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John E. McDonough affords a rare glimpse into the practice of state politics in this insider’s account of the fascinating interface between political science and real-life politics. A member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for thirteen years and a skilled storyteller, McDonough eloquently weaves together stories of politics and policy with engaging theoretical models in a way that illuminates both the theory and the practice. By providing a link between scholarship and the world of experience, he communicates much about the essence of representative democracy. In the process, he demonstrates how politics extend beyond the public sphere into many aspects of life involving diverse values and interests.
McDonough describes the nature of conflict, the role of interests, agenda setting, the nature and pace of change, the use of language, and more. Accessible, insightful, and original, his stories touch on a broad range of issues–including health care politics, campaigns, and elections; a street gang called the X-men; the death penalty; campaign finance reform, and tenants versus landlords. To the author, politics is everywhere and political dynamics are universal. While the setting for this book is one legislature, the lessons and insights are intended for everyone.
Experiencing Politics: A Legislator’s Stories of Government and Health Care
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Comparing Asian Politics presents an invaluable comparative examination of politics and government in three Asian nations: India, China, and Japan. The author elucidates the links between politics and each nation’s distinctive cultural and historical contexts and demonstrates the intermingling and grafting of Asian traditions with the influence of Western values and institutions. National identity, political cohesion, and socioeconomic change emerge as central to how politics has developed in each nation-state. Including new focus boxes on political and social issues and other important countries in Asia, this third edition provides insight into topics such as the significance of constitutions in the political process; the parliamentary system in Asia; the regionalization of politics and the importance of levels of government; the decay of one-party rule; the links between development and democratization; and the impact of globalization. This essential book not only illuminates the politics of India, China, and Japan in relation to one another, it also suggests to readers how their own experience of politics can be informed by understanding the politics and government of these three Asian nations.
Comparing Asian Politics: India, China, and Japan
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WESTERN CIVILIZATION, 9th Edition covers the Western intellectual tradition and the significance of its ideas within a political history chronology. Known for its accessible writing style, this text appeals to students and instructors alike for its brevity, clarity, and careful selection of content including its enhanced focus on religion and philosophy. Updated with more recent scholarship, the Ninth Edition retains many popular features, including comparative timelines and full-color maps with physical geography essays. New technology resources, including an interactive eBook, make learning more engaging and instruction more efficient.
Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society, Volume II: From 1600
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A key player in the politics of the Middle East, Hamas is renowned for its contradictory positions. The group uses terror tactics against Israel’s civilians and military, yet runs on a law and order ticket in Palestinian elections; it pursues an Islamic state, yet holds internal elections; it campaigns for shari’ah law, yet its leaders are predominantly secular professionals; and it calls for the destruction of Israel, yet has reluctantly agreed to honor previously established peace agreements.
In Hamas in Politics, Jeroen Gunning launches a probing study of the movement’s success in the political arena, showing that religion, violence, and democracy are not necessarily incompatible. Many of Hamas’s apparent contradictions flow from the relationship between the organization’s ideology, local constituency, and the nature of politics in Israel and Palestine. Gunning conducts interviews with members of Hamas as well as the group’s critics and draws on a decade of close observation of the organization. He illuminates Hamas’s understanding of its ideology and explores the tension between its dual commitment to “God” and “the people.” Examining the group’s political practice and what it says about the group’s attitude towards democracy, religion, and violence, Gunning provides a unique window into Hamas’s internal structure, revealing its process of choosing leaders and determining policy.
Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence
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The first edition of this landmark work is one of the Brookings Institution’s most successful titles. Since that original publication, authors Morton Halperin and Priscilla Clapp, with Arnold Kanter have been significant participants in America’s foreign policy community. This thoroughly revised book updates their classic analysis of the role played by the federal bureaucracy–civilian career officials, political appointees, and military officers–in formulating U.S. national security policy, illustrating how policy decisions are actually made. The second edition also includes an expanded analysis of Congress’s role in the politics of foreign policy making.
Government agencies, departments, and individuals all have certain interests to preserve and promote. Those priorities, and the conflicts they sometimes spark, heavily influence the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy provides numerous examples of bureaucratic maneuvering and reveals how they have influenced U.S. international relations. The revised edition includes examples of bureaucratic politics from the past three decades, from Jimmy Carter’s view of the State Department to conflicts between George W. Bush and the bureaucracy regarding Iraq.
Bureaucratic Politics And Foreign Policy
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This favorite of both instructors and students is a “behind-the-scenes” tour of news in American politics. The core question explored in this book is: How well does the news, as the core of the national political information system, serve the needs of democracy? In investigating this question, the book examines how various political actors—from presidents and members of Congress, to interest organizations and citizen-activists—try to get their messages into the news.
News: The Politics of Illusion
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A variety of perspectives exist within the Christian community when it comes to political issues and political involvement. This comprehensive and readable book presents a political philosophy from the perspective that the Gospel pertains to all of life so Christians should be involved in political issues. In brief, this is an analysis of conservative and liberal plans to do good for the nation, evaluated in light of the Bible and common sense. In this ground-breaking book, recognized evangelical Bible professor Wayne Grudem rejects five mistaken views about Christian influence on politics: (1) ‘compel religion,’ (2) ‘exclude religion,’ (3) ‘all government is demonic,’ (4) ‘do evangel-ism, not politics,’ and (5) ‘do politics, not evangelism.’ He proposes a better alternative: (6) ’significant Christian influence on government.’ Then he explains the Bible’s teachings about the purpose of civil government and the characteristics of good or bad government. Does the Bible support some form of democracy? Should judges and the courts hold the ultimate power in a nation? With respect to specific political issues, Grudem argues that most people’s political views depend on deep-seated assumptions about several basic moral and even theological questions, such as whether God exists, whether absolute moral standards can be known, whether there is good and evil in each person’s heart, whether people should be accountable for their good and bad choices, whether property should belong to individuals or to society, and whether the purpose of the earth’s resources is to bring benefit to mankind. After addressing these foundational questions, Grudem provides a thoughtful, carefully-reasoned analysis of over fifty specific issues dealing with the protection of life, marriage, the family and children, economic issues and taxation, the environment, national defense, relationships to other nations, freedom of speech and religion, quotas, and special interests. He makes frequent application to the current policies of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, but the principles discussed here are relevant for any nation.
Politics – According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture
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The third edition of An Introduction to African Politics continues to be the ideal textbook for those new to the study of this fascinating continent. It gets to the heart of the politics of this part of the world, tackling questions such as: How is modern Africa still influenced by its colonial past? How do strong ethnic identities on the continent affect government? Why has the military been so influential? Why do African states have such difficulty managing their economies? How does African democracy differ from democracy in the West?
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The result is a textbook that identifies the essential features of African politics, allowing students to grasp the recurring political patterns that have dominated this continent since independence.
Features and benefits of the third edition:
- Thematically organised, with individual chapters exploring issues such as colonialism, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, social class, ideology, legitimacy, authority, sovereignty and democracy.
- Identifies key recurrent themes such as the competitive relationships between the African state, its civil society and external interests.
- Contains useful boxed case studies at the end of each chapter, including: Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Somalia, Ghana, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe.
- Each chapter concludes with key terms and definitions, as well as questions and advice on further reading.
- Illustrated throughout with images of important political figures, and key moments in African history.
- Important terms and concepts are explained in a clear and accessible manner and supported by contemporary examples.
This expanded, fully revised and updated edition remains the ideal gateway for students seeking to make sense of the dynamic and diverse political systems that are a feature of this fascinating part of the world.
An Introduction to African Politics
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In Warrior Politics, the esteemed journalist and analyst Robert D. Kaplan explores the wisdom of the ages for answers for today’s leaders. While the modern world may seem more complex and dangerous than ever before, Kaplan writes from a deeper historical perspective to reveal how little things actually change. Indeed, as Kaplan shows us, we can look to history’s most influential thinkers, who would have understood and known how to navigate today’s dangerous political waters.
Drawing on the timeless work of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, among others, Kaplan argues that in a world of unstable states and an uncertain future, it is increasingly imperative to wrest from the past what we need to arm ourselves for the road ahead. Wide-ranging and accessible, Warrior Politics is a bracing book with an increasingly important message that challenges readers to see the world as it is, not as they would like it to be.Amazon.com Review
Robert Kaplan’s Warrior Politics is an extended, willfully provocative essay arguing that the bedrock of sound foreign policy should be “comprehensive pragmatism” rather than “utopian hopes.” Kaplan calls for a reestablishment of American (primarily) realpolitik, one distanced from Judeo-Christian (or private) virtue and closer to a “pagan” (public) one. He aligns himself with America’s Founding Fathers, who, he says, believed good government emerged only from a “sly understanding of men’s passions.” His book is a mix of aphoristic pronouncements, brief contemporary political analyses, rapid-fire parallels between conflicts ancient and current, and copious quotes from historians and thinkers through the ages (Livy, Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes among them). Though its historical gleanings are often too summary and suspiciously convenient, Warrior Politics promises to generate controversy among students of global politics–just as it was designed to do. –H. O’Billovitch
Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos
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Latin America is a region of great diversity and a rich laboratory for understanding the processes of political development and their interaction with economic growth, social modernization, and cultural influences. Highlighting crucial periods of dynamic socioeconomic and political change,
Comparative Latin American Politics provides a balanced, concise overview of select Latin American countries without underestimating the complexities of a region noted for its striking differences. The book focuses on the dominant dyad of Mexico and Brazil while also considering in detail Argentina, Chile, Peru, Columbia, and Venezuela?seven countries that contain four-fifths of the region’s inhabitants as well as an even higher proportion of its economy.
Recognizing that political institutions and cultures are built over generations, author Ronald M. Schneider divides his analysis into two parts. Part one examines the period from independence to 1930, when countries were coping with an array of post-independence problems and challenges of national consolidation. Part two concentrates on 1930 to the present day and fleshes out current political practices and structures. Each part devotes chapters to specific country coverage as well as meaningful comparative perspectives that illuminate the political evolution of the region and offer salient lessons for other developing parts of the world.
Comparative Latin American Politics