Politics

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

Norms, culture, and world politics: insights from sociology's institutionalism

Abstract: International relations scholars have become increasingly interested in norms of behavior, intersubjective understandings, culture, identity, and other social features of political life. However, our investigations largely have been carried out in disciplinary isolation. We tend to treat our arguments that these things "matter" as discoveries and research into social phenomena as forays into uncharted territory. However, scholars within the fields of international law, history, anthropology, and sociology have always known that social realities influence behavior, and each field has incorporated these social constructions in different ways into research programs. Sociologists working in organization theory have developed a particularly powerful set of arguments about the roles of norms and culture in international life that pose direct challenges to realist and liberal theories in political science. Their arguments locate causal force in an expanding and deepening Western world culture that emphasizes Weberian rationality as the means to both

Envisioning Real Utopias

Abstract: Rising inequality of income and power, along with the recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet there has been a global retreat by the Left: on the assumption that liberal capitalism is the only game in town, political theorists tend to dismiss as utopian any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations. As Fredric Jameson first argued, it is now easier for us to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism. Erik Olin Wright's "Envisioning Real Utopias" is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. Building on a lifetime's work analyzing the class system in the developed world, as well as exploring the problem of the transition to a socialist alternative, Wright has now completed a systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors. "Envisioning Real Utopias" aims to put the social back into socialism, laying the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.

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.

Modernizing Governance: New Labour, Policy and Society

Abstract: Introduction and the Question of Governance Understanding Governance The Dynamics of Institutional Change The Third Way Modernizing Social Democracy Modernizing Government The Politics of Reform Modernising Services The Politics of Performance Joined Up Government The Politics of Partnership Public Participation The Politics of Representation Remaking Civil Society The Politics of Inclusion Conclusion The Politics of Governance

The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU

Abstract: The book critically engages with theoretical developments in international relations and security studies to develop a fresh conceptual framework for studying security. Contents 1. Politics of insecurity, technology and the political 2. Security framing: the question of the meaning of security 3. Displacing the spectre of the state in security studies: From referent objects to techniques of government 4. Securitizing migration: Freedom from existential threats and the constitution of insecure communities 5. European integration and societal insecurity 6. Freedom and security in the EU: A Foucaultian view on spill-over 7. Migration, securitization and the question of political community in the EU 8. De-securitizing migration: Security knowledge and concepts of the political 9. Conclusion: the politics of framing insecurity