Understanding Political Ideas and Movements

Understanding Political Ideas and Movements

Author: Kevin Harrison

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2003-12-05

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780719061516

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Underpinned by the work of major thinkers such as Marx, Locke, Weber, Hobbes and Foucault, the first half of the book looks at political concepts including: the state and sovereignty; the nation; democracy; representation and legitimacy; freedom; equiality and rights; obligation; and citizenship. There is also a specific chapter which addresses the role of ideology in the shaping of politics and society. The second half of the book addresses traditional theoretical subjects such as socialism, Marxism and nationalism, before moving on to more contemporary movements such as environmentalism, ecologism and feminism.


Political Action

Political Action

Author: Michael Walzer

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2019-02-26

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 168137353X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Roads to Dominion

Roads to Dominion

Author: Sara Diamond

Publisher: Guilford Press

Published: 1995-09-08

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9780898628647

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Diamond looks at conservative politics in the United States from World War II to the post-Reagan years.


Moving Politics

Moving Politics

Author: Deborah B. Gould

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-12-15

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 0226305317

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the late 1980s, after a decade spent engaged in more routine interest-group politics, thousands of lesbians and gay men responded to the AIDS crisis by defiantly and dramatically taking to the streets. But by the early 1990s, the organization they founded, ACT UP, was no more—even as the AIDS epidemic raged on. Weaving together interviews with activists, extensive research, and reflections on the author’s time as a member of the organization, Moving Politics is the first book to chronicle the rise and fall of ACT UP, highlighting a key factor in its trajectory: emotion. Surprisingly overlooked by many scholars of social movements, emotion, Gould argues, plays a fundamental role in political activism. From anger to hope, pride to shame, and solidarity to despair, feelings played a significant part in ACT UP’s provocative style of protest, which included raucous demonstrations, die-ins, and other kinds of street theater. Detailing the movement’s public triumphs and private setbacks, Moving Politics is the definitive account of ACT UP’s origin, development, and decline as well as a searching look at the role of emotion in contentious politics.


The Practical Progressive

The Practical Progressive

Author: Erica Payne

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2009-02-23

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0786727691

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Underneath today's elections is a fierce battle for power driven not by the country's elected officials, but by organizations and people you have never heard of. Since the 1964 Goldwater defeat, conservative philanthropists have built a set of ideologically-aligned institutions -- think tanks, legal advocacy organizations, watchdog groups, and media vehicles -- to change the country's intellectual and political climate and to assure conservative political dominance. Progressives finally woke up to this structural disparity and have embarked on one of the most invigorating periods of renewal and growth in political history. This book tells the story of the brightest and best institutions leading this revival.


Supporting a Movement for Health and Health Equity

Supporting a Movement for Health and Health Equity

Author: Alison Mack

Publisher:

Published: 2014-12-03

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9780309303316

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Supporting a Movement for Health and Health Equity" is the summary of a workshop convened in December 2013 by the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities and the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement to explore the lessons that may be gleaned from social movements, both those that are health-related and those that are not primarily focused on health. Participants and presenters focused on elements identified from the history and sociology of social change movements and how such elements can be applied to present-day efforts nationally and across communities to improve the chances for long, healthy lives for all. The idea of movements and movement building is inextricably linked with the history of public health. Historically, most movements - including, for example, those for safer working conditions, for clean water, and for safe food - have emerged from the sustained efforts of many different groups of individuals, which were often organized in order to protest and advocate for changes in the name of such values as fairness and human rights. The purpose of the workshop was to have a conversation about how to support the fragments of health movements that roundtable members believed they could see occurring in society and in the health field. Recent reports from the National Academies have highlighted evidence that the United States gets poor value on its extraordinary investments in health - in particular, on its investments in health care - as American life expectancy lags behind that of other wealthy nations. As a result, many individuals and organizations, including the Healthy People 2020 initiative, have called for better health and longer lives.


Movements and Parties

Movements and Parties

Author: Sidney Tarrow

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 1009033433

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do social movements intersect with the agendas of mainstream political parties? When they are integrated with parties, are they coopted? Or are they more radically transformative? Examining major episodes of contention in American politics – from the Civil War era to the women's rights and civil rights movements to the Tea Party and Trumpism today – Sidney Tarrow tackles these questions and provides a new account of how the interactions between movements and parties have been transformed over the course of American history. He shows that the relationships between movements and parties have been central to American democratization – at times expanding it and at times threatening its future. Today, movement politics have become more widespread as the parties have become weaker. The future of American democracy hangs in the balance.


When Movements Anchor Parties

When Movements Anchor Parties

Author: Daniel Schlozman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0691164703

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Throughout American history, some social movements, such as organized labor and the Christian Right, have forged influential alliances with political parties, while others, such as the antiwar movement, have not. When Movements Anchor Parties provides a bold new interpretation of American electoral history by examining five prominent movements and their relationships with political parties. Taking readers from the Civil War to today, Daniel Schlozman shows how two powerful alliances—those of organized labor and Democrats in the New Deal, and the Christian Right and Republicans since the 1970s—have defined the basic priorities of parties and shaped the available alternatives in national politics. He traces how they diverged sharply from three other major social movements that failed to establish a place inside political parties—the abolitionists following the Civil War, the Populists in the 1890s, and the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond a view of political parties simply as collections of groups vying for preeminence, Schlozman explores how would-be influencers gain influence—or do not. He reveals how movements join with parties only when the alliance is beneficial to parties, and how alliance exacts a high price from movements. Their sweeping visions give way to compromise and partial victories. Yet as Schlozman demonstrates, it is well worth paying the price as movements reorient parties' priorities. Timely and compelling, When Movements Anchor Parties demonstrates how alliances have transformed American political parties.


Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State

Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State

Author: Donatella della Porta

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-09-29

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0521473969

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents empirical research on the nature and structure of political violence. While most studies of social movements focus on single-nation studies, Donatella della Porta uses a comparative research design to analyze movements in two countries--Italy and Germany--from the 1960s to the 1990s. Through extensive use of official documents and in-depth interviews, della Porta is able to explain the actors' construction of external political reality, and to build a theory on political violence that synthesizes the various interactions among political actors.