Legislative Life and the Meaning of Public Service
Through moving personal interviews, the author allows legislators to tell their own stories about how and why they came to politics, the experience of serving in their state legislature, their decisions to stay or leave, and the many trials they face in the name of public service. He contends that these politicians do have the public good in mind.
Legislative Life and the Meaning of Public Service
Through moving personal interviews, the author allows legislators to tell their own stories about how and why they came to politics, the experience of serving in their state legislature, their decisions to stay or leave, and the many trials they face in the name of public service. He contends that these politicians do have the public good in mind.
Politics and Public Opinion in America's School Districts
Begins with educational reforms from the Progressive era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the civil rights movement and ending with Pennsylvania's 2004 tax relief measure. This title explores what factors determine education spending levels in school districts.
The rapid worldwide phase of democratisation since the 1980s has stimulated a renewed interest in how we define and measure democracy. In this wide-ranging volume, leading political theorists, political scientists and experts in comparative government from across Europe address the following questions: By what criteria is the level of a country's democracy to be assessed? How far is democracy subject to measurement and if so what kind of measurement and with what degree of precision? Can the same criteria or indices be applied to developing democracies and established ones? Are the standards used by Western scholars ethnocentric or universal? From questions of how to define democracy to the issue of cultural diversity, each chapter offers new insights and approaches placed in the context of contemporary debates. Defining and Measuring Democracy is essential reading for students and scholars of comparative politics and democracy.
Central to the preservation of democracy is the rule of law, which depends upon an educated citizenry. This title reveals that one of the dangers is that respect for Enlightenment ideals as well as the quality of education are being undercut. It also explains about individual rights and freedoms versus the need for security against terrorism.
Seymour Martin Lipset is one of the best known and most prolific social scientists this century. These comprehensive essays pay tribute to his scholarship by exploring his core theme: the conditions, problems, dynamics, values and institutions of democracy, both in the US and throughout the world. Published originally as a Special Issue of The American Behavioral Scientist, Reexamining Democracy is devoted to rethinking the character and development of democracy worldwide. The contributors offer fascinating perspectives on an ever-potent and compelling social force.
Mass Communication and the Disruption of Social Order
Intended for academics and students in media studies and political science, the authors of this book explore through a number of different contexts the way in which crises highlight the problematic issues of media performance in democratic states. They examine the relationship between communication and civil society through a number of actual cases of media responses to "crises", ranging from the Gulf War of 1991 to recent events in Eastern Europe. Individual examples of crises emphasize the complexities of understanding the role of the media in struggles of identity around nationality, ethnicity, and gender.
Geographical Perspectives on Citizenship, Participation and Representation
'This volume successfully exposes the "ghostly presence" of democracy in the field of geography and shows the value of thinking about democracy geographically. It is a major contribution to serious examination of a normative political issue from a geographical perspective. This is welcome above all because geography is a field whose cultural and ......
Has our system of checks and balances between the three branches of our federal government undergone changes for good or ill over the years since the Constitution was set as the cornerstone of our nation? This book examines the theory and practice of American democracy and the dichotomy that currently exists between them.
