Showing papers on "Politics published in 1989"

The structural transformation of the public sphere : an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society

Abstract: Part 1 Introduction - preliminary demarcation of a type of Bourgeois Public Sphere: the initial question remarks on the type representative publicness on the genesis of the Bourgois Public Sphere. Part 2 Social structures of the Public Sphere: the basic blueprint institutions of the public sphere the Bourgois family and the institutionalization of a privateness oriented to an audience the public sphere in the world of letters in relation to the public sphere in the political realm. Part 3 Political functions of the public sphere: the model case of British development the continental variants civil society as the sphere of private autonomy: private law and a liberalized market the contradictory institutionalization of the public sphere in the Bourgeois constitutional state. Part 4 The bourgeois public sphere - idea and ideology: publicity as the bridging principle between politics and morality, Kant on the dialectic of the public sphere, Hegel and Marx the ambivalent view of the public sphere in the theory of liberalism, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. Part 5 The social-structural transformation of the public sphere: the tendency toward a mutual infiltration of public and private spheres the polarization of the social sphere and the intimate sphere from a culture-debating (kulturrasonierend) public to a culture-consuming public the blurred blueprint - developmental pathways in the disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere. Part 6 the transformation of the public sphere's political function: from the journalism of private men of letters to the public consumer services of the mass media - the public sphere as a platform for advertising the transmitted function of the principle of publicity manufactured publicity and nonpublic opinions - the voting behaviour of the population the political public sphere and the transformation of the liberal constitutional state into a social-welfare state. Part 7 On the concept of public opinion: public opinion as a fiction of constitutional law-and the social-psychological liquidation of the concept a sociological attempt at clarification.

Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics

Abstract: The state has lost its position of centrality in contemporary political theory ideas of moral individualism and an emphasis on bargaining among conflicting interest have usurped ideas that embedded morality in institutions, such as the legal system and the corporation, as foundations for political identity. The authors propose a new theory of political behavior that re-invigorates the role of institutions - from laws and bureaucracy to rituals, symbols and ceremonies - as essential to understanding the modern political and economic systems that guide contemporary life.

Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society

Abstract: Economic, technological, and sociopolitical changes have been transforming the cultures of advanced industrial societies in profoundly important ways during the past few decades. This ambitious work examines changes in religious beliefs, in motives for work, in the issues that give rise to political conflict, in the importance people attach to having children and families, and in attitudes toward divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. Ronald Inglehart's earlier book, The Silent Revolution (Princeton, 1977), broke new ground by discovering a major intergenerational shift in the values of the populations of advanced industrial societies. This new volume demonstrates that this value shift is part of a much broader process of cultural change that is gradually transforming political, economic, and social life in these societies. Inglehart uses a massive body of time-series survey data from twenty-six nations, gathered from 1970 through 1988, to analyze the cultural changes that are occurring as younger generations gradually replace older ones in the adult population. These changes have far-reaching political implications, and they seem to be transforming the economic growth rates of societies and the kind of economic development that is pursued.

Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory

Abstract: Acknowledgements. Introduction. Part I: Powers, Norms, and Vocabularies of Contestation:. 1. Foucault on Modern Power:. Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions. 2. Michael Foucault: A a Young Conservativea ?. 3. Foucaulta s Body Language: A Posthumanist Political Rhetoric?. Part II: On the Political and the Symbolic:. 4. The French Derrideans:. Politicizing Deconstruction or Deconstructing the Political?. 5. Solidarity or Singularity?:. Richard Rorty between Romanticism and Technocracy. Part III: Gender and the Politics of Need Interpretation:. 6. Whata s Critical about Critical Theory?. The Case of Habermas and Gender. 7. Women, Welfare, and the Politics of Need Interpretation. 8. Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist--Feminist Critical. Theory of Late Capitalist Political Culture. Index.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Abstract: POLITICS AND JOURNALISM HERMAN. EDWARD S. and NOAM CHOMSKY, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. 412 pp., $24.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. In an important work of scholarship, Herman and Chomsky offer a "propaganda model" of the manner in which the media serve as a system-supportive institution by inculcating and reinforcing the economic, social and political agenda of the elite. Herman, a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania, and Chomsky, a professor in the department of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, draw extensively on their previous research to offer a well-documented critique of the myth that the mass media serve as an "independent" social institution. At the crux of Herman and Chomsky's treatise is their propaganda model, consisting of five "news filters" which determine the nature and content of news. The first filter can best be characterized as "concentration of ownership." Through analysis of financial data in proxy statements, trade publications and annual reports, Herman and Chomsky provide compelling evidence that media organizations have a central stake in the maintenance of the social and economic status quo. The second news filter, heavy reliance on advertising revenue, is an extension of the first, for the ability to attract audiences with buying power attracts advertisers which, in turn, leads to greater concentration of wealth, power and media ownership. An extension of the work of several media sociologists, especially Mark Fishman, Gave Tuchman and Herbert Gans, the third filter the media's reliance on news "beats" and official sources in both the governmental and corporate realms. The section describing this filter also includes an excellent account of governmental public-information operations which strive to supply much of the "official" and legitimized information the media crave. The fourth and fifth frames are predominantly ideological in nature, and refer, respectively, to feedback mechanisms which delimit the media's occasional forays into criticism of the system, and the media's blind acceptance of the "national religion" of anticommunism. Both filters, Herman and Chomsky argue, are testament to the media's general reluctance to dispute the priorities, agenda and interests promulgated by government, corporations and even conservative interest groups. The confluence of these various forces and filters, according to the model, results in the media's selection of a dominant frame for each issue and concomitant selection of facts to fit each frame. The same can be said for the authors' description of the model itself; and that it is important to acknowledge the assumptions underlying this work. First, the main argument of the book is that the media are subject to many systemic influences that shape news content. In contrast, the underlying premise of the book appears that media ought to be independent of influence. This sentiment is best articulated in the last line of the book, following the author's various prescriptions for reform: "Only to the extent that such developments succeed can we hope to see media that are free and independent. …

Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas

Abstract: There is an old saw in political science that difficult conditions become problems only when people come to see them as amenable to human action. Until then, difficulties remain embedded in the realm of nature, accident, and fate -a realm where there is no choice about what happens to us. The conversion of difficulties into problems is said to be the sine qua non of political rebellion, legal disputes, interest-group mobilization, and of moving policy problems onto the public agenda.' This article is about how situations come to be seen as caused by human actions and amenable to human intervention. Despite the acknowledged importance of this phenomenon as a precursor to political participation and to agenda setting, there is little systematic inquiry about it in the political science literature. For the most part, the question is dealt with under the rubric of agenda setting, even though the transformation of difficulties into problems takes place in something of a black box prior to agenda formation. Three strands of thinking in the agenda literature contribute indirectly to an understanding of this topic. One strand focuses on the identity and characteristics of political actors -leaders, interest groups, professionals, breaucrats. It looks at the actors' attitudes, resources, and opportunities

Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice

Abstract: Preface to the Third Edition Introduction Part I. Toward a Theory of Human Rights 1. The Concept of Human Rights How Rights Work Special Features of Human Rights Human Nature and Human Rights Human Rights and Related Practices Analytic and Substantive Theories The Failure of Foundational Appeals Coping with Contentious Foundations 2. The Universal Declaration Model The Universal Declaration The Universal Declaration Model Human Dignity and Human Rights Individual Rights Interdependence and Indivisibility The State and International Human Rights Respecting, Protecting, and Providing Human Rights Realizing Human Rights and Human Dignity 3. Economic Rights and Group Rights The Status of Economic and Social Rights Group Rights and Human Rights 4. Equal Concern and Respect Hegemony and Settled Norms An Overlapping Consensus on International Human Rights Moral Theory, Political Theory, and Human Rights Equal Concern and Respect Toward a Liberal Theory of Human Rights Consensus: Overlapping but Bounded Part II. The Universality and Relativity of Human Rights 5. A Brief History of Human Rights Politics and Justice in the Premodern Non-Western World The Premodern West The Modern Invention of Human Rights The American and French Revolutions Approaching the Universal Declaration Expanding the Subjects and Substance of Human Rights 6. The Relative Universality of Human Rights "Universal" and "Relative" The Universality of Internationally Recognized Human Rights Three Levels of Universality and Particularity Relative Universality: A Multidimensional Perspective 7. Universality in a World of Particularities Culture and the Relativity of Human Rights Advocating Universality in a World of Particularities Part III. Human Rights and Human Dignity 8. Dignity: Particularistic and Universalistic Conceptions in the West Dignitas: The Roman Roots of Dignity Biblical Conceptions: Kavod and Imago Dei Kant Rights and Dignity in the West Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights 9. Humanity, Dignity, and Politics in Confucian China Cosmology and Ethics Confucians and the Early Empires "Neo-Confucianism" and Song Imperial Rule Twentieth-Century Encounters with "Rights" Human Rights and Asian Values 10. Humans and Society in Hindu South Asia Cosmology Social Philosophy Caste Hindu Universalism Opposition to Caste Discrimination Hinduism and Human Rights in Contemporary India Part IV. Human Rights and International Action 11. International Human Rights Regimes The Global Human Rights Regime Political Foundations of the Global Regime Regional Human Rights Regimes Single-Issue Human Rights Regimes Assessing Multilateral Human Rights Mechanisms The Evolution of Human Rights Regimes 12. Human Rights and Foreign Policy Human Rights and the National Interest International Human Rights and National Identity Means and Mechanisms of Bilateral Action The Aims of Human Rights Policy Foreign Policy and Human Rights Policy The Limits of International Action Appendix: Arguments against International Human Rights Policies Part V. Contemporary Issues 13. Human Rights, Democracy, and Development The Contemporary Language of Legitimacy Defining Democracy Democracy and Human Rights Defining Development Development-Rights Tradeoffs Development and Civil and Political Rights Markets and Economic and Social Rights The Liberal Democratic Welfare State 14. The West and Economic and Social Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Domestic Western Practice The International Human Rights Covenants Functional and Regional Organizations Further Evidence of Western Support Understanding the Sources of the Myth Why Does It Matter? 15. Humanitarian Intervention against Genocide Intervention and International Law Humanitarian Intervention and International Law The Moral Standing of the State Politics, Partisanship, and International Order Changing Conceptions of Security and Sovereignty Justifying the Anti-genocide Norm Changing Legal Practices "Justifying" Humanitarian Intervention Mixed Motives and Consistency Politics and the Authority to Intervene Judging the Kosovo Intervention Darfur and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention 16. Nondiscrimination for All: The Case of Sexual Minorities The Right to Nondiscrimination Nondiscrimination and Political Struggle Discrimination against Sexual Minorities Nature, (Im)morality, and Public Morals Strategies for Inclusion Paths of Incremental Change References Index

Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship

Abstract: An ideal of universal citizenship has driven the emancipatory momentum of modern political life. Ever since the bourgeoisie challenged aristocratic privileges by claiming equal political rights for citizens as such, women, workers, Jews, blacks, and others have pressed for inclusion in that citizenship status. Modern political theory asserted the equal moral worth of all persons, and social movements of the oppressed took this seriously as implying the inclusion of all persons in full citizenship status under the equal protection of the law. Citizenship for everyone, and everyone the same qua citizen. Modern political thought generally assumed that the universality of citizenship in the sense of citizenship for all implies a universality of citizenship in the sense that citizenship status transcends particularity and difference. Whatever the social or group differences among citizens, whatever their inequalities of wealth, status, and power in the everyday activities of civil society, citizenship gives everyone the same status as peers in the political public. With equality conceived as sameness, the ideal of universal citizenship carries at least two meanings in addition to the extension of citizenship to everyone: (a) universality defined as general in opposition to particular; what citizens have in common as opposed to how they differ, and (b) universality in the sense of laws and rules that say the same for all and apply to all in the same way; laws and rules that are blind to individual and group differences. During this angry, sometimes bloody, political struggle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many among the excluded and disadvantaged thought that winning full citizenship status, that is, equal political and civil rights, would lead to their freedom and equality. Now in the late twentieth century, however, when citizenship rights have been formally extended to all groups in liberal capitalist societies, some groups still find themselves treated as second-class citizens. Social movements of oppressed and excluded groups have recently asked why extension of equal citizenship rights has not led to social justice and equality. Part of the answer is

Constructing the Political Spectacle

Abstract: Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions and Actions in Organizations

Abstract: Part 1 Organizations and inconsistent norms: institutional environments inconsistent environments. Part 2 The political organization principle: the ideal type of action organization the ideal type of political organization organizations in the real world - politics and action politics in organizational processes. Part 3 Politics in practice: attempts at action produce politics politics again inconsistencies in ideologies and roles the dominance of politics. Part 4 Decisions as transition between politics and action: the case of Greaton decision-makers as defensive scrutineers opinion-making implementation decision-makers as bearers of responsibility. Part 5 Responsibility as an impediment to influence - the case of budgeting: budgeting budgeting under stagnation roles and actors in the budget process the allocation of responsibility control - supply and demand budgeting as an instrument for external financing. Part 6 The responsible organization: society as hierarchy implementation or legitimation an illustration Stanby - implementation or legitimation? the role of politics. Part 7 Projects and organizations: two projects strategies for meeting external demands - delegation, rationality and ideology. Part 8 Ideas, decisions and actions in organizations: ideas and actions alternative interpretations of organizational decision-making decision-making and the allocation of responsibility decisions as legitimation four roles of decisions. Part 9 The dynamics of hypocrisy: the paradoxes of presentation and result public organizations and the publicness of organizations implications for organizational stakeholders.

Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988

Abstract: From the end of Georgia's white primary in 1946 to the present, Atlanta has been a community of growing black electoral strength and stable white economic power. Yet the ballot box and investment money never became opposing weapons in a battle for domination. Instead, Atlanta experienced the emergence and evolution of a biracial coalition. Although beset by changing conditions and significant cost pressures, this coalition has remained intact. At critical junctures forces of cooperation overcame antagonisms of race and ideology. While retaining a critical distance from rational choice theory, author Clarence Stone finds the problem of collective action to be centrally important. The urban condition in America is one of weak and diffuse authority, and this situation favors any group that can act cohesively and control a substantial body of resources. Those endowed with a capacity to promote cooperation can attract allies and overcome oppositional forces. On the negative side of the political ledger, Atlanta's style of civic cooperation is achieved at a cost. Despite an ambitious program of physical redevelopment, the city is second only to Newark, New Jersey, in the poverty rate. Social problems, conflict of interest issues, and inattention to the production potential of a large lower class bespeak a regime unable to address a wide range of human needs. No simple matter of elite domination, it is a matter of governing arrangements built out of selective incentives and inside deal-making; such arrangements can serve only limited purposes. The capacity of urban regimes to bring about elaborate forms of physical redevelopment should not blind us to their incapacity to address deeply rooted social problems. Stone takes the historical approach seriously. The flow of events enables us to see how some groups deploy their resource advantages to fashion governing arrangements to their liking. But no one enjoys a completely free hand; some arrangements are more workable than others. Stone's theory-minded analysis of key events enables us to ask why and what else might be done. "Regime Politics" offers readers a political history of postwar Atlanta and an elegant, innovative, and incisive conceptual framework destined to influence the way urban politics is studied.

Structure and process, politics and policy: administrative arrangements and the political control of agencies

Abstract: I N 1977, Congress substantially revised the Clean Air Act,1 the nation's flagship legislation on environmental policy. Many changes were considered, and among those that Congress adopted was an intricate redefinition of the procedures to be used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in making rules.2 The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 (1970 Amendments), which had moved responsibility for air pollution regulation from the Public Health Service in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to the newly minted EPA, set up the EPA's rulemaking procedures as \"informal\" with few procedural requirements and considerable decisional flexibility.' After extensive debate in both the 94th and 95th Congresses,4 Congress changed this to a new hybrid process (more formal than \"informal rulemaking\" but less formal than \"formal rulemaking\") that requires a more elaborate written record and a clearer statement of agency intentions and of the bases for its decisions.' As a reading of the committee reports and floor debates about these and similar proposals makes clear, legislators regard the choice of administrative structure and process as vitally important.6 The legislative history of admin-

The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations

Abstract: John Maynard Keynes once observed that the "ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood." The contributors to this volume take that assertion seriously. In a full-scale study of the impact of Keynesian doctrines across nations, their essays trace the reception accorded Keynesian ideas, initially during the 1930s and then in the years after World War II, in a wide range of nations, including Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Scandinavia. The contributors review the latest historical evidence to explain why some nations embraced Keynesian policies while others did not. At a time of growing interest in comparative public policy-making, they examine the central issue of how and why particular ideas acquire influence over policy and politics.Based on three years of collaborative research for the Social Science Research Council, the volume takes up central themes in contemporary economics, political science, and history. The contributors are Christopher S. Allen, Marcello de Cecco, Peter Alexis Gourevitch, Eleanor M. Hadley, Peter A. Hall, Albert O. Hirschman, Harold James, Bradford A. Lee, Jukka Pekkarinen, Pierre Rosanvallon, Walter S. Salant, Margaret Weir, and Donald Winch.

World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations

Abstract: Introduction PART I: Rules 1. Constructivism 2. Law and Language 3. Cognition, Judgement, Culture 4. The Problem of Order PART II: Rule 5. The Presumption of Anarchy 6. Political Society 7. World Politics 8. Rationality and Resources

Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984.

Abstract: Foreward Introduction: Foucault and the politics of Experience Lawrence D. Kritzman 1. The Minimalist Self 2. Critical Theory/Intellectual History 3. An aesthetics of Existence 4. Politics and Reason 5. The Art of Telling the Truth 6. On Power 7. Power and Sex 8. The Dangerous Individual 9. Practicing Criticism 10. Social Security 11. Confinement, Psychiatry, Prison 12. Iran: The Spirit of a World Without Spirit 13. The Battle for Chastity 14. The Return of Morality 15. The Concern for Truth 16. Sexual Morality and the Law 17. Sexual Choice, Sexual Act: Foucault and Homosexuality 18. The Functions of Literature 19. Contemporary Music and Its Public 20. The Masked Philosopher

The New Realities

Abstract: Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley. Most of these passes are simply topography with little or no difference in climate, language or culture between the valleys on either side. But some passes are different: they are true divides. History too knows such divides. Once these divides have been crossed, the social and political landscape changes; the social and political climate is different, and so is the social and political language. Some time between 1965 and 1973 we passed over such a divide and entered "the next century". This work anticipates the central issues of a rapidly changing world. When it was initially published in 1989, some reviewers mistakenly thought the text was a book about the future, or in other words, a series of predictions. But, as indicated in the title, the text discusses realities. Peter Drucker argues that events of the next 30 to 40 years, or even further on, had already largely been defined by events of the previous half-century. Thus, Drucker discusses episodes in world history that had not yet happened at the time of the book's initial publication, such as: the archaism of the hope for "salvation by society" in "The End of FDR's America"; the democratization of the Soviet Union in "When the Russian Empire is Gone"; the technology boom of the 1990s in "The Information-Based Organization"; and the evolution of management in "Management as Social Function and Liberal Art". This edition features a new preface by the author that discusses both reactions to the original publication of the book and how important it is for decision-makers to consider the past and present when planning for the future.

Seigniorage and Political Instability

Abstract: The importance of seigniorage relative to other sources of government revenue differs markedly across countries. This paper tries to explain this regularity by studying a political model of tax reform. The model implies that countries with a more unstable and polarized political system will have more inefficient tax structures and, thus, will rely more heavily on seigniorage. This prediction of the model is tested on cross-sectional data for 79 countries. We find that, after controlling for other variables, political instability is positively associated with seigniorage. (JEL E52, E62, F41)

Unifying Political Methodology: The Likelihood Theory of Statistical Inference

Abstract: One of the hallmarks of the development of political science as a discipline has been the creation of new methodologies by scholars within the discipline--methodologies that are well-suited to the analysis of political data. Gary King has been a leader in the development of these new approaches to the analysis of political data. In his book, "Unifying Political Methodology," King shows how the likelihood theory of inference offers a unified approach to statistical modeling for political research and thus enables us to better analyze the enormous amount of data political scientists have collected over the years. Newly reissued, this book is a landmark in the development of political methodology and continues to challenge scholars and spark controversy."Gary King's "Unifying Political Methodology" is at once an introduction to the likelihood theory of statistical inference and an evangelist's call for us to change our ways of doing political methodology. One need not accept the altar call to benefit enormously from the book, but the intellectual debate over the call for reformation is likely to be the enduring contribution of the work."--Charles Franklin, "American Political Science Review""King's book is one of the only existing books which deal with political methodology in a clear and consistent framework. The material in it is now and will continue to be essential reading for all serious students and researchers in political methodology." --R. Michael Alvarez, California Institute of Tech-nologyGary King is Professor of Government, Harvard University. One of the leading thinkers in political methodology, he is the author of "A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data" and other books and articles.

The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783

Abstract: Under the later Stuarts, England became a major European military power, English armies and navies grew to an unprecedented size, civilian administration burgeoned and taxation, public borrowing and spending on war reached new heights. This work examines the causes of the emergence in England of this fiscal-military state and the features which distinguished it from European powers. It also charts the effect of these developments on society at large: their impact on the economy, on social structure and politics and their role in developing special interest groups and lobbies. Thus it provided an interpretative framework which links adminstration with politics, public finance with the economy and foreign policy with domestic affairs.

making empire respectable: the politics of race and sexual morality in 20th-century colonial cultures

Abstract: With sustained challenges to European rule in African and Asian colonies in the early 20th century, sexual prescriptions by class, race and gender became increasingly central to the politics of rule and subject to new forms of scrutiny by colonial states. Focusing on the Netherlands Indies and French Indochina, but drawing on other contexts, this article examines how the very categories of “colonizer” and “colonized” were increasingly secured through forms of sexual control which defined the common political interests of European colonials and the cultural investments by which they identified themselves. The metropolitan and colonial discourses on health, “racial degeneracy,” and social reform from this period reveal how sexual sanctions demarcated positions of power by enforcing middle-class conventions of respectability and thus the personal and public boundaries of race.[sexuality, race-thinking, hygiene, colonial cultures, Southeast Asia]

The political economy of protection

Abstract: This book examines how trade policy is determined in democratic countries, and illustrates how protectionist policies are engendered by political processes that allow groups to pursue their own interests.

The rise of professional society: England since 1880

Abstract: This long awaited sequel to The Origins of Modern English Society explores the rise of the forgotten middle class' to show a new principle of social organisation. A rare example of a work both accessible to the general reader and indispensable to the professional scholar.' - The Observer No social historian can afford to be without it.' - New Statesman and Society ...an audacious and exciting piece of synthesis. His mastery of political, economic, social and urban history is intimidating.' - New York Review of Books Now available in paperback, this book is the long awaited sequel to The Origins of Modern English Society . Stimulating and controversial, it will be widely read by all those who seek an understanding not just of Britain since 1880, but of all mature economies of the world today. The theme is the rise of 'the forgotten middle class', the non capitalist or professional class which the chief social commentators left out of their analyses. England, like all post-industrial societies, has come to be dominated by growing numbers of 'experts'. As Harold Perkin shows, a new principle of social organization has emerged, based on trained expertise, selection and reward by merit - in a word, on professionalism.

The Personal is Political

Abstract: This article investigates similarities and differences in the relationship between "public" and "private" in the lives of women and men who hold elective and appointive office. An analysis of data collected through surveys of federal appointees and state legislators indicates that men's political choices may be more influenced by private sphere considerations than commonly believed, but that private sphere concerns are nevertheless of greater significance to women than to men. Findings provide support for a conceptualization of public and private as an interrelated system of social relations rather than as two largely separate spheres of existence.

Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics

Abstract: This is an analysis of the failure of the interaction between the news media and their audiences to create the democratic potential everyone assumes occurs with such interaction. Drawing illustrations mainly from the Carter and Reagan years, the book shows the dilemma facing the news media and their audience today. The book offers a portrait of citizenship in America, defined by the public's changing levels of political knowledge and participation from 1952 to 1984. Politically unsophisticated, the mass audience prefers simple, symbolic news, which means that journalists can offer little of the detached, detailed explorations of policy issues that would provide the public with the information needed to hold government to close account.

Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

Abstract: Over the past quarter-century, Robert William Fogel has blazed new trails in scholarship on the lives of the slaves in the American South. Now he presents the dramatic rise and fall of the "peculiar institution," as the abolitionist movement rose into a powerful political force that pulled down a seemingly impregnable system.

Beyond the State: Civil Society and Associational Life in Africa

Abstract: The current scholarly preoccupation with the state may obscure more than it reveals for students of politics in sub-Saharan Africa. The weakly formed state in Africa—beset by decline in economic production and political authority—is now retreating from overambitious attempts at social transformation. The time is therefore ripe for societal actors to play an enhanced role in political change. This article reviews the current literature on state-society relations in Africa with particular emphasis on the nature of African associational life and the extent to which it is taking on a politically organized form as an identifiable civil society. The author proposes a theoretical framework and research agenda that takes account of the capacity of either state or societal actors to exercise a range of options to engage or disengage.

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People

Abstract: This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers.A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.

The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 [Book Review]

Abstract: Some previous histories of southern education, such as Charles W. Dabney's classic Universal Education in the South, slighted the role of American Americans in shaping their own education. James Anderson's new book, the best single volume on black education in the post-bellum south, commits the opposite error. Anderson exaggerates the power and autonomy of southern ex-slaves during Reconstruction and of southern blacks in general during the Jim Crow era, and correspondingly underemphasizes the significance for their education of the efforts of former free people of colour, northern blacks and whites and white southerners. While meriting praise for its uncovering of the role of ordinary people struggling to improve their educational lot, Anderson's revisionist book almost wholly excludes electoral, legislative and administrative politics. The exclusions and lopsided emphases make it nearly as one-sided and incomplete as the white-centred, bureaucrat-dominated history that it seeks to replace.