Four recent books, all by noted economists, expose major problems with the economic system and, consequently, with the macromarketing system. The objective of each book is to expose how the economy ...really functions, much as Victor Lebow did 50 years ago in his “Free Enterprise”: The Opium of the American People (1972). Two of the books argue for a restoration of the market system of myth and lore, one for institutional changes, and the fourth for moving beyond the growth economy to alternatives. The commentary ends by noting that each book argues that little can be done about the economy until we face the facts and address the malfunctioning political system, too. Our American political system, much like the economic system, is also broken. To fix either, we must begin with understanding how each really work and then make necessary changes. Macromarketers can help understand the predicament we are in and help get us out of it.
Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on 'democratic deficits', reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from ...public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.
The role of climate change in the development and demise of Classic Maya civilization (300 to 1000 C.E.) remains controversial because of the absence of well-dated climate and archaeological ...sequences, We present a precisely dated subannual climate record for the past 2000 years from Yok Balum Cave, Belize. From comparison of this record with historical events compiled from well-dated stone monuments, we propose that anomalously high rainfall favored unprecedented population expansion and the proliferation of political centers between 440 and 660 C.E. This was followed by a drying trend between 660 and 1000 C.E. that triggered the balkanization of polities, increased warfare, and the asynchronous disintegration of polities, followed by population collapse in the context of an extended drought between 1020 and 1100 C.E.
This revised and expanded second edition reviews fifty years of research on politics in Africa. The book synthesizes insights from different scholarly approaches and offers an original interpretation ...of the knowledge accumulated in the field, keeping in mind the changes since the first edition was written in 2004.
O artigo utiliza a obra Juca Paranhos, o barão do Rio Branco, de Luís Cláudio Villafañe Santos (Villafañe, L.C. Juca Paranhos: o Barão do Rio Branco. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2018, 560p) para ...examinar a relação de José Maria da Silva Paranhos com os regimes políticos em que atuou.
Several scholars in the United States have recently addressed an increased partisan animosity between Democrats and Republicans, and have termed this phenomenon ‘affective polarisation’. This surge ...in partisan affective polarisation is perceived to be highly problematic, as it has been found to have a negative impact on the functioning of the party system and even society at large. The aim of this article is to study the concept of affective polarisation in European party systems. It introduces the Affective Polarisation Index (API) that allows for measuring and comparing levels of affective polarisation also in multiparty systems. This novel measure is applied to 22 European democracies and the United States between 2005 and 2016. The results indicate that affective polarisation is acutely present in European party systems, as partisans are often extremely hostile towards competing parties. The most affectively polarised countries are in Central Eastern and Southern Europe where the degree of affective polarisation is notably higher than it is in the United States, while Northwestern European countries are more moderate in terms of partisan feelings. Further analysis reveals that affective polarisation is significantly correlated with ideological polarisation, but the relationship between the two appears to be conditional: in some Western European political systems ideological polarisation does not lead itself to strong interparty hostility, while in Central Eastern Europe a high degree of affective polarisation can be present even in ideologically centrist party structures. These findings validate the claim that ideological and affective polarisation are two distinct aspects of polarisation, and that the latter also merits additional attention.
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political ...power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
Political institutions profoundly shape political life and are also gendered. This groundbreaking collection synthesises new institutionalism and gendered analysis using a new approach - feminist ...institutionalism - in order to answer crucial questions about power inequalities, mechanisms of community and the gendered limits of change.
Diffuse support for democracy, as captured in mass surveys, tends to be treated as impervious to regime performance. Such a finding is often presented as confirmation of the basic distinction between ...‘diffuse’ and ‘specific’ support as proposed by David Easton. This study argues that this line of argument stems from an incomplete reading of important aspects of Easton's theorisation about the relationship between system outputs and diffuse support. Using multilevel models, evidence from more than 100 surveys in close to 80 countries, and different measures of democratic support, it is shown that government effectiveness is the strongest macro‐level predictor of such support. In democratic regimes, government effectiveness, understood as the quality of policy‐making formulation and implementation, is linked to higher levels of support for democracy. Furthermore, in non‐democracies, effectiveness and support for democracy are, under some model specifications, negatively related.
In his introduction of the journal Jeune Afrique’s issue of July 2021, Marwane Ben Yamed, raised a question that, I have no doubt, is in many minds. Is the African continent condemned to suffer, ad ...vitam aeternam, from political leaders that lack vision? I would answer no! Africa is moving forward: from the “Conferences Nationmales Soureraines” challenging old regimes in the 1990s and resulting in multi-party political systems to the food riots in the 2008-2011 period followed by the “Arab Spring” that affected some North African countries. The push for change, as Ben Yamed noted, continues such as in Burkina Faso (2014), The Gambia (2016), Zimbabwe (2017), South Africa (2018), Algeria and Sudan (2019), Mali (2020-2021), Senegal (2021), and ongoing protests in Tunisia (July-August 2021).
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