Authors:Rosalee A. Clawson, Zoe M. Oxley,
Publisher: CQ Pre
Keywords: democratic, practice, ideals, public, opinion
Number of Pages: 350
Published: 2008-02-01
List price: $59.95
ISBN-10: 0872893049
ISBN-13: 9780872893047

Our national obsession with opinion polls reflects an assumption that what people think and believe matters. But does it? Do citizens endorse the basic principles of a democratic system? How much knowledge should they have? And do they organize their political thinking? In a new introductory text for public opinion courses, Clawson and Oxley clearly and systematically link these enduring normative questions of democratic theory to the existing empirical research on public opinion to explore the tension between those ideals and their practice. After introducing these normative debates, the auth

Author: Dana Ott
Publisher: Routledge
Keywords: democratic, comparative, studies, democratization, development, size, examination, state, small
Number of Pages: 256
Published: 2000-10-23
List price: $155.00
ISBN-10: 0815339100
ISBN-13: 9780815339106

This book examines the relationship between state size and the formation and maintenance of democratic political systems. Using a cross-national, multiple case study of The Gambia in West Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, in combination with a quantitative data set on all the nations in the world, the study examines the effects of smallness, when measured by population size, on a number of variables including the probability of becoming and remaining democratic, access to information, political instability and political violence. The dissertation argues that the small scale s

Author: Unknown Author
Publisher: Scholarly Publishing Office, University Of Michiga
Keywords: democratic, recommended, national, cluskey, committee, compiled, breckinridge, handbook, buchanan, mich
Number of Pages: 618
Published: 2006-11-30
List price: $34.99
ISBN-10: 1425565425
ISBN-13: 9781425565428

Author: Wayne S
Publisher: CQ Pre
Keywords: election, democratic, way
Number of Pages: 239
Published: 2007-02-06
List price: $28.95
ISBN-10: 0872894053
ISBN-13: 9780872894051

Written by well known presidency scholar, Stephen Wayne, this brief text offers an overview of major issues concerning electoral politics and suggests ways to close the gap between democratic theory and political practice. Key topics include political participation, the role of money, the importance of political parties, and the role of the media. Updated discussion includes controversies that arose from the 2000 Presidential election, such as voter turnout, representational bias, voting irregularities, the role of special interest groups, soft money and the campaign finance reform debate, and

Author: Chantal Mouffe
Publisher: Verso
Keywords: paradox, democratic
Number of Pages: 192
Published: 2000-07-01
List price: $20.00
ISBN-10: 1859842798
ISBN-13: 9781859842799

From the theory of ’deliberative democracy’ to the politics of the ’third way’, the present Zeitgeist is characterized by attempts to deny what Chantal Mouffe contends is the inherently conflictual nature of democratic politics. Far from being signs of progress, such ideas constitute a serious threat to democratic institutions. Taking issue with John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas on one side, and the political tenets of Blair, Clinton and Schroeder on the other, Mouffe brings to the fore the paradoxical nature of modern liberal democracy in which the category of the ’

Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Pre
Keywords: theory, democratic, state
Number of Pages: 200
Published: 2005-12-27
List price: $19.95
ISBN-10: 0691123969
ISBN-13: 9780691123967

What should we expect from democracy, and how likely is it that democracies will live up to those expectations? In The State of Democratic Theory, Ian Shapiro offers a critical assessment of contemporary answers to these questions, lays out his distinctive alternative, and explores its implications for policy and political action.Some accounts of democracy’s purposes focus on aggregating preferences; others deal with collective deliberation in search of the common good. Shapiro reveals the shortcomings of both, arguing instead that democracy should be geared toward minimizing domination

Author: Jon A. Shield
Publisher: Princeton University Pre
Keywords: right, christian, virtues, democratic
Number of Pages: 216
Published: 2009-02-02
List price: $29.95
ISBN-10: 0691137404
ISBN-13: 9780691137407

The Christian Right is frequently accused of threatening democratic values. But in The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, Jon Shields argues that religious conservatives have in fact dramatically increased and improved democratic participation and that they are far more civil and reasonable than is commonly believed. Shields interviewed leaders of more than thirty Christian Right organizations, observed movement activists in six American cities, and analyzed a wide variety of survey data and movement media. His conclusions are surprising: the Christian Right has reinvigorated American