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Author: Jason Brennan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888395
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutions Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out. A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines. Featuring a new preface that situates the book within the current political climate and discusses other alternatives beyond epistocracy, Against Democracy is a challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable.
Author: Jason Brennan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888395
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Get Book Here
Book Description
A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutions Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out. A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines. Featuring a new preface that situates the book within the current political climate and discusses other alternatives beyond epistocracy, Against Democracy is a challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable.
Author: Jeff Manza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195341945
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
"Mr. Manza and Mr. Uggen... wade into one of the most contested empirical debates in political science: How many (if any) recent American elections would have gone differently if all former felons had been allowed to vote?"--The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, who understand the vastness of the jailers' reach, follow the story out of the cell and into the voting booth. Locked Out examines how the disenfranchisement of felons shapes American democracyhardly a hypothetical matter in an age of split electorates and hanging chads.... Exacting and fair, their work should persuade even those who come to the subject skeptically that an injustice is at hand.The New York Review of Books. 5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adultsare denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--for election outcomes, for the reintegration of former offenders back into their communities, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.
Author: Joel Olson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816642786
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
Racial discrimination embodies inequality, exclusion, and injustice and as such has no place in a democratic society. And yet racial matters pervade nearly every aspect of American life, influencing where we live, what schools we attend, the friends we make, the votes we cast, the opportunities we enjoy, and even the television shows we watch. Joel Olson contends that, given the history of slavery and segregation in the United States, American citizenship is a form of racial privilege in which whites are equal to each other but superior to everyone else. In Olson's analysis we see how the tension in this equation produces a passive form of democracy that discourages extensive participation in politics because it treats citizenship as an identity to possess rather than as a source of empowerment. Olson traces this tension and its disenfranchising effects from the colonial era to our own, demonstrating how, after the civil rights movement, whiteness has become less a form of standing and more a norm that cements while advantages in the ordinary operations of modern society. To break this pattern, Olson suggests an "abolitionist-democratic" political theory that makes the fight against racial discrimination a prerequisite for expanding democratic participation.
Author: David A. Bateman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691126496
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
How southern members of Congress remade the United States in their own image after the Civil War No question has loomed larger in the American experience than the role of the South. Southern Nation examines how southern members of Congress shaped national public policy and American institutions from Reconstruction to the New Deal—and along the way remade the region and the nation in their own image. The central paradox of southern politics was how such a highly diverse region could be transformed into a coherent and unified bloc—a veritable nation within a nation that exercised extraordinary influence in politics. This book shows how this unlikely transformation occurred in Congress, the institutional site where the South's representatives forged a new relationship with the rest of the nation. Drawing on an innovative theory of southern lawmaking, in-depth analyses of key historical sources, and congressional data, Southern Nation traces how southern legislators confronted the dilemma of needing federal investment while opposing interference with the South's racial hierarchy, a problem they navigated with mixed results before choosing to prioritize white supremacy above all else. Southern Nation reveals how southern members of Congress gradually won for themselves an unparalleled role in policymaking, and left all southerners—whites and blacks—disadvantaged to this day. At first, the successful defense of the South's capacity to govern race relations left southern political leaders locally empowered but marginalized nationally. With changing rules in Congress, however, southern representatives soon became strategically positioned to profoundly influence national affairs.
Author: Andrew Gumbel
Publisher: Nation Books
ISBN: 9781560256762
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
The 2000 presidential election meltdown and the more recent controversy about computer voting machines did not come out of the blue. Steal This Vote tells the fraught but very colorful history of electoral malfeasance in the United States. It is a tale of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, cast more than once, assigned to dead people and pets, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court. (No wonder America has the lowest voter participation rate of any Western democracy!) Andrew Gumbel—whose work on the new electronic voting fraud has been praised by Gore Vidal and Paul Krugman, and has won a Project Censored Award—shows that, for all the idealism about American democracy, free and fair elections have been the exception, not the rule. In fact, Gumbel suggests that Tammany Hall, shrouded as it is in moral odium, might have been a fairer system than we have today, because ostensibly positive developments like the secret ballot have been used to squash voting rights ever since.
Author: Nelson Lichtenstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521566223
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
A close examination of what came to be known among collars of any colour as 'the labour problem' with the railroad strikes of the 1870s.
Author: M. Marable
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230607349
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
African Americans today face a systemic crisis of mass underemployment, mass imprisonment, and mass disfranchisement. This comprehensive reader makes clear to students the mutual constitution of these three crises.
Author: Amy Chua
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400076374
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.
Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 656
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Book Description
Author: Greg Palast
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609804791
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303
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Book Description
A close presidential election in November could well come down to contested states or even districts--an election decided by vote theft? It could happen this year. Based on Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s investigative reporting for Rolling Stone and BBC television, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps might be the most important book published this year--one that could save the election. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits names the filthy-rich sugar-daddies who are super-funding the Super-PACs of both parties--billionaires with nicknames like "The Ice Man," "The Vulture" and, of course, The Brothers Koch. Told with Palast's no-holds-barred, reporter-on-the-beat style, the facts as he lays them out are staggering. What emerges in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits is the never-before-told-story of the epic battle being fought behind the scenes between the old money banking sector that still supports Obama, and the new hedge fund billionaires like Paul Singer who not only support Romney but also are among his key economic advisors. Although it has not been reported, Obama has shown some backbone in standing up to the financial excesses of the men behind Romney. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits exposes the previously unreported details on how operatives plan to use the hundreds of millions in Super-PAC money pouring into this election. We know the money is pouring in, but Palast shows us the convoluted ways the money will be used to suppress your vote. The story of the billionaires and why they want to buy an election is matched with the nine ways they can steal the election. His story of the sophisticated new trickery will pick up on Palast's giant New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
