Political Science

25001 books

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by Shashi Tharoor (Author)A revelatory and original contribution to our understanding of the role of religion in society and politics. India's leading public intellectual, Shashi Tharoor, lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imper...

Urban Warfare: Housing Under the Empire of Finance - Paperback

$39.95

by Raquel Rolnik (Author), Gabriel Hirschhorn (Translator)How finance and politics have caused the global housing crisisThe most comprehensive survey of the current crisis, Urban Warfare charts how the financial crisis and wider urban politics have left millions homeless and in financial desperation across the world.The financialization of housing has become a global catastrophe, leaving millions desperate and homeless. Since the 2008 financial collapse, models of home ownership, originating ...

$30.71

by Heather MacDonald (Author)False charges of racial profiling threaten to obliterate the crime-fighting gains of the last decade, especially in America's inner cities. This is the message of Heather Mac Donald's new book, in which she brings her special brand of tough and honest journalism to the current war against the police. The anti-profiling crusade, she charges, thrives on an ignorance of policing and a willful blindness to the demographics of crime. In careful reports from New York an...

Franz Kafka and Michel Foucault: Power, Resistance, and the Art of Self-Creation - Paperback

$93.94

by Nicholas Dungey (Author)Franz Kafka and Michel Foucault: Power, Resistance, and the Art of Self-Creation engages with important themes such as power, language, subjectivity and the possibility of fully developed postmodern account of the subject, resistance to power, and an aesthetic interpretation of life.Author BiographyNicholas Dungey is professor of political philosophy in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Northridge. Number of Pages: 186 Dimensions: 0...

Making Nonprofits Work: A Report on the Tides of Nonprofit Management Reform - Paperback

$34.02

by Paul C. Light (Author)" The nonprofit sector has never been under greater pressure to prove itself. With missions expanding and funding never more competitive, the sector suffers from a general impression that it is less efficient and more wasteful than its government and private competitors. Its funders, be they governments, charitable foundations, or individual givers, have never seemed so insistent about economy and results, while its clients, be they communities or individuals, have ne...

Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability - Paperback

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by Paul C. Light (Author)Government is under enormous pressure to change. Call it reinventing, reengineering, or plain old change, but the mandate remains the same: produce more with less, and satisfy the customer while doing it. Yet, successful reform must involve more than exhortation and slogans. Paul Light argues that a failure to pay attention to the thickening of government over the past half century may doom any reinventing effort. The federal government has never had so many leaders. ...

The Search for Social Entrepreneurship - Paperback

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by Paul C. Light (Author)" Research on social entrepreneurship is finally catching up to its rapidly growing potential. In The Search for Social Entrepreneurship, Paul Light explores this surge of interest to establish the state of knowledge on this growing phenomenon and suggest directions for future research. Light begins by outlining the debate on how to define social entrepreneurship, a concept often cited and lauded but not necessarily understood. A very elemental definition would note t...

Welfare Magnets: A New Case for a National Standard - Paperback

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by Paul E. Peterson (Author), Mark C. ROM (Author)"""The best way of handling the question of how much to give the poor, politicians have discovered, is to avoid doing anything about it at all,"" note Paul Peterson and Mark Rom. The issue of the minimum people need in order to live decently is so difficult that Congress has left this crucial question to the states--even though the federal government foots three-fourths of the bill for about 15 million Americans who receive cash and food stamp...

Sharing Power: Public Governance and Private Markets - Paperback

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by Donald F. Kettl (Author)" In the flush of enthusiasm to make government work better, reformers from both left and right have urged government to turn as many functions as possible over to the private sector and to allow market competition instill efficiency and choice. In fact, government has been doing just this for years: every major policy initiative launched since World War II has been managed by public-private partnerships. Yet such privatization has not solved government's problems. ...

Somalia: State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention, and Strategies for Political Reconstruction - Paperback

$37.26

by Terrence Lyons (Author), Ahmed I. Samatar (Author)" The multilateral military intervention in Somalia was one of the international community's first major attempts to respond to a dangerous new challenge in the post-cold war era--the problem of state collapse and social disintegration. Catastrophes such as Somalia reach public attention as humanitarian emergencies, but the underlying causes are the disintegration of political institutions and the resulting chaos and insecurity. Given the c...

North Korea through the Looking Glass - Paperback

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by Kongdan Oh (Author), Ralph C. Hassig (Author)" Fifty-five years after its founding at the dawn of the cold war, North Korea remains a land of illusions. Isolated and anachronistic, the country and its culture seem to be dominated exclusively by the official ideology of Juche, which emphasizes national self-reliance, independence, and worship of the supreme leader, General Kim Jong Il. Yet this socialist utopian ideal is pursued with the calculations of international power politics. Kim has...

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by Paul C. Light (Author)" According to Paul C. Light's controversial new book, The New Public Service, this January's 4.8 percent federal pay increase will do little to compensate for what potential employees think is currently missing from federal careers. Talented Americans are not saying ""show me the money"" but ""show me the job."" And federal jobs just do not show well. All job offers being equal, Light argues that the pay increase would matter. But all offers are not equal. Light's re...

Neither Star Wars Nor Sanctuary: Constraining the Military Uses of Space - Paperback

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by Michael E. O'Hanlon (Author)" Space has been militarized for over four decades. Should it now be weaponized? This incisive and insightful book argues that it should not. Since the cold war, space has come to harbor many tools of the tactical warfighter. Satellites have long been used to provide strategic communication, early warning of missile launch, and arms control verification. The U.S. armed forces increasingly use space assets to locate and strike targets on the battlefield. To date,...

Laws of the Landscape: How Policies Shape Cities in Europe and America - Paperback

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by Pietro S. Nivola (Author)" For decades, concerns have been raised about the consequences of relentless suburban expansion in the United States. But so far, government programs to control urban sprawl have had little effect in slowing it down, much less stopping it. In this book, Pietro S. Nivola raises important questions about the continued suburbanization of America: Is suburban growth just the result of market forces, or have government policies helped induce greater sprawl? How much of...

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by Elizabeth Pond (Author)" This revised and updated paperback edition covers the introduction of the euro, the fall of Milosevic, and the impact of September 11 in European integration. The rejuvenation of Europe as a totalitarian century ends and a global century begins is a remarkable story. This book brings together the three dynamics of Europe's position at this extraordinary moment: European monetary union, the deepening of intra-EU cooperation, and the widening of the EU and NATO to ta...

No Child Left Behind?: The Politics and Practice of School Accountability - Paperback

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by Paul E. Peterson (Editor), Martin R. West (Editor)" The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act is the most important legislation in American education since the 1960s. The law requires states to put into place a set of standards together with a comprehensive testing plan designed to ensure these standards are met. Students at schools that fail to meet those standards may leave for other schools, and schools not progressing adequately become subject to reorganization. The significance of the law lie...

Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France - Paperback

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by Jonathan Laurence (Author), Justin Vaisse (Author)" Nearly five million Muslims call France home, the vast majority from former French colonies in North Africa. While France has successfully integrated waves of immigrants in the past, this new influx poses a new variety of challenges--much as it does in neighboring European countries. Alarmists view the growing role of Muslims in French society as a form of ""reverse colonization""; they believe Muslim political and religious networks seek...

Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It - Paperback

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by Stephen Macedo (Author)" Voter turnout was unusually high in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. At first glance, that level of participation--largely spurred by war in Iraq and a burgeoning culture war at home--might look like vindication of democracy. If the recent past is any indication, however, too many Americans will soon return to apathy and inactivity. Clearly, all is not well in our civic life. Citizens are participating in public affairs too infrequently, too unequally, and in t...

Religion in American Public Life - Paperback

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by James A. Reichley (Author)"We are," said Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, "a religious people," and his observation is continually borne out in every aspect of American public life. Religious ideals underlay the founding of the colonies and the firming of the new nation; the activities of churches have been closely interwined with politics in the abolition of slavery, the drive for women's suffrage, the prohibition of liquor, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The recent ...

An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security after the Cold War - Paperback

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by Janne E. Nolan (Author)" The United States continues to maintain a large nuclear arsenal guided by a deterrence strategy little changed since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Notwithstanding changes in the size and composition of nuclear forces brought about since 1991, the fundamental rationales and planning principles which informed U.S. nuclear policy for decades remain in place--despite the disappearance of a superpower nuclear enemy. In this work, Janne E. Nolan traces the effort to a...

Financing State and Local Governments - Paperback

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by J. Richard Aronson (Author), John L. Hilley (Author)" State and local governments are at a financial crossroads. As the federal government attempts to reduce its deficits, state governments will have to provide a greater share of support for mandatory social programs. Local governments face demands for new initiatives in education and for civic improvements. Both have obligations to employee pension plans that are large and still relatively untested. Running counter to these claims on stat...

China's Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy - Paperback

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by Cheng Li (Editor)"While China's economic rise is being watched closely around the world, the country's changing political landscape is intriguing, as well. Forces unleashed by market reforms are profoundly recasting state-society relations. Will the Middle Kingdom transition rapidly, slowly, or not at all to political democracy? In China's Changing Political Landscape, leading experts examine the prospects for democracy in the world's most populous nation. China's political transformation ...

New Weapons, Old Politics: America's Military Procurement Muddle - Paperback

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by Thomas L. McNaugher (Author)" Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressu...

Protecting the American Homeland: One Year on - Paperback

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by Michael E. O'Hanlon (Author), Peter R. Orszag (Author), Ivo H. Daalder (Author)" A good deal has been done to improve the safety of Americans on their own soil since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet there have been numerous setbacks. The Bush administration and Congress wasted at least six months in 2002 due to partisan disagreement over a new budget for homeland security, and as one consequence, resources were slow to reach first responders across the country. Most improvements in h...

Reforming Regulation: An Evaluation of the Ash Council Proposals - Paperback

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by Roger G. Noll (Author)" Many observers agree that federal regulation of business often fails to prevent monopoly profits, promote technological change, or protect consumers against market abuses. Why? President Nixon assigned the task of proposing reforms to his Advisory Council on Executive Organization, called the Ash Council after its chairman, Roy L. Ash. The object of both the Council's report and this paper is to advance the public search for reform. The council suggested that a lead...

The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties - Paperback

$100.44

by James A. Reichley (Author)In this classic work, James Reichley traces the decline of political parties resulting in divided government and an ineffectual political process-but he also shows us what it will take to restore the party system and how it could work to revitalize our democracy. For the first time in paperback, The Life of the Parties includes updates on third party movements, political cycles and realignments, campaign finance reform, and other electoral trends.Author BiographyA...

The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond - Paperback

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by Bradley H. Patterson (Author)" Shrouded in anonymity, protected by executive privilege, but with no legal or constitutional authority of their own, the 5,900 people in 125 offices collectively known as the ""White House staff"" assist the chief executive by shaping, focusing, and amplifying presidential policy. Why is the staff so large? How is it organized and what do those 125 offices actually do? In this sequel to his critically appraised 1988 book, Ring of Power, Bradley H. Patterson J...

Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights - Paperback

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by R. Shep Melnick (Author)" Judicial interpretation of federal statutes has often been at the center of political controversy in recent years. In fact, it would be difficult to find a major domestic policy area in which statutory interpretation by the federal courts has not played a significant role in shaping the activities of government. In most important cases, judges base their interpretation not on the letter of the law, but on their reading of its history, purpose, and spirit. What jud...

Systematic Thinking for Social Action - Paperback

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by Alice M. Rivlin (Author)" How can we identify who benefits from government programs aimed at solving our social problem and who pays for them? With so many problems, how can we allocate scarce funds to promote the maximum well-being of our citizens? In this book, originally presented as the third series of H. Rowan Gaither Lectures in Systems Science at the University of California (Berkeley). Alice M. Rivlin examines the contributions that systematic analysis has made to decisionmaking in...

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by James A. Reichley (Author)Essays discuss the presidential nominating process, media campaign coverage, voter participation, campaign financing, election fraud, and the role of political parties. Number of Pages: 291 Dimensions: 0.83 x 8.98 x 6.07 IN Publication Date: October 01, 1987

Reversals of Fortune: Public Policy and Private Interests - Paperback

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by Gary Mucciaroni (Author)" In this book, Gary Mucciaroni examines the shifting fortunes of economic interest groups in Washington. He addresses such compelling questions as: Why do policymakers bestow benefits on these groups in some areas of public policy but refrain from doing so in others? Why are benefits given to these industries in one period but revoked at a later time? What conditions and processes shape policymakers' postures toward particular interests, and why do they sometimes c...

The Global Public Management Revolution: A Report on the Transformation of Governance, Second Edition - Paperback

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by Donald F. Kettl (Author)" Over the last quarter century, governments around the world have launched ambitious efforts to reform how they manage their programs. Citizens have demanded smaller, cheaper, more effective governments. They have also asked for more programs and better services. To resolve this paradox, governments have experimented with scores of ideas to be more productive, improve performance, and reduce costs. In this new edition of T he Global Public Management Revolution, D...