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Political Emotions

Political Emotions
Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674728297
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How can we achieve and sustain a "decent" liberal society, one that aspires to justice and equal opportunity for all and inspires individuals to sacrifice for the common good? In this book, a continuation of her explorations of emotions and the nature of social justice, Martha Nussbaum makes the case for love. Amid the fears, resentments, and competitive concerns that are endemic even to good societies, public emotions rooted in love—in intense attachments to things outside our control—can foster commitment to shared goals and keep at bay the forces of disgust and envy. Great democratic leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., have understood the importance of cultivating emotions. But people attached to liberalism sometimes assume that a theory of public sentiments would run afoul of commitments to freedom and autonomy. Calling into question this perspective, Nussbaum investigates historical proposals for a public "civil religion" or "religion of humanity" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Rabindranath Tagore. She offers an account of how a decent society can use resources inherent in human psychology, while limiting the damage done by the darker side of our personalities. And finally she explores the cultivation of emotions that support justice in examples drawn from literature, song, political rhetoric, festivals, memorials, and even the design of public parks. "Love is what gives respect for humanity its life," Nussbaum writes, "making it more than a shell." Political Emotionsis a challenging and ambitious contribution to political philosophy.

Political Philosophy: All That Matters

Political Philosophy: All That Matters
Author: Johanna Oksala
Publisher: John Murray
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2013-08-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1444174398
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What is political philosophy? A philosophical study of political ideas such as authority, freedom, justice and democracy? An inquiry into the best form of government? An attempt to rationally justify forms of authority? Johanna Oksana asks exactly these questions as she opens this brilliant new guide to political philosophy. Rather than attempting to provide the reader with a definite answer, the book invites readers to recognize many of the issues encountered in everyday life as political, the outcome of human practices that incorporate power relations, social norms and obligations. It suggests that political philosophy should be understood as an open-ended, critical project that to some extent concerns everyone. The book employs an original structure which will be a huge help to both students and general readers seeking to understand the topic. Each chapter, which moves chronologically from antiquity to the twentieth century, focuses on selected classic texts in political philosophy, which are briefly introduced and analysed. The texts then function as a springboard for a discussion of central contemporary issues in political philosophy.

Vibrant Matter

Vibrant Matter
Author: Jane Bennett
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2010-01-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0822391627
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In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy.

What Americans Know about Politics and why it Matters

What Americans Know about Politics and why it Matters
Author: Michael X. Delli Carpini
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780300072754
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The authors explore how Americans' levels of political knowledge have changed over the past 50 years, how such knowledge is distributed among different groups, and how it is used in political decision-making. Drawing on extensive survey data, they present compelling evidence for benefits of a politically informed citizenry--and the cost of one that is poorly and inequitably informed. 62 illustrations.

Why Parties Matter

Why Parties Matter
Author: John H. Aldrich
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2018-01-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 022649540X
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Since the founding of the American Republic, the North and South have followed remarkably different paths of political development. Among the factors that have led to their divergence throughout much of history are differences in the levels of competition among the political parties. While the North has generally enjoyed a well-defined two-party system, the South has tended to have only weakly developed political parties—and at times no system of parties to speak of. With Why Parties Matter, John H. Aldrich and John D. Griffin make a compelling case that competition between political parties is an essential component of a democracy that is responsive to its citizens and thus able to address their concerns. Tracing the history of the parties through four eras—the Democratic-Whig party era that preceded the Civil War; the post-Reconstruction period; the Jim Crow era, when competition between the parties virtually disappeared; and the modern era—Aldrich and Griffin show how and when competition emerged between the parties and the conditions under which it succeeded and failed. In the modern era, as party competition in the South has come to be widely regarded as matching that of the North, the authors conclude by exploring the question of whether the South is poised to become a one-party system once again with the Republican party now dominant.

News That Matters

News That Matters
Author: Shanto Iyengar
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2010-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226388603
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Almost twenty-five years ago, Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder first documented a series of sophisticated and innovative experiments that unobtrusively altered the order and emphasis of news stories in selected television broadcasts. Their resulting book News That Matters, now hailed as a classic by scholars of political science and public opinion alike, is here updated for the twenty-first century, with a new preface and epilogue by the authors. Backed by careful analysis of public opinion surveys, the authors show how, despite changing American politics, those issues that receive extended coverage in the national news become more important to viewers, while those that are ignored lose credibility. Moreover, those issues that are prominent in the news stream continue to loom more heavily as criteria for evaluating the president and for choosing between political candidates. “News That Matters does matter, because it demonstrates conclusively that television newscasts powerfully affect opinion. . . . All that follows, whether it supports, modifies, or challenges their conclusions, will have to begin here.”—The Public Interest

Why Trust Matters

Why Trust Matters
Author: Marc J. Hetherington
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2006-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691128707
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American public policy has become demonstrably more conservative since the 1960s. Neither Jimmy Carter nor Bill Clinton was much like either John F. Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson. The American public, however, has not become more conservative. Why, then, the right turn in public policy? Using both individual and aggregate level survey data, Marc Hetherington shows that the rapid decline in Americans' political trust since the 1960s is critical to explaining this puzzle. As people lost faith in the federal government, the delivery system for most progressive policies, they supported progressive ideas much less. The 9/11 attacks increased such trust as public attention focused on security, but the effect was temporary. Specifically, Hetherington shows that, as political trust declined, so too did support for redistributive programs, such as welfare and food stamps, and race-targeted programs. While the presence of race in a policy area tends to make political trust important for whites, trust affects policy preferences in other, non-race-related policy areas as well. In the mid-1990s the public was easily swayed against comprehensive health care reform because those who felt they could afford coverage worried that a large new federal bureaucracy would make things worse for them. In demonstrating a strong link between public opinion and policy outcomes, this engagingly written book represents a substantial contribution to the study of public opinion and voting behavior, policy, and American politics generally.

Words That Matter

Words That Matter
Author: Leticia Bode
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815731922
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How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.

The Message Matters

The Message Matters
Author: Lynn Vavreck
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691139628
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Demonstrating how candidates and their campaigns affect the economic vote, this book provides a different way of understanding past elections - and predicting future ones. It offers a theory of campaigns that explains why electoral victory requires more than simply being the candidate favored by prevailing economic conditions.

Why Trust Matters

Why Trust Matters
Author: Marc J. Hetherington
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780691117768
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American public policy has become demonstrably more conservative since the 1960s. Neither Jimmy Carter nor Bill Clinton was much like either John F. Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson. The American public, however, has not become more conservative. Why, then, the right turn in public policy? Using both individual and aggregate level survey data, Marc Hetherington shows that the rapid decline in Americans' political trust since the 1960s is critical to explaining this puzzle. As people lost faith in the federal government, the delivery system for most progressive policies, they supported progressive ideas much less. The 9/11 attacks increased such trust as public attention focused on security, but the effect was temporary. American public policy has become demonstrably more conservative since the 1960s. The American public, however, has not become more conservative. Using survey data, Hetherington shows that the rapid decline in America's political trust since the 1960s is critical to explaining this puzzle. Specifically, Hetherington shows that, as political trust declined, so too did support for redistributive programs, such as welfare and food stamps, and race-targeted programs. While the presence of race in a policy area tends to make political trust important for whites, trust affects policy preferences in other, non-race-related policy areas as well. In the mid-1990s the public was easily swayed against comprehensive health-care reform because those who felt they could afford coverage worried that a large new federal bureaucracy would make things worse for them. In demonstrating a strong link between public opinion and policy outcomes, this engagingly written book represents a substantial contribution to the study of public opinion and voting behavior, policy, and American politics generally.