Intentionally excluded from formal politics in authoritarian states by reigning elites, do the common people have concrete ways of achieving community objectives? Contrary to conventional wisdom, ...this book demonstrates that they do. Focusing on the political life of the sha'b (or popular classes) in Cairo, Diane Singerman shows how men and women develop creative and effective strategies to accomplish shared goals, despite the dominant forces ranged against them. Starting at the household level in one densely populated neighborhood of Cairo, Singerman examines communal patterns of allocation, distribution, and decision-making. Combining the institutional focus of political science with the sensitivities of anthropology, she uncovers a system of informal networks, supported by an informal economy, that constitutes another layer of collective institutions within Egypt and allows excluded groups to pursue their interests. Avenues of Participation traces this informal system from its grounding in the family to its influence on the larger polity. Discussing the role of these networks in meeting fundamental needs in the community--such as earning a living, reproducing the family, saving and investing money, and coping with the bureaucracy--Singerman demonstrates the surprising power these "excluded" people wield. While the government has reduced politics to the realm of distribution to protect itself from challenges, she argues that the popular classes in Cairo, as consumers of goods and services, have turned exploiting the government into a fine art.
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.
How do individuals decide to exercise their democratic rights? This 2006 book argues that they first assess their economic autonomy, meaning their ability to make a living independent of government ...authorities. Before individuals consider whether their resources and organizational abilities are adequate to act on their interests, they calculate the risk of political activism to their livelihood. This is particularly evident in regions of the world where states monopolize the economy and thus can readily harass activists at their workplaces. Economic autonomy links capitalism and democracy through individuals' calculations about activism. Accounts of activists' decisions about establishing independent media, leading political organizations, and running for office and descriptions of government harassment in Russia and Kyrgyzstan, along with examples from most regions of the world, illustrate these arguments. Economic autonomy and the interaction among democratic rights help explain the global proliferation of hybrid regimes, governments that display both democratic and authoritarian characteristics.
Republic.com 2.0 Sunstein, Cass R; Sunstein, Cass R. R
08/2009
eBook
What happens to democracy and free speech if people use the Internet to listen and speak only to the like-minded? What is the benefit of the Internet's unlimited choices if citizens narrowly filter ...the information they receive? Cass Sunstein first asked these questions in 2001'sRepublic.com. Now, inRepublic.com 2.0, Sunstein thoroughly rethinks the critical relationship between democracy and the Internet in a world where partisan Weblogs have emerged as a significant political force.
Republic.com 2.0highlights new research on how people are using the Internet, especially the blogosphere. Sunstein warns against "information cocoons" and "echo chambers," wherein people avoid the news and opinions that they don't want to hear. He also demonstrates the need to regulate the innumerable choices made possible by technology. His proposed remedies and reforms emphasize what consumers and producers can do to help avoid the perils, and realize the promise, of the Internet.
Polarized Campbell, James E
2018, 2016., 20180327, 2016, 2018-03-27
eBook
Many continue to believe that the United States is a nation of political moderates. In fact, it is a nation divided. It has been so for some time and has grown more so. This book provides a new and ...historically grounded perspective on the polarization of America, systematically documenting how and why it happened. Polarized presents commonsense benchmarks to measure polarization, draws data from a wide range of historical sources, and carefully assesses the quality of the evidence. Through an innovative and insightful use of circumstantial evidence, it provides a much-needed reality check to claims about polarization. This rigorous yet engaging and accessible book examines how polarization displaced pluralism and how this affected American democracy and civil society. Polarized challenges the widely held belief that polarization is the product of party and media elites, revealing instead how the American public in the 1960s set in motion the increase of polarization. American politics became highly polarized from the bottom up, not the top down, and this began much earlier than often thought. The Democrats and the Republicans are now ideologically distant from each other and about equally distant from the political center. Polarized also explains why the parties are polarized at all, despite their battle for the decisive median voter. No subject is more central to understanding American politics than political polarization, and no other book offers a more in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the subject than this one. James E. Campbell is UB Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His books include The American Campaign: U.S. Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote and The Presidential Pulse of Congressional Elections.
This book examines how ruling elites manage and manipulate their political opposition in the Middle East. In contrast to discussions of government-opposition relations that focus on how rulers either ...punish or co-opt opponents, this book focuses on the effect of institutional rules governing the opposition. It argues rules determining who is and is not allowed to participate in the formal political arena affect not only the relationships between opponents and the state, but also between various opposition groups. This affects the dynamics of opposition during prolonged economic crises. It also shapes the informal strategies that ruling elites use toward opponents. The argument is presented using a formal model of government-opposition relations. It is demonstrated in the cases of Egypt under Presidents Nasir, Sadat and Mubarek; Jordan under King Husayn; and Morocco under King Hasan II.
The countries of Central Europe in the first round for admission to the European Union have all established constitutional, electoral democracies and market economies. However, much remains to be ...done to achieve fully consolidated democratic states. This study documents the weaknesses of public oversight and participation in policymaking in Hungary and Poland, two of the most advanced countries in the region. It discusses five alternative routes to accountability including European Union oversight, constitutional institutions such as presidents and courts, devolution to lower-level governments, the use of neo-corporatist bodies, and open-ended participation rights. It urges more emphasis on the fifth option, public participation. Case studies of the environmental movement in Hungary and of student groups in Poland illustrate these general points. The book reviews the United States' experience of open-ended public participation and draws some lessons for the transition countries from the strengths and weaknesses of the American system.
Despite its authoritarian political structure, Egypt's government has held competitive, multi-party parliamentary elections for more than 30 years. This book argues that, rather than undermining the ...durability of the Mubarak regime, competitive parliamentary elections ease important forms of distributional conflict, particularly conflict over access to spoils. In a comprehensive examination of the distributive consequences of authoritarian elections in Egypt, Lisa Blaydes examines the triadic relationship between Egypt's ruling regime, the rent-seeking elite that supports the regime, and the ordinary citizens who participate in these elections. She describes why parliamentary candidates finance campaigns to win seats in a legislature that lacks policymaking power, as well as why citizens engage in the costly act of voting in such a context.
Much of public opinion research over the past several decades
suggests that the American voters are woefully uninformed about
politics and thus unable to fulfill their democratic obligations.
Arguing ...that this perception is faulty, Vincent Hutchings shows
that, under the right political conditions, voters are surprisingly
well informed on the issues that they care about and use their
knowledge to hold politicians accountable. Though Hutchings is not
the first political scientist to contend that the American public
is more politically engaged than it is often given credit for,
previous scholarship--which has typically examined individual and
environmental factors in isolation--has produced only limited
evidence of an attentive electorate. Analyzing broad survey data as
well as the content of numerous Senate and gubernatorial campaigns
involving such issues as race, labor, abortion, and defense,
Hutchings demonstrates that voters are politically engaged when
politicians and the media discuss the issues that the voters
perceive as important. Hutchings finds that the media--while far
from ideal--do provide the populace with information regarding the
responsiveness of elected representatives and that groups of voters
do monitor this information when "their" issues receive attention.
Thus, while the electorate may be generally uninformed about and
uninterested in public policy, a complex interaction of individual
motivation, group identification, and political circumstance leads
citizens concerned about particular issues to obtain knowledge
about their political leaders and use that information at the
ballot box.
This book provides a state-of-the-art assessment of citizen participation practice and research in the United States. With contributions from a stellar group of scholars, it provides readers an ...overview of a field at the heart of democratic governance. Individual chapters trace shifts in participation philosophy and policy, examine trends at different government levels, analyze technology/participation interactions, identify the participation experiences of minority populations, and explore the impact of voluntary organizations on this topic. A five-chapter section illustrates innovative cases. Another section explores the role of various methodologies in advancing participation research.The scope, depth, and timeliness of the coverage fills two voids in the public administration literature. First, the book provides a unique collection of articles for graduate courses in citizen participation and democratic governance. The volume also offers an excellent compendium for researchers who are at the frontline of participation research and practice.
