2916 books match the query 'Politics and government' and 160 start with r

cover of Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck

Reshaping the German Right

Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck

Geoff Eley

University of Michigan Press, 1991

Examines the conditions under which a particular right-wing ideology was generated
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cover of Resistance against the Third Reich: 1933-1990

Resistance against the Third Reich

1933-1990

Edited by Michael Geyer and John W. Boyer

University of Chicago Press, 1994

"The history of resistance affords a powerful example of why the present should try to remember a more distant, early modern past" write Michael Geyer and John W. Boyer in their introduction to Resistance against the Third Reich. Addressing the legacy of European resistance, this volume examines the nature of political opposition to unjust rule, which is so often grounded in the bitter conflicts between church and state. This collection is a timely effort to link recent advances in European history with lingering questions concerning resistance against the Third Reich.

Contributors include Geoffrey Cocks, Werner G. Jeanrond, Tony Judt, Claudia Koonz, Hans Mommsen, and Frank Trommler.
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cover of Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms: Performing Identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong

Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms

Performing Identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong

Hsin-I Cheng

Michigan State University Press, 2023

The desire of the people of Taiwan and Hong Kong to exercise democratic self-rule, fully embody their local identities, and become global citizens challenges the big-power politics between China and the United States. Occupying a critical stance on the margins, the local perspectives and international relations of these two cosmopolitan and postcolonial societies challenge both narratives centered on China and those focused on the U.S.–China power struggle. Taking a culture-centered approach to the communicative process of “glocalized resistance” in an era of rising nationalisms, the chapters in this volume address topics ranging from the rhetoric of political leaders and the language games of mass protesters on social media to resistant street performance. These chapters showcase the geocultural identity-in-the-making of the Taiwanese and Hong Kong people and offer insights into societies under imminent threat by an aggressive neighbor. 
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cover of Resisting Brazil's Military Regime: An Account of the Battles of Sobral Pinto

Resisting Brazil's Military Regime

An Account of the Battles of Sobral Pinto

By John W. F. Dulles

University of Texas Press, 2007

Praised by his many admirers as a "courageous and fearless" defender of human rights, Heráclito Fontoura Sobral Pinto (1893-1991) was the most consistently forceful opponent of the regime of Brazilian dictator Getúlio Vargas. John W. F. Dulles chronicled Sobral's battles with the Vargas government in Sobral Pinto, "The Conscience of Brazil": Leading the Attack against Vargas (1930-1945), which History: Reviews of New Books called "a must-read for anyone wanting to understand twentieth-century Brazil."

In this second and final volume of his biography of Sobral Pinto, Professor Dulles completes the story of the fiery crusader's fight for democracy, morality, and justice, particularly for the downtrodden. Drawing on Sobral's vast correspondence, Dulles offers an extensive account of Sobral's opposition to the military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. He describes how Sobral Pinto defended those who had been politically influential before April, 1964, as well as other victims of the regime, including Communists, once-powerful labor leaders, priests, militant journalists, and students. Because Sobral Pinto participated in so many of the struggles against the military regime, his experiences provide vivid new insights into this important period in recent Brazilian history. They also shed light on developments in the Catholic Church (Sobral, a devout Catholic, vigorously opposed liberation theology), as well as on Sobral's key role in preserving Brazil's commission for defending human rights.

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cover of Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central America Peace Movement

Resisting Reagan

The U.S. Central America Peace Movement

Christian Smith

University of Chicago Press, 1996

A comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Central America peace movement, Resisting Reagan explains why more than one hundred thousand U.S. citizens marched in the streets, illegally housed refugees, traveled to Central American war zones, committed civil disobedience, and hounded their political representatives to contest the Reagan administration's policy of sponsoring wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Focusing on the movement's three most important national campaigns—Witness for Peace, Sanctuary, and the Pledge of Resistance—this book demonstrates the centrality of morality as a political motivator, highlights the importance of political opportunities in movement outcomes, and examines the social structuring of insurgent consciousness. Based on extensive surveys, interviews, and research, Resisting Reagan makes significant contributions to our understanding of the formation of individual activist identities, of national movement dynamics, and of religious resources for political activism.
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cover of Respect and Loathing in American Democracy: Polarization, Moralization, and the Undermining of Equality

Respect and Loathing in American Democracy

Polarization, Moralization, and the Undermining of Equality

Jeff Spinner-Halev and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

University of Chicago Press, 2024

A deep examination of why respect is in short supply in politics today and why it matters.

Respect is in trouble in the United States. Many Americans believe respecting others is a necessary virtue, yet many struggle to respect opposing partisans. Surprisingly, it is liberal citizens, who hold respect as central to their view of democratic equality, who often have difficulty granting respect to others. Drawing on evidence from national surveys, focus groups, survey experiments, and the views of political theorists, Jeff Spinner-Halev and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse explain why this is and why respect is vital to—and yet so lacking in—contemporary US politics.

Respect and Loathing in American Democracy argues that liberals and conservatives are less divided than many believe, but alienate one another because they moralize different issues. Liberals moralize social justice, conservatives champion national solidarity, and this worldview divide keeps them at odds.

Respect is both far-reaching and vital, yet it is much harder to grant than many recognize, partly because of the unseen tension between respect, social justice, and national solidarity. Respect and Loathing in American Democracy proposes a path forward that, while challenging, is far from impossible for citizens to traverse.

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cover of Responsive Democracy: Increasing State Accountability in East Asia

Responsive Democracy

Increasing State Accountability in East Asia

Jeeyang Rhee Baum

University of Michigan Press, 2011

"Responsive Democracy is a pioneering contribution to the political analysis of administrative law in East Asia. Both political scientists and legal academics will greatly benefit from the author's in-depth analysis of the intersection between presidential power and administrative law in the contrasting cases of South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines."
---Susan Rose-Ackerman, Yale University Law School

"Baum's book is a very significant contribution because it focuses on a part of the world that has often been neglected in studies of democratization. It focuses attention on the nuts and bolts of what we mean by democratic consolidation and responsiveness. Indeed, if more political science were written with this clarity, we would all enjoy reading the literature much more!"
---Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University

Under what conditions is a newly democratic government likely to increase transparency, accountability, and responsiveness to its citizens? What incentives might there be for bureaucrats, including those appointed by a previously authoritarian government, to carry out the wishes of an emerging democratic regime? Responsive Democracy addresses an important problem in democratic transition and consolidation: the ability of the chief executive to control the state bureaucracy.

Using three well-chosen case studies---the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan---Jeeyang Rhee Baum explores the causes and consequences of codifying rules and procedures in a newly democratic government. In the Philippines, a president facing opposition has the option of appointing and dismissing officials at will and, therefore, has no need for administrative procedure acts. However, in South Korea and Taiwan, presidents employ such legislation to rein in recalcitrant government agencies, and, as a consequence, increase transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Moreover, as Baum demonstrates by drawing upon surveys conducted both before and after implementation, administrative procedural reforms in South Korea and Taiwan improved public confidence in and attitudes toward democratic institutions.  

Jeeyang Rhee Baum is a Research Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

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cover of Restructuring the Philadelphia Region: Metropolitan Divisions and Inequality

Restructuring the Philadelphia Region

Metropolitan Divisions and Inequality

Carolyn Adams, David W. Bartelt, David Elesh and Ira Goldstein with Joshua Freely Michelle Schmitt

Temple University Press, 2008

Restructuring the Philadelphia Region offers one of the most comprehensive and careful investigations written to date about metropolitan inequalities in America’s large urban regions. Moving beyond simplistic analyses of cities-versus-suburbs, the authors use a large and unique data set to discover the special patterns of opportunity in greater Philadelphia, a sprawling, complex metropolitan region consisting of more than 350 separate localities. With each community operating its own public services and competing to attract residents and businesses, the places people live offer them dramatically different opportunities.

The book vividly portrays the region’s uneven development—paying particular attention to differences in housing, employment and educational opportunities in different communities—and describes the actors who are working to promote greater regional cooperation. Surprisingly, local government officials are not prominent among those actors. Instead, a rich network of “third-sector” actors, represented by nonprofit organizations, quasi-governmental authorities and voluntary associations, is shaping a new form of regionalism.

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cover of Rethinking Past and Present in Cuba: essays in memory of Alistair Hennessy

Rethinking Past and Present in Cuba

essays in memory of Alistair Hennessy

Edited by Antoni Kapcia

University of London Press, 2018

This collection of essays and research articles has been designed, by its breadth of expertise and discipline, to pay suitable homage to the seminal influence and contribution made by the late Alistair Hennessy towards the development of Cuban studies. For that reason, it includes a judicious mixture of the old and the new, including several of the leading and internationally well-established experts on Cuban history, politics and culture, but also some up-and-coming researchers in the field; that mixture and the combination of topics (some addressing the past directly, others assessing the present within a historical context) reflects Hennessy’s own cross-disciplinary and open-minded approach to the study of the history of Cuba. 
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cover of Reversing Course: Carter's Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and the Failure of Reform

Reversing Course

Carter's Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and the Failure of Reform

David Skidmore

Vanderbilt University Press, 1996

An examination of the several reasons for the failure of foreign policy reform during the controversial administration of President Jimmy Carter.

In Reversing Course, David Skidmore argues that President Carter's initial foreign policy agenda required a scaling back of U.S. commitments abroad, reflecting a decline in resources, as well as influence, in a world developing in ways necessarily reducing U.S. hegemony. By probing beneath the obvious and carefully sifting the abundant but poorly understood evidence, Skidmore finds at the root of Carter's failed effort an irresistible pressure to reverse a liberal foreign-policy agenda in order to address the effect at home of well-organized conservative criticism. For Skidmore, Carter's course "reversed" toward a traditional containment strategy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union not because of Soviet intransigence or faulty idealism but because Cold War politics sold better in the polls.

While offering significant theoretical arguments, Skidmore carefully anchors his thesis in the day-to-day political give and take among those personalities and events that provoked headlines and commentaries long before they were the stuff of history. Among the telling factors and events analyzed in this book are the Vance/Brzezinski conflict, the support and opposition of Howard Baker, the SALT II Treaty, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to mention only a few.

Although Skidmore draws conclusions that apply to the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations as well, his focus is not on personality but on theory and underlying structures. He provides a demonstration that this structural approach can "be helpful not only in unraveling the mysteries of policy change under Carter but also in specifying the underlying sources of policy vacillation over much of the past two decades." .

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cover of Revivalism and Cultural Change: Christianity, Nation Building, and the Market in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Revivalism and Cultural Change

Christianity, Nation Building, and the Market in the Nineteenth-Century United States

George M. Thomas

University of Chicago Press, 1989

The history of Christianity in America has been marked by recurring periods of religious revivals or awakenings. In this book, George M. Thomas addresses the economic and political context of evangelical revivalism and its historical linkages with economic expansion and Republicanism in the nineteenth century. Thomas argues that large-scale change results in social movements that articulate new organizations and definitions of individual, society, authority, and cosmos. Drawing on religious newspapers, party policies and agendas, and quantitative analyses of voting patterns and census data, he claims that revivalism in this period framed the rules and identities of the expanding market economy and the national policy.

"Subtle and complex. . . . Fascinating."—Randolph Roth, Pennsylvania History

"[Revivalism and Cultural Change] should be read with interest by those interested in religious movements as well as the connections among religion, economics, and politics."—Charles L. Harper, Contemporary Sociology

"Readers old and new stand to gain much from Thomas's sophisticated study of the macrosociology of religion in the United States during the nineteenth century. . . . He has given the sociology of religion its best quantitative study of revivalism since the close of the 1970s."—Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
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cover of Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand

Revolution Interrupted

Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand

Tyrell Haberkorn; Foreword by Thongchai Winichakul

University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

In October 1973 a mass movement forced Thailand’s prime minister to step down and leave the country, ending nearly forty years of dictatorship. Three years later, in a brutal reassertion of authoritarian rule, Thai state and para-state forces quashed a demonstration at Thammasat University in Bangkok. In Revolution Interrupted, Tyrell Haberkorn focuses on this period when political activism briefly opened up the possibility for meaningful social change. Tenant farmers and their student allies fomented revolution, she shows, not by picking up guns but by invoking laws—laws that the Thai state ultimately proved unwilling to enforce.
    In choosing the law as their tool to fight unjust tenancy practices, farmers and students departed from the tactics of their ancestors and from the insurgent methods of the Communist Party of Thailand. To first imagine and then create a more just future, they drew on their own lived experience and the writings of Thai Marxian radicals of an earlier generation, as well as New Left, socialist, and other progressive thinkers from around the world. Yet their efforts were quickly met with harassment, intimidation, and assassinations of farmer leaders. More than thirty years later, the assassins remain unnamed.
    Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles, cremation volumes, activist and state documents, and oral histories, Haberkorn reveals the ways in which the established order was undone and then reconsolidated. Examining this turbulent period through a new optic—interrupted revolution—she shows how the still unnameable violence continues to constrict political opportunity and to silence dissent in present-day Thailand.

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cover of Revolution Squared: Tahrir, Political Possibilities, and Counterrevolution in Egypt

Revolution Squared

Tahrir, Political Possibilities, and Counterrevolution in Egypt

Atef Shahat Said

Duke University Press, 2024

In Revolution Squared Atef Shahat Said examines the 2011 Egyptian Revolution to trace the expansive range of liberatory possibilities and containment at the heart of every revolution. Drawing on historical analysis and his own participation in the revolution, Said outlines the importance of Tahrir Square and other physical spaces as well as the role of social media and digital spaces. He develops the notion of lived contingency—the ways revolutionary actors practice and experience the revolution in terms of the actions they do or do not take—to show how Egyptians made sense of what was possible during the revolution. Said charts the lived contingencies of Egyptian revolutionaries from the decade prior to the revolution’s outbreak to its peak and the so-called transition to democracy to the 2013 military coup into the present. Contrary to retrospective accounts and counterrevolutionary thought, Said argues that the Egyptian Revolution was not doomed to defeat. Rather, he demonstrates that Egyptians did not fully grasp their immense clout and that limited reformist demands reduced the revolution’s potential for transformation.
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cover of Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation

Revolution and Disenchantment

Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation

Fadi A. Bardawil

Duke University Press, 2020

The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.
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cover of Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in the Syrian Kurdistan

Revolution in Rojava

Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in the Syrian Kurdistan

Michael Knapp, Ercan Ayboga, and Anja Flach

Pluto Press, 2016

“Their first-hand experiences and active participation in the anti-capitalist society being built in the region make this the first detailed account of the popular revolution….The definitive book so far on Rojava."― Morning Star                                         
 
Revolution in Rojava tells the story of Rojava's groundbreaking experiment in what they call democratic confederalism, a communally organized democracy that is fiercely anti-capitalist and committed to female equality, while rejecting reactionary nationalist ideologies.
 
Rooted in the ideas of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, the system is built on effective gender quotas, bottom-up democratic structures, far-sighted ecological policies, and a powerful militancy that has allowed the region to keep ISIS at bay.
 
Given the widespread violence and suffering in Syria, it's not unreasonable that outsiders look at the situation as unrelentingly awful. And while the reality of the devastation is undeniable, there is reason for hope in at least one small pocket of the nation: the cantons of Rojava in Syrian Kurdistan, where in the wake of war people are quietly building one of the most progressive societies in the world today. Chapters here include:
 
*Rojava's Diverse Cultures
*Democratic Confederalism 
*The Liberation
*A Women's Revolution
*Democratic Autonomy in Rojava
*Civil Society Associations
*The Theory of the Rose: Defense 
*The New Justice System
*Democratization of Education
*Health Care 
*The Social Economy
*Ecological Challenges 
 
This first full-length study of democratic developments in Rojava tells an extraordinary and powerfully hopeful story of a little-known battle for true freedom in dark times. With excellent first-hand background information about this important, but little understood struggle, Revolution in Rojava will educate and inspire the reader to learn more about Rojava, Syria, and the fight for change in one of the world’s most dangerous regions.
 
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cover of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics

Revolutionaries to Race Leaders

Black Power and the Making of African American Politics

Cedric Johnson

University of Minnesota Press, 2007

The Black Power movement represented a key turning point in American politics. Disenchanted by the hollow progress of federal desegregation during the 1960s, many black citizens and leaders across the United States demanded meaningful self-determination. The popular movement they created was marked by a vigorous artistic renaissance, militant political action, and fierce ideological debate.

Exploring the major political and intellectual currents from the Black Power era to the present, Cedric Johnson reveals how black political life gradually conformed to liberal democratic capitalism and how the movement’s most radical aims—the rejection of white aesthetic standards, redefinition of black identity, solidarity with the Third World, and anticapitalist revolution—were gradually eclipsed by more moderate aspirations. Although Black Power activists transformed the face of American government, Johnson contends that the evolution of the movement as a form of ethnic politics restricted the struggle for social justice to the world of formal politics.

Johnson offers a compelling and theoretically sophisticated critique of the rhetoric and strategies that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive archival research, he reinterprets the place of key intellectual figures, such as Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka, and influential organizations, including the African Liberation Support Committee, the National Black Political Assembly, and the National Black Independent Political Party in postsegregation black politics, while at the same time identifying the contradictions of Black Power radicalism itself.

Documenting the historical retreat from radical, democratic struggle, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders ultimately calls for the renewal of popular struggle and class-conscious politics.

Cedric Johnson is assistant professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

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cover of Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937

Revolutionary Nativism

Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937

Maggie Clinton

Duke University Press, 2017

In Revolutionary Nativism Maggie Clinton traces the history and cultural politics of fascist organizations that operated under the umbrella of the Chinese Nationalist Party (GMD) during the 1920s and 1930s. Clinton argues that fascism was not imported to China from Europe or Japan; rather it emerged from the charged social conditions that prevailed in the country's southern and coastal regions during the interwar period. These fascist groups were led by young militants who believed that reviving China's Confucian "national spirit" could foster the discipline and social cohesion necessary to defend China against imperialism and Communism and to develop formidable industrial and military capacities, thereby securing national strength in a competitive international arena. Fascists within the GMD deployed modernist aesthetics in their literature and art while justifying their anti-Communist violence with nativist discourse. Showing how the GMD's fascist factions popularized a virulently nationalist rhetoric that linked Confucianism with a specific path of industrial development, Clinton sheds new light on the complex dynamics of Chinese nationalism and modernity.
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cover of Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910–1940

Revolutionary Parks

Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910–1940

Emily Wakild

University of Arizona Press, 2011

Winner of the Alfred B. Thomas Award (Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies)

Revolutionary Parks tells the surprising story of how forty national parks were created in Mexico during the latter stages of the first social revolution of the twentieth century. By 1940 Mexico had more national parks than any other country. Together they protected more than two million acres of land in fourteen states. Even more remarkable, Lázaro Cárdenas, president of Mexico in the 1930s, began to promote concepts akin to sustainable development and ecotourism.

Conventional wisdom indicates that tropical and post-colonial countries, especially in the early twentieth century, have seldom had the ability or the ambition to protect nature on a national scale. It is also unusual for any country to make conservation a political priority in the middle of major reforms after a revolution. What emerges in Emily Wakild’s deft inquiry is the story of a nature protection program that takes into account the history, society, and culture of the times. Wakild employs case studies of four parks to show how the revolutionary momentum coalesced to create early environmentalism in Mexico.

According to Wakild, Mexico’s national parks were the outgrowth of revolutionary affinities for both rational science and social justice. Yet, rather than reserves set aside solely for ecology or politics, rural people continued to inhabit these landscapes and use them for a range of activities, from growing crops to producing charcoal. Sympathy for rural people tempered the radicalism of scientific conservationists. This fine balance between recognizing the morally valuable, if not always economically profitable, work of rural people and designing a revolutionary state that respected ecological limits proved to be a radical episode of government foresight.
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cover of Revolutionary Passage: From Soviet To Post-Soviet Russia

Revolutionary Passage

From Soviet To Post-Soviet Russia

Marc Garcelon

Temple University Press, 2005

Revolutionary Passage is a cultural, social, and political history of Russia during its critical period of transformation at the end of the twentieth century. Marc Garcelon traces the history of perestroika and the rise of Vladimir Putin, arguing that the pressure Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms put on the Soviet system gave birth to movements for democratic change. He also shows that the very political arrangements that prompted the fall of Communism also killed hopes for subsequent reform. At the turning point of this political revolution stood Democratic Russia, or DemRossiia, the principal organization of the Russian democratic movement that helped to dismantle the Soviet system and force the Soviet leadership to change course. However, as post-Soviet Russia committed itself to globalization and U.S.-style economic reforms, the country directed itself away from the Democratic reforms called for by organizations like DemRossiia, and such groups collapsed. Revolutionary Passage provides a close examination of the DemRossiia. Garcelon deftly illuminates the rise and decline of this organization, and how the processes of revolutionary change impacted both Russia and the world.
[more]
cover of Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia

The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

James J. Brittain

Pluto Press, 2010

This book presents an insider's account of Columbia's internal conflict. At the forefront are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP).

Although they are one of the most powerful military forces in Latin American history, little is known about the FARC-EP. James J. Brittain explains where and why this political military movement came into existence and assesses whether the methods employed by the insurgency have the potential to free those marginalised in Colombia.

As democratic socialism develops in Venezuela and Bolivia, Brittain's fascinating study assesses the relevance of armed struggle to 21st century Latin American politics. This is an essential title for those wishing to develop a full understanding of the continent.

By evaluating the FARC-EP's actions, ideological construction, and their theoretical placement, the book gauges how this guerrilla movement relates to revolutionary theory and practice and through what tangible mechanisms, if any, they are creating a new Colombia.

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cover of Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Jocelyn Olcott

Duke University Press, 2005

Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico is an empirically rich history of women’s political organizing during a critical stage of regime consolidation. Rebutting the image of Mexican women as conservative and antirevolutionary, Jocelyn Olcott shows women activists challenging prevailing beliefs about the masculine foundations of citizenship. Piecing together material from national and regional archives, popular journalism, and oral histories, Olcott examines how women inhabited the conventionally manly role of citizen by weaving together its quotidian and formal traditions, drawing strategies from local political struggles and competing gender ideologies.

Olcott demonstrates an extraordinary grasp of the complexity of postrevolutionary Mexican politics, exploring the goals and outcomes of women’s organizing in Mexico City and the port city of Acapulco as well as in three rural locations: the southeastern state of Yucatán, the central state of Michoacán, and the northern region of the Comarca Lagunera. Combining the strengths of national and regional approaches, this comparative perspective sets in relief the specificities of citizenship as a lived experience.

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cover of Revolutionizing Repertoires: The Rise of Populist Mobilization in Peru

Revolutionizing Repertoires

The Rise of Populist Mobilization in Peru

Robert S. Jansen

University of Chicago Press, 2017

Politicians and political parties are for the most part limited by habit—they recycle tried-and-true strategies, draw on models from the past, and mimic others in the present. But in rare moments politicians break with routine and try something new.

Drawing on pragmatist theories of social action, Revolutionizing Repertoires sets out to examine what happens when the repertoire of practices available to political actors is dramatically reconfigured. Taking as his case study the development of a distinctively Latin American style of populist mobilization, Robert S. Jansen analyzes the Peruvian presidential election of 1931. He finds that, ultimately, populist mobilization emerged in the country at this time because newly empowered outsiders recognized the limitations of routine political practice and understood how to modify, transpose, invent, and recombine practices in a whole new way. Suggesting striking parallels to the recent populist turn in global politics, Revolutionizing Repertoires offers new insights not only to historians of Peru but also to scholars of historical sociology and comparative politics, and to anyone interested in the social and political origins of populism.
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cover of Rhetoric, Independence, and Nationhood, 1760–1800, Volume II

Rhetoric, Independence, and Nationhood, 1760–1800, Volume II

Stephen E Lucas

Michigan State University Press, 2022

Few periods of American history have been studied more extensively or debated more intensely than the last four decades of the eighteenth century, during which the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, won their independence on the battlefield, created the United States Constitution, and implemented a new national government. Scholars have approached these developments from a variety of perspectives—economic, social, political, religious, legal, and diplomatic, to name a few. This volume adopts a rhetorical perspective, which foregrounds the art of effective expression as a means of influencing political perceptions, values, and behaviors. It presents eleven essays by an interdisciplinary group of scholars who bring to bear a variety of methods, backgrounds, perspectives, and specializations. The essays illuminate key rhetors, works, controversies, and moments that helped shape American discourse and politics during the years 1760–1800.
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cover of Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia

Rhythms of the Pachakuti

Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar

Duke University Press, 2014

In the indigenous Andean language of Aymara, pachakuti refers to the subversion and transformation of social relations. Between 2000 and 2005, Bolivia was radically transformed by a series of popular indigenous uprisings against the country's neoliberal and antidemocratic policies. In Rhythms of the Pachakuti, Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar documents these mass collective actions, tracing the internal dynamics of such disruptions to consider how motivation and execution incite political change.

"In Rhythms of the Pachakuti we can sense the reverberations of an extraordinary historical process that took place in Bolivia at the start of the twenty-first century. The book is the product of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar's political engagement in that historical process. . . . Though of Mexican nationality, [she] was intimately involved in Bolivian politics for many years and acquired a quasi-legendary status there as an intense, brilliant activist and radical intellectual. . . . [Her account is] . . . itself a revolutionary document. . . . Rhythms of the Pachakuti deserves to stand as a key text in the international literature of radicalism and emancipatory politics in the new century."—Sinclair Thomson, from the foreword
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cover of Richard Price and the Ethical Foundations of the American Revolution

Richard Price and the Ethical Foundations of the American Revolution

William Bernard Peach, ed.

Duke University Press, 1979

Richard Price was a loyal, although dissenting, subject of Great Britain who thought the British treatment of their colonies as wrong, not only prudentially, financially, economically, militarily, and politically, but, above all, morally wrong. He expressed these views in his first pamphlet early in 1776. It concluded with a plea for the cessation of hostilities by Great Britain and reconciliation. Its analyses, arguments, and conclusions, however, along with its admiration for the colonists, their moral position and qualities, could hardly fail to contribute to their reluctant recognition that there was no real alternative to independence. Price found some of his views not only misunderstood but vilified by negative critics in the ensuing controversy. So he wrote a second pamphlet which was published in early 1777. He expanded his analysis of liberty, extended its application to the war with America, and greatly expanded his discussion of the economic impact upon Great Britain. After the war, in 1784, he published a third pamphlet on the importance of the American Revolution and the means of making it a benefit to the world, appending an extensive letter from the Frenchman, Turgot. Implicitly the letter regards Price as a perceptive theorist of the revolution; explicitly it identifies the problems facing the prospective new nation and expresses a wish that it will fulfill its role s the hope of the world. Selections in the appendices present a part of the pamphlet controversy and the selection of correspondence shows how seriously Price was regarded by Revolutionary leaders.
[more]
cover of Rick Perry: A Political Life

Rick Perry

A Political Life

Brandon Rottinghaus

University of Texas Press, 2024

How Rick Perry navigated and shaped Texas politics as the state’s longest serving governor.

Rick Perry, the charming rancher, pilot, and politician from West Texas who was governor from 2000 to 2015, is one of the most important but polarizing figures in the state's history. Over the nearly forty years he spent in the political arena, his political instincts served as a radar primed to sense future political opportunities. Hugging the arc of Texas political change, he shifted from a rural, “blue dog” Democrat to one of the most conservative politicians the state had elected up to that time, overseeing the enactment of controversial redistricting, voting, and abortion measures. Yet his evolution was complicated and incomplete, as his stands on such topics as immigration, vaccine requirements, and the use of state funds to attract business ran into opposition from a growing and ever-more conservative wing of the Republican Party in Texas—and the nation.

Rick Perry is both a biography of Perry as a politician and a study of the shifts in state politics that took place during his time in office. Demonstrating that Perry ranks among the most consequential governors in Texas history, Brandon Rottinghaus chronicles the profound ways he accumulated power and shaped the governorship.

[more]
cover of Righteous Revolutionaries: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in the Making of the Chinese State

Righteous Revolutionaries

Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in the Making of the Chinese State

Jeffrey A. Javed

University of Michigan Press, 2022

Righteous Revolutionaries illustrates how states appeal to popular morality—shared understandings of right and wrong—to forge new group identities and mobilize violence against perceived threats to their authority. Jeffrey A. Javed examines the Chinese Communist Party’s mass mobilization of violence during its land reform campaign in the early 1950s, one of the most violent and successful state-building efforts in history. Using an array of novel archival, documentary, and quantitative historical data, this book illustrates that China’s land reform campaign was not just about economic redistribution but rather part of a larger, brutally violent state-building effort to delegitimize the new party-state’s internal rivals and establish its moral authority.

Righteous Revolutionaries argues that the Chinese Party-state simultaneously removed perceived threats to its authority at the grassroots and bolstered its legitimacy through a process called moral mobilization. This mobilization process created a moral boundary that designated a virtuous ingroup of “the masses” and a demonized outgroup of “class enemies,” mobilized the masses to participate in violence against this broadly defined outgroup, and strengthened this symbolic boundary by making the masses complicit in state violence. Righteous Revolutionaries shows how we can find traces of moral mobilization in China today under Xi Jinping’s rule. In an era where states and politicians regularly weaponize moral emotions to foment intergroup conflict and violence, understanding the dynamics of violent mobilization and state authority are more relevant than ever before.
[more]
cover of Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision

Righting the American Dream

How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision

Diane Winston

University of Chicago Press, 2023

A provocative new history of how the news media facilitated the Reagan Revolution and the rise of the religious Right.
 
After two years in the White House, an aging and increasingly unpopular Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president, but in 1983 something changed. Reagan spoke of his embattled agenda as a spiritual rather than a political project and cast his vision for limited government and market economics as the natural outworking of religious conviction. The news media broadcast this message with enthusiasm, and white evangelicals rallied to the president’s cause. With their support, Reagan won reelection and continued to dismantle the welfare state, unraveling a political consensus that stood for half a century.

In Righting the American Dream, Diane Winston reveals how support for Reagan emerged from a new religious vision of American identity circulating in the popular press. Through four key events—the “evil empire” speech, AIDS outbreak, invasion of Grenada, and rise in American poverty rates—Winston shows that many journalists uncritically adopted Reagan’s religious rhetoric and ultimately mainstreamed otherwise unpopular evangelical ideas about individual responsibility. The result is a provocative new account of how Reagan together with the press turned America to the right and initiated a social revolution that continues today.
[more]
cover of Rigoberta Menchu Controversy

Rigoberta Menchu Controversy

Arturo Arias

University of Minnesota Press, 2001

A balanced appraisal of the bitter debate surrounding the autobiography of Guatemala’s 1992 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

Guatemalan indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú first came to international prominence following the 1983 publication of her memoir, I, Rigoberta Menchú, which chronicled in compelling detail the violence and misery that she and her people suffered during her country’s brutal civil war. The book focused world attention on Guatemala and led to her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. In 1999, a book by David Stoll challenged the veracity of key details in Menchú’s account, generating a storm of controversy. Journalists and scholars squared off regarding whether Menchú had lied about her past and, if so, what that would mean about the larger truths revealed in her book.

In The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, Arturo Arias has assembled a casebook that offers a balanced perspective. The first section of this volume collects the primary documents-newspaper articles, interviews, and official statements-in which the debate raged, many translated into English for the first time. In the second section, a distinguished group of international scholars assesses the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the debate and considers its implications for such issues as the “culture wars,” historical truth, and the politics of memory. Included is a new essay by David Stoll in which he responds to his critics.Contributors: Luis Aceituno; Juan Jesús Aznárez; John Beverley, U of Pittsburgh; Allen Carey-Webb, Western Michigan U; Margarita Carrera; Duncan Earle, U of Texas, El Paso; Carolina Escobar Sarti; Claudia Ferman, U of Richmond; Dina Fernández García; Eduardo Galeano; Dante Liano, U of Milan; W. George Lovell, Queen’s U, Canada; Christopher H. Lutz; Octavio Martí; Victor D. Montejo, UC Davis; Rosa Montero; Mario Roberto Morales, U of Northern Iowa; Jorge Palmieri; Daphne Patai, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Mary Louise Pratt, Stanford U; Danilo Rodríguez; Ileana Rodríguez, Ohio State U; Larry Rohter; Jorge Skinner-Kleé; Elzbieta Sklodowska, Washington U; Carol A. Smith, UC Davis; Doris Sommer, Harvard U; David Stoll, Middlebury College; Manuel Vásquez Montalbán; and Kay B. Warren, Harvard U.
[more]
cover of Rim Country Exodus: A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making

Rim Country Exodus

A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making

Daniel J. Herman

University of Arizona Press, 2012

Winner Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award

For thousands of years, humans have lived on the sprawling escarpment in Arizona known as the Mogollon Rim, a stretch that separates the valleys of central Arizona from the mountains of the north. A vast portion of this dramatic landscape is the traditional home of the Dilzhe’e (Tonto Apache) and the Yavapai. Now Daniel Herman offers a compelling narrative of how—from 1864 to 1934—the Dilzhe’e and the Yavapai came to central Arizona, how they were conquered, how they were exiled, how they returned to their homeland, and how, through these events, they found renewal.

Herman examines the complex, contradictory, and very human relations between Indians, settlers, and Federal agents in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arizona—a time that included Arizona’s brutal Indian wars. But while most tribal histories stay within the borders of the reservation, Herman also chronicles how Indians who left the reservation helped build a modern state with dams, hydroelectricity, roads, and bridges. With thoughtful detail and incisive analysis, Herman discusses the complex web of interactions between Apache, Yavapai, and Anglos that surround every aspect of the story.

Rim Country Exodus is part of a new movement in Western history emphasizing survival rather than disappearance. Just as important, this is one of the first in-depth studies of the West that examines race as it was lived. Race was formulated, Herman argues, not only through colonial and scientific discourses, but also through day-to-day interactions between Indians, agents, and settlers. Rim Country Exodus offers an important new perspective on the making of the West.

[more]
cover of Rio as Method: Collective Resistance for a New Generation

Rio as Method

Collective Resistance for a New Generation

Paul Amar, editor

Duke University Press, 2024

Rio as Method provides a new set of lenses for apprehending and transforming the world at critical junctures. Challenging trends that position Global South scholars as research informants or objects, this Rio de Janeiro-based network of scholars, activists, attorneys, and political leaders center their Brazilian megacity as a globally relevant source for transformational world-making insights. Presenting this volume as a handbook and manifesto for energizing public engagement and direct action, more than forty contributors reconceive method as a politics of knowledge production that animates new ways of being, seeing, and doing politics. They draw on lessons from the city’s intersecting religious, feminist, queer, Black, Indigenous, and urbanist movements to examine issues ranging from state violence, urban marginalization, and moral panic to anticorruption efforts, paramilitary policing, sex work, and mutual aid. Rethinking theoretical and collaborative research methods, Rio as Method models theories of decolonial analysis and concepts of collective resistance that can be taken up by scholar-activists anywhere.

Contributors. Rosiane Rodrigues de Almeida, José Claudio Souza Alves, Tamires Maria Alves, Paul Amar, Marcelo Caetano Andreoli, Beatriz Bissio, Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Fernando Brancoli, Thayane Brêtas, Victoria Broadus, Fatima Cecchetto, Leonard Cortana, Marcos Coutinho, Monica Cunha, Luiz Henrique Eloy Amado, Marielle Franco, Cristiane Gomes Julião, Benjamin Lessing, Roberto Kant de Lima, Amanda De Lisio, Bryan McCann, Flávia Medeiros, Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda, Sean T. Mitchell, Rodrigo Monteiro, Vitória Moreira, Jacqueline de Oliveira Muniz, Laura Rebecca Murray, Cesar Pinheiro Teixeira, Osmundo Pinho, Paulo Pinto, María Victoria Pita, João Gabriel Rabello Sodré, Luciane Rocha, Marcos Alexandre dos Santos Albuquerque, Ana Paula da Silva, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Soraya Simões, Indianare Siqueira, Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima, Leonardo Vieira Silva
[more]
cover of Rise and Fall of the Confederacy: The Memoir of Senator Williamson S. Oldham, CSA

Rise and Fall of the Confederacy

The Memoir of Senator Williamson S. Oldham, CSA

Edited & Intro by Clayton E. Jewett

University of Missouri Press, 2006

Williamson S. Oldham was a shrewd and candid observer of the Civil War scene. Representing the always contrary and suspicious Texans in the Confederate Senate, he was a major opponent of President Jefferson Davis and spoke out vehemently against conscription—which he considered an abusive violation of individual rights—and against military interference in the cotton trade.
Oldham’s memoir provides a firsthand look at the Civil War from the perspective of a government insider. In it, he sheds light on such topics as military strategy, foreign relations, taxes, and conflicts between state officials and the Confederate government. Perhaps more important, his travels between Texas and Richmond—both during and after the war—allowed him to observe the many changes taking place in the South, and he made note of both the general sentiment of citizens and the effect of political and military measures on the country.
Throughout the memoir, Oldham consistently stresses the centrality of politics to a society and the necessity of legislating for the will of the people even in times of war. In assessing the Confederacy’s defeat, he points not to military causes but to Congress’s giving in to the will of the president and military leaders rather than ruling for and representing the people.
Clayton E. Jewett has edited and annotated Oldham’s memoir to produce the only fully edited publication of this important document, significantly expanded here over any version previously published. His introduction helps clarify Oldham’s position on many of the topics he discusses, making the memoir accessible to scholar and Civil War buff alike, while his annotations reflect his deep knowledge of the intrigue of wartime political life in both Texas and Richmond.
Oldham’s memoir offers important new insight into not only political leadership and conflicts in a young nation but also the question of why the South lost the Civil War, dispelling many myths about the defeat and bolstering interpretations of the Confederacy’s decline that point more to political than to military causes. Rise and Fall of the Confederacy is one of the major political and social documents of the Confederacy and will be a boon to all scholars of the Civil War era.
[more]
cover of Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love

Rise to the Challenge

A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love

Johnson

University of Minnesota Press, 2024

The inspiring life story of Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor: breaking political ground, navigating patriarchal tradition, and persevering through great personal loss

Marking a milestone for women in state government, Marlene M. Johnson became Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor under Rudy Perpich’s gubernatorial administration in January 1983. That same year, she met her husband, Peter, and their deeply loving relationship profoundly sustained her for twenty-seven years. Rise to the Challenge weaves these personal and professional stories together in a courageous portrait of dedication and leadership.

Growing up in rural Minnesota, Johnson began organizing and advocating for change early, beginning with a campaign to introduce foreign languages into her high school curriculum. Pursuing a deeply felt commitment to improving the lives of others, she continued to sharpen her leadership skills throughout her life, participating in activist work in college, cofounding organizations to support women entrepreneurs and politicians, and eventually running an international education nonprofit.

A stalwart supporter, her husband gave Marlene strength and encouragement to face the challenges of the political landscape and its gender biases. Then, in 2010, he suffered a traumatic brain injury that would change both of their lives. Learning how to be a medical advocate and, eventually, facing the sorrow of Peter’s death, Marlene relied on the hard-fought resilience and belief in herself that Peter had helped her to develop.

A story of learning and leadership in politics, business, and public service, Rise to the Challenge is a moving portrayal of spirit, perseverance, and grace in the face of daunting personal challenges, supported by unwavering faith in the public good.

[more]
cover of Rising Star: The Meaning of Nikki Haley, Trump’s Unlikely Ambassador

Rising Star

The Meaning of Nikki Haley, Trump’s Unlikely Ambassador

Jason A. Kirk

University of Arkansas Press, 2021

Nikki Haley has been an emerging force in American politics, her star power burnished over a decade that has seen her move from the national spotlight to the global stage. In Rising Star, political scientist Jason A. Kirk analyzes her ascendance in the Republican Party, from her governorship of South Carolina—during which she faced extraordinary challenges in a state reckoning with tragedy, race, and its own history—to her elevated profile as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, where, as the daughter of immigrants and a woman of color, she became the face of his America First policy to the world. In considering a wide range of perspectives, Kirk illuminates how the combination of Haley’s political talents and her identity as an Indian American, Christian, southern woman has made her an unlikely bridge between the Trump years and the GOP’s embattled path forward.
[more]
cover of Rivalry and Reform: Presidents, Social Movements, and the Transformation of American Politics

Rivalry and Reform

Presidents, Social Movements, and the Transformation of American Politics

Sidney M. Milkis and Daniel J. Tichenor

University of Chicago Press, 2019

Few relationships have proved more pivotal in changing the course of American politics than those between presidents and social movements. For all their differences, both presidents and social movements are driven by a desire to recast the political system, often pursuing rival agendas that set them on a collision course. Even when their interests converge, these two actors often compete to control the timing and conditions of political change. During rare historical moments, however, presidents and social movements forged partnerships that profoundly recast American politics.

Rivalry and Reform explores the relationship between presidents and social movements throughout history and into the present day, revealing the patterns that emerge from the epic battles and uneasy partnerships that have profoundly shaped reform. Through a series of case studies, including Abraham Lincoln and abolitionism, Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights movement, and Ronald Reagan and the religious right, Sidney M. Milkis and Daniel J. Tichenor argue persuasively that major political change usually reflects neither a top-down nor bottom-up strategy but a crucial interplay between the two. Savvy leaders, the authors show, use social movements to support their policy goals. At the same time, the most successful social movements target the president as either a source of powerful support or the center of opposition. The book concludes with a consideration of Barack Obama’s approach to contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter, United We Dream, and Marriage Equality.
 
[more]
cover of Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields

Robert C. Byrd

Child of the Appalachian Coalfields

Robert C. Byrd

West Virginia University Press, 2010

This autobiography follows United States Senator Robert C. Byrd’s experiences from his boyhood in the early 1920s to his election in 2000, which won him an unprecedented eighth term in the Senate. Along the way, Senator Byrd offers commentary on national and international events that occurred throughout his long life in public service. Senator Byrd’s journey from the hardscrabble coalfields to the marbled halls of Congress has inspired generations of people in West Virginia and throughout the nation. From reading the stories of the Founding Fathers as a young boy by the light of a kerosene lamp to the swearing of an oath for more than a half-century to guard the United States Constitution, Senator Byrd’s life is legendary. Byrd always stands by his principles, earning the affection of the people of his home state and the respect of Americans from all walks of life. With his beloved Erma ever by his side, Robert C. Byrd has never forgotten his roots, harkening back to those early lessons that he learned as a child of the Appalachian coalfields.

[more]
cover of Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields

Robert C. Byrd

Child of the Appalachian Coalfields

ROBERT C. BYRD

West Virginia University Press, 2015

This autobiography follows West Virginia senator Robert C. Byrd’s experiences from his boyhood in the early 1920s to his election in 2000, which won him an unprecedented eighth term in the Senate. Within these pages, Senator Byrd offers commentary on national and international events that occurred throughout his long life in public service. 

His journey from the hardscrabble coalfields to the marbled halls of Congress has inspired generations of people in West Virginia and throughout the nation. From reading the stories of the Founding Fathers as a young boy by the light of a kerosene lamp to the swearing of an oath for more than a half-century to guard the US Constitution, Senator Byrd’s life is legendary. 

Until his death on June 28, 2010, Byrd stood by his principles, earning the affection of the people of his home state and the respect of Americans from all walks of life. With his beloved Erma ever by his side, Robert C. Byrd never forgot his roots, harkening back to those early lessons that he learned as a child of the Appalachian coalfields.

This new paperback edition includes a foreword by Gaston Caperton, governor of West Virginia from 1989–1997.

[more]
cover of Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector

Robert Kennedy

Brother Protector

James Hilty

Temple University Press, 2000

For most of his life, Robert Kennedy stood in the shadow cast by his older brother, John; only after President Kennedy's assassination did the public gain a complete sense of Robert ("Bobby," we called him) as a committed advocate for social justice and  a savvy politician in his own right. In this comprehensive biography, James W. Hilty offers a detailed and nuanced account of how Robert was transformed from a seemingly unpromising youngster, unlikely to match the  accomplishments of his older brother, to the forceful man who ran "the family business," orchestrating the Kennedy quest for political power.

The centerpiece of the book is the remarkable political partnership that formed between Robert and John. As the manager of John's political campaigns Robert proved himself "hard as nails" (in his father's admiring words), relentless in securing his brother's victory and unforgiving in overseeing his brother's presidency. Hilty marshals a great deal of evidence to show that while they did not always see eye to eye -- Lyndon Johnson's selection as John's running mate being a notable disagreement -- Robert and John discussed virtually every issue, gauging the likely political effects of every position. Robert was so close to the President that insiders called him "number one and a-half"; their consultations were so intimate that they spoke in a kind of code, barely intelligible to those around them. In Hilty's evocative but unsentimental recounting of the political crises of  the Kennedy Administration, Robert and John prove to have been more calculating and astute leaders than today's pundits allow. Theirs was a partnership that was unprecedented and, thanks to an act signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, is never to be equaled.

The Kennedy family's story seems to have been lived in the public eye and Americans apparently never tire of the photographs and familiar anecdotes. Most of the written accounts, however, either highlight the multiple tragedies and scandals, preserve the latter-day Camelot myth, or follow the elusive traces of some conspiracy.

In contrast, Hilty's concern is for historical perspective -- for accuracy, plausibility, and thoroughness. With facts and reasoned conclusions, he challenges the stories about the Kennedys in relation to Marilyn Monroe, J. Edgar Hoover, and Martin Luther King, Jr. that have passed into American folklore. He develops a portrait of Robert Kennedy as a complex public figure, a man of centrist political allegiances and firm moral convictions who easily adapted to the crusader's role in working  for Joseph McCarthy or pursuing James Hoffa for racketeering. Hilty's great care in sifting through the evidence and weighing competing theories gives us a sense of Kennedy as a public servant whose dedication to social justice intensified after he was in office and further deepened after his brother's assassination.

Even as he took charge of family matters and supported Jacqueline during the long ordeal of the state funeral, Robert's own crushing pain was evident to the world. It was then that "Bobby" ceased being a disparaging term and became a mark of respect and affection.
[more]
cover of Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe

Sue Onslow

Ohio University Press, 2018

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe sharply divides opinion and embodies the contradictions of his country’s history and political culture. As a symbol of African liberation and a stalwart opponent of white rule, he was respected and revered by many. This heroic status contrasted sharply, in the eyes of his rivals and victims, with repeated cycles of gross human rights violations. Mugabe presided over the destruction of a vibrant society, capital flight, and mass emigration precipitated by the policies of his government, resulting in his demonic image in Western media.

This timely biography addresses the coup, led by some of Mugabe’s closest associates, that forced his resignation after thirty-seven years in power. Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut explain Mugabe’s formative experiences as a child and young man; his role as an admired Afro-nationalist leader in the struggle against white settler rule; and his evolution into a political manipulator and survivalist. They also address the emergence of political opposition to his leadership and the uneasy period of coalition government. Ultimately, they reveal the complexity of the man who stamped his personality on Zimbabwe’s first four decades of independence.

[more]
cover of Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals: The Case of Hungary

Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals

The Case of Hungary

András Bozóki

Central European University Press, 2022

Utilizing a new and original framework for examining the role of intellectuals in countries transitioning to democracy, Bozóki analyses the rise and fall of dissident intellectuals in Hungary in the late 20th century. He shows how that framework is applicable to other countries too as he forensically examines their activities.

Bozóki argues that the Hungarian intellectuals did not become a ‘New Class’. By rolling transition, he means an incremental, non-violent, elite driven political transformation which is based on the rotation of agency, and it results in a new regime. This is led mainly by different groups of intellectuals who do not construct a vanguard movement but create an open network which might transform itself into different political parties. Their roles changed from dissidents to reformers, to movement organizers and negotiators through the periods of dissidence, open network building, roundtable negotiations, parliamentary activities, and new movement politics.

Through the prism of political sociology, the author focuses on the following questions: Who were the dissident intellectuals and what did they want? Under what conditions do intellectuals rebel and what are the patterns of their protest? This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and public intellectuals around the world aiming to promote human rights and democracy.

[more]
cover of Rolling on the River: The Best of Steve Neal

Rolling on the River

The Best of Steve Neal

Steve Neal. Foreword by Paul Simon

Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

"There are few places where the game [of politics] is played with more intensity than in Chicago," notes Steve Neal, who has covered that city's politics since 1979.



The longtime political columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Neal covered Jane M. Byrne's election in 1979 as the city's first woman mayor and Harold Washington's 1983 triumph as Chicago's first African American mayor. Even people who are not interested in politics are drawn to Neal's column because of his hard-hitting style and lucid insights. Rolling on the River is the first published collection of his work.



In these pages, you'll meet the state legislator who never met a special interest he did not like, an alderman groveling to a mob boss, and the prosecutor who gained notoriety as a publicity hound. Of a junketing congressman, Neal writes: "Instead of sending out a congressional newsletter, [he] ought to be sending his constituents 'Wish you were here' postcards of sandy beaches."



Neal's beat is politics, but his interests are rich and varied. He also writes about sports, music, literature, and film with a point of view that is fresh and original. Neal shows how Muhammad Ali became the heavyweight champion who transcended sports and how Sid Luckman changed football. He writes of Kenny Washington's importance in breaking professional football's color barrier and Steve Prefontaine's courage in taking on the little gray men of the sports establishment. Neal chronicles Paul Robeson's struggles: "His name became a great whisper. . . . The injustices against Paul Robeson have not been righted."



Nobel laureate Saul Bellow tells Neal that comedy is the bright hope of American fiction because it is too difficult for writers in this country to grasp the worst of the human condition. Neal tells why Frank Sinatra called Chicago his kind of town and also shows how the city inspires the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks.



Neal, a former White House correspondent, shares his perspective as one of the few reporters to have interviewed Ronald Reagan in four different decades. He recalls spending an evening with Richard M. Nixon, defends Harry Truman's most controversial decision, and writes from Ireland of John F. Kennedy's enduring legacy in the nation of his ancestors. Neal portrays William Jefferson Clinton as the "world's oldest teenager."



With vivid imagery, Neal makes his subjects come alive. Mayor Richard M. Daley is likened to Forrest Gump, and the legendary boxing announcer Ben Bentley is hailed as the last of the Damon Runyon characters.



Tough but fair. Illuminating. Compassionate. That's the best of Steve Neal.



 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 





[more]
cover of Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914–1939

Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter

The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914–1939

Neal Pease

Ohio University Press, 2009

When an independent Poland reappeared on the map of Europe after World War I, it was widely regarded as the most Catholic country on the continent, as “Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter.” All the same, the relations of the Second Polish Republic with the Church—both its representatives inside the country and the Holy See itself—proved far more difficult than expected.

Based on original research in the libraries and depositories of four countries, including recently opened collections in the Vatican Secret Archives, Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914–1939 presents the first scholarly history of the close but complex political relationship of Poland with the Catholic Church during the interwar period. Neal Pease addresses, for example, the centrality of Poland in the Vatican’s plans to convert the Soviet Union to Catholicism and the curious reluctance of each successive Polish government to play the role assigned to it. He also reveals the complicated story of the relations of Polish Catholicism with Jews, Freemasons, and other minorities within the country and what the response of Pope Pius XII to the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939 can tell us about his controversial policies during World War II.

Both authoritative and lively, Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter shows that the tensions generated by the interplay of church and state in Polish public life exerted great influence not only on the history of Poland but also on the wider Catholic world in the era between the wars.

[more]
cover of Ronald Reagan and the House Democrats: Gridlock, Partisanship, and the Fiscal Crisis

Ronald Reagan and the House Democrats

Gridlock, Partisanship, and the Fiscal Crisis

Karl Gerard Brandt

University of Missouri Press, 2009

When Democrats in the House of Representatives locked horns with President Ronald Reagan over the latter’s fiscal policies, the ensuing conflict reinforced the seismic shift in the political landscape that the 1980 election had brought. Karl Brandt now tells the story of how the New Deal Democratic coalition was able to sustain itself in the face of an unprecedented Republican assault—in a conflict whose reverberations are still being felt today.
            After a bipartisan conservative House coalition passed Reagan’s budget and tax cuts in 1981, conservative Democrats became worried about the increasingly large deficits produced by Reaganomics and questioned the administration’s spending priorities. In one of the few studies of congressional politics in the 1980s, Brandt describes the House Democratic leadership’s efforts to rebuild party unity while facing challenges from conservative Democrats, the Reagan administration, and the emerging fiscal crisis. He tells how Democrats worked hard to rein in party conservatives, to craft consensus-oriented policies palatable to all Democrats, and over the coming years to force the president and the Senate to compromise over fiscal policy.
            Drawing on primary source materials unavailable in the 1980s—including transcripts from closed-door meetings and internal House documents—Brandt chronicles the events that resulted in the deepening of the fiscal crisis, examines the growth of an intensely partisan political environment, and provides insight into the dynamics of creating a national budget. He cuts through conservative rhetoric to show how Reagan’s fiscal policies deepened federal deficits and reveals how the partisan struggles of the Reagan years redefined the Democrats along more centrist lines.
            When the dust had settled, the Democratic Party had become more unified in the face of budget conflict and had proved that it could practice fiscal conservatism and make tough budget choices when necessary. Carefully argued and thoroughly researched, Brandt’s work brings historical perspective to this important chapter in recent history as it explores conflicting visions of the economy, American society, and the very future of the nation.
[more]
cover of Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-1895

Roosevelt the Reformer

Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-1895

Richard D. White Jr

University of Alabama Press, 2003

Discover the overlooked years that forged Theodore Roosevelt’s reforming spirit, revealing how bureaucratic battles shaped a future president and transformed American government forever

Roosevelt the Reformer is a compelling scholarly biography that uncovers a neglected chapter of Theodore Roosevelt’s life: his six-year tenure as U.S. Civil Service Commissioner from 1889 to 1895. Rather than focusing on his presidency or battlefield exploits, the book reveals how Roosevelt’s administrative work shaped his reformist zeal, political skills, and enduring impact on American governance. Through vivid narrative and careful analysis, it shows how this “quiet” period contributed directly to the modernization of the federal government and the emergence of the merit-based civil service. 

Structured chronologically, the book traces each year of Roosevelt’s commissionership while weaving together political events, personal life, and broader social context. It draws on rich primary sources—letters, speeches, and contemporary accounts—and includes scholarly features such as notes, bibliography, and index. Richard D. White Jr., a historian of American political development, combines narrative storytelling with rigorous research to illuminate Roosevelt’s battles with patronage politics, his reform strategies, and his growing administrative expertise. 

This book will appeal to historians, political scientists, and general readers interested in the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the origins of modern government. It is especially valuable for readers seeking fresh perspectives on Theodore Roosevelt, public administration, or reform movements, offering both an engaging biography and a nuanced study of how institutions and leaders are transformed.

[more]
cover of Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance

Roots of Our Renewal

Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance

Clint Carroll

University of Minnesota Press, 2015

Honorable Mention: Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award

In Roots of Our Renewal, Clint Carroll tells how Cherokee people have developed material, spiritual, and political ties with the lands they have inhabited since removal from their homelands in the southeastern United States. Although the forced relocation of the late 1830s had devastating consequences for Cherokee society, Carroll shows that the reconstituted Cherokee Nation west of the Mississippi eventually cultivated a special connection to the new land—a connection that is reflected in its management of natural resources.

Until now, scant attention has been paid to the interplay between tribal natural resource management programs and governance models. Carroll is particularly interested in indigenous environmental governance along the continuum of resource-based and relationship-based practices and relates how the Cherokee Nation, while protecting tribal lands, is also incorporating associations with the nonhuman world. Carroll describes how the work of an elders’ advisory group has been instrumental to this goal since its formation in 2008.

An enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Carroll draws from his ethnographic observations of Cherokee government–community partnerships during the past ten years. He argues that indigenous appropriations of modern state forms can articulate alternative ways of interacting with and “governing” the environment.

[more]
cover of Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917

Roots of Reform

Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917

Elizabeth Sanders

University of Chicago Press, 1999

Roots of Reform offers a sweeping revision of our understanding of the rise of the regulatory state in the late nineteenth century. Sanders argues that politically mobilized farmers were the driving force behind most of the legislation that increased national control over private economic power. She demonstrates that farmers from the South, Midwest, and West reached out to the urban laborers who shared their class position and their principal antagonist—northeastern monopolistic industrial and financial capital—despite weak electoral support from organized labor.

Based on new evidence from legislative records and other sources, Sanders shows that this tenuous alliance of "producers versus plutocrats" shaped early regulatory legislation, remained powerful through the populist and progressive eras, and developed a characteristic method of democratic state expansion with continued relevance for subsequent reform movements.

Roots of Reform is essential reading for anyone interested in this crucial period of American political development.
[more]
cover of Ross Sterling, Texan: A Memoir by the Founder of Humble Oil and Refining Company

Ross Sterling, Texan

A Memoir by the Founder of Humble Oil and Refining Company

By Ross S. Sterling and Ed Kilman

University of Texas Press, 2007

Born on a farm near Anahuac, Texas, in 1875 and possessed of only a fourth-grade education, Ross Sterling was one of the most successful Texans of his generation. Driven by a relentless work ethic, he become a wealthy oilman, banker, newspaper publisher, and, from 1931 to 1933, one-term governor of Texas. Sterling was the principal founder of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, which eventually became the largest division of the ExxonMobil Corporation, as well as the owner of the Houston Post.

Eager to "preserve a narrative record of his life and deeds," Ross Sterling hired Ed Kilman, an old friend and editorial page editor of the Houston Post, to write his biography. Though the book was nearly finished before Sterling's death in 1949, it never found a publisher due to Kilman's florid writing style and overly hagiographic portrayal of Sterling.

In this volume, by contrast, editor Don Carleton uses the original oral history dictated by Ross Sterling to Ed Kilman to present the former governor's life story in his own words. Sterling vividly describes his formative years, early business ventures, and active role in developing the Texas oil industry. He also recalls his political career, from his appointment to the Texas Highway Commission to his term as governor, ending with his controversial defeat for reelection by "Ma" Ferguson. Sterling's reminiscences constitute an important primary source not only on the life of a Texan who deserves to be more widely remembered, but also on the history of Houston and the growth of the American oil industry.

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cover of Rotten Boroughs, Political Thickets, and Legislative Donnybrooks: Redistricting in Texas

Rotten Boroughs, Political Thickets, and Legislative Donnybrooks

Redistricting in Texas

Edited by Gary A. Keith

University of Texas Press, 2013

Every ten years, the Texas legislature redistricts itself and the state’s congressional districts in an attempt to ensure equality in representation. With a richly textured cultural fabric, Texas often experiences redistricting battles that are heated enough to gain national attention. Collecting a variety of voices, including legislators themselves, in addition to lawyers, community organizers, political historians, and political scientists, Rotten Boroughs, Political Thickets, and Legislative Donnybrooks delivers a multidimensional picture of how redistricting works in Texas today, and how the process evolved.

In addition to editor Gary Keith’s historical narrative, which emphasizes the aftermath of the Warren Court’s redistricting decisions, longtime litigators David Richards and J. D. Pauerstein describe the contentious lines drawn from the 1970s into the 2000s. Former state legislator and congressman Craig Washington provides an insider’s view, while redistricting attorney and grassroots organizer Jose Garza describes the repercussions for Mexican Americans in Texas. Balancing these essays with a quantitative perspective, political scientists Seth McKee and Mark McKenzie analyze the voting data for the 2000 decade to describe the outcomes of redistricting. The result is a timely tour that provides up-to-date context, particularly on the role of the Voting Rights Act in the twenty-first century. From local community engagement to the halls of the Capitol, this is the definitive portrait of redistricting and its repercussions for all Texans.

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cover of Rotten States?: Corruption, Post-Communism, and Neoliberalism

Rotten States?

Corruption, Post-Communism, and Neoliberalism

Leslie Holmes

Duke University Press, 2006

Official corruption has become increasingly prevalent around the world since the early 1990s. The situation appears to be particularly acute in the post-communist states. Corruption—be it real or perceived—is a major problem with concrete implications, including a lowered likelihood of foreign investment. In Rotten States? Leslie Holmes analyzes corruption in post-communist countries, paying particular attention to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia, as well as China, which Holmes argues has produced, through its recent economic liberalization, a system similar to post-communism. As he points out, these countries offer useful comparisons: they vary in terms of size, religious orientation, ethnic homogeneity, and their approaches to and economic success with the transition from communism.

Drawing on data including surveys commissioned especially for this study, Holmes examines the causes and consequences of official corruption as well as ways of combating it. He focuses particular attention on the timing of the recent increase in reports of corruption, the relationship between post-communism and corruption, and the interplay between corruption and the delegitimation and weakening of the state. Holmes argues that the global turn toward neoliberalism—with its focus on ends over means, flexibility, and a reduced role for the state—has generated much of the corruption in post-communist states. At the same time, he points out that neoliberalism is perhaps the single most powerful tool for overcoming the communist legacy, which is an even more significant cause of corruption. Among the conclusions that Holmes draws is that a strong democratic state is needed in the early stages of the transition from communism in order to prevent corruption from taking hold.

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cover of Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire

Rough Rider in the White House

Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire

Sarah Watts

University of Chicago Press, 2003

Who was Theodore Roosevelt? Most of us think of him as one of America's greatest presidents, a champion of progressive politics, and a master statesman. But many feared the political power that Roosevelt wielded. Woodrow Wilson once called him "the most dangerous man of the age." Mark Twain thought him "clearly insane." William James scorned the "flood of bellicose emotion" he let loose during his presidency. Even his biographer, Edmund Morris, is astonished at Roosevelt's "irrational love of battle."

In this book, Sarah Watts probes this dark side of the Rough Rider, presenting a fascinating psychological portrait of a man whose personal obsession with masculinity profoundly influenced the fate of a nation. Drawing on his own writings and on media representations of him, Watts attributes the wide appeal of Roosevelt's style of manhood to the way it addressed the hopes and anxieties of men of his time. Like many of his contemporaries, Roosevelt struggled with what it meant to be a man in the modern era. He saw two foes within himself: a fragile weakling and a primitive beast. The weakling he punished and toughened with rigorous, manly pursuits such as hunting, horseback riding, and war. The beast he unleashed through brutal criticism of homosexuals, immigrants, pacifists, and sissies—anyone who might tarnish the nation's veneer of strength and vigor. With his unabashed paeans to violence and aggressive politics, Roosevelt ultimately offered American men a chance to project their longings and fears onto the nation and its policies. In this way he harnessed the primitive energy of men's desires to propel the march of American civilization—over the bodies of anyone who might stand in its way.

Written with passion and precision, this powerful revisioning of an American icon will forever alter the way we see Theodore Roosevelt and his political legacy.

"A superb scholarly study of how Roosevelt built his political base on the aspiration and fears of men in a rapidly changing nation and world."—Charles K. Piehl, Library Journal

"A thought-provoking and innovative study of the dark side of Roosevelt's personality. . . . [Watt's] arguments are clear, passionate, and thoroughly supported."—Elizabeth A. Bennion, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

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