front cover of Educated by Initiative
Educated by Initiative
The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States
Daniel A. Smith and Caroline J. Tolbert
University of Michigan Press, 2004
"This body of research not only passes academic muster but is the best guidepost in existence for activists who are trying to use the ballot initiative process for larger policy and political objectives."
--Kristina Wilfore, Executive Director, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and Foundation

Educated by Initiative moves beyond previous evaluations of public policy to emphasize the educational importance of the initiative process itself. Since a majority of ballots ultimately fail or get overturned by the courts, Smith and Tolbert suggest that the educational consequences of initiative voting may be more important than the outcomes of the ballots themselves. The result is a fascinating and thoroughly-researched book about how direct democracy teaches citizens about politics, voting, civic engagement and the influence of special interests and political parties. Designed to be accessible to anyone interested in the future of American democracy, the book includes boxes (titled "What Matters") that succinctly summarize the authors' data into easily readable analyses.

Daniel A. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.

Caroline J. Tolbert is Associate Professor of Political Science at Kent State University.


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Empire-Building and Nation-Building in Central Europe
Zoltán László (1881–1961) in the Turmoil of the 20th Century
Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics
Central European University Press, 2026
This book reconstructs the intellectual and political trajectory of Zoltán László (1881–1961), a representative figure of the East-Central European middle-class intelligentsia. His shifting positions—on nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, antisemitism, racism, and anticommunism—mirror the broader ideological and political transformations of the region from the nineteenth century to the aftermath of the Second World War.
Before 1914, László established himself as a journalist, writer, academic, and willing agent of Austro-Hungarian imperial policy. In the interwar period and during the Second World War, his expertise as a propagandist found expression in racist circles.
By examining László’s life as a case study, the book offers a microhistorical perspective on how members of the educated middle classes became implicated in, and often willing participants of, imperial, racist, and totalitarian projects. It demonstrates how the lived experience of one individual illuminates the complex entanglement of ideology, identity, and power in East-Central Europe’s modern history.
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logo for Central European University Press
Empire-Building and Nation-Building in Central Europe
Zoltán László (1881–1961) in the Turmoil of the 20th Century
Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics
Central European University Press, 2026
This book reconstructs the intellectual and political trajectory of Zoltán László (1881–1961), a representative figure of the East-Central European middle-class intelligentsia. His shifting positions—on nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, antisemitism, racism, and anticommunism—mirror the broader ideological and political transformations of the region from the nineteenth century to the aftermath of the Second World War.
Before 1914, László established himself as a journalist, writer, academic, and willing agent of Austro-Hungarian imperial policy. In the interwar period and during the Second World War, his expertise as a propagandist found expression in racist circles.
By examining László’s life as a case study, the book offers a microhistorical perspective on how members of the educated middle classes became implicated in, and often willing participants of, imperial, racist, and totalitarian projects. It demonstrates how the lived experience of one individual illuminates the complex entanglement of ideology, identity, and power in East-Central Europe’s modern history.
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front cover of The End of Liberalism
The End of Liberalism
Chilton Williamson
St. Augustine's Press, 2022
In the fourth title in the Dissident American Thought Today Series, Chilton Williamson takes on liberalism and reveals the 'faith' of the present Democratic Party as its own cultivated version of absurdity. This 'advanced liberalism' is not the liberalism of Mill, and it certainly no longer is the thinking man's party. If it were once true that conservatism is unimaginative and reactionary, the contrary is the picture of our times. Liberalism now asserts that human nature can and must be perfected, but without reference to nature. The age of the expert has been thrust upon the United States with the urgency of technique to be applied to coerce the vision of a perfect society and perfect human beings. 

Williamson observes that this liberalism to nevertheless be collapsing, given the obvious opposition to the idea that it is essential to modernity. Liberalism is ironically a kind of unyielding control, "a relativist persuasion that discourages and resists fixed beliefs and certainties and the idea of truth itself." Williamson offers commentary on the present state of liberal ideas and their crimes against better judgment, and vindicates conservatism from being labeled reactionary. Liberalism is exposed as a faith we cannot accept, for it contains nothing to be believed and what it says about the order of things is pure fiction. 
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front cover of The Evangelical Crackup?
The Evangelical Crackup?
The Future of the Evangelical-Republican Coalition
Edited by Paul Djupe and Ryan L. Claassen
Temple University Press, 2019

Why did Donald Trump attract a record number of white evangelical voters without unified support—and despite nontrivial antipathy from evangelical leaders? The editors and leading scholars that contribute to the timely volume The Evangelical Crackup? answer this question and provide a comprehensive assessment of the status of evangelicals and the Christian Right in the Republican coalition.

The expected “crackup” with the Republican Party never happened. Each chapter in this cogent volume includes analyses of the 2016 election to explain why—and why that is critical. Chapters examine policy priorities, legal advocacy, and evangelical loyalty to the Republican Party; rhetoric, social networks, and evangelical elite influence; and the political implications of movements within evangelicalism, such as young evangelicals, Hispanics, and the Emergent Church movement.

Contributors include: Daniel Bennett, Mark Brockway, Ryan P. Burge, Brian R. Calfano, Jeremy Castle, Kimberly Conger, Daniel A. Cox, Kevin den Dulk, Sarah Allen Gershon, Tobin Grant, Robert P. Jones, Geoffrey Layman, Andrew R. Lewis, Ronald J. McGauvran, Joshua Mitchell, Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Jacob R. Neiheisel, Elizabeth Oldmixon, Adrian D. Pantoja, David Searcy, Anand Edward Sokhey, J. Benjamin Taylor, Robert Wuthnow, and the editors.

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