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Political Change and Electoral Coalitions in Western Democracies (Elements in European Politics)
by Peter A. Hall Georgina Evans Sung In KimThis Element documents long-term changes in the political attitudes of occupational groups, shifts in the salience of economic and cultural issues, and the movement of political parties in the electoral space from 1990 to 2018 in eight Western democracies. We evaluate prominent contentions about how electoral contestation has changed and why support for mainstream parties has declined while support for challenger parties has increased. We contribute a new analysis of how the viability of the types of electoral coalitions assembled by center-left, center-right, radical-right, and Green parties changes over these decades. We find that their viability is affected by changes over time in citizens' attitudes to economic and cultural issues and shifts in the relative salience of those issues. We examine the contribution these developments make to declining support for mainstream center-left and center-right coalitions and increasing support for coalitions underpinning radical-right and Green parties.
Political Communication in Europe: The Cultural and Structural Limits of the European Public Sphere
by Francisco Seoane PérezThe disconnection between the institutions of the EU and the people of Europe has often been attributed to the existence of a communication gap resulting from the failure of national medias and politicians to convey the importance of the EU. This book challenges that idea instead showing that the fault lies with the idea and institutions of the EU.
Political Confidence and Democracy in Europe: Antecedents and Consequences of Citizens’ Confidence in Representative and Regulative Institutions and Authorities (Contributions to Political Science)
by Christian SchnaudtThis book examines the antecedents and consequences of citizens’ confidence in different political institutions and authorities. Its main argument states that a distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities is of crucial importance in order to gain novel insights into the relevance of political confidence for the viability of democratic systems. Relying on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the author provides empirical evidence that citizens from a total of twenty-one European countries make a distinction between confidence in representative institutions and authorities and confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. Furthermore, the author shows that both types of political confidence emanate from different sources and are associated with varying consequences. Overall, these findings indicate that confidence in representative and confidence in regulative institutions and authorities establish two qualitatively different types of political confidence, each with distinct implications for the functioning and well-being of modern democracies.
Political Conflict in America
by Alan WareRecently, there has been a high level of conflict in American politics. Massive disagreements over government policies have pitted one group of Americans against another. This book explores how and why this style of politics developed and argues that fundamental disagreements between Americans have always been at the root of its politics.
The Political Consequences Of Motherhood
by Jill GreenleeFrom civically and politically engaged women linking their identity as “mothers” to their fight for prohibition, public sanitation, and protective labor laws to the general call to arms of “mama grizzlies” issued by Sarah Palin in 2010, American political activists and candidates have used motherhood to rally women’s interest, support, and participation throughout American history. Politicized motherhood persists, and motherhood continues to inspire women’s participation and direct their concerns. In The Political Consequences of Motherhood, Jill S. Greenlee investigates the complex relationship between motherhood and women’s political attitudes. Combining a historical overview of the ways motherhood has been used for political purposes with recent political opinion surveys and individual-level analysis, she explains how and when motherhood shapes women’s thoughts and preferences. Greenlee argues that two mechanisms account for the durability of motherhood politics. First, women experience attitudinal shifts when they become mothers. Second, “mother” is a broad-based identity, widely shared and ideologically unconstrained, that lends itself to appeals across the political spectrum to build support for candidates and policy issues.
Political Correctness: A Sociocultural Black Hole (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)
by Thomas TsakalakisThis book explores the nature of political correctness as but one of the faces of today’s widespread sociocultural hypocrisy; it is a critique of a phenomenon that constitutes a threat to the Enlightenment hope that humanity might one day achieve maturity. The author identifies political correctness as a drive towards shallowness, anti-intellectualism and self-flagellation – and a culture in which perception is everything. With attention to the emergence and growth of political correctness in a country, Greece, where it can be observed from a bottom-up perspective, this volume demonstrates that although at first glance it appears as a well-intentioned social movement informed by values with which no moral and judicious person could disagree, political correctness actually represents, at best, a distraction from graver concerns; at worst, a manifestation of human foolishness and malevolence. A study of the destruction of honest and rational debate, characterized by trials of intention, often by social media, Political Correctness: A Sociocultural Black Hole will appeal to scholars of sociology and media studies with interests in contemporary political culture.
Political Correctness and the Destruction of Social Order
by Howard S. SchwartzThis book develops a psychoanalytic theory of political correctness and the pristine self, which is defined as a self touched by nothing but love. It explores the damage that political correctness can do to social order. Applications include the breakdown of social capital, the financial crisis, and Occupy Wall Street. Long an issue for conservatives, alarm over political correctness has now spread to the liberal side of the political spectrum. As Schwartz argues, all have reason to be concerned. The psychology that underlies political correctness has the potential to be extremely destructive to social organization on every level. Schwartz discusses the primitive roots of political correctness and, through the use of case studies, shows its capacity for ruination. The book focuses on a transformation in the idea of the self, and specifically the rise of the pristine self. The problem is that, in truth, the world does not love us. This puts the pristine self at war with objective reality.
Political Correctness Gone Mad?
by Stephen Fry Michelle Goldberg Michael Dyson Jordan Peterson&‘Without free speech there is no true thought.&’ –Jordan Peterson &‘If you&’re white, this country is one giant safe space.&’ –Michael Eric Dyson The Munk debate on political correctness Is political correctness an enemy of free speech, sparking needless conflict? Or is it a weapon in the fight for equality, restoring dignity to the downtrodden? How should we talk about the things that matter most in an era of rapid social change? Four thinkers take on one of the most heated debates in the culture wars of the twenty-first century.
Political Corruption and Scandals in Japan
by Matthew M. Carlson Steven R. ReedCombining history with comparative politics, Matthew M. Carlson and Steven R. Reed take on political corruption and scandals, and the reforms designed to counter them, in post–World War II Japan.Political Corruption and Scandals in Japan makes sense of the scandals that have plagued Japanese politics for more than half a century and attempts to show how reforms have evolved to counter the problems. What causes political corruption to become more or less serious over time? they ask. The authors examine major political corruption scandals beginning with the early postwar period until the present day as one way to make sense of how the nature of corruption changes over time. They also consider bureaucratic corruption and scandals, violations of electoral law, sex scandals, and campaign finance regulations and scandals.In the end, Carlson and Reed write, though Japanese politics still experiences periodic scandals, the political reforms of 1994 have significantly reduced the levels of political corruption. The basic message is that reform can reduce corruption. The causes and consequences of political corruption in Japan, they suggest, are much like those in other consolidated democracies.
The Political Costs of the 2009 British MPs� Expenses Scandal: Doing Time, Doing Freedom (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology)
by Jennifer Vanheerde-HudsonThis study examines the evolution and political consequences of the 2009 British MPs' expenses scandal. Despite claims of a revolution in British politics, we show how the expenses scandal had a limited, short-term impact.
Political Cultural Developments in East Asia
by P. W. PrestonThis book offers an interpretive and critical comparative politics analysis of the post-1945 development trajectory of the broad East Asian region and its component countries. The discussion considers the region and its countries in terms of their historical legacies (colonialism, war and the preoccupation with development) and argues that each country has constructed their own way of ordering political life, each created its own political logic. Arguing that it is an error to judge these countries' performance against the model of Europe or America, Preston discusses the era of expansionist colonialism, the episode of breakdown in highly destructive regional warfare in the early twentieth century and the subsequent diverse records of China (with its party-state turned towards a nominal state-socialism), Hong Kong (confronting the problems of living with distant masters), Singapore (with its elite directed national building) and Thailand (mired in elite-resistance to popular political reform).
Political Culture and the Making of Modern Nation-States
by Edward Weisband Courtney I ThomasThis book focuses on transformations of political culture from times past to future-present. It defines the meaning of political culture and explores the cultural values and institutions of kinship communities and dynastic intermediaries, including chiefdoms and early states. It systematically examines the rise and gradual universalization of modern sovereign nation-states. Contemporary debates concerning nationality, nationalism, citizenship, and hyphenated identities are engaged. The authors recount the making of political culture in the American nation-state and look at the processes of internal colonialism in the American experience, examining how major ethnic, sectarian, racial, and other distinctions arose and congealed into social and cultural categories. The book concludes with a study of the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the political cultures of violation in post-colonial Rwanda and in racialized ethno-political conflicts in various parts of the world. Struggles over legitimacy in nation-building and state-building are at the heart of this new take on the important role of political culture.Features of this Innovative Text
Political Demography and Urban Governance in French Guyana: Implications for Latin America and the Caribbean
by Romanovski ZéphirinThis book analyzes decades of immigration–population growth and rapid urbanization as political-demography and urban-governance issues in French Guyana. Factors such as immigration, population composition and re-composition have sparked patterns of urban relocation across the entire Cayenne agglomeration, affecting urban and housing policy planning, political district redesigns and jeopardizing influential ethno-social and economic groups. Politics and policy conflicts over shifting demography have transcended Guyana to involve France and various neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries. As well as discussing the demographic and human settlement aspects, the book blends the specific French Guyanese patterns of urbanization–migration into the wider theoretical literature. As such, it will appeal to students, academics, policymakers, journalists, activists and globalists looking for fresh insights into ethno-socio-cultural diversities and inclusive democratic governance at a time when increasing numbers of migrants are settling in urban areas.
Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the Politics of Evolution in Victorian England
by Piers J. HaleHistorians of science have long noted the influence of the nineteenth-century political economist Thomas Robert Malthus on Charles Darwin. In a bold move, Piers J. Hale contends that this focus on Malthus and his effect on Darwin’s evolutionary thought neglects a strong anti-Malthusian tradition in English intellectual life, one that not only predated the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species but also persisted throughout the Victorian period until World War I. Political Descent reveals that two evolutionary and political traditions developed in England in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act: one Malthusian, the other decidedly anti-Malthusian and owing much to the ideas of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These two traditions, Hale shows, developed in a context of mutual hostility, debate, and refutation. Participants disagreed not only about evolutionary processes but also on broader questions regarding the kind of creature our evolution had made us and in what kind of society we ought therefore to live. Significantly, and in spite of Darwin’s acknowledgement that natural selection was "the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms,” both sides of the debate claimed to be the more correctly "Darwinian. ” By exploring the full spectrum of scientific and political issues at stake, Political Descent offers a novel approach to the relationship between evolution and political thought in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Political Difference and Global Normative Orders (Global Political Sociology)
by Fränze WilhelmOnce considered a question of an international order based on consolidated statehood and homogeneous social communities within national borders, global order has become a question of alternative political articulations, resistance movements, and cultural diversity, among others. This book first critically analyzes the conditions for the struggles of theorizing global normative order in political and IR theory. Second, to make sense of the presence of difference and possibility for global normative order in view of the simultaneous absence of first foundations, the study draws on post-foundational thinking based on the seminal work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau. Finally, the author develops a theoretical framework for a hauntological approach to global normative order that provides an alternative and theoretically coherent explanation for the emergence of global order. This is of interest to scholars as well as practitioners (including activists) concerned with global social relations, global political discourse, and the construction of global identity and normative order(s).
Political Dissent and Democratic Remittances: The Activities of Russian Migrants in Europe (Studies in Migration and Diaspora)
by Joanna FominaWith a focus on the most recent wave of political emigration from Russia unleashed during President Vladimir Putin’s third term, this book explores the activities of those who voice political dissent after leaving their country. Based on rich ethnographic data and interviews gathered among Russian emigrants to the EU member-states, who are engaged in civic and political participation targeted at their home country, it demonstrates that emigration, particularly forced emigration in which political dissidents are squeezed out of their country, no longer functions efficiently as a means of calming political unrest. Drawing on the concept of social remittances, the author analyses the content, structure and the channels of political democratic remittances sent by political dissidents overseas, the factors that shape them and the perceived effects of these endeavours. A study of the latest wave of politically charged emigration from Russia and emigrants’ engagement in ‘homeland politics’, this volume will appeal to scholars across a range of social sciences working on migration, diaspora and democratisation processes, citizenship, EU studies and Russia studies.
The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)
by Matt DawsonThis book presents Durkheim as an important political sociologist, inspired by and advocating socialism. Through a series of studies, it argues that Durkheim’s normative vision, which can be called libertarian socialism, shaped his sociological critique and search for alternatives. With attention to the value of this political sociology as a means of understanding our contemporary world, the author asks us to look again at Durkheim. While Durkheim’s legacy has often emphasised the supposed conservative elements and stability advocated in his thought, we can point to a different legacy, one of a radical sociology. In dialogue with the decolonial critique, this volume also asks ‘was Durkheim white?’ and in doing so shows how, as a Jew, he experienced significant racialisation in his lifetime. A new reading and a vital image of a ‘political Durkheim’, The Political Durkheim will appeal to scholars and students with interests in Durkheim, social theory and political sociology.
Political Ecologies of Landscape: Governing Urban Transformations in Penang
by Creighton ConnollyConnolly uses ongoing urban redevelopment in Penang in Malaysia to provide stimulating new perspectives on urbanisation, governance and political ecology. The book deploys the concept of landscape political ecology to show how Penang residents, activists, planners and other stakeholders mobilize new relationships with the urban environment, to contest controversial development projects and challenge hegemonic visions for the city’s future. Based on six years of local research, this book provides both a dynamic account of region’s rapid reshaping and a fresh theoretical framework in which to consider issues of sustainable development, heritage and governance in urban areas worldwide.
Political Ecology: A Critical Engagement with Global Environmental Issues
by Tor A. Benjaminsen Hanne SvarstadThis textbook introduces political ecology as an interdisciplinary approach to critically examine land and environmental issues. Drawing on discourse and narrative analysis, Marxist political economy and insights from natural science, the book points at similarities, differences and inter-connections between environmental governance in the global North and South. A wide range of carefully curated case studies are presented, with a particular focus on Africa and Norway. Key themes of power, justice and environmental sustainability run through all chapters. The authors challenge established views and leading discourses and present research findings that may surprise readers. Chapters cover topics including wildlife conservation, climate change and conflicts, land grabbing, the effects of population growth on the environment, jihadism in the African Sahel, bioprospecting, feminist political ecology, and struggles around carbon mitigation within a fossil fuel-based economy. This introductory text provides tools and examples for both undergraduate and postgraduate students to better understand on-going struggles about some of the world’s most urgent challenges.
Political Ecology: Deconstructing Capital and Territorializing Life
by Enrique LeffThis book offers a conceptual framework for the critical understanding of the present socio-environmental conflicts. It reflects on the evolution of subject and thought, a shift in environmental thinking triggered by the development of eco-territorial conflicts and the social responses given to the environmental question. Bringing together 40 years of the authors writing and research, the book explores the transition from ecological economics and historical materialism to ecological Marxism. It unpacks the forging of political ecology from value theory in political economy, to ecological distribution and ecologies of difference; a transition to an environmental rationality grounded in the ontology of diversity, a politics of difference and an ethics of otherness. This evolution in thinking gives consistency to a theoretical discourse able to respond to the territorial conflicts generated by the radicalization of the environmental question as a key social issue of our times. The book is a call to respond to the urgent challenge of reversing the tendency towards the entropic death of the planet and to building a sustainable world order.
Political Ecology
by Karl Zimmerer Thomas J. BassettThis volume offers a unique, integrative perspective on the political and ecological processes shaping landscapes and resource use across the global North and South. Twelve carefully selected case studies demonstrate how contemporary geographical theories and methods can contribute to understanding key environment-and-development issues and working toward effective policies. Topics addressed include water and biodiversity resources, urban and national resource planning, scientific concepts of resource management, and ideas of nature and conservation in the context of globalization. Giving particular attention to evolving conceptions of nature-society interaction and geographical scale, an introduction and conclusion by the editors provide a clear analytical focus for the volume and summarize important developments and debates in the field.
Political Ecology of Agriculture: Agroecology and Post-Development
by Omar Felipe GiraldoThis study discusses an original proposal aimed at critically analyzing the power relations that exist in contemporary agriculture. The author endeavors herein to clarify some of the strategies that industrial agribusiness, in collusion with the state and multilateral structures, sets in motion in order to functionalize the lives of millions of farmers, so that their bodies, enunciations, and sensibilities can be repurposed in accordance with the dynamics of capital accumulation. The argument is based on the idea that agro-extractivism cannot be thought of exclusively as an economic-political and technological system, but as a complex interweaving of cultural meanings, aesthetics, and affections, which, amalgamated under the abstract name of "development", act as a support for the whole system's scaffolding. The book also explores the other side of the coin, describing how, and under what conditions, social movements are responding to the calamities generated by this model. The central thesis is that many ongoing agroecological processes are providing one of the most interesting guidelines at present for visualizing transitions towards post-development, post-extractivism, and the construction of multiple worlds beyond the sphere of capital. Political ecology of agriculture joins the calls that question the cultural project of modernity and the predatory sense imposed by the globalized food empire, and invites recognition of the importance of agroecology in the context of the end of the fossil-fuel era and the likely collapse of our industry-based civilization.
A Political Ecology of Common People (Critiques and Alternatives to Capitalism)
by Jacques BidetThis book advances a counter-intuitive thesis: modern attacks on the global ecological balance are exclusively the result of processes of social domination, whether they are based on class, gender or nation. If this is the case, then it follows that ecological struggle and social struggle are one and the same thing. The approach is inspired by Marx’s theory, as revisited through Bourdieu and Foucault, Rawls and Habermas, and Ostrom and Wallerstein. Based on a new concept, that of “metastructure” which defines the relationship between the structural and the symbolic, it confronts contemporary debates on class, gender andcoloniality, as well as on the state, the nation and the World-System. Global social-ecological destruction is thus analysed on three registers: that of capital, which produces for profit; that of (supposed) competent authority, which produces to produce; and that of the nation, which produces to conquer. Consumerism follows from productivism, not the other way around. The question of need takes precedence over that of desire. This metastructural configuration poses the imperative constantly renewed to counter the blind logic of capital with a rational logic of organisation, and, at the same time, to counter the logic of the organisers through a democratic discursive logic. This latter is the recourse of common people. The Global South is on the front line of this struggle; and women’s struggle bears its own decisive ecological impulse.
Political Ecology of Everyday Resistance and State Building: A Case of the Ho of Jharkhand
by Dhiraj KumarResource extraction and conflicts over natural resources are a global phenomenon, including in India. This book explores the process of state formation through developmental intervention in the resource-rich areas of Jharkhand in eastern India which are inhabited by the indigenous Ho community. The cultural practices and livelihoods of Indigenous tribes, like the Ho community in Jharkhand, are deeply linked with the local ecology. The conflict in Jharkhand is intertwined with state development projects and capitalist interventions. This book examines the history of these projects and the issues of territorialisation, dispossession, accumulation, and marginalization which communities have been fighting against for many decades. It examines the process of development policies and projects shaping and restructuring the resource-rich ecology in the region and addresses the interrelated issues of development-induced dispossession, resistance, ecological transformation, governance, illegalities, and state-building. It focuses on the questions: what do development projects bring to the Ho community; what induces them to resist and negotiate; and how state decentralization schemes and local governance in resource conflict areas strengthen State capacities? The book highlights the consequences on the livelihoods and cultural practices of the local people because of ecological transformation and everyday resistance. Comprehensive and important, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of anthropology, sociology, political ecology, social work, development studies, ecology, developmental sociology, indigenous studies, law, and economic anthropology.
The Political Ecology of the Modern Peasant: Calculation and Community
by Leslie E. AndersonDoes political action by peasants primarily serve the interests of the individual or does it address community concerns as well? Previous attempts to resolve this question often become mired in the age-old debate over selfish versus altruistic behaviour. In "The Political Ecology of the Modern Peasant", Leslie Anderson goes beyond the polarized positions of previous discussion to reach a new synthesis in which individual and community interests are shown to be both interdependent and mutually sustaining. <p><p>Anderson begins by demonstrating that peasant political behavior is far more complex than previously thought, ranging over a broad spectrum from the deliberate choice of quiescence to political violence or revolution. Within these two extremes, she examines the motivation underlying a variety of non-violent collective actions. Her theory explains each of these forms of peasant action with reference to a particular worldview - the political-ecological perspective - that peasants gain from living in a given social context that links the individual, the village, the natural environment and society. <p><p>Drawing on personal experience in the villages of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Anderson puts forth a theory with broad implications for the study of peasant political behavior in Latin America and throughout the Third World. "The Political Economy of the Modern Peasant" aims to be of interest not only to political scientists but to anthropologists, sociologists and students of developing countries and Latin America.