Politics

About: Politics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 263762 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5388913 citations.

Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education

Abstract: After decades of neglect, civic education is back on the agenda of political science in the United States. Despite huge increases in the formal educational attainment of the US population during the past 50 years, levels of political knowledge have barely budged. Today's college graduates know no more about politics than did high school graduates in 1950. Recent research indicates that levels of political knowledge affect the acceptance of democratic principles, attitudes toward specific issues, and political participation. There is evidence that political participation is in part a positional good and is shaped by relative as well as absolute levels of educational attainment. Contrary to findings from 30 years ago, recent research suggests that traditional classroom-based civic education can significantly raise political knowledge. Service learning—a combination of community-based civic experience and systematic classroom reflection on that experience—is a promising innovation, but program evaluations ha...

The art of political manipulation

Abstract: In twelve entertaining stories from history and current events, a noted political scientist and game theorist shows us how some of our heroes we as well as ordinary folk have manipulated their opponents in order to win political advantage. The stories come from many times and places, because manipulation of people by other people is universal: from the Roman Senate through the Constitutional Convention of 1787, to the Congress, state legislatures, and city councils of twentieth-century America. The results of manipulation are not trivial, as we see, for example, in Riker's account of Lincoln's outmaneuvering of Douglas in their debates and in his description of the parliamentary trick that defeated the Equal Rights Amendment only six years ago in the Virginia Senate. The tales can be enjoyed by anyone. For the scholar, they are held together by a concluding chapter in which Riker discusses the feature of politics that all of the manipulators exploited and sketches out the new political theory that explains why manipulation works the way it does. Preface Lincoln at Freeport Chauncey DePew and the Seventeenth Amendment The Flying Club Gouverneur Morris in the Philadelphia Convention Heresthetic in Fiction Camouflaging the Gerrymander Pliny the Younger on Parliamentary Law Trading Votes at the Constitutional Convention How to Win on a Roll Call by Not Voting Warren Magnuson and Nerve Gas Exploiting the Powell Amendment Reed and Cannon Conclusion "A useful and entertaining informal essay on political tactics that will have direct utility in the classroom."-Douglas W. Rae, Yale University William H. Riker is Wilson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester and a former president of the American Political Science Association. He is the author of numerous books, including Theory of Political Coalitions, a classic in the field.

Global Business Regulation

Abstract: Across an amazing sweep of the critical areas of business regulation - from contract, intellectual property and corporations law, to trade, telecommunications, labour standards, drugs, food, transport and environment - this book confronts the question of how the regulation of business has shifted from national to global institutions. Based on interviews with 500 international leaders in business and government, this book examines the role played by global institutions such as the WTO, the OECD, IMF, Moody's and the World Bank, as well as various NGOs and significant individuals. The authors argue that effective and decent global regulation depends on the determination of individuals to engage with powerful agendas and decision-making bodies that would otherwise be dominated by concentrated economic interests. This book will become a standard reference for readers in business, law, politics and international relations.

From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict

Abstract: A trenchant analysis of the attempts to mediate the transition from oppression to freedom, and a warning of the potentially disastrous challenges that face burgeoning democracies. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many proclaimed the triumph of liberal democracy as they watched democratization sweep through formerly authoritarian countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and East Asia. Yet the 1990s turned out to be a decade marked by chronic nationalist conflict, and the sense of democratic triumph turned to frustration. In From Voting to Violence, Jack Snyder shows how democratization can actually exacerbate nationalist fervor and ethnic conflict if the conditions permitting a successful transition are not in place. Arguing that international organizations can cause conflict rather than averting it in their rush to establish democratic governments and punish outgoing leaders, he prescribes policies that will make transitions less dangerous and allow fledgling democracies to flourish. In the light of such tragic examples as Weimar Germany and contemporary Bosnia--each drawn into a spiral of ethnic hatred and civil war by political leaders manipulating nationalist sentiments--From Voting to Violence questions the sometimes rash optimism of liberal democracy that would rush to democracy at the cost of freedom.