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On September 9, 2015, in the quirky village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, the Miami Township Board of Trustees arbitrated a dispute concerning an area bed and breakfast that was apparently causing problems in the neighborhood where it was located. People were irate: the B&B was considered too loud by some but unfairly under attack by others, while township officials were called incompetent by both sides for not ruling in their favor. The trustees were amused, concerned, and baffled at the situation before them.
 
This quaint debate represents just one of many fascinating problems the trustees deal with on a daily basis. While Miami Township is small, the concerns are myriad—from cemeteries filled with unknown remains to a fire department to oversee to legal action required against properties clogged with junk. The responsibilities are doubly impressive considering no trustees have backgrounds in public office.
 
This book combines entertaining nonfiction vignettes with well-researched township history—including a history of religious cults and the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was once in town—and elucidates the processes behind an entire civic division. Dance of the Trustees documents twenty-first-century small-town life with humor, warmth, and erudition.
 
 

"A must-read for anyone interested in enhancing a historical understanding of our present through a consideration of what it means to decolonize."—Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. Their battle cry, #RhodesMustFall, sparked an international movement calling for the decolonization of universities all over the world.
 
Today, as the movement develops beyond the picket line, how might it go on to radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists, and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, demanding diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education. Chapters include:
 
*Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change (Dalia Febrial)
*Race and the Neoliberal University ((John Holmwood)
*Black/Academia (Robbie Shilliam)
*The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University (Kehinde Andrews)
*Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum (Pat Lockley)
*Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention (Carol Azumah Dennis)
*Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science (William Jamal Richardson)
 
As the book’s insightful Introduction states, "Taking colonialism as a global project as a starting point, it becomes difficult to turn away from the Western university as a key site through which colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized." Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist colonialism inside and outside the classroom, Decolonizing the University provides the tools for radical change in educational disciplines, pedagogies, and institutions.  
 

In Mexico, as elsewhere, the national space, that network of places where the people interact with state institutions, is constantly changing. How it does so, how it develops, is a historical process-a process that Claudio Lomnitz exposes and investigates in this book, which develops a distinct view of the cultural politics of nation building in Mexico. Lomnitz highlights the varied, evolving, and often conflicting efforts that have been made by Mexicans over the past two centuries to imagine, organize, represent, and know their country, its relations with the wider world, and its internal differences and inequalities. Firmly based on particulars and committed to the specificity of such thinking, this book also has broad implications for how a theoretically informed history can and should be done.

An exploration of Mexican national space by way of an analysis of nationalism, the public sphere, and knowledge production, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico brings an original perspective to the dynamics of national cultural production on the periphery. Its blending of theoretical innovation, historical inquiry, and critical engagement provides a new model for the writing of history and anthropology in contemporary Mexico and beyond.

Public Worlds Series, volume 9

 

Referenda on important public policy questions have come to play a central role in policy making in many states. Referenda, or ballot propositions, have resulted in limits on taxation and limits on the number of terms of elected officials, and have dealt with bilingual education, campaign finances, and affirmative action, in states all over the country.

Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan present a searching and original examination of how voters make decisions in direct referenda. The authors ask if voters have some information about the issue easily at their disposal and if they make choices that seem sensible given their interests and the information they have. Looking at the way voters respond to different kinds of questions, the authors suggest that while direct democracy has its failings, the flaws do not necessarily lie with citizens being "duped," nor with voters approving propositions they do not want or do not understand at some basic level.

As cynicism about government has increased many have sought to take policy questions out of the hands of elected officials and put the questions directly before the voters for decision. And yet many are skeptical about the ability of voters to make intelligent decisions about complex policy issues. This important book demonstrates that voters are capable of responding thoughtfully to referenda questions.

This book will appeal to students of contemporary American politics and electoral politics.

Shaun Bowler is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California at Irvine. Todd Donovan is Associate Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University.

This book explores how democracy has developed in Chile since the end of the military dictatorship in 1990. It brings together an examination of international influences on the country's political development with empirically based analyses of Chilean political institutions and change. Chapters one and two examine international aspects of the 1973 coup and how these influenced the development of politics inside Chile. Chapters three, four, and five provide empirical analyses of the 1989, 1993, and 1999/2000 presidential elections, respectively. Chapter six investigates how the Pinochet factor influenced developments after 1990 and the Chilean reaction to Pinochet's arrest in London in 1998. Chapter seven assesses changes in the Chilean party system and links these to similar processes elsewhere. The final chapter examines the paradox that despite economic and social advances, opinion polls report a low level of attachment to democracy and very low levels of confidence in political institutions.

Following costly U.S. engagement in two wars in the Middle East, questions about the appropriateness of American military interventions dominate foreign policy debates. Is an interventionist foreign policy compatible with the American constitutional tradition?

This book examines critic Irving Babbitt’s (1865–1933) unique contribution to understanding the quality of foreign policy leadership in a democracy. Babbitt explored how a democratic nation’s foreign policy is a product of the moral and cultural tendencies of the nation’s leaders, arguing that the substitution of expansive, sentimental Romanticism for the religious and ethical traditions of the West would lead to imperialism.

The United States’ move away from the restraint and order of sound constitutionalism to involve itself in the affairs of other nations will inevitably cause a clash with the “civilizational” regions that have emerged in recent decades. Democracy and Imperialism uses the question of soul types to address issues of foreign policy leadership, and discusses the leadership qualities that are necessary for sound foreign policy.

America faces daunting problems—stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. Yet the government consistently ignores the needs of its citizens, paying attention instead to donors and organized interests. Real issues are held hostage to demagoguery, partisanship beats practicality, and trust in government withers along with the social safety net.
 
How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who’ve been left behind, the United States has failed to do so.  Instead, we have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
 
What’s the solution? More democracy. More opportunity for citizens to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections, reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges, and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.
 
This book presents a damning indictment. But the situation is far from hopeless. With increased democratic participation as their guide, Page and Gilens lay out a set of proposals that would boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House and Senate. The only certainty is that inaction is not an option. Now is the time to act to restore and extend American democracy.
 

Traces the communication strategies of various constituencies in a Chicago neighborhood, offering insights into the challenges that beset diverse urban populations and demonstrating persuasively rhetoric’s power to illuminate and resolve charged conflicts

Candice Rai’s Democracy’s Lot is an incisive exploration of the limitations and possibilities of democratic discourse for resolving conflicts in urban communities. Rai roots her study of democratic politics and publics in a range of urban case studies focused on public art, community policing, and urban development. These studies examine the issues that erupted within an ethnically and economically diverse Chicago neighborhood over conflicting visions for a vacant lot called Wilson Yard. Tracing how residents with disparate agendas organized factions and deployed language, symbols, and other rhetorical devices in the struggle over Wilson Yard’s redevelopment and other contested public spaces, Rai demonstrates that rhetoric is not solely a tool of elite communicators, but rather a framework for understanding the agile communication strategies that are improvised in the rough-and-tumble work of democratic life.
 
Wilson Yard, a lot eight blocks north of Wrigley Field in Chicago’s gentrifying Uptown neighborhood, is a diverse enclave of residents enlivened by recent immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. The neighborhood’s North Broadway Street witnesses a daily multilingual hubbub of people from a wide spectrum of income levels, religions, sexual identifications, and interest groups. When a fire left the lot vacant, this divided community projected on Wilson Yard disparate and conflicting aspirations, the resolution of which not only determined the fate of this particular urban space, but also revealed the lot of democracy itself as a process of complex problem-solving. Rai’s detailed study of one block in an iconic American city brings into vivid focus the remarkable challenges that beset democratic urban populations anywhere on the globe—and how rhetoric supplies a framework to understand and resolve those challenges.
 
Based on exhaustive field work, Rai uses rhetorical ethnography to study competing publics, citizenship, and rhetoric in action, exploring “rhetorical invention,” the discovery or development by individuals of the resources or methods of engaging with and persuading others. She builds a case for democratic processes and behaviors based not on reflexive idealism but rather on the hard work and practice of democracy, which must address apathy, passion, conflict, and ambivalence.

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens offer the most systematic examination to date of the origins, character, effects, and prospects of generous welfare states in advanced industrial democracies in the post—World War II era. They demonstrate that prolonged government by different parties results in markedly different welfare states, with strong differences in levels of poverty and inequality. Combining quantitative studies with historical qualitative research, the authors look closely at nine countries that achieved high degrees of social protection through different types of welfare regimes: social democratic states, Christian democratic states, and "wage earner" states. In their analysis, the authors emphasize the distribution of influence between political parties and labor movements, and also focus on the underestimated importance of gender as a basis for mobilization.

Building on their previous research, Huber and Stephens show how high wages and generous welfare states are still possible in an age of globalization and trade competition.

As disasters become more commonplace, we need to think of alternatives for relief.

'Commendable - a book that prepares us to think about and react to system failures' - Peter Gelderloos

Anarchists have been central in helping communities ravaged by disasters, stepping in when governments wash their hands of the victims. Looking at Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilized relief in their wake, Disaster Anarchy is an inspiring and alarming book about collective solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.

As climate change and neoliberalism converge, mutual aid networks, grassroots direct action, occupations, and brigades have sprung up in response to this crisis with considerable success. Occupy Sandy was widely acknowledged to have organized relief more effectively than federal agencies or NGOs, and following Covid-19 the term ‘mutual aid’ entered common parlance.

However, anarchist-inspired relief has not gone unnoticed by government agencies. Their responses include surveillance and co-option, extending at times to violent repression involving police brutality. Arguing that disaster anarchy is one of the most important political phenomena to emerge in the 21st century, Rhiannon Firth shows through her research on and within these movements that anarchist theory and practice are needed to protect ourselves from the disasters of our unequal and destructive economic system.

As disasters become more commonplace, we need to think of alternatives for relief.

'Commendable - a book that prepares us to think about and react to system failures' - Peter Gelderloos

Anarchists have been central in helping communities ravaged by disasters, stepping in when governments wash their hands of the victims. Looking at Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilized relief in their wake, Disaster Anarchy is an inspiring and alarming book about collective solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.

As climate change and neoliberalism converge, mutual aid networks, grassroots direct action, occupations, and brigades have sprung up in response to this crisis with considerable success. Occupy Sandy was widely acknowledged to have organized relief more effectively than federal agencies or NGOs, and following Covid-19 the term ‘mutual aid’ entered common parlance.

However, anarchist-inspired relief has not gone unnoticed by government agencies. Their responses include surveillance and co-option, extending at times to violent repression involving police brutality. Arguing that disaster anarchy is one of the most important political phenomena to emerge in the 21st century, Rhiannon Firth shows through her research on and within these movements that anarchist theory and practice are needed to protect ourselves from the disasters of our unequal and destructive economic system.

Reductions in state spending have put significant strain on communities during disasters. When hurricanes, floods and earthquakes hit, the responsibility for emergency relief is shifted from the state onto civil society. Disasters and Social Reproduction builds upon Marxist-Feminist elaborations of unwaged forms of labor, arguing that social reproduction theory is best understood as a dynamic between the state, the market and civil society.

Following the long economic crisis of the 1970s, disaster relief has become increasingly reliant on the unwaged reproductive labor of ordinary people, allowing the US state to cut back on social spending, a shift that has fundamentally reconfigured the responsibilities of the state and civil society. As sea levels rise, climate change worsens and we see an increase in disaster relief led by communities, this analysis of the interrelations between state, society and grassroots initiatives, including Occupy Sandy and the American Black Cross, will prove indispensable.

The election of populist politicians in recent years seems to challenge the commitment to democracy, if not its ideal. This book argues that majority rule is not the problem; rather, the institutions that stabilize majorities are responsible for the suppression of minority interests. Despite the popular notion that social choice instability (or “cycling”) makes it impossible for majorities to make sound legislation, Yuhui Li argues that the best part of democracy is not the large number of people on the winning side; it is that the winners can be easily divided and realigned with the losers in the cycling process. He shows that minorities’ bargaining power depends on their ability to exploit division within the winning coalition and induce its members to defect, an institutionalized uncertainty that is missing in one-party authoritarian systems.

Dividing the Rulers theorizes why such division within the majority is important and what kind of institutional features can help a democratic system maintain such division, which is crucial in preventing the “tyranny of the majority.” These institutional solutions point to a direction of institutional reform that academics, politicians, and voters should collectively pursue.
 

A pivotal in the study of history and politics, not only in Alabama but in the other states of the South
 
Barnard’s account is elegantly concise, the labor of conspicuous scholarship. In an effort to analyze Alabama’s political bedrock, the author has tapped virtually every source. What results is a cogent and harmonious theme.

The only time most Americans care anything about politics is during the presidential election cycle. This quadrennial flood of posturing and blame, once confined to the July conventions and the November election, has spread like a greasy lake across the landscape and calendar of our politics. From the first exploratory rumblings of the hopefuls sometime after the midterm elections to the tsunami of Super Tuesday, the political language of the presidential election has become a reflecting pool of our polity. Doubletalk casts a warm ray of sunlight on the campaign trail as an add-on to last year’s Dog Whistles, Walk-backs, and Washington Handshakes, with over 100 new terms, phrases, and epithets combining wit, humor, truth, and dubious taste and propriety.

During the 2016 presidential campaign millions of voters, concerned about the economic impact of illegal immigration, rallied behind the notion of a border wall between the United States and Mexico. Well into the Trump presidency, immigration endures as a hotly contested issue in United States politics.

In Dreams Derailed sociologist William A. Schwab shares the stories of immigration reform advocates and follows up on stories told in his 2013 book Right to DREAM, which argued in favor of the DREAM Act that would have provided conditional residency for undocumented youth brought to the United States as children, a version of which was later enacted by executive order and referred to as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

Taking as its focal point the Trump administration’s decision to rescind Obama-era DACA protection, Dreams Derailed delves into the economic, political, and social factors that inform the public conversation about immigration, making a clear case for the many benefits of inclusive policies and the protection of undocumented youths. Schwab also takes a close look at the factors that carried Donald Trump to the White House, demonstrates how economic upheaval and the issue of immigration influenced the 2016 presidential election, analyzes current immigration laws, and suggests next steps for reform.