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Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945
Voting is a habit. People learn the habit of voting, or not, based on experience in their first few elections. Elections that do not stimulate high turnout among young adults leave a 'footprint' of low turnout in the age structure of the electorate as many individuals who were new at those elections fail to vote at subsequent elections. Elections that stimulate high turnout leave a high turnout footprint. So a country's turnout history provides a baseline for current turnout that is largely set, except for young adults. This baseline shifts as older generations leave the electorate and as changes in political and institutional circumstances affect the turnout of new generations. Among the changes that have affected turnout in recent years, the lowering of the voting age in most established democracies has been particularly important in creating a low turnout footprint that has grown with each election.
eBook
Anti-politics, depoliticization, and governance
\"There is a mounting body of evidence pointing towards rising levels of public dissatisfaction with the formal political process. Depoliticization refers to a more discrete range of contemporary strategies that add to this growing trend towards anti-politics by either removing or displacing the potential for choice, collective agency, and deliberation. This book examines the relationship between these two trends as understood within the broader shift towards governance. It brings together a number of contributions from scholars who have a varied range of concerns but who nevertheless share a common interest in developing the concept of depoliticization through their engagement with a set of theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical questions. This volume explores these questions from a variety of different perspectives and uses a number of different empirical examples and case studies from both within the nation state as well as from other regional, global, and multi-level arenas. In this context, this volume examines the potential and limits of depoliticization as a concept and its position and contribution in the nexus between the larger and more established literatures on governance and anti-politics.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Change they can't believe in
Are Tea Party supporters merely a group of conservative citizens concerned about government spending? Or are they racists who refuse to accept Barack Obama as their president because he's not white?Change They Can't Believe Inoffers an alternative argument--that the Tea Party is driven by the reemergence of a reactionary movement in American politics that is fueled by a fear that America has changed for the worse. Providing a range of original evidence and rich portraits of party sympathizers as well as activists, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto show that what actually pushes Tea Party supporters is not simple ideology or racism, but fear that the country is being stolen from \"real Americans\"--a belief triggered by Obama's election. From civil liberties and policy issues, to participation in the political process, the perception that America is in danger directly informs how Tea Party supporters think and act.
The authors argue that this isn't the first time a segment of American society has perceived the American way of life as under siege. In fact, movements of this kind often appear when some individuals believe that \"American\" values are under threat by rapid social changes. Drawing connections between the Tea Party and right-wing reactionary movements of the past, including the Know Nothing Party, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and the John Birch Society, Parker and Barreto develop a framework that transcends the Tea Party to shed light on its current and future consequences.
Linking past and present reactionary movements,Change They Can't Believe Inrigorously examines the motivations and political implications associated with today's Tea Party.
eBook
Making citizens : political socialization research and beyond
\"This book assembles what political scientists, sociologists, and communication analysts have learned in almost six decades of research on political socialization (the lifelong process by which we acquire political beliefs). It also explores how people develop political values, attitudes, identities, and behavioral dispositions. Of particular interest to Philo C. Wasburn and Tawnya J. Adkins Covert is the process by which people are made into active citizens who are politically interested, informed, partisan, tolerant, and engaged. Finally, Wasburn and Adkins Covert identify some suggestions for institutional change that would lead to \"better\" citizenship\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Staging Democracy
Focusing on the experiences of people in Russia and Ukraine,
Staging Democracy shows how some national leaders' seeming
popularity rests on local economic compacts. Jessica Pisano draws
on long-term research in rural communities and company towns,
analyzing how local political and business leaders, seeking favor
from incumbent politicians, used salaries, benefits, and public
infrastructure to pressure citizens to participate in command
performances.
Pisano looks at elections whose outcome was known in advance,
protests for hire, and smaller mises en scène to explain why people
participate, what differs from spectacle in totalitarian societies,
how political theater exists in both authoritarian and democratic
systems, and how such performances reshape understandings of the
role of politics.
Staging Democracy moves beyond Russia and Ukraine to
offer a novel economic argument for why some people support Putin
and similar politicians. Pisano suggests we can analyze politics in
both democracies and authoritarian regimes using the same
analytical lens of political theater.
eBook
The unheavenly chorus
Politically active individuals and organizations make huge investments of time, energy, and money to influence everything from election outcomes to congressional subcommittee hearings to local school politics, while other groups and individual citizens seem woefully underrepresented in our political system.The Unheavenly Chorusis the most comprehensive and systematic examination of political voice in America ever undertaken--and its findings are sobering.
The Unheavenly Chorusis the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests--membership associations such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals, and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever created--representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a twenty-five-year period--this book conclusively demonstrates that American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of organized interests are even less representative than those of individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations, how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these inequalities--and more.
In a true democracy, the preferences and needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice.The Unheavenly Chorusreveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.
eBook
Pluralism by default : weak autocrats and the rise of competitive politics
An audacious new explanation for the emergence of political pluralism in weak states.
Pluralism by Default explores sources of political contestation in the former Soviet Union and beyond. Lucan Way proposes that pluralism in \"new democracies\" is often grounded less in democratic leadership or emerging civil society and more in the failure of authoritarianism. Dynamic competition frequently emerges because autocrats lack the state capacity to steal elections, impose censorship, or repress opposition. In fact, the same institutional failures that facilitate political competition may also thwart the development of stable democracy.
eBook