Beyond Majority Rule
Author: Michael J. Sheeran
Publisher:
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 174
ISBN-13:
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Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy
Author: Adam Jentleson
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Published: 2021-01-12
Total Pages: 301
ISBN-13: 1631497782
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration THE CASE FOR ENDING THE FILIBUSTER "A truly excellent book… blistering and persuasive.” —Ezra Klein, New York Times An insider’s account of how politicians representing a radical white minority of Americans have used “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to hijack our democracy. Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation’s most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster—which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed—to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation’s right-wing minority. • “Jentleson understands the inner workings of the institution, down to the most granular details, showing precisely how arcane procedural rules can be leveraged to dramatic effect.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times • “Careful and thorough and exacting.” —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books • “[An] excellent, surprising new book.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker
Majority Rule Versus Consensus
Author: James H. Read
Publisher: American Political Thought
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 296
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis text sheds light on the promise and limitations of democracy, showing that, despite the failure of Calhoun's remedy, his diagnosis of the potential injustice of majority rule must be taken seriously.
Politics Is for Power
Author: Eitan Hersh
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2020-01-14
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1982116781
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA brilliant condemnation of political hobbyism—treating politics like entertainment—and a call to arms for well-meaning, well-informed citizens who consume political news, but do not take political action. Who is to blame for our broken politics? The uncomfortable answer to this question starts with ordinary citizens with good intentions. We vote (sometimes) and occasionally sign a petition or attend a rally. But we mainly “engage” by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. We soak in daily political gossip and eat up statistics about who’s up and who’s down. We tweet and post and share. We crave outrage. The hours we spend on politics are used mainly as pastime. Instead, we should be spending the same number of hours building political organizations, implementing a long-term vision for our city or town, and getting to know our neighbors, whose votes will be needed for solving hard problems. We could be accumulating power so that when there are opportunities to make a difference—to lobby, to advocate, to mobilize—we will be ready. But most of us who are spending time on politics today are focused inward, choosing roles and activities designed for our short-term pleasure. We are repelled by the slow-and-steady activities that characterize service to the common good. In Politics Is for Power, pioneering and brilliant data analyst Eitan Hersh shows us a way toward more effective political participation. Aided by political theory, history, cutting-edge social science, as well as remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who got off their couches and took political power seriously, this book shows us how to channel our energy away from political hobbyism and toward empowering our values.
From Majority Rule to Inclusive Politics
Author: Peter Emerson
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-01-16
Total Pages: 168
ISBN-13: 3319235001
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book discusses voting procedures in collective decision-making. Drawing on well-established election processes from all over the world, the author presents a voting procedure that allows for the speedy but fair election of a proportional, all-party coalition. The methodology - a matrix vote - is accurate, robust and ethno-color blind. In the vote, the counting procedure encourages all concerned to cross the gender as well as any party and/or sectarian divides. While in the resulting executive each party will be represented fairly and, at best, with the consensus of parliament, every minister will be the one most suited to his/her new portfolio. By using preferential voting and thus achieving consensus, the matrix vote will be fundamental to the resolution of conflicts. The matrix vote can also be used when: • two or more parliamentary parties elect a coalition government • one parliamentary party elects a government or shadow cabinet, or organizations in civil society elect their governing boards or executive committees • any group chooses a fixed number of individuals to form a team in which each member carries out a different function
Beyond Instrumentalised Politics
Author: Garrett Thomson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2024-05-06
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13: 3111240592
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe weaknesses of aggregative/representative democracy point to the current governments' failures so prevalent in the West that there are few innovative alternatives. Given that major global challenges all hinge on the transformation of public governance, it has become a most pressing matter for humanity to re-conceptualise future-making approaches to governance. This series aims to explore constructive and promising orientations to democracy.
Beyond Politics
Author: William Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 222
ISBN-13: 0429720483
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTraditional public policy and welfare economics have held that market failures are common, requiring the intervention of government in order to serve and protect the public good. In Beyond Politics, William C. Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons carefully scrutinize this traditional view through the modern theory of public choice. The authors enlighten the relationship of government and markets by emphasizing the actual rather than the ideal workings of governments and by reuniting the insights of economics with those of political science. Beyond Politics traces the anatomy of government failure and a pathology of contemporary political institutions as government has become a vehicle for private gain at public expense. In so doing, this brisk and vigorous book examines a host of public issues, including social welfare, consumer protection, and the environment. Offering a unified and powerful perspective on the market process, property rights, politics, contracts, and government bureaucracy, Beyond Politics is a lucid and comprehensive book on the foundations and institutions of a free and humane society.
Beyond the Turnout Paradox
Author: Luis Fernando Medina Sierra
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2018-02-10
Total Pages: 101
ISBN-13: 3319739484
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis Brief uses game-theoretic analysis to debunk the turnout paradox and offers an alternative economic model to elucidate the patterns behind the socioeconomic bias in turnout. The author argues that the turnout paradox—the idea that rational, strategic actors would not vote in an election—is an overstated problem, and that, contrary to widespread belief, game-theoretic models of elections with highly realistic parameters are compatible with high turnout. The author applies the method of stability sets to the study of voting games so as to characterize the behavior of electoral turnout in response to the game’s structural parameters. To illustrate the power and potential of this framework, the author then develops a politico-economic model that generates testable theories about the way in which the modern welfare state and redistribution of wealth can shape the patterns of biased turnout that exist in most democracies. By turning a classic problem of rational choice into a source of new methods of analysis this Brief allows game theory to intervene in relevant conversations about the political economy of electoral participation, creating an opportunity for formal methods to make a welcome contribution to the discipline. As such, this Brief will be of use to scholars and student of political science, economics, political economy, and public policy, especially those who work in the tradition of formal methods.
The Political Philosophy of AI
Author: Mark Coeckelbergh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2022-01-31
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13: 1509548556
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPolitical issues people care about such as racism, climate change, and democracy take on new urgency and meaning in the light of technological developments such as AI. How can we talk about the politics of AI while moving beyond mere warnings and easy accusations? This is the first accessible introduction to the political challenges related to AI. Using political philosophy as a unique lens through which to explore key debates in the area, the book shows how various political issues are already impacted by emerging AI technologies: from justice and discrimination to democracy and surveillance. Revealing the inherently political nature of technology, it offers a rich conceptual toolbox that can guide efforts to deal with the challenges raised by what turns out to be not only artificial intelligence but also artificial power. This timely and original book will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy of technology and political philosophy, as well as tech developers, innovation leaders, policy makers, and anyone interested in the impact of technology on society.
Cycles and Social Choice
Author: Thomas Schwartz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018-03-22
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13: 1316853233
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe centuries-old paradox of voting is that majorities sometimes prefer x to y, y to z, and z to x - a cycle. The discovery of the sources and consequences of such cycles, under majority rule and countless other regimes, constitutes much of the mathematical theory of voting and social choice. This book explores the big questions posed by the paradox of voting: positive questions about how to predict outcomes and explain observed stability, and normative questions about how to hold elections, how to take account of preference intensities, the relevance of social welfare to social choice, and challenges to formal 'rationality', individual and social. The overall lesson is that cycles are facts, ubiquitous, and consequential in non-obvious ways, not puzzles to be solved, much less maladies or misfortunes to be avoided or regretted.
