A Preface to Politics
A Preface to Politics

Author: Walter Lippmann

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1649741367

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The most incisive comment on politics to day is indifference. When men and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings by calling the political method itself into question. Leaders in public affairs recognize this. They know that no attack is so disastrous as silence, that no invective is so blasting as the wise and indulgent smile of the people who do not care. I have put forward a preliminary sketch for a theory of politics, a preface to thinking. Like all speculation about human affairs, it is the result of a grapple with problems as they appear in the experience of one man. For though a personal vision may at times assume an eloquent and universal language, it is well never to forget that all philosophies are the language of particular men.

A Preface to Democratic Theory
A Preface to Democratic Theory

Author: Robert A. Dahl

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1956

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9780226134260

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Robert Dahl's Preface helped launch democratic theory fifty years ago as a new area of study in political science, and it remains the standard introduction to the field. Exploring problems that had been left unsolved by traditional thought on democracy, Dahl here examines two influential models--the Madisonian, which represents prevailing American doctrine, and its recurring challenger, populist theory--arguing that they do not accurately portray how modern democracies operate. He then constructs a model more consistent with how contemporary democracies actually function, and, in doing so, develops some original views of popular sovereignty and the American constitutional system.

Political Action
Political Action

Author: Michael Walzer

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2019-02-26

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 168137353X

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Political theorist Michael Walzer's classic guide is a perfect introduction to social activism, including what-to-do advice for deciding which issues to take on, organizing, fundraising, and providing effective leadership Political Action is a how-to book for activists that was written at one of the darkest moments of the Nixon administration and remains no less timely and intelligent and useful today. Michael Walzer draws on his extensive engagement in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s to lay out the practical steps necessary to keep movement politics alive both in victory and in defeat. What do people need to do when out of outrage or fear of looming disaster they come together to demand change? Should they focus on one or several issues? Should they form coalitions? What can and can’t be accomplished through electoral politics? How can movements operate democratically? What is effective leadership? Walzer addresses such questions with clarity, concision, wisdom, and wit in a book that everywhere insists not only on the centrality of movement politics to the health of democratic societies but on the deep satisfaction that is to be found there. Political Action is both an indispensable resource for activists and a lasting and inspiring summons to arms.

Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan

Author: Robert Dallek

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780674779419

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Few American politicians have enjoyed greater popularity than Ronald Reagan. Robert Dallek presents a portrait of the man and his politics - from his childhood years through the California governorship to the first years of the presidency.

A Preface to Economic Democracy
A Preface to Economic Democracy

Author: Robert A. Dahl

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0520341163

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Tocqueville pessimistically predicted that liberty and equality would be incompatible ideas. Robert Dahl, author of the classic A Preface to Democratic Theory, explores this alleged conflict, particularly in modern American society where differences in ownership and control of corporate enterprises create inequalities in resources among Americans that in turn generate inequality among them as citizens. Arguing that Americans have misconceived the relation between democracy, private property, and the economic order, the author contends that we can achieve a society of real democracy and political equality without sacrificing liberty by extending democratic principles into the economic order. Although enterprise control by workers violates many conventional political and ideological assumptions of corporate capitalism as well as of state socialism. Dahl presents an empirically informed and philosophically acute defense of "workplace democracy." He argues, in the light of experiences here and abroad, that an economic system of worker-owned and worker-controlled enterprises could provide a much better foundation for democracy, political equality, and liberty than does our present system of corporate capitalism. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986. Tocqueville pessimistically predicted that liberty and equality would be incompatible ideas. Robert Dahl, author of the classic A Preface to Democratic Theory, explores this alleged conflict, particularly in modern American society where difference

A Preface to Morals
A Preface to Morals

Author: Walter Lippmann

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0878559078

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After an eloquent and moving analysis of what he sees as the disillusion of themodern age, Lippmann posits as the central dilemma of liberalism its inability to find an appropriate substitute for the older forms of authority-- church, state, class, family, law, custom--that it has denied. Lippmann attempts to find a way out of this chaos through the acceptance of a higher humanism and a way of life inspired by the ideal of "disinterestedness" in all things. In his new introduction to the Transaction edition, John Patrick Diggins marks "A Preface "to "Morals, "originally published in 1929, as a critical turning point in Lippmann's intellectual career. He also provides an excellent discussion of the enduring value of this major twentieth-century work by situating it within the context of other intellectual movements.

Why States Matter
Why States Matter

Author: Gary F. Moncrief

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1442268077

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When it comes to voting, taxes, environmental regulations, social services, education, criminal justice, political parties, property rights, gun control, marriage and a whole host of other modern American issues, the state in which a citizen resides makes a difference. That idea—that the political decisions made by those in state-level offices are of tremendous importance to the lives of people whose states they govern—is the fundamental concept explored in this book. Gary F. Moncrief and Peverill Squire introduce students to the very tangible and constantly evolving implications, limitations, and foundations of America’s state political institutions, and accessibly explain the ways that the political powers of the states manifest themselves in the cultures, economies, and lives of everyday Americans, and always will.

Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution
Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution

Author: Lynn Hunt

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016-10-17

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0520931041

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When this book was published in 1984, it reframed the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes (such as modernization, capitalist development, and the rise of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes) to its central political significance: the discovery of the potential of political action to consciously transform society by molding character, culture, and social relations. In a new preface to this twentieth-anniversary edition, Hunt reconsiders her work in the light of the past twenty years' scholarship.

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

Author: Gerald Gaus

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 069121980X

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An updated and expanded edition of the classic introduction to PPE—philosophy, politics, and economics—coauthored by one of the field’s pioneers Philosophy, Politics, and Economics offers a complete introduction to the fundamental tools and concepts of analysis that PPE students need to study social and political issues. This fully updated and expanded edition examines the core methodologies of rational choice, strategic analysis, norms, and collective choice that serve as the bedrocks of political philosophy and the social sciences. The textbook is ideal for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and nonspecialists looking to familiarize themselves with PPE’s approaches. Starting with individual choice, the book develops an account of rationality to introduce readers to decision theory, utility theory, and concepts of welfare economics and consumer choice theory. It moves to strategic choice in game theory to explore such issues as bargaining theory, repeated games, and evolutionary game theory. The text also considers how social norms can be understood, observed, and measured. Concluding chapters address collective choice, social choice theory and democracy, and public choice theory’s connections to voters, representatives, and institutions. Rigorous and comprehensive, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics continues to be an essential text for this popular and burgeoning field. The only book that covers the entirety of PPE methods A rigorous, nontechnical introduction to decision theory, game theory, and positive political theory A philosophical introduction to rational choice theory in the social sciences