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Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
Alex Carey
University of Illinois Press, 1995
Alex Carey documents the twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda as practiced by U.S. businesses, and its export to and adoption by Western democracies like the United Kingdom and Australia. The collection, drawn from Carey's voluminous unpublished writings, examines how and why the business elite successfully sold its values and perspectives to the rest of society.
 
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Talking Together
Public Deliberation and Political Participation in America
Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini
University of Chicago Press, 2009

Challenging the conventional wisdom that Americans are less engaged than ever in national life and the democratic process, Talking Together paints the most comprehensive portrait available of public deliberation in the United States and explains why it is important to America’s future.

The authors’ original and extensive research reveals how, when, and why citizens talk to each other about the issues of the day.  They find that—in settings ranging from one-on-one conversations to e-mail exchanges to larger and more formal gatherings—a surprising two-thirds of Americans regularly participate in public discussions about such pressing issues as the Iraq War, economic development, and race relations. Pinpointing the real benefits of public discourse while considering arguments that question its importance, Talking Together presents an authoritative and clear-eyed assessment of deliberation’s function in American governance. In the process, it offers concrete recommendations for increasing the power of talk to foster political action.

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Teachers of the People
Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill
Dana Villa
University of Chicago Press, 2017
2016 witnessed an unprecedented shock to political elites in both Europe and America. Populism was on the march, fueled by a substantial ignorance of, or contempt for, the norms, practices, and institutions of liberal democracy. It is not surprising that observers on the left and right have called for renewed efforts at civic education. For liberal democracy to survive, they argue, a form of political education aimed at “the people” is clearly imperative.

In Teachers of the People, Dana Villa takes us back to the moment in history when “the people” first appeared on the stage of modern European politics. That moment—the era just before and after the French Revolution—led many major thinkers to celebrate the dawning of a new epoch. Yet these same thinkers also worried intensely about the people’s seemingly evident lack of political knowledge, experience, and judgment. Focusing on Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill, Villa shows how reformist and progressive sentiments were often undercut by skepticism concerning the political capacity of ordinary people. They therefore felt that “the people” needed to be restrained, educated, and guided—by laws and institutions and a skilled political elite. The result, Villa argues, was less the taming of democracy’s wilder impulses than a pervasive paternalism culminating in new forms of the tutorial state.
Ironically, it is the reliance upon the distinction between “teachers” and “taught” in the work of these theorists which generates civic passivity and ignorance. And this, in turn, creates conditions favorable to the emergence of an undemocratic and illiberal populism.
 
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Terrorism for Humanity
Inquiries in Political Philosophy
Ted Honderich
Pluto Press, 2003
Ted Honderich is one of the world's foremost philosophers of the Left. This is a revised edition of his classic text, Violence for Equality, which became a benchmark in political philosophy when it was first published over twenty years ago. Now extensively revised and updated by Honderich, Terrorism for Humanity raises important questions about the uses and ethics of political violence -- questions that are all the more pertinent in the light of recent events & the 'war on terror'. What can be said for & against terrorism and political violence? When is such terrorism right, if it ever is, & when is it wrong? In six lucid essays, Honderich challenges the presuppositions, inconsistencies and prejudices of liberal-democratic thinking. He tackles such emotive subjects as the IRA, the PLO and the ANC, arguing the importance of understanding the justification for political violence in all manifestations. Exploring the moral issues that lie at the heart of these difficult questions, Honderich reminds us that political philosophy should be an attempt to inquire with an open mind -- & that to open one's mind is not necessarily to lose one's convictions. This remarkable book should be of interest to all teachers & students of philosophy & politics, & anyone who is curious to explore the theoretical framework of the morality of 'terrorism'.
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Theatre for Youth Third Space
Performance, Democracy, and Community Cultural Development
Stephani Etheridge Woodson
Intellect Books, 2015
Theatre for Youth Third Space is a practical yet philosophically grounded handbook for people working in theater and performance with children and youth in community or educational settings. Presenting asset development approaches, deliberative dialogue techniques, and frames for building strong community relationships, Stephani Etheridge Woodson shares multiple project models that are firmly grounded in the latest community cultural development practices. Guiding readers step by step through project planning, creating safe environments, and using evaluation protocols, Theatre for Youth Third Space will be an invaluable resource for both teaching and practice.
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Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy
Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy
Edited by David Miller and William Dinan
Pluto Press, 2007
Leading writers expose the scandalous world of corporate spin and its impact on media freedom, democracy and the health of our planet.

Bringing together leading activists and writers from the United States and beyond, this book unmasks the covert and undemocratic world of corporate spin.

Wherever big business is threatened or corporate advantage can be gained, spin doctors, lobbyists, think tanks and front groups are on hand to push the corporate interest, often at the wider public¹s expense.

The authors challenge the notion that corporate PR is only about celebrity gossip. They show how it extends much further, and how the techniques of the PR industry are now in use across a wide range of political fields, driven by corporate interests.

The authors reveal the secrets of the PR trade, including deception, the use of fake Œinstitutes¹ and think tanks, behind the scenes influence-peddling, spying and dirty tricks. Most importantly, they show the devastating impact spin has had--as the public is denied access to the truth, the results are rising inequality and environmental catastrophe.

The book covers the misdeeds of some of the best-known companies including BP, Coca Cola, British Aerospace, Exxon and Monsanto. It also reveals startling new information about the covert funding of apparently independent thinks tanks and institutes in the US, EU and around the globe.

Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy also offers a guide to resisting deceptive PR. The authors describe concrete campaigns involving the internet and new communication technology to organise, raise awareness and campaign to roll back corporate power and the influence of PR.

This volume is edited by William Dinan and David Miller (University of Strathclyde and Spinwatch). Contributors include: Laura Miller (PR Watch), Gerry Sussman (Portland State University), Kert Davies (Greenpeace US), Leslie Sklair (LSE, UK), Bob Burton (PR Watch, Australia), Judith Richter (author and activist), Olivier Hoedeman (Corporate Europe Observatory, Netherlands), Andy Rowell (Spinwatch, UK), Eveline Lubbers (Spinwatch, Netherlands), James Marriott and Greg Muttitt (Platform, UK), Aeron Davis (City University, UK), and Granville Williams (Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and Huddersfield University, UK).

Published by Pluto Press in association with Spinwatch (www.spinwatch.org) .

William Dinan is Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Geography and Sociology at Strathclyde University, specializing in corporate PR and lobbying.

David Miller is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Geography and Sociology at the University of Strathclyde. He has previously edited Arguments Against G8 and Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq for Pluto Press.
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The Three Ages of Government
From the Person, to the Group, to the World
Jos C.N. Raadschelders
University of Michigan Press, 2020
It is only in the last 250 years that ordinary people (in some parts of the world) have become citizens rather than subjects. This change happened in a very short period, between 1780 and 1820, a result of the foundations of democracy laid in the age of revolutions. A century later local governments embraced this shift due to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. During the twentieth century, all democratic governments began to perform a range of tasks, functions, and services that had no historical precedent. In the thirty years following the Second World War, Western democracies created welfare states that, for the first time in history, significantly reduced the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. Many of the reforms of that postwar period have been since rolled back because of the belief that government should be more like a business. Jos C.N. Raadschelders provides the information that all citizens should have about their connections to government, why there is a government, what it does, how it does it, and why we can no longer do without it. The Three Ages of Government rises above stereotypical thinking to show the centrality of government in human life.
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Through the Grapevine
Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy
Taylor N. Carlson
University of Chicago Press, 2024

An enlightening examination of what it means when Americans rely on family and friends to stay on top of politics.

Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality is that many Americans today do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior?

Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy. Although socially transmitted information does not necessarily render democracy dysfunctional, Through the Grapevine shows how it contributes to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged.

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"To Serve a Larger Purpose"
Engagement for Democracy and the Transformation of Higher Education
Edited by John Saltmarsh and Matthew Hartley
Temple University Press, 2012

"To Serve a Larger Purpose" calls for the reclamation of the original democratic purposes of civic engagement and examines the requisite transformation of higher education required to achieve it. The contributors to this timely and relevant volume effectively highlight the current practice of civic engagement and point to the institutional change needed to realize its democratic ideals.

Using multiple perspectives, "To Serve a Larger Purpose" explores the democratic processes and purposes that reorient civic engagement to what the editors call "democratic engagement." The norms of democratic engagement are determined by values such as inclusiveness, collaboration, participation, task sharing, and reciprocity in public problem solving and an equality of respect for the knowledge and experience that everyone contributes to education, knowledge generation, and community building. This book shrewdly rethinks the culture of higher education.

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Tocqueville and Democracy in the Internet Age
C. Jon Delogu
Michigan Publishing Services, 2014
Tocqueville and Democracy in the Internet Age is a general introduction to Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his monumental two-volume study Democracy in America (1835, 1840) that pays particular attention to the critical conversation around Tocqueville and democracy since the end of the Cold War during the Internet Age; i.e., post-1989. The book is addressed broadly to students, specialists, and ordinary citizens who wonder if democracy is still possible today and under what conditions.
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Tocqueville and the Two Democracies
Jean-Claude Lamberti
Harvard University Press, 1989

Why did the French Revolution lead to the crimes of the Terror, whereas the American Revolution brought forth a liberal democracy? Alexis de Tocqueville spent a lifetime trying to understand the paradox. This first book on the genesis of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America considers his two main themes of democracy and revolution in the light of his own early political activities and his subsequent studies of the past, and thereby makes a valuable contribution to intellectual history.

In tracing the evolution of Tocqueville’s work, Jean-Claude Lamberti reveals Tocqueville’s enormous intellectual debt to Montesquieu; skillfully analyzes all that separates Tocqueville from the liberal French school, particularly Benjamin Constant and François Guizot; shows that Tocqueville believed that the only means of preventing new revolutions (which he abhorred) was to increase political freedom, especially that of association; sketches the difference between Tocqueville and counter-revolutionaries on the question of individualism, which Tocqueville wished to correct but not annihilate. Never before have historians been able to place Tocqueville so securely in the genealogy of French liberalism. This new work demonstrates his relevance to the world today.

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Town Hall Meetings and the Death of Deliberation
Jonathan Beecher Field
University of Minnesota Press, 2019

Tracing the erosion of democratic norms in the US and the conditions that make it possible

Jonathan Beecher Field tracks the permutations of the town hall meeting from its original context as a form of democratic community governance in New England into a format for presidential debates and a staple of corporate governance. In its contemporary iteration, the town hall meeting models the aesthetic of the former but replaces actual democratic deliberation with a spectacle that involves no immediate electoral stakes or functions as a glorified press conference. Urgently, Field notes that though this evolution might be apparent, evidence suggests many US citizens don’t care to differentiate.

Forerunners: Ideas First
Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead 

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Town Meeting
Practicing Democracy in Rural New England
Donald L. Robinson
University of Massachusetts Press, 2011
At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln described government by the people as "the great task remaining before us." Many citizens of modern America, frustrated and disheartened, are tempted to despair of realizing that ideal. Yet, it is a project still alive in parts of New England.

This book traces the origins of town-meeting democracy in Ashfield, a community of just under 2,000 people in the foothills of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Donald Robinson begins by recounting several crises at the town's founding in the eighteenth century that helped to shape its character. He shows how the town has changed since then and examines how democratic self-government functions in the modern context.

The picture is not pretty. Self-government carries no guarantees, and Ashfield is no utopia. Human failings are abundantly on display. Leaders mislead. Citizens don't pay attention and they forget hard-earned lessons.

But in this candid account of the operation of democracy in one New England town, Robinson demonstrates that for better and for worse, Ashfield governs itself democratically. Citizens control the actions of their government. Not everyone participates, but all may, and everyone who lives in the town must accept and obey what town meeting decides.
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Transformation and Trouble
Crime, Justice and Participation in Democratic South Africa
Diana Gordon
University of Michigan Press, 2006

Crime is one of the major challenges to any new democracy. Violence often increases after the lifting of authoritarian control, or in the aftermath of regime change. But how can a fledgling democracy fight crime without violating the fragile rights of its citizens? In Transformation and Trouble, accomplished theorist and criminal justice scholar Diana Gordon critically examines South Africa's efforts to strike the perilous balance between democratic participation and social control.
South Africa has made great progress in pursuing the Western ideals of participatory justice and due process. Yet Gordon finds that popular concerns about crime have fostered the growth of a punitive criminal justice system that undermines the country's rights-oriented political culture. Transformation and Trouble calls for South Africa to reaffirm its commitment to public empowerment by reforming its criminal justice system-an approach, she argues, that would strengthen the country's new democracy.

"An eloquent, critical, but ultimately optimistic, analysis of the democratization of crime and justice in post-apartheid South Africa."
--Bill Dixon, School of Criminology, Education, Sociology and Social Work, Keele University

"A must read for understanding contemporary South Africa's agonizing dilemmas as it struggles to reconcile crime control with democratic values."
--Jerome H. Skolnick, New York University School of Law

"Gordon's vast experience with criminal justice illuminates her cautionary tale of the search for a new way in south Africa."
--Paul Chevigny, New York University


Diana Gordon is Professor Emerita of Political Science and Senior Research Scholar, City University of New York.

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Transformative Civic Education in Democratic Societies
Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert
Michigan State University Press, 2023
Democracy is neither inevitable nor guaranteed to last. To survive, democracy needs people adequately prepared to enact it. Such preparation for effective citizenship in a complex and plural world requires an adult civic education, one that goes beyond simple knowledge acquisition. It requires a transformative education to help learners become agents and co-shapers of their worlds. This book offers examples of the roles that civic education has played and can play in different communities. In this collection, scholars from around the world report and reflect on civic adult education, examining approaches, paradigms, and concepts that help us to act in culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse societies.
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Transformative Justice
Israeli Identity on Trial
Leora Bilsky
University of Michigan Press, 2004
Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic?

Transformative Justice, Leora Bilsky's landmark study of Israeli political trials, poses this deceptively simple question. The four trials that she analyzes focus on identity, the nature of pluralism, human rights, and the rule of law-issues whose importance extends far beyond Israel's borders. Drawing on the latest work in philosophy, law, history, and rhetoric, Bilsky exposes the many narratives that compete in a political trial and demonstrates how Israel's history of social and ideological conflicts in the courtroom offers us a rare opportunity to understand the meaning of political trials. The result is a bold new perspective on the politics of justice and its complex relationship to the values of liberalism.

Leora Bilsky is Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University.

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Transforming Citizenship
Democracy, Membership, and Belonging in Latino Communities
Raymond A. Rocco
Michigan State University Press, 2014
In Transforming Citizenship Raymond Rocco studies the “exclusionary inclusion” of Latinos based on racialization and how the processes behind this have shaped their marginalized citizenship status, offering a framework for explaining this dynamic. Contesting this status has been at the core of Latino politics for more than 150 years. Pursuing the goal of full, equal, and just inclusion in societal membership has long been a major part of the struggle to realize democratic normative principles. This illuminating research demonstrates the inherent limitations of the citizenship regime in the United States for incorporating Latinos as full societal members and offers an alternative conception, “associative citizenship,” that provides a way to account for and challenge the pattern of exclusionary belonging that has defined the positions of the Latinos in U.S. society. Through a critical engagement with key theorists such as Rawls, Habermas, Kymlicka, Walzer, Taylor, and Young, Rocco advances an original analysis of the politics of Latino societal membership and citizenship, arguing that the specific processes of racialization that have played a determinative role in creating and maintaining the pattern of social and political exclusions of Latinos have not been addressed by the dominant theories of diversity and citizenship developed in the prevalent literature in political theory.
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Transforming India
Challenges to the World’s Largest Democracy
Sumantra Bose
Harvard University Press, 2013

A nation of 1.25 billion people composed of numerous ethnic, linguistic, religious, and caste communities, India is the world’s most diverse democracy. Drawing on his extensive fieldwork and experience of Indian politics, Sumantra Bose tells the story of democracy’s evolution in India since the 1950s—and describes the many challenges it faces in the early twenty-first century.

Over the past two decades, India has changed from a country dominated by a single nationwide party into a robust multiparty and federal union, as regional parties and leaders have risen and flourished in many of India’s twenty-eight states. The regionalization of the nation’s political landscape has decentralized power, given communities a distinct voice, and deepened India’s democracy, Bose finds, but the new era has also brought fresh dilemmas.

The dynamism of India’s democracy derives from the active participation of the people—the demos. But as Bose makes clear, its transformation into a polity of, by, and for the people depends on tackling great problems of poverty, inequality, and oppression. This tension helps explain why Maoist revolutionaries wage war on the republic, and why people in the Kashmir Valley feel they are not full citizens. As India dramatically emerges on the global stage, Transforming India: Challenges to the World’s Largest Democracy provides invaluable analysis of its complexity and distinctiveness.

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Translocalities/Translocalidades
Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Américas
Sonia E. Alvarez, Claudia de Lima Costa, Verónica Feliu, Rebecca J. Hester, Norma Klahn, and Millie Thayer, eds.
Duke University Press, 2014
Translocalities/Translocalidades is a path-breaking collection of essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and United States–based Latina feminisms and their multiple translations and cross-pollinations. The contributors come from countries throughout the Américas and are based in diverse disciplines, including media studies, literature, Chicana/o studies, and political science. Together, they advocate a hemispheric politics based on the knowledge that today, many sorts of Latin/o-americanidades—Afro, queer, indigenous, feminist, and so on—are constructed through processes of translocation. Latinidad in the South, North and Caribbean "middle" of the Américas, is constituted out of the intersections of the intensified cross-border, transcultural, and translocal flows that characterize contemporary transmigration throughout the hemisphere, from La Paz to Buenos Aires to Chicago and back again. Rather than immigrating and assimilating, many people in the Latin/a Américas increasingly move back and forth between localities, between historically situated and culturally specific, though increasingly porous, places, across multiple borders, and not just between nations. The contributors deem these multidirectional crossings and movements, and the positionalities engendered, translocalities/translocalidades.

Contributors. Sonia E. Alvarez, Kiran Asher, Victoria (Vicky) M. Bañales, Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius, Maylei Blackwell, Cruz C. Bueno, Pascha Bueno-Hansen, Mirangela Buggs, Teresa Carrillo, Claudia de Lima Costa, Isabel Espinal, Verónica Feliu, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Rebecca J. Hester, Norma Klahn, Agustín Lao-Montes, Suzana Maia, Márgara Millán, Adriana Piscitelli, Ana Rebeca Prada, Ester R. Shapiro, Simone Pereira Schmidt, Millie Thayer
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Triumph of the Fatherland
German Unification and the Marginalization of Women
Brigitte Young
University of Michigan Press, 1999
The East German uprising of 1989 was not a male revolution. Indeed, one of the most significant aspects of the fall of East Germany, compared to that of other East European nations, was the presence of women demanding a political role in the newly emerging social order. As one slogan proclaimed, "Without Women There Is No State."
Yet despite the determination of these women--and of West German feminist groups--to help shape the future of the German state, their influence remained, in the end, very limited. In Triumph of the Fatherland, political scientist Brigitte Young draws on in-depth interviews, archival sources, newspapers, and her own observations from 1989 to 1991 to study the goals, strategies, and eventual fate of the German women's movements during this tumultuous period.
Young focuses on the relationship between the state and its citizenry, outlining the mobilization of women in four states: the East German and West German states before unification; the "stateless state" in East Germany after the collapse of the Wall, and the West German state during unification. Ultimately she finds that the political opportunity structures opened during the "stateless state" closed again with unification, resulting in what Young calls "double gender marginalization."
Brigitte Young is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Otto-Suhr-Institute, Free University Berlin, Germany.
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The Troubling State of India's Democracy
Šumit Ganguly, Dinsha Mistree, and Larry Diamond, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2024
As India’s power and prominence rise on the international stage, its longstanding tradition of democracy is under threat. Since establishing a secular and democratic constitution in 1950, India has held elections at the local, state, and national levels with frequent transitions of power between opposing parties. This commitment to democracy has provided political order to a country that is twice the size of Europe and with a stunning array of social and economic divides. 

Despite this rich tradition, India’s democracy faces an unprecedented threat with the rise of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. After decisively winning general elections in 2014, Modi and the BJP have pursued a range of anti-democratic policies in which the state and society are used to undermine the opposition, to stifle free speech, and to harass religious minorities. The Troubling State of India’s Democracy brings together leading scholars from around the world to assess the conditions of India’s democracy across three important dimensions: politics, specifically the state of political parties and the party system; the state, including the condition of federalism and the health of various institutions; and society, including NGOs, ethnic and religious tensions, and control of the media. Even though elements of India’s democracy seem to function—like its commitment to elections—the contributors document a disturbing trajectory, one that not only threatens to undermine India’s own stability, but could also affect the global order.
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Trust and Governance
Valerie Braithwaite
Russell Sage Foundation, 1998
An effective democratic society depends on the confidence citizens place in their government. Payment of taxes, acceptance of legislative and judicial decisions, compliance with social service programs, and support of military objectives are but some examples of the need for public cooperation with state demands. At the same time, voters expect their officials to behave ethically and responsibly. To those seeking to understand—and to improve—this mutual responsiveness, Trust and Governance provides a wide-ranging inquiry into the role of trust in civic life. Trust and Governance asks several important questions: Is trust really essential to good governance, or are strong laws more important? What leads people either to trust or to distrust government, and what makes officials decide to be trustworthy? Can too much trust render the public vulnerable to government corruption, and if so what safeguards are necessary? In approaching these questions, the contributors draw upon an abundance of historical and current resources to offer a variety of perspectives on the role of trust in government. For some, trust between citizens and government is a rational compact based on a fair exchange of information and the public's ability to evaluate government performance. Levi and Daunton each examine how the establishment of clear goals and accountability procedures within government agencies facilitates greater public commitment, evidence that a strong government can itself be a source of trust. Conversely, Jennings and Peel offer two cases in which loss of citizen confidence resulted from the administration of seemingly unresponsive, punitive social service programs. Other contributors to Trust and Governance view trust as a social bonding, wherein the public's emotional investment in government becomes more important than their ability to measure its performance. The sense of being trusted by voters can itself be a powerful incentive for elected officials to behave ethically, as Blackburn, Brennan, and Pettit each demonstrate. Other authors explore how a sense of communal identity and shared values make citizens more likely to eschew their own self-interest and favor the government as a source of collective good. Underlying many of these essays is the assumption that regulatory institutions are necessary to protect citizens from the worst effects of misplaced trust. Trust and Governance offers evidence that the jurisdictional level at which people and government interact—be it federal, state, or local—is fundamental to whether trust is rationally or socially based. Although social trust is more prevalent at the local level, both forms of trust may be essential to a healthy society. Enriched by perspectives from political science, sociology, psychology, economics, history, and philosophy, Trust and Governance opens a new dialogue on the role of trust in the vital relationship between citizenry and government. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation's Series on Trust.
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The Truth about Leo Strauss
Political Philosophy and American Democracy
Catherine H. Zuckert and Michael P. Zuckert
University of Chicago Press, 2006

Is  Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? The Truth about Leo Strauss puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate such an oversimplified view of such a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. More important, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure. 

Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former students of Strauss—guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss’s political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the ideas that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. This idea, they show, stemmed from Strauss’s belief that modern thought, with its relativism and nihilism, undermines healthy politics and even the possibility of real philosophy. Identifying this view as one of Strauss’s three core propositions—America is modern, modernity is bad, and America is good—they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses. 

The Zuckerts finish, appropriately, by examining the varied work of Strauss’s numerous students and followers, revealing the origins—rooted in the tensions within his own thought—oftheir split into opposing camps. Balanced and accessible, The Truth about Leo Strauss is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy.

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Turkey's July 15th Coup
What Happened and Why
Edited by M. Hakan Yavuz and Bayram Balci
University of Utah Press, 2018

Utah Series in Middle East Studies

On July 15, 2016, a faction of the Turkish military attempted to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish government blamed the unsuccessful coup attempt on Gülenists, adherents of an Islamist movement led by Fethullah Gülen. They had helped elect Erdoğan and his AK Party, with the goal of bringing an ostensibly “soft” version of Islam into the secular Turkish government. In alliance with the AK Party, Gülenists steadfastly increased their representation in various government institutions, including the military, the police, and the judiciary. This volume focuses on the historical and sociopolitical contexts of the Gülen Movement’s origins and political ascendancy along with its possible role in the failed coup.
 

Editors Yavuz and Balcı are among the first international scholars to have studied the movement from its nascent stages in Turkey. The volume's contributors include scholars who have researched the movement in Turkey, Central Asia, and the Balkans. The result is a comprehensive, timely assessment of numerous dimensions of Gülenist activities, including its social and political networks and the institutions that supported the movement as it became a major economic and educational force in Turkey and elsewhere. This volume reflects exchanges among scholars who having studied the Gülenists, assembled to discuss how and why the movement became belligerent opponents of Erdoğan’s government, and it addresses questions such as how this major, still continuing disruption in Turkey’s politics will affect not only the future of the movement but also that of Turkey's embattled democracy as well.

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Twelve Ways to Save Democracy in Wisconsin
Matthew Rothschild
University of Wisconsin Press, 2021
Wisconsin, once a progressive stronghold led by Robert La Follette and others, inaugurated far-reaching reforms that broadened public involvement in civic affairs. A wave of innovative social programs aimed at making the state more egalitarian followed. In recent decades, however, the Badger State has become a laboratory for antidemocratic maneuvers that have increased the political influence of the super-rich and corporations while decreasing the power of voters.
 
From tightening campaign finance laws and banning gerrymandering to rooting out structural racism and moving toward economic equality, each chapter focuses on one of the dozen reforms that are required to heal democracy within the state. Rothschild provides an in-depth rationale for each, dismantling the counterarguments against them and exploring the complexities involved in implementing them. He offers concrete proposals and action items for grassroots organizers and concerned community advocates to restore constituent control of state politics. This pocket-sized handbook is essential for politically aware citizens as well as journalists and watchdogs who see Wisconsin as a crucial battleground state and political bellwether for the nation.
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The Two Faces of American Freedom
Aziz Rana
Harvard University Press, 2014

The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin.

However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.

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Two Kinds of Rationality
Kibbutz Democracy and Generational Conflict
T.M.S. Evens
University of Minnesota Press, 1995

Two Kinds of Rationality was first published in 1995. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Beginning with a discussion of mind-body dualism in social anthropology, Evens presents a profound theory of human conduct that deploys notions of hierarchy and practice. He uses the case study of an Israeli kibbutz to address the central anthropological problem of rationality.

Of particular interest is Evens's interpretation of the Genesis myth, as well as his reading of Rousseau's revision of this myth, as paradigms of generational conflict and the kibbutz's logic of moral order. These interpretations are tied to Evens's detailed discussion of a controversial attempt to introduce secret balloting into a particular kibbutz's directly democratic process.

Two Kinds of Rationality distinguishes between instrumental and mythic rationality, picturing the latter as a value rationality. Projecting reality as basically ambiguous, Evens offers a critique of theoretical approaches to social action and a rethinking of contemporary notions of human agency. This revolutionary theoretical work will appeal to social and political theorists, anthropologists, and students of cultural studies, social movements, and Jewish studies.

T. M. S. Evens is professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous articles and coeditor of Transcendence in Society: Case Studies (1990), a comparative study of social movements.

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Tyranny of the Moment
Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Pluto Press, 2001


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