704 books match the query 'Political Process' and 25 start with f

cover of F. D. R. and the Press

F. D. R. and the Press

Graham J. White

University of Chicago Press, 1979

Franklin D. Roosevelt's tempestuous, adversary relationship with the American press is celebrated in the literature of his administrations. Historians have documented the skill and virtuosity that he displayed in his handling and exploitation of the press. Graham J. White discovers the well of Roosevelt's excessive ardor: an intractable political philosophy that pitted him against a fierce (though imaginary) enemy, the written press.

White challenges and disproves Roosevelt's contention that the press was unusually severe and slanted in its treatment of the Roosevelt years. His original work traces FDR's hostile assessment of the press to his own political philosophy: an ideology that ordained him a champion of the people, whose task it was to preserve American democracy against the recurring attempt by Hamiltonian minorities (newspaper publishers and captive reporters) to wrest control of their destiny from the masses.

White recounts Roosevelt's initial victory over the press corps, and the effect his wily manipulations had on press coverage of his administrations and on his own public image. He believes Roosevelt's denunciation of the press was less an accurate description of the press's behavior towards his administrations than a product of his own preconceptions about the nature of the Presidency. White concludes that Roosevelt's plan was to disarm those he saw as the foes of democracy by accusing them of unfairly maligning him.
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cover of Fair Share: Senior Activism, Tiny Publics, and the Culture of Resistance

Fair Share

Senior Activism, Tiny Publics, and the Culture of Resistance

Gary Alan Fine

University of Chicago Press, 2023

A deeply researched ethnographic portrait of progressive senior activists in Chicago who demonstrate how a tiny public wields collective power to advocate for broad social change.
 
If you've ever been to a protest or been involved in a movement for social change, you have likely experienced a local culture, one with slogans, jargon, and shared commitments. Though one might think of a cohort of youthful organizers when imagining protest culture, this powerful ethnography from esteemed sociologist Gary Alan Fine explores the world of senior citizens on the front lines of progressive protests. While seniors are a notoriously important—and historically conservative—political cohort, the group Fine calls “Chicago Seniors Together” is a decidedly leftist organization, inspired by the model of Saul Alinsky. The group advocates for social issues, such as affordable housing and healthcare, that affect all sectors of society but take on a particular urgency in the lives of seniors. Seniors connect and mobilize around their distinct experiences but do so in service of concerns that extend beyond themselves. Not only do these seniors experience social issues as seniors—but they use their age as a dramatic visual in advocating for political change.
 
In Fair Share, Fine brings readers into the vital world of an overlooked political group, describing how a “tiny public” mobilizes its demands for broad social change. In investigating this process, he shows that senior citizen activists are particularly savvy about using age to their advantage in social movements. After all, what could be more attention-grabbing than a group of passionate older people determinedly shuffling through snowy streets with canes, in wheelchairs, and holding walkers to demand healthcare equity, risking their own health in the process?

 
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cover of Fake News – What’s the harm?: Four ideas for fact-checkers, policymakers & platforms on countering the consequences of false information & defending free speech

Fake News – What’s the harm?

Four ideas for fact-checkers, policymakers & platforms on countering the consequences of false information & defending free speech

Peter Cunliffe-Jones

University of Westminster Press, 2025

Former news reporter and founder of Africa’s first fact-checking organisation Peter Cunliffe-Jones argues that since concern about ‘information disorder’ soared in 2016, we have laboured under flawed assumptions about the nature and effects of ‘fake news’ and misinformation. Based on a four-year review of 250 case studies, Cunliffe-Jones sets out four ideas for fact-checkers, policymakers and platforms to curb harmful consequences and protect wider freedom of speech. First, information disorder is about more than misinformation. Second, misinformation in offline settings can cause as big a problem as misinformation online. Third, misinformation that affects policymakers can be as bad as misinformation that affects the public. Fourth, he proposes a model for fact-checkers, researchers and platforms to distinguish false claims that do and do not have substantive potential to cause substantive consequences.
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cover of Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People's Party in Texas

Farmers in Rebellion

The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People's Party in Texas

By Donna A. Barnes

University of Texas Press, 1984

The years after the Civil War brought struggle to the Southern farmer as the economic mainstay of the South—cotton—steadily dropped in price. Prompted by hard times, farmers in Lampasas County, Texas, gathered in 1877 to discuss what could be done. From these modest origins emerged the National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union, later known as the Southern Farmers Alliance, a powerful protest movement that played an important role in the formation in 1892 of a new political force, the People's party. In the "solid South," particularly in Texas, large numbers of voters abandoned the Democratic party for the new party. Yet despite this support, the decline of the People's party after 1894 was swift.

Farmers in Rebellion recounts the compelling story of these two crucial and closely related movements. Donna A. Barnes examines their developmental histories, asking such important questions as: Under what conditions do protest movements remain weak? Under what conditions do they prosper, amassing large numbers of supporters? And under what conditions do successful protest movements lose their momentum and die? The author explores these complex questions with deft use of archival data that allows her to reflect on the adequacy of the past sociological answers to these questions.

Farmers in Rebellion is a book rich in detail and scope in its look at a critical juncture in the growth of national populist movements. Of interest to sociologists, historians, and political scientists, it stands as an important contribution to our understanding of a pivotal time in Texas, and national, history.

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cover of Feeling Democracy: Emotional Politics in the New Millennium

Feeling Democracy

Emotional Politics in the New Millennium

Sarah Tobias

Rutgers University Press, 2024

Cultural critic Lauren Berlant wrote that “politics is always emotional,” and her words hold especially true for politics in the twenty-first century. From Obama to Trump, from Black Lives Matter to the anti-abortion movement, politicians and activists appeal to hope, fear, anger, and pity, all amplified by social media. 
 
The essays in Feeling Democracy examine how both reactionary and progressive politics are driven largely by emotional appeals to the public. The contributors in this collection cover everything from immigrants’ rights movements to white nationalist rallies to show how solidarities forged around gender, race, and sexuality become catalysts for a passionate democratic politics. Some essays draw parallels between today’s activist strategies and the use of emotion in women-led radical movements from the 1960s and 1970s, while others expand the geographic scope of the collection by considering Asian decolonial politics and Egyptian pro-democracy protests. 
 
Incorporating scholarship from fields as varied as law, political science, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and history, Feeling Democracy considers how emotional rhetoric in politics can be a double-edged sword—often wielded by authoritarian populists who seek to undermine democracy but sometimes helping to bring about a genuine renewal of participatory democracy.  
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cover of Fighting Corporate Abuse: Beyond Predatory Capitalism

Fighting Corporate Abuse

Beyond Predatory Capitalism

Corporate Reform Collective

Pluto Press, 2014

Fighting Corporate Abuse demonstrates, through compelling and revelatory analysis, the legislation and regulation needed to deal with the abuses in the corporate sector that have been revealed in recent years. It highlights the more general contribution of company law and practice to the current crisis in capitalism.

The first section develops a controversial argument, using detailed illustrations and vivid examples which show how the various abuses of predatory capitalism have been carried out through the manipulation of the corporate form and the creation of highly complex corporate groups. The group of authors, all experts in their fields, tackle head-on the issues of tax evasion, extraction of value and asset stripping, environmental destruction and managerial self-interest. In doing so, they paint a picture of a system that is abusive, and degenerated, but also a system which can be reformed.

In the run up to the UK general election, the authors develop of a set of practical proposals for an incoming government, outlining how each of these abuses could be curtailed and how a more acceptable and accountable form of corporate capitalism can be developed through national and international action.

Drawing on the group’s activism, as well as their academic experience in law, politics, economics and human rights, this will be an authoritative as well as a highly practical book.

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cover of Fighting for Reliable Evidence 

Fighting for Reliable Evidence 

Judith M. Gueron

Russell Sage Foundation, 2013

Once primarily used in medical clinical trials, random assignment experimentation is now accepted among social scientists across a broad range of disciplines. The technique has been used in social experiments to evaluate a variety of programs, from microfinance and welfare reform to housing vouchers and teaching methods. How did randomized experiments move beyond medicine and into the social sciences, and can they be used effectively to evaluate complex social problems? Fighting for Reliable Evidence provides an absorbing historical account of the characters and controversies that have propelled the wider use of random assignment in social policy research over the past forty years. Drawing from their extensive experience evaluating welfare reform programs, noted scholar practitioners Judith M. Gueron and Howard Rolston portray randomized experiments as a vital research tool to assess the impact of social policy. In a random assignment experiment, participants are sorted into either a treatment group that participates in a particular program, or a control group that does not. Because the groups are randomly selected, they do not differ from one another systematically. Therefore any subsequent differences between the groups can be attributed to the influence of the program or policy. The theory is elegant and persuasive, but many scholars worry that such an experiment is too difficult or expensive to implement in the real world. Can a control group be truly insulated from the treatment policy? Would staffers comply with the random allocation of participants? Would the findings matter? Fighting for Reliable Evidence recounts the experiments that helped answer these questions, starting with the income maintenance experiments and the Supported Work project in the 1960s and 1970s. Gueron and Rolston argue that a crucial turning point came during the 1980s, when Congress allowed states to experiment with welfare programs and foundations, states, and the federal government funded larger randomized trials to assess the impact of these reforms. As they trace these historical shifts, Gueron and Rolston discuss the ways that strategies for resolving theoretical and practical problems were developed, and they highlight the strict conditions required to execute a randomized experiment successfully. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of the potential and limitations of social experiments to advance empirical knowledge. Weaving history, data analysis and personal experience, Fighting for Reliable Evidence offers valuable lessons for researchers, policymakers, funders, and informed citizens interested in isolating the effect of policy initiatives. It is an essential primer on welfare policy, causal inference, and experimental designs.
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cover of Follow the Leader?: How Voters Respond to Politicians' Policies and Performance

Follow the Leader?

How Voters Respond to Politicians' Policies and Performance

Gabriel S. Lenz

University of Chicago Press, 2012

In a democracy, we generally assume that voters know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. We also assume that voters consider candidates' competence, honesty, and other performance-related traits. But does this actually happen? Do voters consider candidates’ policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians’ performances in office factor into the voting decision?
 
In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought. Lenz looks at citizens’ views of candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, natural disasters, and episodes of economic boom and bust. Noting important shifts in voters’ knowledge and preferences as a result of these events, he finds that, while citizens do assess politicians based on their performance, their policy positions actually matter much less. Even when a policy issue becomes highly prominent, voters rarely shift their votes to the politician whose position best agrees with their own. In fact, Lenz shows, the reverse often takes place: citizens first pick a politician and then adopt that politician’s policy views. In other words, they follow the leader.
 
Based on data drawn from multiple countries, Follow the Leader? is the most definitive treatment to date of when and why policy and performance matter at the voting booth, and it will break new ground in the debates about democracy.
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cover of For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice

For the Culture

Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice

Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey and Adolphus G. Belk, Jr., Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2022

For the Culture: Hip-Hop and the Fight for Social Justice documents and analyzes the ways in which Hip-Hop music, artists, scholars, and activists have discussed, promoted, and supported social justice challenges worldwide. Drawing from diverse approaches and methods, the contributors in this volume demonstrate that rap music can positively influence political behavior and fight to change social injustices, and then zoom in on artists whose work has accomplished these ends.  The volume explores topics including education and pedagogy; the Black Lives Matter movement; the politics of crime, punishment, and mass incarceration; electoral politics; gender and sexuality; and the global struggle for social justice. Ultimately, the book argues that hip hop is much more than a musical genre or cultural form: hip hop is a resistance mechanism.
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cover of Fractured Politics: Peruvian Democracy Past and Present

Fractured Politics

Peruvian Democracy Past and Present

Edited by John Crabtree

University of London Press, 2011

Latin American opinion surveys consistently point to Peruvian citizens' deep distrust of their elected rulers and democratic institutions. The 2011 presidential and legislative elections in Peru, along with the regional and municipal polls of the previous year,showed once again the degree of political fragmentation in contemporary Peru andthe weakness of its party system. Fractured Politics examines the history of political exclusion in Peru, the weaknessof representative institutions, and the persistence of localized violent protest. It also evaluates the contribution of institutional reforms in bridging the gap between state and society, including Peru's Law on Political Parties, administrative decentralization, and the experience of the Defensor, or ombudsman's office. The chapters, by leading scholars of Peruvian politics, emerge from a conference, held in 2009 in Saint Antony's College Oxford. Julio Cotler, from the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP), was the keynote speaker.
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cover of Framing Immigrants: News Coverage, Public Opinion, and Policy

Framing Immigrants

News Coverage, Public Opinion, and Policy

Chris Haynes

Russell Sage Foundation, 2016

While undocumented immigration is controversial, the general public is largely unfamiliar with the particulars of immigration policy. Given that public opinion on the topic is malleable, to what extent do mass media shape the public debate on immigration? In Framing Immigrants, political scientists Chris Haynes, Jennifer Merolla, and Karthick Ramakrishnan explore how conservative, liberal, and mainstream news outlets frame and discuss undocumented immigrants. Drawing from original voter surveys, they show that how the media frames immigration has significant consequences for public opinion and has implications for the passage of new immigration policies.
 
The authors analyze media coverage of several key immigration policy issues—including mass deportations, comprehensive immigration reform, and measures focused on immigrant children, such as the DREAM Act—to chart how news sources across the ideological spectrum produce specific “frames” for the immigration debate. In the past few years, liberal and mainstream outlets have tended to frame immigrants lacking legal status as “undocumented” (rather than “illegal”) and to approach the topic of legalization through human-interest stories, often mentioning children. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, tend to discuss legalization using impersonal statistics and invoking the rule of law. Yet, regardless of the media’s ideological positions, the authors’ surveys show that “negative” frames more strongly influence public support for different immigration policies than do positive frames. For instance, survey participants who were exposed to language portraying immigrants as law-breakers seeking “amnesty” tended to oppose legalization measures. At the same time, support for legalization was higher when participants were exposed to language referring to immigrants living in the United States for a decade or more.
 
Framing Immigrants shows that despite heated debates on immigration across the political aisle, the general public has yet to form a consistent position on undocumented immigrants. By analyzing how the media influences public opinion, this book provides a valuable resource for immigration advocates, policymakers, and researchers.
 
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cover of France at the Polls, 1981 and 1986

France at the Polls, 1981 and 1986

Howard R. Penniman, ed.

Duke University Press, 1988

At the Polls is a series of national election studies prepared by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy and Research. Books in the series include volumes on some thirty national democratic elections around the world. Distinguished foreign and American scholars have contributed to the studies.
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cover of Frantz Fanon: Toward a Revolutionary Humanism

Frantz Fanon

Toward a Revolutionary Humanism

Christopher J. Lee

Ohio University Press, 2015

Psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon is one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. He presented powerful critiques of racism, colonialism, and nationalism in his classic books, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). This biography reintroduces Fanon for a new generation of readers, revisiting these enduring themes while also arguing for those less appreciated—namely, his anti-Manichean sensibility and his personal ethic of radical empathy, both of which underpinned his utopian vision of a new humanism. Written with clarity and passion, Christopher J. Lee’s account ultimately argues for the pragmatic idealism of Frantz Fanon and his continued importance today.

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cover of Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

Free Speech and Koch Money

Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

Ralph Wilson

Pluto Press, 2021

In recent years hundreds of high-profile ‘free speech’ incidents have rocked US college campuses. Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy’s intolerance towards conservative views.

But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network.

Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organzations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. We need to abandon the ‘campus free speech’ narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

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cover of Free to Hate: How Media Liberalization Enabled Right-Wing Populism in Post-1989 Bulgaria

Free to Hate

How Media Liberalization Enabled Right-Wing Populism in Post-1989 Bulgaria

Martin Marinos

University of Illinois Press, 2023

Linking neoliberalism with the Right’s global rise

Bulgaria’s media-driven pivot to right-wing populism parallels political developments taking place around the world. Martin Marinos applies a critical political economy approach to place Bulgarian right-wing populism within the structural transformation of the country’s media institutions. As Marinos shows, media concentration under Western giants like Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and News Corporation have led to a neoliberal turn of commercialization, concentration, and tabloidization across media. The Right have used the anticommunism and racism bred by this environment to not only undermine traditional media but position their own outlets to boost new political entities like the nationalist party Ataka. Marinos’s ethnographic observations and interviews with local journalists, politicians, and media experts add on-the-ground detail to his account. He also examines several related issues, including the performative appeal of populist media and the money behind it.

A timely and innovative analysis, Free to Hate reveals where structural changes in media intersect with right-wing populism.

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cover of Freedom, Inc. and Black Political Empowerment

Freedom, Inc. and Black Political Empowerment

Micah W. Kubic

University of Missouri Press, 2016

Much has been written about black urban empowerment and about the candidates—particularly the winning candidates—who are the public face of such shifts in power. Authors invariably mention the important role played by black political organizations in electing black officials or organizing communities, but Micah W. Kubic goes further, making, for the first time, one such organization the focus of a book-length study. Kubic tells the story of black political empowerment in Kansas City through the prism of Freedom, Inc., the nation’s oldest existing black political organization.

Using interviews and observation of participants as well as archival research, Kubic offers historical and political analysis of Freedom, Inc. from its founding in 1962 through its role in municipal elections of 2007. Kubic asserts that strong local organizations are living, dynamic organisms and that they, rather than charismatic candidates or interracial alliances, are the crucial players in both determining political outcomes and advancing black interests in urban areas.

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cover of From Ballot to Bench: Judicial Elections and the Quest for Accountability

From Ballot to Bench

Judicial Elections and the Quest for Accountability

By Philip L. Dubois

University of Texas Press, 1980

Over several decades, many U.S. states abandoned the practice of selecting their judges by direct popular election and adopted the Missouri Plan of judicial selection. In From Ballot to Bench, Philip L. Dubois subjects the various criticisms raised against judicial elections to a more searching scrutiny than previously has been attempted.

Dubois carefully reviews the three central counts on which judicial elections have been faulted: for lowering the quality of the bench, for impairing judicial independence, and for failing to secure judicial accountability. After concluding that the potential for judicial elections to hold judges popularly accountable is what might commend them over alternative selection methods, Dubois concentrates on the analysis of empirical evidence to evaluate judicial elections as mechanisms of accountability.

The study examines all the statewide partisan and nonpartisan elections for state supreme court justices in non-southern states from 1948 to 1974. Included is a detailed examination of voter participation, electoral competition, the behavior of judicial electorates, and the patterns of gubernatorial vacancy appointments. An analysis of decision making on eight state supreme courts also tests the relationship between different selection systems and judicial behavior.

Dubois finds that partisan elections maximize voter participation, meaningfully structure voter choices, minimize accession to the bench by appointment, and allow popular control over gubernatorial appointments. Additional evidence on the extent of partisan voting by judges selected under different methods leads Dubois to conclude that partisan elections are superior to both nonpartisan elections and nonelective selection methods as instruments of accountability.

The importance of the questions addressed, the breadth of the data collected, and the unorthodox conclusions offered make this a significant book for political scientists, judges, lawyers, and public officials.

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cover of From Edward Brooke to Barack Obama: African American Political Success, 1966-2008

From Edward Brooke to Barack Obama

African American Political Success, 1966-2008

Dennis S. Nordin

University of Missouri Press, 2012

In 2008, American history was forever changed with the election of Barack Obama, the United States’ first African American president. However, Obama was far from the first African American to run for a public office or to face the complexities of race in a political campaign. For over a century, offices ranging from city mayor to state senator have been filled by African Americans, making race a factor in many elections.

In From Edward Brooke to Barack Obama, Dennis S. Nordin navigates the history of biracial elections by examining the experiences of a variety of African American politicians from across the country, revealing how voters, both black and white, respond to the issue of race in an election.
The idea to compare the African American political experience across several levels of office first occurred to Nordin as he was researching Arthur W. Mitchell’s 1934 congressional campaign. The question of white voter support was of particular significance, as was whether the continuation of that support depended upon his avoiding minority issues in office. To begin answering these questions and others, Nordin compares the experiences of eleven African American politicians. Taken from across the country to ensure a wide sample and accurate depiction of the subject, the case studies examined include Tom Bradley, mayor of Los Angeles; David Dinkins, mayor of New York; Freeman Bosley Jr., mayor of St. Louis; Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts; Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois; Governor L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia; and Representative J. C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma, among others. As Nordin analyzes these individuals and their contribution to the whole, he concludes that biracial elections in the United States have yet to progress beyond race.

From Edward Brooke to Barack Obama investigates the implications of race in politics, a highly relevant topic in today’s American society. It offers readers a chronological overview of the progress made over the last several decades as well as shows where there is room for growth in the political arena. By taking a pertinent topic for the era and placing it in the context of history, Nordin successfully chronicles the roles of race and race relations in American politics.
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cover of From Inclusion to Influence: Latino Representation in Congress and Latino Political Incorporation in America

From Inclusion to Influence

Latino Representation in Congress and Latino Political Incorporation in America

Walter Clark Wilson

University of Michigan Press, 2017

In From Inclusion to Influence, Walter Wilson addresses urgent questions regarding the political incorporation of Latinos in America. First, he demonstrates that Latino representatives in the U.S. Congress do, in fact, represent Latino interests more effectively than do other representatives, both by serving as conduits connecting fellow Latinos to the government and by introducing their concerns into the legislative process. Then, moving beyond the debate about descriptive and substantive representation, Wilson identifies the ways in which the efforts of Latinos in Congress enable the meaningful inclusion of Latinos in politics, foster the ability of Latinos to shape public policy, and ultimately promote democracy in an increasingly diverse nation.

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cover of From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction

From Oligarchy to Republicanism

The Great Task of Reconstruction

Forrest A. Nabors

University of Missouri Press, 2026

On December 4, 1865, members of the 39th United States Congress walked into the Capitol Building to begin their first session after the end of the Civil War. They understood their responsibility to put the nation back on the path established by the American Founding Fathers. The moment when the Republicans in the Reconstruction Congress remade the nation and renewed the law is in a class of rare events. The Civil War should be seen in this light.

In From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, Forrest A. Nabors shows that the ultimate goal of the Republican Party, the war, and Reconstruction was the same. This goal was to preserve and advance republicanism as the American founders understood it, against its natural, existential enemy: oligarchy. The principle of natural equality justified American republicanism and required abolition and equal citizenship. Likewise, slavery and discrimination on the basis of color stand on the competing moral foundation of oligarchy, the principle of natural inequality, which requires ranks.

The effect of slavery and the division of the nation into two “opposite systems of civilization” are causally linked. Charles Devens, a lawyer who served as a general in the Union Army, and his contemporaries understood that slavery’s existence transformed the character of political society.

One of those dramatic effects was the increased power of slaveowners over those who did not have slaves. When the slave state constitutions enumerated slaves in apportioning representation using the federal three-fifths ratio or by other formulae, intra-state sections where slaves were concentrated would receive a substantial grant of political power for slave ownership. In contrast, low slave-owning sections of the state would lose political representation and political influence over the state. This contributed to the non-slaveholders’ loss of political liberty in the slave states and provided a direct means by which the slaveholders acquired and maintained their rule over non-slaveholders.

This book presents a shared analysis of the slave South, synthesized from the writings and speeches of the Republicans who served in the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth or Fortieth Congress from 1863-1869. The account draws from their writings and speeches dated before, during, and after their service in Congress. Nabors shows how the Republican majority, charged with the responsibility of reconstructing the South, understood the South.

Republicans in Congress were generally united around the fundamental problem and goal of Reconstruction. They regarded their work in the same way as they regarded the work of the American founders. Both they and the founders were engaged in regime change, from monarchy in the one case, and from oligarchy in the other, to republicanism. The insurrectionary states’ governments had to be reconstructed at their foundations, from oligarchic to republican. The sharp differences within Congress pertained to how to achieve that higher goal.
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cover of From Socialism to Capitalism: Eight Essays

From Socialism to Capitalism

Eight Essays

Janos Kornai

Central European University Press, 2008

Eight essays connected by various common strands. The most important one is the community of the main subject-matter: socialism, capitalism, democracy, change of system. These four expressions cover four phenomena of great and comprehensive importance. Each piece in the book deals with these and the connections between them.

One of the Leitmotifs is the “capitalism/socialism” pair of opposites. Capitalism has a history of several hundred years, while the socialist regime existed only for a few decades. But this pair of opposites was central to the history of the twentieth century. This antagonism put its stamp on political thinking, on the foreign policy and military preparedness of every country, and on some appallingly destructive armed conflicts. All these had great secondary influence on each country’s economic development and the standard of living and disposition of its inhabitants.

None of the studies is confined to one country—not to Hungary or to any other. Each tries to embrace the problems common to greater units. However, the greater unit comprehended is not the same in each study. One may deal with the capitalist or socialist system in general, another will all the post-socialist countries, and a third the Central East European region. But all extend the analysis beyond the borders of one country.

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cover of From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age

From Voice to Influence

Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age

Edited by Danielle Allen and Jennifer S. Light

University of Chicago Press, 2015

How have online protests—like the recent outrage over the Komen Foundation’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood—changed the nature of political action? How do Facebook and other popular social media platforms shape the conversation around current political issues? The ways in which we gather information about current events and communicate it with others have been transformed by the rapid rise of digital media. The political is no longer confined to the institutional and electoral arenas, and that has profound implications for how we understand citizenship and political participation.

With From Voice to Influence, Danielle Allen and Jennifer S. Light have brought together a stellar group of political and social theorists, social scientists, and media analysts to explore this transformation. Threading through the contributions is the notion of egalitarian participatory democracy, and among the topics discussed are immigration rights activism, the participatory potential of hip hop culture, and the porous boundary between public and private space on social media. The opportunities presented for political efficacy through digital media to people who otherwise might not be easily heard also raise a host of questions about how to define “good participation:” Does the ease with which one can now participate in online petitions or conversations about current events seduce some away from serious civic activities into “slacktivism?”

 Drawing on a diverse body of theory, from Hannah Arendt to Anthony Appiah, From Voice to Influence offers a range of distinctive visions for a political ethics to guide citizens in a digitally connected world.
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cover of From the Nation-Building Debate to the Bolsa Família Program: Whiteness, Gender, and Poverty in Brazil

From the Nation-Building Debate to the Bolsa Família Program

Whiteness, Gender, and Poverty in Brazil

Beatriz Junqueira Lage Carbone

Campus Verlag, 2023

An examination of struggles over race and gender in contemporary Brazil, as reflected in conflicts over a national social welfare program.

Bolsa Familia was a social welfare program launched in Brazil in 2003 that made cash payments to poor families, provided they kept their children in school and got them vaccinated. Over time, the program became controversial, intertwined with struggles over race and gender, and President Jair Bolsonaro canceled it in 2021. This book examines the discourse around the program and its effects, illuminating conflicts over national identity and the roles of sexism and racism in Brazil.
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cover of Fujimori's Peru: The Political Economy

Fujimori's Peru

The Political Economy

Edited by John Crabtree and Jim Thomas

University of London Press, 1998

This book provides an evaluation of Peruvian politics and economics in the 1990s, on the evidence available up until the end of 1997. The purpose is twofold: to detect continuities and discontinuities between the Fujimori period and earlier ones, and to offer an answer--however tentative--to the question of whether the Fujimori government has laid the basis for greater future stability. The answers to these questions are mixed. There appear to be more continuities than many suppose, even though 1990 in many ways was a 'turning point.' And while the Fujimori government helped provide a more stable context than the one it inherited, it is by no means clear that the changes it has brought about will prove sustainable over the longer run. The political model looks particularly brittle. The contributors are Luis Abugatt?s, Elena Alvarez, Javier de Bela.nde, John Crabtree, Carlos Iv?n Degregori, Francisco Durand, Adolfo Figueroa, Ra.l Hopkins, Javier Igu??iz, Drago Kisic, Enrique Obando, Martin Tanaka, Jim Thomas, and Rosemary Thorp. John Crabtree is a researcher at Oxford Analytica and a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London.
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cover of Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party

Future Forward

The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party

Duncan McCargo and Anyarat Chattharakul

National University of Singapore Press, 2020

Future Forward deals with a remarkable phenomenon in Thailand's recent politics: the rise of a new party led by Thanathorn Juangroongruankit, a wealthy, charismatic politician who upended conventional understandings of how elections work in the country. One year after Future Forward was founded, it became the third largest party in parliament. Another year on, it was summarily dissolved by the Constitutional Court. This is the first book to examine the most interesting new force to emerge in Thai politics for two decades, one also exploring the wider dynamics of political leadership, party formation and voter behaviour in a society where popular participation was largely suppressed after the 2014 military coup. Based on exclusive interviews with party leaders and a wide range of Thai-language sources, it examines how Future Forward succeeded in mobilising so much electoral support, whilst also arousing intense hostility from the conservative forces demanding its dissolution.
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