This book examines the consequences of legislators' strategic communication for representation, demonstrating how legislators present their work to cultivate constituent support. Using new statistical techniques to analyze massive data sets, Justin Grimmer makes the compelling case that to understand political representation, we must understand what legislators say to constituents.
This book demonstrates the consequences of legislators' strategic communication for representation in American politics. Representational Style in Congress shows how legislators present their work to cultivate constituent support. Using a massive new data set of texts from legislators and new statistical techniques to analyze the texts, this book provides comprehensive measures of what legislators say to constituents and explains why legislators adopt these styles. Using the new measures, Justin Grimmer shows how legislators affect how constituents evaluate their representatives and the consequences of strategic statements for political discourse. The introduction of new statistical techniques for political texts allows a more comprehensive and systematic analysis of what legislators say and why it matters than was previously possible. Using these new techniques, the book makes the compelling case that to understand political representation, we must understand what legislators say to constituents.
This monograph offers a critical introduction to current theories of how scientific models represent their target systems. Representation is important because it allows scientists to study a model to discover features of reality. The authors provide a map of the conceptual landscape surrounding the issue of scientific representation, arguing that it consists of multiple intertwined problems. They provide an encyclopaedic overview of existing attempts to answer these questions, and they assess their strengths and weaknesses. The book also presents a comprehensive statement of their alternative proposal, the DEKI account of representation, which they have developed over the last few years. They show how the account works in the case of material as well as non-material models; how it accommodates the use of mathematics in scientific modelling; and how it sheds light on the relation between representation in science and art. The issue of representation has generated a sizeable literature, which has been growing fast in particular over the last decade. This makes it hard for novices to get a handle on the topic because so far there is no book-length introduction that would guide them through the discussion. Likewise, researchers may require a comprehensive review that they can refer to for critical evaluations. This book meets the needs of both groups.
Members of Parliament (MPs) are often dismissed as “trained seals,” helpless to do anything other than take commands from party leaders. Representation in Action challenges this view of Canadian MPs and shows that the ways they represent their constituents are as diverse as Canada itself. Royce Koop, Heather Bastedo, and Kelly Blidook examine the types of activities Members of Parliament engage in, within their constituencies and in Ottawa, and they systemically determine what accounts for differences in style and agency. Drawing on original observational and interview research with eleven MPs and featuring detailed in-depth case studies, this book shows how MPs develop distinct approaches to the role of representative when addressing policy concerns, assisting constituents with problems, and connecting with those who elect them. The first book to use intensive participant-observation methods to study Canadian MPs and representation, Representation in Action is a compelling portrait of diversity in representational styles.
This book uses Sweden as a test case to analyze how parliament and elected representatives function in a representative democracy. Despite the status of Scandinavian countries as perhaps the world’s most egalitarian societies, the book argues that the best summary characterization of Swedish representative democracy is an elitist system run from above. The book also argues that an individualist representational model is relevant to the Swedish setting and most likely, to other settings as well. Representative democracy is not just party-based democracy - not even in a country with strong and disciplined parties. The book takes a broad approach to the study of political representation. It integrates into a single analytical framework concepts and theories from neighbouring traditions such as legislative behaviour, opinion formation and interest organizations. The study is based on a comprehensive set of data, including three surveys of the Members of the Swedish Parliament, corresponding voter surveys and content analysis of mass media and parliamentary records.
In this book, the noted intellectual historian Frank Ankersmit provides a systematic account of the problems of reference, truth, and meaning in historical writing. He works from the conviction that the historicist account of historical writing, associated primarily with Leopold von Ranke and Wilhelm von Humboldt, is essentially correct but that its original idealist and romanticist idiom needs to be translated into more modern terms. Rehabilitating historicism for the contemporary philosophy of history, he argues, "reveals the basic truths about the nature of the past itself, how we relate to it, and how we make sense of the past in historical writing." At the heart of Ankersmit's project is a sharp distinction between interpretation and representation. The historical text, he holds, is first and foremost a representation of some part of the past, not an interpretation. The book's central chapters address the concept of historical representation from the perspectives of reference, truth, and meaning. Ankersmit then goes on to discuss the possible role of experience in the history writing, which leads directly to a consideration of subjectivity and ethics in the historian's practice. Ankersmit concludes with a chapter on political history, which he maintains is the "basis and condition of all other variants of historical writing." Ankersmit's rehabilitation of historicism is a powerfully original and provocative contribution to the debate about the nature of historical writing.
Best Team Skills gives you the tools you need to achieve the highest performance through the most productive encouragement and motivational methods available. Dr. Losoncy identifies the 50 skills that will most encourage your team members. Using 100 encouragement opportunity exercises, he works as your personal trainer to reinforce your progress. Just as there are vital technical skills that team members need in their own areas of expertise, there are also consequential team skills that are necessary to build responsible, involved and committed team players. If you want to become a more encouraging team member or help your entire team to become mutual encouragers, Best Team Skills is for you. Written not only for your work team, you can also can also apply Losoncy's techniques to your home or sports team. Presented in an easy-to-read format, each skill is put to use quickly for immediate feedback and success.
From the high plains of Canada to caves in the southeastern United States, images etched into and painted on stone by ancient Native Americans have aroused in observers the desire to understand their origins and meanings. Rock paintings and engravings can be found in nearly every state and province, and each region has its own distinctive story of discovery and evolving investigation of the rock art record. Rock art in the twenty-first century enjoys a large and growing popularity fueled by scholarly research and public interest alike. This book explores the history of rock art research in North America and is the only volume in the past twenty-five years to provide coverage of the subject on a continental scale. Written by contributors active in rock art research, it examines sites that provide a cross-section of regions and topics and complements existing books on rock art by offering new information, insights, and approaches to research. The first part of the volume explores different regional approaches to the study of rock art, including a set of varied responses to a single site as well as an overview of broader regional research investigations. It tells how Writing-on-Stone in southern Alberta, Canada, reflects changing thought about rock art from the 1870s to today; it describes the role of avocational archaeologists in the Mississippi Valley, where rock art styles differ on each side of the river; it explores discoveries in southwestern mountains and southeastern caves; and it integrates the investigation of cupules along Georgia’s Yellow River into a full study of a site and its context. The book also compares the differences between rock art research in the United States and France: from the outset, rock art was of only marginal interest to most U.S. archaeologists, while French prehistorians considered cave art an integral part of archaeological research. The book’s second part is concerned with working with the images today and includes coverage of gender interests, government sponsorship, the role of amateurs in research, and chronometric studies. Much has changed in our understanding of rock art since Cotton Mather first wrote in 1714 of a strange inscription on a Massachusetts boulder, and the cutting-edge contributions in this volume tell us much about both the ancient place of these enduring images and their modern meanings. Discovering North American Rock Art distills today’s most authoritative knowledge of the field and is an essential volume for both specialists and hobbyists.
While the Congress literature of the 1970s and 1980s led to the dominant impression that all politics is local, in recent years legislative behavior has pointed in more national directions. Dilemmas of Representation comprehensively examines the multifaceted activities of several legislators from New York, one of the country's most diverse states. Legislators still include strong local components in their home styles, but a variety of national factors now contribute notably to an understanding of local politics. This book encourages the reader to think more about the appropriate balance of local and national emphasis in legislator home styles, and also the advantages and disadvantages of the contrasting representational styles used by some contemporary representatives.
