That Noble Science of Politics

That Noble Science of Politics
Author: Stefan Collini
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 404
Release: 1983-11-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521277709

In this work, three historians of ideas examine the forms taken in nineteenth-century Britain to develop a 'science of politics'.

Politics of Nature

Politics of Nature
Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674039963

A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.

The Logic of Political Survival

The Logic of Political Survival
Author: Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 602
Release: 2005-01-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262261774

The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.

The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950

The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950
Author: Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469636417

In this history of the social and human sciences in Mexico and the United States, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt reveals intricate connections among the development of science, the concept of race, and policies toward indigenous peoples. Focusing on the anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, physicians, and other experts who collaborated across borders from the Mexican Revolution through World War II, Rosemblatt traces how intellectuals on both sides of the Rio Grande forged shared networks in which they discussed indigenous peoples and other ethnic minorities. In doing so, Rosemblatt argues, they refashioned race as a scientific category and consolidated their influence within their respective national policy circles. Postrevolutionary Mexican experts aimed to transform their country into a modern secular state with a dynamic economy, and central to this endeavor was learning how to "manage" racial difference and social welfare. The same concern animated U.S. New Deal policies toward Native Americans. The scientists' border-crossing conceptions of modernity, race, evolution, and pluralism were not simple one-way impositions or appropriations, and they had significant effects. In the United States, the resulting approaches to the management of Native American affairs later shaped policies toward immigrants and black Americans, while in Mexico, officials rejected policy prescriptions they associated with U.S. intellectual imperialism and racial segregation.

Earthly Politics

Earthly Politics
Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2004-03-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780262600590

Globalization today is as much a problem for international harmony as it is a necessary condition of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness in ecology, economy, technology, and politics has brought nations and societies into even closer contact, creating acute demands for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming decades global governance will have to accommodate differences even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect many aspects of the local while developing institutions that transcend localism. This book analyzes a variety of environmental-governance approaches that balance the local and the global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws on insights from the field of science and technology studies to enrich our understanding of environmental-development politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national boundaries. The cases in the book display the crucial relationship between knowledge and power—the links between the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways we manage them—and illustrate the different paths by which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested, defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization, the authors identify some of the conditions for creating more effective engagement between the global and the local in environmental governance.

Prejudice in Politics

Prejudice in Politics
Author: Lawrence D. Bobo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2006-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674013292

The authors explore a lengthy controversy surrounding fishing, hunting, and gathering rights of Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin. The book uses a carefully designed survey of public opinion to explore the dynamics of prejudice and political contestation, and to further our understanding of how and why racial prejudice enters into politics in the U.S.

The Politics of Denial

The Politics of Denial
Author: Michael A. Milburn
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262631846

What is the driving force behind the rage of America's white males? Emotion appears to be playing a growing role in politics, as evidenced by vociferous opposition to welfare, abortion, and immigrants, as well as by the rise of the radical Religious Right, antienvironmentalism, and the increasingly neoconservative slant of American public opinion. The Politics of Denial presents a compelling explanation of these phenomena, providing solid empirical evidence for the role of rigid, harsh child-rearing practices in the creation of punitive, authoritarian adult political attitudes. The authors, social psychologists, show how both the political and the public policy processes in the United States are distorted by the unresolved negative emotions (such as fear, anger, and helplessness) that remain from punitive parenting and by the politicians and conservative religious leaders who exploit those emotions. Among the many public figures discussed are Patrick Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, and Billy Graham.

The Science of Politics

The Science of Politics
Author: Josep Maria Colomer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Political science
ISBN: 9780195397741

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The Terms of Order

The Terms of Order
Author: Cedric J. Robinson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1469628228

Do we live in basically orderly societies that occasionally erupt into violent conflict, or do we fail to perceive the constancy of violence and disorder in our societies? In this classic book, originally published in 1980, Cedric J. Robinson contends that our perception of political order is an illusion, maintained in part by Western political and social theorists who depend on the idea of leadership as a basis for describing and prescribing social order. Using a variety of critical approaches in his analysis, Robinson synthesizes elements of psychoanalysis, structuralism, Marxism, classical and neoclassical political philosophy, and cultural anthropology in order to argue that Western thought on leadership is mythological rather than rational. He then presents examples of historically developed "stateless" societies with social organizations that suggest conceptual alternatives to the ways political order has been conceived in the West. Examining Western thought from the vantage point of a people only marginally integrated into Western institutions and intellectual traditions, Robinson's perspective radically critiques fundamental ideas of leadership and order.