Results by title
704 books match the query 'Political Process' and 18 start with n
Namibia’s Liberation Struggle
The Two-Edged SwordColin Leys
Ohio University Press, 1994
It took twenty-three years of armed struggle before Namibia could gain its independence from South Africa in March 1990. Swapo’s victory was remarkable in the face of an overwhelmingly superior enemy. How this came about, and at what cost, is the subject of this outstanding study that is based on unpublished documents and extensive interviews with a large range of the key activists in the struggle.
The story that emerges is one of endurance and heroism in face of atrocious brutality on the part of the colonialists. But it reveals that it was also one of painful compromises imposed by the conditions of the struggle and the subordination of internal democracy within the liberation movement to the single goal of military and diplomatic victory.
The study will be of keen interest to everyone concerned with southern Africa. Students of armed liberation struggle generally will find much to challenge received wisdom. The sheer human interest of the interviews makes the book attractive to a wide readership.
Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence
Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in CameroonMeredith Terretta
Ohio University Press, 2014
Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence is the first extensive history of Cameroonian nationalism to consider the global and local influences that shaped the movement within the French and British Cameroons and beyond. Drawing on the archives of the United Nations, France, Great Britain, Ghana, and Cameroon, as well as oral sources, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence chronicles the spread of the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) nationalist movement from the late 1940s into the first postcolonial decade. It shows how, in the French and British Cameroon territories administered as UN Trusteeships after the Second World War, notions of international human rights, the promise of Third World independence, Pan-African federation, and national citizenship blended with local political and spiritual practices that resurfaced as the period of European rule came to a close. After French and British administrators banned the party in the mid-1950s, UPC nationalists adopted violence as a revolutionary strategy. In the 1960s, the nationalist vision disintegrated. The postcolonial regime labeled UPC nationalists “outlaws” and rounded them up for imprisonment or execution as the state shifted to single-party rule in 1966.
Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence traces the connection between local and transregional politics in the age of Africa’s decolonization and the early decades of the Cold War. Rather than stop at official independence as most conventional histories of African nationalist movements do, this book considers postindependence events as crucial to the history of Cameroonian nationalism and to an understanding of the postcolonial government that came to power on 1 January 1960. While the history of the UPC is a story that ends with the party’s failure to gain access to political power with independence, it is also a story of the postcolonial state’s failure to become a nation.
Nation-Building
A Key Concept For Peaceful Conflict Transformation?Jochen Hippler
Pluto Press, 2005
Currently the international debate on nation-building is heavily dominated by US actors and authors, especially by writers connected to the Bush administration or its policies. This book presents academic and political alternatives, presenting a critical view from 'Old Europe'.
The book combines academic research and analysis with policy orientation, with contributors from both fields. It clarifies the terminology distinguishing developmental, peace-related, imperial and analytical approaches to nation-building. Highlighting its connections to globalisation, democracy, ethnic and religious minorities, the contributors consider case studies such as Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Nigeria.
Dr. Jochen Hippler, Political Scientist at the University of Duisburg-Essen and its Institute for Development and Peace (INEF), specialises in regional conflicts and interventionism in the Third World, political identities, and the Middle East. He is the former Director of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam and the author of numerous books and articles including Pax Americana (Pluto Press 1994), The Democratisation of Disempowerment (Pluto Press 1995) and The Next Threat (Pluto Press 1995).
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World
A Derivative DiscoursePartha Chatterjee
University of Minnesota Press, 1993
In this book a leading Indian political philosopher criticizes Western theories of Third World nationalism—both liberal and Marxist. He demonstrates how Western theorists, with their emphasis on the power of reason, the primacy of the hard sciences, and the dominance of the empirical method, have assumed that their presuppositions are universally valid, and, through the impact of Western education, have imposed concepts of nationalism on non-Western peoples to the detriment, if not destruction, of their own world-views. The author explores the central contradiction that nationalism in Africa and Asia has consequently experienced: setting out to assert its freedom from European domination, it yet remained a prisoner of European post-Enlightenment rationalist discourse.
Using the case of India, Professor Chatterjee goes on to show how Indian nationalism did effect significant displacements in the framework of modernist thinking imbibed from the West. Yet, despite constituting itself as a different discourse, it remained dominated by the very structure of power it sought to repudiate. And so the historical outcome generally has been the transformation of Third World nationalism by ruling classes into a state ideology legitimizing their own rule, appropriating the life of the nation, and propelling it along the path of ‘universal modernization’. But the spurious ideological unity proclaimed by these classes, and their failure to subsume completely the life of the nation in the life of their new states, raises the historical prospect that a critique of state nationalism will emerge.
This profound exercise in political philosophy questions the legitimacy of the currently predominant formulations of nationalist ideology in the Third World. It anticipates a new generation of popular struggles that will redefine the content of Afro-Asian nationalism and the kinds of society people wish to build.
For scholars, it will make uncomfortable reading because of its radical attack on the fundamentals of Western bourgeois thought, an attack always couched, however, in the rational tones of Western scholarship.
Nationalizing Empires
Stefan Berger
Central European University Press, 2015
Navigating Gendered Terrain
Stereotypes and Strategy in Political CampaignsKelly Dittmar
Temple University Press, 2014
Navigating Gendered Terrain addresses how gender is used to shape how campaigns are waged by influencing insider perceptions of and decisions about effective campaign messages, images, and tactics within party and political contexts. Dittmar uses survey information and interviews with candidates, political consultants, and other campaign professionals to reveal how gender-informed advertising, websites, and overall presentation to voters respond to stereotypes and perceptions of female and male candidates.
She closes her book by offering a feminist interpretation of women as candidates and explaining how the unintended outcomes of political campaigns reinforce prevailing ideas about gender and candidacy.
New Jersey Politics and Government, 4th edition
The Suburbs Come of AgeSalmore, Barbara G
Rutgers University Press, 2013
Offering a comprehensive overview of New Jersey politics and government, chapters cover the state’s political history; campaigns and elections; interest groups; the constitution; the development of government institutions; relationships with neighboring states, the federal government, and its own municipalities and counties; tax and spending policies; education; and quality of life issues.
New Jersey Politics and Government
The Suburbs Come of AgeSalmore, Barbara G
Rutgers University Press, 2008
News
The Politics of Illusion, Ninth EditionW. Lance Bennett
University of Chicago Press, 2011
News
The Politics of Illusion, Tenth EditionW. Lance Bennett
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Nkrumah & the Chiefs
The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960Richard Rathbone
Ohio University Press, 1999
Kwame Nkrumah, who won independence for Ghana in 1957, was the first African statesman to achieve world recognition. Nkrumah and his movement also brought about the end of independent chieftaincy—one of the most fundamental changes in the history of Ghana.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples’ Party was committed not only to the rapid termination of British colonial rule but also to the elimination of chiefly power. This book is an account of Kwame Nkrumah and his government’s long struggle to wrest administrative control of the Ghanaian countryside from the chiefs. Based largely upon previously unstudied documentation in Ghana, this study charts the government’s frustrated attempts to democratize local government and the long and bitter campaigns mounted by many southern chiefs to resist their political marginalization.
Between 1951 and the creation of the First Republic in 1960, Ghanaian governments sought to discard the chiefly principle in local government, then to weaken chieftaincy by attrition and eventually, by altering the legal basis of chieftaincy, to incorporate and control a considerably altered chieftaincy. The book demonstrates that chieftaincy was consciously and systematically reconstructed in the decade of the 1950s with implications which can still be felt in modern Ghana.
No Longer Outsiders
Black and Latino Interest Group Advocacy on Capitol HillMichael D. Minta
University of Chicago Press, 2021
In No Longer Outsiders, Minta provides a comprehensive account of the effectiveness of minority civil rights organizations and their legislative allies. He finds that the organizations’ legislative priorities are consistent with black and Latino preferences for stronger enforcement of civil rights policy and immigration reform. Although these groups focus mainly on civil rights for blacks and immigration issues for Latinos, their policy agendas extend into other significant areas. Minta concludes with an examination of how diversity in Congress helps groups gain greater influence and policy success despite many limits placed upon them.
No Middle Ground
How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize LegislaturesSeth E. Masket
University of Michigan Press, 2011
"This is a fascinating book. It is one of the best studies of the ways that parties and politics get conducted in any American state. Masket shows that legislators can be perfectly content without parties that control agendas and does a terrific job of explaining the transition from free-wheeling legislators to rigidly partisan voting blocs."
---Sam Popkin, University of California at San Diego
"No Middle Ground makes a significant contribution to the study of American parties and legislative politics."
---Matthew Green, Catholic University of America
Despite concerns about the debilitating effects of partisanship on democratic government, in recent years political parties have gained strength in state governments as well as in Washington. Whereas political machines of the past manipulated votes, today's machines determine which candidates can credibly compete in a primary.
Focusing on the history and politics of California, Seth E. Masket reveals how these machines evolved and how they stay in power by directing money, endorsements, and expertise to favored candidates, who often tend toward the ideological extreme. Masket argues that politicians are not inherently partisan. Instead, partisanship is thrust upon them by actors outside the government with the power to manipulate primary elections.
Seth E. Masket is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver.
No Votes for Women
The New York State Anti-Suffrage MovementSusan Goodier
University of Illinois Press, 2013
No. 10
The Geography of Power at Downing StreetJack Brown
Haus Publishing, 2019
Written by Number 10’s first ever ‘Researcher in Residence,’ with unprecedented access to people and papers, No. 10: The Geography of Power at Downing Street sheds new light on unexplored aspects of Prime Ministers’ lives. Jack Brown tells the story of the intimately entwined relationships between the house and its post-war residents, telling how each occupant’s use and modification of the building reveals their own values and approaches to the office of Prime Minister. The book reveals how and why Prime Ministers have stamped their personalities and philosophies upon Number 10 and how the building has directly affected the ability of some Prime Ministers to perform the role. Both fascinating and extremely revealing, No. 10 offers an intimate account of British political power and the building at its core. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the nature and history of British politics.
Nobody Calls Just to Say Hello
Reflections on Twenty-Two Years in the Illinois SenatePhilip J. Rock, with Ed Wojcicki
Southern Illinois University Press, 2011
A native of Chicago's West Side, Rock became one of the most influential politicians in Illinois during the 1970s and 1980s. As a senator in the 1970s and senate president from 1979 to 1993, he sponsored historic legislation to assist abused and neglected children and victims of domestic violence, ushered the state through difficult income tax increases and economic development decisions, shepherded an unruly and fragmented Democratic senate caucus, and always was fair to his Republican counterparts. Covering in great detail a critical period in Illinois political history for the first time, Rock explains how making life better for others drove his decisions in office, while also espousing the seven principles he advocates for effective leadership and providing context for how he applied those principles to the legislative battles of the era.
Unlike many Illinois politicians, Rock, a former seminarian, was known for having a greater interest in issues than in partisan politics. Considered a true statesman, he also was known as a skilled orator who could silence a busy floor of legislators with his commentary on important issues and as a devoted public servant who handled tens of thousands of bills and sponsored nearly five hundred of them himself.
Nobody Calls Just to Say Hello, which takes its title from the volume of calls and visits to elected officials from constituents in need of help, perfectly captures Rock's profound reverence for the institutions of government, his respect for other government offices, and his reputation as a problem solver who, despite his ardent Democratic beliefs, disavowed political self-preservation to cross party lines and make government work for the people. Taking readers through his legislative successes, bipartisan efforts, and political defeats-including a heartbreaking loss in the U.S. Senate primary to Paul Simon in 1984-Rock passionately articulates his belief that government's primary role is to help people, offering an antidote to the current political climate with the simple legislative advice, "Just try to be fair, give everyone a chance, and everything else comes after that."
None of the Above
Protest Voting in Latin American DemocraciesMollie J. Cohen
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Winner of the 2025 International Society of Political Psychology David O. Sears Best Book on Mass Politics Award
Around the world each year, millions of citizens turn out to vote but leave their ballots empty or spoil them. Increasingly, campaigns have emerged that promote “invalid” votes like these. Why do citizens choose to cast blank and spoiled votes? And how do campaigns mobilizing the invalid vote influence this decision? None of the Above answers these questions using evidence from presidential and gubernatorial elections in eighteen Latin American democracies. Author Mollie J. Cohen draws on a broad range of methods and sources, incorporating data from electoral management bodies, nationally representative surveys, survey experiments, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and news sources.
Contrary to received wisdom, this book shows that most citizens cast blank or spoiled votes in presidential elections on purpose. By participating in invalid vote campaigns, citizens can voice their concerns about low-quality candidates while also expressing a preference for high-quality democracy. Campaigns promoting blank and spoiled votes come about more often, and succeed at higher rates, when incumbent politicians undermine the quality of elections. Surprisingly, invalid vote campaigns can shore up the quality of democracy in the short term. None of the Above shows that swings in blank and spoiled vote rates can serve as a warning about the trajectory of a country’s democracy.
Now Is the Time!
Detroit Black Politics and Grassroots ActivismTodd C. Shaw
Duke University Press, 2009
Shaw uses the tools of social movement analysis, including the quantitative analysis of budgets, electoral data, and housing statistics, as well as historical research and personal interviews, to better understand the dilemmas, innovations, and dynamics of grassroots activism. He begins with a history of discriminatory housing practices and racial divisions that deeply affected Detroit following the Second World War and set the stage for the election of the city’s first black mayor, Coleman Young. By emphasizing downtown redevelopment, Mayor Young’s administration often collided with low-income housing advocates. Only through grassroots activism were those advocates able to delay or derail governmental efforts to demolish low-income housing in order to make way for more upscale development. Shaw then looks at present-day public housing activism, assessing the mixed success of the nationally sponsored HOPE VI project aimed at fostering home ownership in low-income areas. Descriptive and prescriptive, Now Is the Time! traces the complicated legacy of community activism to illuminate what is required for grassroots activists to be effective in demanding public accountability to poor and marginalized citizens.