialist venture in the Philippine Islands between 1900 and 1921.
Adam D. Burns traces Taft’s course through six chapters, beginning with his years in the islands and then following it through his tenure as President Roosevelt’s secretary of war, his term as president of the United States, and his life after departing the White House. Across these years Taft continued his efforts to forge a lasting imperial bond and prevent Philippine independence.
Grounded in extensive primary source research, William Howard Taft and the Philippines is an engaging work that will interest scholars of Philippine history, American foreign policy, imperialism, the American presidency, the Progressive Era, and more.
Winning the War for Democracy: The March on Washington Movement, 1941-1946 recalls that triumph, but also looks beyond Randolph and the MOWM's national leadership to focus on the organization's evolution and actions at the local level. Using the personal papers of previously unheralded MOWM members such as T.D. McNeal, internal government documents from the Roosevelt administration, and other primary sources, David Lucander highlights how local affiliates fighting for a double victory against fascism and racism helped the national MOWM accrue the political capital it needed to effect change.
Lucander details the efforts of grassroots organizers to implement MOWM's program of empowering African Americans via meetings and marches at defense plants and government buildings and, in particular, focuses on the contributions of women activists like Layle Lane, E. Pauline Myers, and Anna Arnold Hedgeman. Throughout he shows how local activities often diverged from policies laid out at MOWM's national office, and how grassroots participants on both sides ignored the rivalry between Randolph and the leadership of the NAACP to align with one another on the ground.
The essays collectively explore the shifting dynamics and power relations between the civic coalitions that pursue the Winter Olympics and the social movements that oppose their efforts. The contributors look at specific Games impacted by dissent and probe the issues that swirled around failed and withdrawn bids. In addition, contributions on the contemporary Olympics describe current or future bids while delving into the campaigns demanding host nations pay attention to economic, social, humanitarian, and environmental concerns.
A first-of-its-kind collection, Winters of Discontent profiles the wide range of activists and social movements that have organized against the Winter Olympics.
"I'm embarrassed to say I thought I knew anything substantial about Wisconsin agriculture or its history before I read this book. 'Wisconsin Agriculture' should be required reading in history classes from high school to the collegiate level. It makes me thankful that Jerry Apps has such a sense of commitment to Wisconsin's agricultural heritage--and to getting the story right." --Pam Jahnke, Farm Director, Wisconsin Farm Report Radio
Wisconsin has been a farming state from its very beginnings. And though it's long been known as "the Dairy State," it produces much more than cows, milk, and cheese. In fact, Wisconsin is one of the most diverse agricultural states in the nation.
The story of farming in Wisconsin is rich and diverse as well, and the threads of that story are related and intertwined. In this long-awaited volume, celebrated rural historian Jerry Apps examines everything from the fundamental influences of landscape and weather to complex matters of ethnic and pioneer settlement patterns, changing technology, agricultural research and education, and government regulations and policies. Along with expected topics, such as the cranberry industry and artisan cheesemaking, "Wisconsin Agriculture" delves into beef cattle and dairy goats, fur farming and Christmas trees, maple syrup and honey, and other specialty crops, including ginseng, hemp, cherries, sugar beets, mint, sphagnum moss, flax, and hops. Apps also explores new and rediscovered farming endeavors, from aquaculture to urban farming to beekeeping, and discusses recent political developments, such as the 2014 Farm Bill and its ramifications. And he looks to the future of farming, contemplating questions of ethical growing practices, food safety, sustainability, and the potential effects of climate change.
Featuring first-person accounts from the settlement era to today, along with more than 200 captivating photographs, "Wisconsin Agriculture" breathes life into the facts and figures of 150 years of farming history and provides compelling insights into the state's agricultural past, present, and future.
The controversy over the management of national forests in the Pacific Northwest vividly demonstrates the shortcomings of existing management institutions and natural resource policies. The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl explores the American policymaking process through the case of the spotted owl -- a case that offers a striking illustration of the failure of our society to cope with long-term, science-intensive issues requiring collective choices.
Steven Lewis Yaffee analyzes the political and organizational dynamics from which the controversy emerged and the factors that led to our stunning inability to solve it. He examines the state of resource management agencies and policy processes, providing insight into questions such as:
Contributors bring to light the presence and persistence of Jewish anarchism throughout histories of radical labor, women’s studies, political theory, multilingual literature, and ethnic studies.
These essays reveal an ongoing engagement with non-Jewish radical cultures, including the translation practices of the Jewish anarchist press. Jewish anarchists drew from a matrix of secular, cultural, and religious influences, inventing new anarchist forms that ranged from mystical individualism to militantly atheist revolutionary cells.
With Freedom in Our Ears brings together more than a dozen scholars and translators to write the first collaborative history of international, multilingual, and transdisciplinary Jewish anarchism.
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