Politics

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

Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation

Abstract: A growing chorus of scholars laments the apparent decline of political participation in America, and the negative implications of this trend for American democracy. This article questions this position – arguing that previous studies misdiagnosed the sources of political change and the consequences of changing norms of citizenship for Americans' political engagement. Citizenship norms are shifting from a pattern of duty-based citizenship to engaged citizenship. Using data from the 2005 ‘Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy’ survey of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS) I describe these two faces of citizenship, and trace their impact on political participation. Rather than the erosion of participation, this norm shift is altering and expanding the patterns of political participation in America.

Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism

Abstract: Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have all sought to ana- lyze the spread of economic and political liberalism across countries in recent decades+ This article documents this diffusion of liberal policies and politics and proposes four distinct theories to explain how the prior choices of some countries and inter- national actors affect the subsequent behavior of others: coercion, competition, learn- ing, and emulation+ These theories are explored empirically in the symposium articles that follow+ The goal of the symposium is to bring quite different and often isolated schools of thought into contact and communication with one another, and to define common metrics by which we can judge the utility of the contending approaches to diffusion across different policy domains+

Politics of Friendship

Abstract: Jacques Derrida is known primarily, and until recently, as the major proponent of deconstruction; always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of the day. Derrida's "political turn" was marked by the appearance of "Specters of Marx". In this study, Jacques Derrida renews this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "O my friends, there is no friend", and its inversions by later philosophers, such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and re-stage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought - friendship and enmity, private and public life - have become dangerously unstable. At the same time, he dissects geneology itself, the familiar and male-centred notion of fraternity, and the virile virtue whose autority has gone unquestioned in the Western culture of friendship and modern models of democracy. The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy.

The Foucault effect : studies in governmentality : with two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault

Abstract: Based on Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Colle ge de France on governmental rationalities and his 1977 interview regarding his work on imprisonment, this volume is the long-awaited sequel to "Power/Knowledge." In these lectures, Foucault examines the art or activity of government both in its present form and within a historical perspective as well as the different ways governmentality has been made thinkable and practicable. Foucault's thoughts on political discourse and governmentality are supplemented by the essays of internationally renowned scholars. United by the common influence of Foucault's approach, they explore the many modern manifestations of government: the reason of state, police, liberalism, security, social economy, insurance, solidarity, welfare, risk management, and more. The central theme is that the object and the activity of government are not instinctive and natural things, but things that have been invented and learned. "The Foucault Effect" analyzes the thought behind practices of government and argues that criticism represents a true force for change in attitudes and actions, and that extending the limits of some practices allows the invention of others. This unique and extraordinarily useful collection of articles and primary materials will open the way for a whole new set of discussions of the work of Michel Foucault as well as the status of liberalism, social policy, and insurance. Graham Burchell a contributor to "Radical Philosophy" and "Ideology and Consciousness, " is a free-lance researcher and translator. Colin Gordon, a former research assistant to Michel Foucault at the Colle ge de France, is the editor andtranslator of Foucault's "Power/Knowledge" and translator of "The Philosophical Imaginary" by Michelle LeDoeuff. Peter Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance at the London School of Economics and Political Science.