Results by title
18284 books match the query 'United States' and 3764 start with t
The Political Economy of Pipelines
A Century of Comparative Institutional DevelopmentJeff D. Makholm
University of Chicago Press, 2012
The Political Economy of Third World Intervention
Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo CrisisDavid N. Gibbs
University of Chicago Press, 1991
In The Political Economy of Third World Intervention, David Gibbs explores the factors that motivate intervention, especially the influence of business interests. He challenges conventional views of international relations, eschewing both the popular "realist" view that the state is influenced by diverse national interests and the "dependency" approach that stresses conflicts between industrialized countries and the Third World. Instead, Gibbs proposes a new theoretical model of "business conflict" which stresses divisions between different business interests and shows how such divisions can influence foreign policy and interventionism. Moreover, he focuses on the conflicts among the core countries, highlighting friction among private interests within these countries.
Drawing on U.S. government documents—including a wealth of newly declassified materials—he applies his new model to a detailed case study of the Congo Crisis of the 1960s. Gibbs demonstrates that the Crisis is more accurately characterized by competition among Western interests for access to the Congo's mineral wealth, than by Cold War competition, as has been previously argued.
Offering a fresh perspective for understanding the roots of any international conflict, this remarkably accessible volume will be of special interest to students of international political economy, comparative politics, and business-government relations.
"This book is an extremely important contribution to the study of international relations theory; Gibbs' treatment of the Congo case is superb. He effectively takes the "statists" to task and presents a compelling new way of analyzing external interventions in the Third World."—Michael G. Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin
"David Gibbs makes an original and important contribution to our understanding of the influence of business interests in the making of U.S. foreign policy. His business conflict model provides a synthetic theoretical framework for the analysis of business-government relations, one which yields fresh insights, overcomes inconsistencies in other approaches, and opens new ground for important research. . . . [Gibbs] provides a sophisticated analysis of the conflicts within the U.S. business community and identifies the complex ways in which they interacted with agencies within the government to form U.S. foreign policy toward the Congo. . . . This is a well-crafted analysis of a critical case of U.S. postwar intervention which should be of general interest to scholars and others concerned with the domestic bases of foreign policy."—Thomas J. Biersteker, Director, School of International Relations, University of Southern California
The Political Economy of Trade Protection
Edited by Anne O. Krueger
University of Chicago Press, 1995
In case studies of trade barriers imposed during the 1980s to help the steel, semiconductor, automobile, lumber, wheat, and textile and apparel industries, the contributors trace the evolution of efforts to obtain protection, protectionist measures, and their results. A chapter assessing the common themes that emerge from the studies concludes that the focus of current trade law is exclusively on the individual protection-seeking industries, with little regard for indirect effects on using industries or for consumers. Reform could usefully take these effects into account.
This volume will interest policymakers, business executives, and anyone interested in trade policy formulation and practice.
The Political Integration of Women
Roles, Socialization, and PoliticsVirginia Sapiro
University of Illinois Press, 1983
The Political Life of Medicare
Jonathan Oberlander
University of Chicago Press, 2003
The Political Plays of Langston Hughes
Introductions and Analyses by Susan Duffy
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000
Among the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is perhaps best remembered for the innovative use of jazz rhythms in his writing. While his poetry and essays received much public acclaim and scholarly attention, Hughes’ dramas are relatively unknown. Only five of the sixty-three plays Hughes scripted alone or collaboratively have been published (in 1963).
Published here, for the first time, are four of Hughes’ most poignant, poetic, and political dramas, Scottsboro Limited, Harvest (also known as Blood on the Fields), Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer. Each play reflects Hughes’ remarkable professionalism as a playwright as well as his desire to dramatize the social history of the African American experience, especially in the context of the labor movements of the 1930s and their attempts to attract African American workers. Hughes himself counted prominent members of these leftist groups among his close friends and patrons; he formed a theater group with Whittaker Chambers, prompting an FBI investigation of Hughes and his writing in the 1930s. These plays, while easily read as idealistic propaganda pieces for the left, are nonetheless reflective of Hughes’ other more influential and studied works.
The first scholar to offer a systematic study of Hughes’ plays, Susan Duffy provides an informed introduction as well as a detailed analysis of each of the four plays. Duffy also establishes that De Organizer, a collaboration with noted jazz pianist and composer James P. Johnson (who also wrote its score) was indeed performed by the Labor Stage.
By making these forgotten texts available, and by presenting them within a scholarly discussion of 1930s leftist political movements, Duffy seeks to spark a renewed interest in Langston Hughes as an American playwright and political figure.
The Political Style of Conspiracy
Chase, Sumner, and LincolnMichael William Pfau
Michigan State University Press, 2005
The turbulent history of the United States has provided a fertile ground for conspiracies, both real and imagined. From the American Revolution to the present day, conspiracy discourse—linguistic and symbolic practices and artifacts revolving around themes, claims, or accusations of conspiracy—has been a staple of political rhetoric. Some conspiracy theories never catch on with the public, while others achieve widespread popularity. Whether successful or not, the means by which particular conspiracy theories spread is a rhetorical process, a process in which persuasive language, symbolism, and arguments act upon individual minds within concrete historical and political settings.
Conspiracy rhetoric was a driving force in the evolution of antebellum political culture, contributing to the rise and fall of the great parties in the nineteenth century. One conspiracy theory in particular—the "slave power" conspiracy—was instrumental in facilitating the growth of the young Republican Party's membership and ideology. The Political Style of Conspiracy analyzes the concept and reality of the "slave power" in the rhetorical discourse of the mid-nineteenth-century, in particular the speeches and writing of politicians Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, and Abraham Lincoln. By examining their mainstream texts, Pfau reveals that, in addition to the "paranoid style" of conspiracy rhetoric that inhabits the margins of political life, Lincoln, Chase, and Sumner also engaged in a distinctive form of conspiracy rhetoric that is often found at the center of mainstream American society and politics.
The Political Theology of David Lipscomb
Collected WorksDavid Lipscomb; Edited by Edward Peter Stringham and Norman R. Horn
Vanderbilt University Press, 2026
Few figures shaped the Stone-Campbell Restoration movement more than David Lipscomb, whose influence on its theology and practice rivaled that of any of his contemporaries. Yet the writings in this volume have long been unavailable to general readers, and most people are no longer familiar with his ideas, including his belief that Christians should not participate in secular politics.
In the early decades of the Stone-Campbell movement, adherents argued their positions in person and in print, and the direction of the movement was decided by these wide-ranging theological discussions. Dissent was built into the discourse and considered a part of the spiritual well-being of the movement. Followers were expected to read and have opinions on all these discussions. And now most of these books and articles have all but vanished from circulation—not just Lipscomb’s but many of the nineteenth-century Campbellite theologians’ writings.
This volume comprises three of Lipscomb’s most important works regarding Christians’ relationship to civil government, along with an introduction by Edward Peter Stringham and Norman R. Horn that explains how Lipscomb’s political writings receded from view within the movement he once shaped.
The Political Theory of The Federalist
David F. Epstein
University of Chicago Press, 1986
In The Political Theory of “The Federalist,” David F. Epstein offers a guide to the fundamental principles of American government as they were understood by the framers of the Constitution. Epstein here demonstrates the remarkable depth and clarity of The Federalist’s argument, reveals its specifically political (not merely economic) view of human nature, and describes how and why the American regime combines liberal and republican values.
“While it is a model of scholarly care and clarity, this study deserves an audience outside the academy. . . . David F. Epstein’s book is a fine demonstration of just how much a close reading can accomplish, free of any flights of theory or fancy references.”—New Republic
“Epstein’s strength lies in two aspects of his own approach. One is that he reads the text with uncommon closeness and sensitivity; the other is an extensive knowledge of the European political thought which itself forms an indispensable background to the minds of the authors.”—Times Literary Supplement
The Political Use of Racial Narratives
School Desegregation in Mobile, Alabama, 1954-97Richard A. Pride
University of Illinois Press, 2002
Exploring who benefits and who pays when different narratives are accepted as true, Pride offers a step-by-step account of how Mobile's culture changed each time a new and more forceful narrative was used to justify inequality. More than a retelling of Mobile's story of desegregation, The Political Use of Racial Narratives promotes the value of rhetorical and narrative analysis in the social sciences and history.
The Politics of American Jews
Herbert F. Weisberg
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Jewish voting is distinctive and paradoxical. Stereotypes about the voting habits of American Jews include that they vote at unusually high levels, that they’re liberal, that they vote for Democratic candidates without regard to their self-interest, and that Israel is their most important issue. Not only are all of those claims wrong, but they obscure aspects of Jews’ voting behavior that are much more interesting.
The Politics of American Jews uncovers new perspectives on Jews’ political choices by analyzing the unprecedented amount of survey data that is now available, including surveys that permit contrasting the voting of Jews with that of comparable non-Jews. The data suggest several mysteries about Jewish voting. While more Jews are Democrats than are liberals, there has not been a previous exploration of why more politically conservative Jews are not Republicans.
A fresh picture of Jews’ political behaviors shows that Jews are no longer politically monolithic. They vote on the basis of their self-interest and their values, but not all Jews share the same self-interest or the same values. While most Jews have incorporated being Democratic and liberal into their political DNA, growing divisions in their ranks suggest a mutation could occur.
The Politics of Attention
How Government Prioritizes ProblemsBryan D. Jones and Frank R. Baumgartner
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Analyzing fifty years of data, Jones and Baumgartner's book is the first study of American politics based on a new information-processing perspective. The authors bring together the allocation of attention and the operation of governing institutions into a single model that traces public policies, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions across multiple institutions.
The Politics of Attention offers a groundbreaking approach to American politics based on the responses of policymakers to the flow of information. It asks how the system solves, or fails to solve, problems rather than looking to how individual preferences are realized through political action.
The Politics of Belonging
Race, Public Opinion, and ImmigrationNatalie Masuoka and Jane Junn
University of Chicago Press, 2013
The Politics of Care Work
Puerto Rican Women Organizing for Social JusticeEmma Amador
Duke University Press, 2025
The Politics of Collecting
Race and the Aestheticization of PropertyEunsong Kim
Duke University Press, 2024
The Politics of Dependency
US Reliance on Mexican Oil and Farm LaborBy Martha Menchaca
University of Texas Press, 2016
The United States and Mexico trade many commodities, the most important of which are indispensable sources of energy—crude oil and agricultural labor. Mexican oil and workers provide cheap and reliable energy for the United States, while US petro dollars and agricultural jobs supply much-needed income for the Mexican economy. Mexico’s economic dependence on the United States is well-known, but The Politics of Dependency makes a compelling case that the United States is also economically dependent on Mexico.
Expanding dependency theory beyond the traditional premise that weak countries are dominated by powerful ones, Martha Menchaca investigates how the United States and Mexico have developed an asymmetrical codependency that disproportionally benefits the United States. In particular, she analyzes how US foreign policy was designed to enable the US government to help shape the development of Mexico’s oil industry, as well as how migration from Mexico to the United States has been regulated by the US Congress to ensure that American farmers have sufficient labor. This unprecedented dual study of energy sectors that are usually examined in isolation reveals the extent to which the United States has become economically dependent on Mexico, even as it remains the dominant partner in the relationship. It also exposes the long-term effects of the agricultural policies of NAFTA, which led to the unemployment of millions of agricultural workers in Mexico, a large percentage of whom relocated to the United States.
The Politics of Fame
Burns, Eric
Rutgers University Press, 2019
In search of answers, cultural historian Eric Burns delves deep into the biographies of some of the most famous figures in American history, from Benjamin Franklin to Fanny Kemble, Elvis Presley to Gene Tierney, and Michael Jordan to Oprah Winfrey. Through these case studies, he considers the evolution of celebrity throughout the ages. More controversially, he questions the very status of fame in the twenty-first century, an era in which thousands of minor celebrities have seen their fifteen minutes in the spotlight.
The Politics of Fame is a provocative and entertaining look at the lives and afterlives of America’s most beloved celebrities as well as the mad devotion they inspired. It raises important questions about what celebrity worship reveals about the worshippers—and about the state of the nation itself
The Politics of Fear
Joseph R. McCarthy and the SenateRobert Griffith
University of Massachusetts Press, 1970
Winner of the Organization of American Historians’ Frederick Jackson Turner Award
Originally published in 1970, and now a classic in its field, The Politics of Fear traces the rise and fall of one of America’s most notorious political demagogues. Robert Griffith concludes that McCarthy’s enormous power owed less to the force of the senator’s unique personality than to the issues and symbols with which he identified and that McCarthy was the product, not the progenitor, of the postwar politics of anticommunism. For this edition, Griffith has provided a new introduction covering the recent literature on McCarthyism and the changing views on the topic.
The Politics of Free Markets
The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United StatesMonica Prasad
University of Chicago Press, 2006
In The Politics of Free Markets, a comparative-historical analysis of the development of neoliberal policies in these four countries,Monica Prasad argues that neoliberalism was made possible in the United States and Britain not because the Left in these countries was too weak, but because it was in some respects too strong. At the time of the oil crisis in the 1970s, American and British tax policies were more punitive to business and the wealthy than the tax policies of France and West Germany; American and British industrial policies were more adversarial to business in key domains; and while the British welfare state was the most redistributive of the four, the French welfare state was the least redistributive. Prasad shows that these adversarial structures in the United States and Britain created opportunities for politicians to find and mobilize dissatisfaction with the status quo, while the more progrowth policies of France and West Germany prevented politicians of the Right from anchoring neoliberalism in electoral dissatisfaction.
The Politics of Gay Rights
Edited by Craig A. Rimmerman, Kenneth D. Wald, and Clyde Wilcox
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Forcefully argued and accessibly written, this collection is an important contribution to the current discussion about civil rights for gays and lesbians.
The Politics of Hate
How the Christian Right Darkened America's Political SoulAngelia R. Wilson
Temple University Press, 2025
Based on original research, participant observation at events, and data collection, Wilson follows the money to provide a meticulous analysis of how Christian Right political elites operate. She traces the evolutionary development of the Christian Right’s political professionalism and their allegiance to a grand vision that articulates a grammar of war to fulfill their Biblical worldview.
The Politics of Hate demonstrates how Christian Right organizations educate and train networks of soldiers to tactically engage the enemy in local, state, and national legal and political battles. Wilson carefully documents their history of co-belligerency, their strategies of political warfare, and, importantly, the impact of this war that has, over the past fifty years, forever changed American politics.
The Politics of Hazardous Waste Management
James P. Lester and Ann O M. Bowman, eds.
Duke University Press, 1983
The Politics of Health Care Reform
Lessons from the Past, Prospects for the FutureJames A. Morone and Gary S. Belkin, eds.
Duke University Press, 1994
The Politics of Health Care Reform explains how successful reforms occur in the United States and shows what is unique about health care issues. Theoretically informed, politically astute, historically nuanced, this volume takes an inventory of our health policy infrastructure. Here is an account of the institutions, ideas, and interests that shape health policy in the 1990s: Congress, the federal courts, interest groups, state governments, the public bureaucracy, business (large and small), the insurance industry, the medical profession. The volume offers a fresh look at such critical matters as public opinion, the politics of race and gender, and the lessons we can draw from other nations.
The Politics of Health Care Reform is the definitive collection of political science essays about health care. Expanded from two special issues of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, the most prominent scholarly journal in the field it helped create, this collection will enliven the present debate over health reform and instruct everyone who is concerned about the future of American health care.
Contributors. Lawrence Brown, Robert Evans, William Glaser, Colleen Grogan, Robert Hackey, Lawrence Jacobs, Nancy Jecker, Taeku Lee, Joan Lehman, David McBride, Ted Marmor, Cathie Jo Martin, James A. Morone, Mark Peterson, David Rochefort, Rand Rosenblatt, David Rothman, Joan Ruttenberg, Mark Schlesinger, Theda Skocpol, Michael Sparer, Deborah Stone, Kenneth Thorpe
The Politics of Herding Cats
When Congressional Leaders FailJohn Lovett
University of Michigan Press, 2021
The Politics of Information
Problem Definition and the Course of Public Policy in AmericaFrank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones
University of Chicago Press, 2014
With The Politics of Attention, leading policy scholars Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones demonstrated the central role attention plays in how governments prioritize problems. Now, with The Politics of Information, they turn the focus to the problem-detection process itself, showing how the growth or contraction of government is closely related to how it searches for information and how, as an organization, it analyzes its findings. Better search processes that incorporate more diverse viewpoints lead to more intensive policymaking activity. Similarly, limiting search processes leads to declines in policy making. At the same time, the authors find little evidence that the factors usually thought to be responsible for government expansion—partisan control, changes in presidential leadership, and shifts in public opinion—can be systematically related to the patterns they observe.
Drawing on data tracing the course of American public policy since World War II, Baumgartner and Jones once again deepen our understanding of the dynamics of American policy making.
The Politics of Kinship
Race, Family, GovernanceMark Rifkin
Duke University Press, 2024
The Politics of Knowledge
The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public PolicyEllen Condliffe Lagemann
University of Chicago Press, 1992
The Politics of Liberal Education
Darryl Gless and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, eds.
Duke University Press, 1992
Within this area of consensus, however, the contributors display a wide range of approaches, illuminating the issues from the perspectives of their particular disciplines—classics, education, English, history, and philosophy, among others—and their individual experiences as teachers. Among the topics they discuss are canon-formation in the ancient world, the idea of a “common culture,” and the educational implications of such social movements as feminism, technological changes including computers and television, and intellectual developments such as “theory.” Readers interested in the controversies over American education will find this volume an informed alternative to sensationalized treatments of these issues.
Contributors. Stanley Fish, Phyllis Franklin, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Henry A. Giroux, Darryl J. Gless, Gerald Graff, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, George A. Kennedy, Bruce Kuklick, Richard A. Lanham, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Alexander Nehamas, Mary Louise Pratt, Richard Rorty, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
The Politics of Manhood
Profeminist Men Respond to the Mythopoetic Men's Movement (And the Mythopoetic Leaders Answer)edited by Michael S. Kimmel
Temple University Press, 1995
The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism
Reputation Meets RealityEdited by Jerold Duquette and Erin O'Brien
University of Massachusetts Press, 2022
Are claims of Massachusetts’s special and instructive place in American history and politics justified? Alternately described as a “city upon a hill” and “an organized system of hatreds,” Massachusetts politics has indisputably exerted an outsized pull on the national stage. The Commonwealth’s leaders often argue for the state’s distinct position within the union, citing its proud abolitionist history and its status as a policy leader on health care, gay marriage, and transgender rights, not to mention its fertile soil for budding national politicians. Detractors point to the state’s busing crisis, sky high levels of economic inequality, and mixed support for undocumented immigrants.
The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism tackles these tensions, offering a collection of essays from public policy experts that address the state’s noteworthy contributions to the nation’s political history. This is a much-needed volume for Massachusetts policymakers, journalists, and community leaders, as well as those learning about political power at the state level, inside and outside of the classroom. Contributors include the editors as well as Maurice T. Cunningham, Lawrence Friedman, Shannon Jenkins, Luis F. Jiménez, and Peter Ubertaccio.
The Politics of Millennials
Political Beliefs and Policy Preferences of America's Most Diverse GenerationStella M. Rouse and Ashley D. Ross
University of Michigan Press, 2018
The Politics of Numbers
William Alonso
Russell Sage Foundation, 1987
The Politics of Patronage
Lawyers, Philanthropy, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational FundBy Benjamin Márquez
University of Texas Press, 2021
Co-winner, Latino Politics Best Book Award, American Political Science Association
The first book about the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the influential work it has done for the Latina/o community, and the issues stemming from its dependence on large philanthropic organizations.
Founded in 1968, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is the Latino equivalent to the NAACP: a source of legal defense for the Latina/o community in cases centered on education, state immigration laws, redistricting, employment discrimination, and immigrant rights. Unlike the NAACP, however, MALDEF was founded by Mexican American activists in conjunction with the larger philanthropic structure of the Ford Foundation—a relationship that has opened it up to controversy and criticism.
In the first book to examine this little-known but highly influential organization, Benjamin Márquez explores MALDEF’s history and shows how it has thrived and served as a voice for the Latina/o community throughout its six decades of operation. But he also looks closely at large-scale investments of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and others, considering how their ties to MALDEF have influenced Mexican American and Latinx politics. Its story crafted from copious research into MALDEF and its benefactors, this book brings to light the influence of outside funding on the articulation of minority identities and the problems that come with creating change through institutional means.
The Politics of Petulance
America in an Age of ImmaturityAlan Wolfe
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Alan Wolfe has an answer. In The Politics of Petulance he argues that the core of our problem isn’t Trump himself—it’s that we are mired in an age of political immaturity. That immaturity is not grounded in any one ideology, nor is it a function of age or education. It’s in an abdication of valuing the character of would-be leaders; it’s in a failure to acknowledge, even welcome the complexity of government and society; and it’s in a loss of the ability to be skeptical without being suspicious. In 2016, many Americans were offered tantalizingly simple answers to complicated problems, and, like children being offered a lunch of Pop Rocks and Coke, they reflexively—and mindlessly—accepted.
The good news, such as it is, is that we’ve been here before. Wolfe reminds us that we know how to grow up and face down Trump and other demagogues. Wolfe reinvigorates the tradition of public engagement exemplified by midcentury intellectuals such as Richard Hofstadter, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling—and he draws lessons from their battles with McCarthyism and conspiratorial paranoia. Wolfe mounts a powerful case that we can learn from them to forge a new path for political intervention today.
Wolfe has been thinking and writing about American life and politics for decades. He sees this moment as one of real risk. But he’s not throwing up his hands; he’s bracing us. We’ve faced demagogues before. We can find the intellectual maturity to fight back. Yes we can.
The Politics of Piracy
Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial AmericaDouglas R. Burgess
University Press of New England, 2014
The Politics of Place
A History of Zoning in ChicagoJoseph P. Schwieterman and Dana M. Caspall
Southern Illinois University Press, 2006
The Politics of Preference
Democratic Institutions and Affirmative Action in the United States and IndiaSunita Parikh
University of Michigan Press, 1997
The Politics of Privacy in Contemporary Native, Latinx, and Asian American Metafictions
Colleen G. Eils
The Ohio State University Press, 2020
Eils breaks strict disciplinary silos by putting visibility/surveillance studies, ethnic studies, and narrative studies in conversation with one another. Eils also puts texts in the Native, Latinx, and Asian American literary canon in conversation with each other. She focuses on texts by Viet Thanh Nguyen, David Treuer, Monique Truong, Rigoberto González, Nam Le, and Stephen Graham Jones that call into question our positions as readers and critics. In deliberately and self-consciously evading readers through the form of their fiction, these writers seize privacy as a political tool for claiming and wielding power in both representational and material registers.
The Politics of Pure Science
Daniel S. Greenberg
University of Chicago Press, 1999
While the book's hard-hitting approach earned praise from a broad audience, it drew harsh fire from many scientists, who did not relish their turn under the microscope. The fact that this dispute is so reminiscent of today's acrimonious "Science Wars" demonstrates that although science has changed a great deal since The Politics of Pure Science first appeared, the politics of science has not—which is why this book retains its importance.
For this new edition, John Maddox (Nature editor emeritus) and Steven Shapin have provided introductory essays that situate the book in broad social and historical context, and Greenberg has written a new afterword taking account of recent developments in the politics of science.
"[A] book of consequence about science as one of the more consequential social institutions in the modern world. It is one that could be understood and should be read by the President, legislators, scientists and the rest of us ordinary folk. . . . Informative and perceptive."—Robert K. Merton, New York Times Book Review
The Politics of Purity
Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food PolicyClayton A. Coppin and Jack High
University of Michigan Press, 1999
The Politics of Research
Edited by E. Ann Kaplan and George Levine
Rutgers University Press, 1997
The Politics of Rights
Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political ChangeStuart A. Scheingold
University of Michigan Press, 2004
"Scheingold presents a clear, thoughtful discussion of the ways in which rights can both empower and constrain those seeking change in American society. While much of the writing on rights is abstract and obscure, The Politics of Rights stands out as an accessible and engaging discussion."
-Gerald N. Rosenberg, University of Chicago
"This book has already exerted an enormous influence on two generations of scholars. It has had an enormous influence on political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, as well as historians and legal scholars. With this new edition, this influence is likely to continue for still more generations. The Politics of Rights has, I believe, become an American classic."
-Malcolm Feeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, from the foreword
Stuart A. Scheingold is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington.
The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage
Edited by Craig A. Rimmerman and Clyde Wilcox
University of Chicago Press, 2007
Same-sex marriage emerged in 2004 as one of the hottest issues of the campaign season. But in a severe blow to gay rights advocates, all eleven states that had the issue on the ballot passed amendments banning the practice, and the subject soon dropped off the media’s radar. This pattern of waxing and waning in the public eye has characterized the debate over same-sex marriage since 1996 and the passing of the Defense of Marriage Act. Since then, court rulings and local legislatures have kept the issue alive in the political sphere, and conservatives and gay rights advocates have made the issue a key battlefield in the culture wars.
The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage brings together an esteemed list of scholars to explore all facets of this heated issue, including the ideologies and strategies on both sides of the argument, the public’s response, the use of the issue in political campaigns, and how same-sex marriage fits into the broad context of policy cycles and windows of political opportunity. With comprehensive coverage from a variety of different approaches, this volume will be a vital sourcebook for activists, politicians, and scholars alike.
The Politics of Scale
A History of Rangeland ScienceNathan F. Sayre
University of Chicago Press, 2017
During the late 1880s and early 1890s, a variety of forces—from the Homestead Act of 1862 to the extermination of bison, foreign investment, and lack of government regulation—promoted free-for-all access to and development of the western range, with disastrous environmental consequences. To address the crisis, government agencies turned to scientists, but as Nathan F. Sayre shows, range science grew in a politically fraught landscape. Neither the scientists nor the public agencies could escape the influences of bureaucrats and ranchers who demanded results, and the ideas that became scientific orthodoxy—from fire suppression and predator control to fencing and carrying capacities—contained flaws and blind spots that plague public debates about rangelands to this day. Looking at the global history of rangeland science through the Cold War and beyond, The Politics of Scale identifies the sources of past conflicts and mistakes and helps us to see a more promising path forward, one in which rangeland science is guided less by capital and the state and more by communities working in collaboration with scientists.
The Politics of School Reform, 1870 - 1940
Paul E. Peterson
University of Chicago Press, 1985
Drawing upon rarely examined archival data, Peterson demonstrates that widespread public backing for the common school existed in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco. He finds little evidence of systematic discrimination against white immigrants, at least with respect to classroom crowding and teaching assignments. Instead, his research uncovers solid trade union and other working-class support for compulsory education, adequate school financing, and curricular modernization.
Urban reformers campaigned assiduously for fiscally sound, politically strong public schools. Often they had at least as much support from trade unionists as from business elites. In fact it was the business-backed machine politicians—from San Francisco's William Buckley to Chicago's Edward Kelly—who deprived the schools of funds. At a time when public schools are being subjected to searching criticism and when new educational ideas are gaining political support, The Politics of School Reform, 1870-1940 is a timely reminder of the strength and breadth of those groups that have always supported "free" public schools.
The Politics of Skin Tone
African American Experiences, Identity, and AttitudesNicole D. Yadon
University of Chicago Press, 2025
A nuanced examination of the salience of skin tone within African American politics.
Research shows that skin tone is associated with significant differences in life experiences. On average, African Americans with darker skin earn lower wages, suffer worse health outcomes, and endure more negative criminal justice experiences than lighter-skinned African Americans. Nicole D. Yadon conceptualizes skin tone as one facet of the multidimensional construct of race that powerfully influences racialized experiences which, in turn, can influence political identities and attitudes.
Drawing on evidence from one hundred in-depth interviews, multiple surveys, and a survey experiment, The Politics of Skin Tone investigates the political associations of skin tone. Yadon finds that skin tone correlates with political attitudes, particularly on issues where color-based disparities are especially pronounced such as criminal justice. Moreover, a sizable number of African Americans adopt a skin tone-based identity. In an era of shifting racial boundaries and growing color-based discrimination, The Politics of Skin Tone examines the implications for both scholars and policymakers.
The Politics of Social Change
From the Sixties to the Present Through the Eyes of a GenerationLarry M. Bartels and Katherine J. Cramer
University of Chicago Press, 2026
How did we get to this point in American politics? Drawing on insights from an unprecedented decades-long study of ordinary Americans’ political lives, this book tells the story of how, why, and when our politics fractured.
Few time periods have been as defined by waves of monumental social change as the United States during the 1960s. Even today, almost sixty years later, the era is often depicted as a triumph of social progress. Yet, as Larry M. Bartels and Katherine J. Cramer show in The Politics of Social Change, it was Americans’ diverse reactions to the milestone events of the time—from the welcoming, to the fiercely resistant, to the largely oblivious—that planted the seeds of our current political turmoil.
Their masterful analysis draws on a unique historical resource: the longest-running systematic tracking of individual Americans’ political attitudes and behavior ever attempted. The study began in 1965 when researchers interviewed hundreds of high school students across the country and then periodically reinterviewed them over the next three decades. Bartels and Cramer supplement this historical record with in-depth interviews with dozens of the original students, painting a detailed picture of the generation’s individual and collective political development. By tracing the responses of the Class of ’65 to major events of their political lifetimes—including the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, the Vietnam War, the shifting role of religion, escalating economic inequality, immigration, and the rise of Donald Trump—Bartels and Cramer shed new light on the evolution of public opinion and the unsteady progress of American democracy.
The Politics of Staying Put
Condo Conversion and Tenant Right-to-Buy in Washington, DCCarolyn Gallaher
Temple University Press, 2016
When cities gentrify, it can be hard for working-class and low-income residents to stay put. Rising rents and property taxes make buildings unaffordable, or landlords may sell buildings to investors interested in redeveloping them into luxury condos.
In her engaging study The Politics of Staying Put, Carolyn Gallaher focuses on a formal, city-sponsored initiative—The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA)—that helps people keep their homes. This law, unique to the District of Columbia, allows tenants in apartment buildings contracted for sale the right to refuse the sale and purchase the building instead. In the hands of tenants, a process that would usually hurt them—conversion to a condominium or cooperative—can instead help them.
Taking a broad, city-wide assessment of TOPA, Gallaher follows seven buildings through the program’s process. She measures the law’s level of success and its constraints. Her findingshave relevance for debates in urban affairs about condo conversion, urban local autonomy, and displacement.
The Politics of Street Crime
Criminal Process and Cultural ObsessionStuart A. Scheingold
Temple University Press, 1992
Americans find street crime terrifying and repellent. Yet we vicariously seek it out in virtually all of our media: books, newspapers, television, films, and the theatre. Stuart Scheingold confronts this cultural contradiction and asks why street crime is generally regarded in the trivializing and punitive images of cops and robbers that attribute crime to the willful acts of flawed individuals rather than to the structural shortcomings of a flawed society. In his case study of the police and criminal courts in the community he calls "Cedar City," a medium-sized city in the Western United States, Scheingold examines the effects of this cultural contradiction and these punitive predispositions on politics and policy making.
The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses
Ty Solomon
University of Michigan Press, 2015