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Showing papers on "Politics published in 1993"


Book
01 Aug 1993
TL;DR: The conditions associated with the existence and stability of democratic society have been a leading concern of political philosophy as discussed by the authors, and the problem is attacked from a sociological and behavioral standpoint, by presenting a number of hypotheses concerning some social requisites for democracy, and by discussing some of the data available to test these hypotheses.
Abstract: The conditions associated with the existence and stability of democratic society have been a leading concern of political philosophy. In this paper the problem is attacked from a sociological and behavioral standpoint, by presenting a number of hypotheses concerning some social requisites for democracy, and by discussing some of the data available to test these hypotheses. In its concern with conditions—values, social institutions, historical events—external to the political system itself which sustain different general types of political systems, the paper moves outside the generally recognized province of political sociology. This growing field has dealt largely with the internal analysis of organizations with political goals, or with the determinants of action within various political institutions, such as parties, government agencies, or the electoral process. It has in the main left to the political philosopher the larger concern with the relations of the total political system to society as a whole.

5,525 citations


Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: In this paper, Drucker describes how every few hundred years a sharp transformation has taken place and greatly affected society - its worldview, its basic values, its business and economics, and its social and political structure.
Abstract: From the Publisher: A probing and incisive analysis of the major world transformation from the Age of Capitalism to the Knowledge Society and how it will affect society, economics, business, and politics now and in the years ahead. In Post-Capitalist Society Peter Drucker describes how every few hundred years a sharp transformation has taken place and greatly affected society - its worldview, its basic values, its business and economics, and its social and political structure. According to Drucker, we are right in the middle of another time of radical change, from the Age of Capitalism and the Nation-State to a Knowledge Society and a Society of Organizations. The primary resource in the post-capitalist society will be knowledge and the leading social groups will be "knowledge workers." Looking backward and forward, Drucker discusses the Industrial Revolution, the Productivity Revolution, the Management Revolution, and the governance of corporations. He explains the new functions of organizations, the economics of knowledge, and productivity as a social and economic priority. He covers the transformation from Nation-State to Megastate, the new pluralism of political systems, and the needed government turnaround. Finally, Drucker details the knowledge issues and the role and use of knowledge in post-capitalist society. Divided into three parts - Society, Polity, and Knowledge - Post-Capitalist Society provides a searching look into the future as well as a vital analysis of the past, focusing on the challenges of the present transition period and how, if we can understand and respond to them, we can create a new future.

4,459 citations


Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: Baumgartner and Jones as mentioned in this paper extended their work to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States and pointed out that short-term, single-issue analysis cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media.
Abstract: When "Agendas and Instability in American Politics" appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the "Journal of Politics" predicted that it would 'become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics'. That prediction proved true, and in this long-awaited second edition, Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analysis cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Baumgartner and Jones provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues - including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety - to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

3,911 citations


Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: This paper argued that culturally based "civilizations" exert stronger holds on people than economic systems, levels of development, or even political systems, arguing that culture and civilization are distinct from economic and political life, a view that many scholars of political culture would dispute.
Abstract: Huntington contends that culturally based “civilizations” exert stronger holds on people than economic systems, levels of development, or even political systems. Clearly, he views culture and civilization as, at least partially and importantly, distinct from economic and political life, a view that many scholars of political culture (e.g., Inglehart 1997; Putnam with Leonardi and Nanetti 1993; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990; Eckstein 1988) would dispute. In his later expansion of this article’s themes, Huntington focuses particularly on language and religion as clear indices of the distinctiveness of various civilizations (1996).

3,708 citations


Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: The Puzzle of Participation in American Politics as discussed by the authors is the political logic of political participation in American politics, and it has been solved by the mobilization and participation of citizens in government and electoral politics.
Abstract: Foreword by Keith Reeves of Swarthmore College 1 Introduction: The Puzzle of Participation in American Politics 2 The Political Logic of Political Participation 3 Citizen Participation in American Politics, 1952-1990 4 Citizen Participation in Governmental Politics 5 Citizen Participation in Electoral Politics 6 Mobilization and Participation in Electoral Politics 7 Solving the Puzzle 8 Conclusion: Mobilization and Political Equality Appendix A Participation in Governmental Politics: Data Sources Appendix B Participation in Electoral Politics: Data Sources Appendix C Participation in Governmental Politics: Tables Appendix D Participation in Electoral Politics: Tables Appendix E Mobilization and Participation in Electoral Politics: Tables

2,973 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Theda Skocpol1
TL;DR: Theda Skocpol et al. as discussed by the authors show that the United States nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than 40 states enacted social spending, labour regulations, and health education programmes to assist American mothers and children.
Abstract: It is generally believed that the United States lagged behind the countries of Western Europe in developing modern social policies. But, as Theda Skocpol shows in this historical analysis, the United States actually pioneered generous social spending for many of its elderly, disabled and dependent citizens. During the late 19th century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Some Americans hoped to expand veterans' benefits into pensions for all of the needy elderly and social insurance for workingmen and their families. But such hopes went against the logic of political reform in the Progressive era. Generous social spending faded along with the Civil War generation. Instead, the U.S. nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than 40 states enacted social spending, labour regulations, and health education programmes to assist American mothers and children. As Skocpol shows, many of these policies were enacted even before American women were granted the right to vote. Banned from electoral politics, they turned their energies to creating huge, nation-spanning federations of women's clubs, which collaborated with reform-minded professional women to spur legislative action across the country. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

2,288 citations


Book
09 Sep 1993
TL;DR: In Moral Boundaries as mentioned in this paper, Tronto provides one of the most original responses to the controversial questions surrounding women and caring and demonstrates that feminist thinkers have failed to realise the political context which has shaped their debates about care.
Abstract: In Moral Boundaries Joan C. Tronto provides one of the most original responses to the controversial questions surrounding women and caring. Tronto demonstrates that feminist thinkers have failed to realise the political context which has shaped their debates about care. It is her belief that care cannot be a useful moral and political concept until its traditional and ideological associations as a "women's morality" are challenged.Moral Boundaries contests the association of care with women as empirically and historically inaccurate, as well as politically unwise. In our society, members of unprivileged groups such as the working classes and people of color also do disproportionate amounts of caring. Tronto presents care as one of the central activites of human life and illustrates the ways in which society degrades the importance of caring in order to maintain the power of those who are privileged.

2,253 citations


Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: Cox and McCubbins as mentioned in this paper view the majority parties in the House as a species of "legislative cartel" and argue that the majority party has all the structural advantages.
Abstract: This book provides an incisive new look at the inner workings of the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. Reevaluating the role of parties and committees, Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins view parties in the House - especially majority parties - as a species of 'legislative cartel.' These cartels usurp the power, theoretically resident in the House, to make rules governing the structure and process of legislation. Possession of this rule-making power leads to two main consequences. First, the legislative process in general, and the committee system in particular, is stacked in favor of majority party interests. Second, because the majority party has all the structural advantages, the key players in most legislative deals are members of that party and the majority party's central agreements are facilitated by cartel rules and policed by the cartel's leadership. Debunking prevailing arguments about the weakening of congressional parties, Cox and McCubbins powerfully illuminate the ways in which parties exercise considerable discretion in organizing the House to carry out its work. This work will have an important impact on the study of American politics, and will greatly interest students of Congress, the presidency, and the political party system.

1,942 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Paul Pierson1
TL;DR: The authors suggest that policies generate resources and incentives for political actors, and they provide those actors with information and cues that encourage particular interpretations of the political world, and that these mechanisms operate in a variety of ways, but have significant effects on government elites, interest groups, and mass public.
Abstract: As governmental activity has expanded, scholars have been increasingly inclined to suggest that the structure of public policies has an important influence on patterns of political change. Yet research on policy feedback is mostly anecdotal, and there has so far been little attempt to develop more general hypotheses about the conditions under which policies produce politics. Drawing on recent research, this article suggests that feedback occurs through two main mechanisms. Policies generate resources and incentives for political actors, and they provide those actors with information and cues that encourage particular interpretations of the political world. These mechanisms operate in a variety of ways, but have significant effects on government elites, interest groups, and mass publics. By investigating how policies influence different actors through these distinctive mechanisms, the article outlines a research agenda for moving from the current focus on illustrative case studies to the investigation of broader propositions about how and when policies are likely to be politically consequential.

1,708 citations


Book
17 Dec 1993
TL;DR: Mouffe argues that liberal democracy misunderstands the problems of ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts because of its inadequate conception of politics and suggests that the democratic revolution may be jeopardised by a lack of understanding of citizenship, community and pluralism as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In this work, Mouffe argues that liberal democracy misunderstands the problems of ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts because of its inadequate conception of politics. He suggests that the democratic revolution may be jeopardised by a lack of understanding of citizenship, community and pluralism. Mouffe examines the work of Schmidt and Rawls and explores feminist theory, in an attempt to place the project of radical and plural democracy on a more adequate foundation than is provided by liberal theory.

1,693 citations


Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: The Politics of Common Sense: Why the Right is Winning 3. Cultural Politics and the Text 4. Regulating Official Knowledge 5. Creating the Captive Audience: Channel One and the Political Economy of the Text 6. Whose Curriculum is This Anyway? (with Susan Jungck) 7. Hey Man I'm Good! The Art and Politics of Creating New Knowledge in Schools 8. Education, Power, and Personal Biography: An Interview as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: 1. Introduction: The Politics of Official Knowledge 2. The Politics of Common-sense: Why the Right is Winning 3. Cultural Politics and the Text 4. Regulating Official Knowledge 5. Creating the Captive Audience: Channel One and the Political Economy of the Text 6. Whose Curriculum is This Anyway? (with Susan Jungck) 7. Hey Man, I'm Good! The Art and Politics of Creating New Knowledge in Schools 8. The Politics of Pedagogy and the Building of Community Appendix Education, Power, and Personal Biography: An Interview.

01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: Schmitter et al. as mentioned in this paper presented an analysis of the role of the United States Agency for International Development (UID) in the development of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty of Lisbon.
Abstract: Philippe C. Schmitter is professor of political science and director of the Center for European Studies at Stanford University. Terry Lynn Karl is associate professor of political science and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the same institution. The original, longer version of this essay was written at the request of the United States Agency for International Development, which is not responsible for its content.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the ability to craft arrangements through which resources can be mobilized, thus enabling a community to accomplish difficult and non-routine goals, is a creative exercise of political choice.
Abstract: Regime theory starts with the proposition that governing capacity is not easily captured through the electoral process. Governing capacity is created and maintained by bringing together coalition partners with appropriate resources, nongovernmental as well as governmental. If a governing coalition is to be viable, it must be able to mobilize resources commensurate with its main policy agenda. The author uses this reasoning as the foundation/or comparing regimes by the nature and difficulty of the government tasks they undertake and the level and kind of resources required for these tasks. Political leadership, he argues, is a creative exercise of political choice, involving the ability to craft arrangements through which resources can be mobilized, thus enabling a community to accomplish difficult and nonroutine goals.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the nineteenth-century liberalism as a mode of rule produced a series of problems about the governability of individuals, families and markets and populations.
Abstract: This paper outlines Foucault's concept of governmentality and argues for its contemporary significance. It focuses upon the role that liberal modes of government accord to the exercise of authority over individual and collective conduct by expertise. The paper argues that nineteenth-century liberalism as a mode of rule produced a series of problems about the governability of individuals, families and markets and populations. Expertise provided a formula for resolving these problems instantiated in a range of complex and heterogenous ‘machines’ for the government of individual and collective conduct. Over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries one sees the rise of a new formula for the exercise of rule, which one can call ‘the welfare state’ - within which expertise becomes linked to the formal political apparatus in new ways. the strategies of rule generated under this formula of ‘the welfare state’ have changed fundamentally over the last fifty years. A new formula of rule is taking shape, one...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the case of science policy bureaucracies, this paper found that indicators of state conditions and functional need for these entities are not correlated with the pattern for their adoption, rather, adoption was prompted by the activities of an international organization which "taught" states the value of science and established the coordination of science as an appropriate, and even a necessary, role for states.
Abstract: Most explanations for the creation of new state institutions locate the cause of change in the conditions or characteristics of the states themselves. Some aspect of a state's economic, social, political, or military situation is said to create a functional need for the new bureaucracy which then is taken up by one or more domestic groups who succeed in changing the state apparatus. However, changes in state structure may be prompted not only by changing conditions of individual states but also by socialization and conformance with international norms. In the case of one organizational innovation recently adopted by states across the international system, namely, science policy bureaucracies, indicators of state conditions and functional need for these entities are not correlated with the pattern for their adoption. Instead, adoption was prompted by the activities of an international organization which “taught” states the value of science policy organizations and established the coordination of science as an appropriate, and even a necessary, role for states. This finding lends support to constructivist or reflective theories that treat states as social entities shaped by international social action, as opposed to more conventional treatments of states as autonomous international agents.



Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the promise of democracy and the individual's right to be alone in the pursuit of it, and discuss the role of women in political thought and their role in this process.
Abstract: Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Fraternity. 2. So Whata s Wrong with the Individual?. 3. Universal Pretensions in Political Thought. 4. Citizenship and Feminist Theory. 5. Democracy and Difference. 6. Must Feminists Give up on Liberal Democracy?. 7. The Promise of Democracy. 8. Pluralism, Solidarity and Change. Index.

Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: The Social Contract is one of the three most influential treatises ever written as discussed by the authors, the others being PLato's Republic and Marx's Das Kapital, and it continues to exert a direct influence on contemporary political thought.
Abstract: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT is one of three most influential treatises ever written (the others being PLato's REPUBLIC and Marx's DAS KAPITAL) Of the three it is safe to say that only THE SOCIAL CONTRACT is much read in its entirety today, and it continues to exert a direct influence on contemporary political thought. In it - and in the three DISCOURCES here printed with it - Rousseau discusses the nature of liberty, human rights and the state; the origins of private property the function of education; the economic structure of society; and the relationship between individuals and the community. This revised re-issue of G. D. H. Cole's celebrated translation, long published by Everyman, includes sections from the manuscript draft of the text and is accompanied by an extensive new introduction, chronology and bibliography prepared by Professor Alan Ryan.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, the authors describes the development and testing of survey-based measures of political knowledge, with special attention to the existing items on the National Election Study surveys, and illustrates the use of a variety of techniques for item analysis and scale construction.
Abstract: Research in political behavior has increasingly turned to the cognitions underlying attitudes. The simplest of these cognitions are political facts-the bits of information about politics that citizens hold. While other key concepts in political science-partisanship, trust, tolerance-have widely used (if still controversial) measures that facilitate comparisons across time and among studies, the discipline has no generally accepted measure of the public's level of political information. This paper describes the development and testing of survey-based measures of political knowledge, with special attention to the existing items on the National Election Study surveys. In so doing, it illustrates the use of a variety of techniques for item analysis and scale construction. We also present a recommended fiveitem knowledge index.

Book
09 Sep 1993
TL;DR: The authors collects together perspectives which challenge received notions of geography; which are in danger of becoming anachronisms, without a language to articulate the new space of resistance, the new politics of identity.
Abstract: In the last two decades, new political subjects have been created through the actions of the new social movements; often by asserting the unfixed and `overdetermined' character of identity. Further, in attempting to avoid essentialism, people have frequently looked to their territorial roots to establish their constituency. A cultural politics of resistance, as exemplified by Black politics, feminism, and gay liberation, has developed struggles to turn sites of oppression and discrimintion into spaces of resistance. This book collects together perspectives which challenge received notions of geography; which are in danger of becoming anachronisms, without a language to articulate the new space of resistance, the new politics of identity.

Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: The political logic of economic reform in China is discussed in this paper, with a focus on authority relations between the Central Communist Party and government institutions in the People's Republic of China.
Abstract: Acknowledgments Formal Authority Relations Among Central Communist Party and Government Institutions in the People's Republic of China PART 1. INTRODUCTION 1. The Political Logic of Economic Reform 2. The Prereform Chinese Economy and the Decision to Initiate Market Reforms PART 2. CHINESE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 3. Authority Relations: The Communist Party and the Government 4. Leadership Incentives:- Political Succession and Reciprocal Accountability 5. Bargaining Arena: The Government Bureaucracy 6. Who Is Enfranchised in the Policy-making Process? 7. Decision Rules: Delegation by Consensus 8. Chinese Political Institutions and the Path of Economic Reforms PART 3* ECONOMIC REFORM POLICY-MAKING 9. Playing to the Provinces: Fiscal Decentralization and the Politics of Reform 10. Creating Vested Interests in Reform: Industrial Reform Takeoff, 1978-81 11. Leadership Succession and Policy Conflict: The Choice Between Profit Contracting and Substituting Tax-for-Profit, 1982-83 221 12. Building Bureaucratic Consensus: Formulating the Tax-for-Profit Policy, 1983-84 13. The Power of Particularism: Abortive Price Reform and the Revival of Profit Contracting, 1985-88 PART 4* CONCLUSION 14. The Political Lessons of Economic Reform in China Bibliography Index


BookDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the role of religious leaders in the political life of modern nations, even while acknowledging some religious nationalists' proclivity to violence and disregard of Western notions of human rights.
Abstract: Will the religious confrontations with secular authorities around the world lead to a new Cold War? Mark Juergensmeyer paints a provocative picture of the new religious revolutionaries altering the political landscape in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. Impassioned Muslim leaders in Egypt, Palestine and Algeria, political rabbis in Israel, militant Sikhs in India, and triumphant Catholic clergy in Eastern Europe are all players in Juergensmeyer's study of the explosive growth of religious movements that decisively reject Western ideas of secular nationalism. Juergensmeyer revises notions of religious revolutions. Instead of viewing religious nationalists as wild-eyed, anti-American fanatics, he reveals them as modern activists pursuing a legitimate form of politics. He explores the positive role religion can play in the political life of modern nations, even while acknowledging some religious nationalists' proclivity to violence and disregard of Western notions of human rights. Finally, he situates the growth of religious nationalism in the context of the political malaise of the modern West. Noting that the synthesis of traditional religion and secular nationalism yields a religious version of the modern nation-state, Juergensmeyer claims that such a political entity could conceivably embrace democratic values and human rights.

Book
01 Jul 1993
TL;DR: The authors argue that threats to ethno-national identity are replacing military concerns as the central focus of European insecurity and the interplay of these societal insecurities in West and East will determine both the political shape and stability of Europe for the next generation as well as the future of Europes relations with its Islamic periphery.
Abstract: This book argues that threats to ethno-national identity are replacing military concerns as the central focus of European insecurity. In Western Europe societal insecurity has replaced state sovereignty as the key to success or failure of European integration pushing concerns about identity and migration to the top of the political agenda and profoundly dividing peoples from their leaderships. In the East national identity has become the mainspring of post-Soviet political reorganisation raising a host of boundary and minority problems. The interplay of these societal insecurities in West and East will determine both the political shape and stability of Europe for the next generation as well as the future of Europes relations with its Islamic periphery. (EXCERPT)

Book
10 Oct 1993
TL;DR: Enloe's riveting new book "The Morning After" as discussed by the authors looks at the end of the Cold War and places women at the center of international politics, finding that women glimpse the possibilities of democratization and demilitarization within what is still a largely patriarchal world.
Abstract: Cynthia Enloe's riveting new book looks at the end of the Cold War and places women at the center of international politics. Focusing on the relationship between the politics of sexuality and the politics of militarism, Enloe charts the changing definitions of gender roles, sexuality, and militarism at the end of the twentieth century. In the gray dawn of this new era, Enloe finds that the politics of sexuality have already shifted irrevocably. Women glimpse the possibilities of democratization and demilitarization within what is still a largely patriarchal world. New opportunities for greater freedom are seen in emerging social movements - gays fighting for their place in the American military, Filipina servants rallying for their rights in Saudi Arabia, Danish women organizing against the European Community's Maastricht treaty. Enloe also documents the ongoing assaults against women as newly emerging nationalist movements serve to reestablish the privileges of masculinity. The voices of real women are heard in this book. They reach across cultures, showing the interconnections between military networks, jobs, domestic life, and international politics. "The Morning After" will spark new ways of thinking about the complexities of the post-Cold War period, and it will bring contemporary sexual politics into the clear light of day as no other book has done.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, Anderson argues that all nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all are dangerous dangerous, not in Eric Hobsbawm's sense as having to be opposed, but in the sense of representing relations to political power and to the technologies of violence.
Abstract: All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, snd all are dangerousdangerous, not in Eric Hobsbawm's sense as having to be opposed, but in the sense of representing relations to political power and to the technologies of violence. Nationalism, as Ernest Gellner notes, invents nations where they do not exist, and most modern nations, despite their appeal to an august and immemorial past, are of recent invention (Gellner, 1964). Benedict Anderson warns, however, that Gellner tends to assimilate 'invention' to 'falsity' rather than to 'imagining' and 'creation'. Anderson, by contrast, views nations as 'imagined communities' in the sense that they are systems of cultural representation whereby people come to imagine a shared experience of identification with an extended community (Anderson, 1991: 6). As such, nations are not simply phantasmagoria of the mind, but are historical and institutional practices through which social difference is invented and performed. Nationalism becomes, as a result, radically constitutive of people's identities, through social contests that are frequently violent and always gendered. But if the invented nature of nationalism has found wide theoretical currency, explorations of the gendering of the national imaginary have been conspicuously paltry. All nations depend on powerful constructions of gender. Despite nationalisms' ideological investment in the idea of popular unity, nations have historically amounted to the sanctioned institutionalization of gender difference. No nation in the world gives women and men the same access to the rights and resources of the nation-state. Rather than expressing the flowering into time of the organic essence of a timeless people, nations are contested systems of cultural representation that limit and legitimize peoples' access to the resources of the nation-state. Yet with the notable exception of Frantz Fanon, male theorists have seldom felt moved to explore how nationalism is


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors used coded data on 227 communal groups throughout the world to assess a general model of how and why they mobilize to defend and promote their collective interests, and found that cultural identity, inequalities, and historical loss of autonomy all contribute substantially to their grievances.
Abstract: Political protest and rebellion by communal groups has become a major impetus to domestic and international political change. This study uses new coded data on 227 communal groups throughout the world to assess a general model of how and why they mobilize to defend and promote their collective interests. Statistical analysis shows that cultural identity, inequalities, and historical loss of autonomy all contribute substantially to their grievances. Political mobilization, grievances, and the international diffusion and contagion of communal conflict jointly explain the extent of political action in the 1980s. Democracy, state power, and institutional change help determine whether conflict takes the form of protest or rebellion.

Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: The Rebirth of Urban Democracy as discussed by the authors examines cities that have created systems of neighborhood government and incorporated citizens in public policymaking and finds that neighborhood based participation is the key to revitalizing American democracy.
Abstract: In an era when government seems remote and difficult to approach, participatory democracy may seem a hopelessly romantic notion. Yet nothing is more crucial to the future of American democracy than to develop some way of spurring greater citizen participation. In this important book, Jeffrey Berry, Ken Portney, and Ken Thompson examine cities that have created systems of neighborhood government and incorporated citizens in public policymaking. Through careful research and analysis, the authors find that neighborhood based participation is the key to revitalizing American democracy. The Rebirth of Urban Democracy provides a thorough examination of five cities with strong citizen participation programs--Birmingham, Dayton, Portland, St. Paul, and San Antonio. In each city, the authors explore whether neighborhood associations encourage more people to participate; whether these associations are able to promote policy responsiveness on the art of local governments; and whether participation in these associations increases the capacity of people to take part in government. Finally, the authors outline the steps that can be taken to increase political participation in urban America. Berry, Portney, and Thomson show that citizens in participatory programs are able to get their issues on the public agenda and develop a stronger sense of community, greater trust in government officials, and more confidence in the political system. From a rigorous evaluation of surveys and interviews with thousands of citizens and policymakers, the authors also find that central governments in these cities are highly responsive to their neighborhoods and that less conflict exists among citizens and policymakers. The authors assert that these programs can provide a blueprint for major reform in cities across the country. They outline the components for successful participation programs and offer recommendations for those who want to get involved. They demonstrate that participation systems can influence citizens to become more knowledgeable, more productive, and more confident in government; and can provide more governments with a mechanism for being more responsive in setting priorities and formulating polices that closely approximate the true preferences of the people.