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The process of making a new constitution often begins in conditions that are not optimal for careful consideration of the process of constitution making and its objectives. Emphasizing the need for a process that maximizes chances for a democratic outcome, this book makes a case for processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and oriented toward achieving consensus rather than merely negotiated outcomes. The book focuses attention on politicians who participate in creating new constitutions. It discusses methods for selecting them, modes of organizing the deliberating and drafting bodies, their standards of decision making, their ways of connecting to the public, and their use of outside advice—all with a view to enhancing the commitment of the participants after the process concludes. Beginning with an enumeration of unpropitious conditions and ways of mitigating them, the chapters provide illustrations of processes that have been relatively successful and others that have gone astray, drawing on an array of country-focused accounts. The volume also identifies characteristic problems, tradeoffs, and pitfalls that can arise in the course of constitution making. The book aims to provide arguments, evidence, and descriptions that will appeal to a wide audience, ranging from curious non-specialist readers to students, experts, and constitution makers and advisors alike.

Which get-out-the-vote efforts actually succeed in ethnoracial communities and why? Analyzing the results from hundreds of original experiments, this book offers a new theory to explain why some methods work while others do not. Exploring and comparing a wide variety of efforts targeting ethnoracial voters, the authors present a new theoretical frame—the Social Cognition Model of voting, based on an individual's sense of civic identity—for understanding get-out-the-vote effectiveness. This book will serve as a useful guide for political practitioners, for it offers concrete strategies to employ in developing future mobilization efforts.

People's capacity to give meaning and direction to social life is an essential dimension of political freedom. Yet many citizens of Western democracies believe that this freedom has become quite restricted. They feel they are at the mercy of anonymous structures and processes over which they have little control, structures and processes that present them with options and realities they might not have chosen if they had any real choice. As a result, political interest declines and political cynicism flourishes. The underlying cause of the powerlessness pervading the current political system could be modernization. Taking the work of Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, and Joseph Schumpeter as a point of departure, this book examines this process. The topics covered are, among others, the meaning of modernization, the forces that drive it, and, especially, the consequences of modernization for the political freedom of citizens to influence the course of their society via democratic politics.

This book offers a thought-provoking meditation on the art of democratic rule: how does a government persuade the people to accept its authority? Every government must make unpopular demands of its citizens, from levying taxes to enforcing laws and monitoring compliance to regulations. The challenge, this book argues, is that power is not enough; the populace must also be willing to be led. The book addresses this political conundrum unabashedly, using the United States and Britain as his prime examples, providing sharp opinions and cogent analyses on how the culture of national obedience is created and nurtured. It explores the paths leaders must choose if they wish to govern by authority rather than power, or, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, to “maintain order in a nation of devils.”

What explains the continuing hardship of so many black Americans? In this book, a group of scholars analyzes the long, complex structural and environmental causes of discrimination and their effects on African-Americans. The chapter examines the impact of poverty, poor health, poor schools, poor housing, poor neighborhoods, and few job opportunities, and demonstrate how multiple causes reinforce each other and condemn African-Americans to positions of inferiority and poverty. Some of the chapters examine policies designed to correct problems, while others look at the changing racial and ethnic composition of America and its implications for African-Americans, as other minorities surpass them in numbers and claim political, economic, and social attention.

This book provides a new perspective on the development of political thought from Homer to Machiavelli, Tocqueville, and Gertrude Stein (who is introduced here, for the first time, as a writer of political significance). Providing nuanced readings of key texts by these and other thinkers, it locates a powerful theme: that the political health of organized political communities—from the ancient polis to the modern state to contemporary democracy—requires a balance between masculine and feminine qualities. Although most critics view the Western tradition as a progression away from misogyny and toward rights for women, the book contends that the need for balance in the political community was well understood in earlier eras, and only now has it been almost entirely overlooked in our focus on surface indications of strict gender equality. It argues that political rhetoric must once again promote the reconciliation of masculine and feminine forces in order to achieve effective politics and statecraft.

Authoritarian nationalist movements labeled “populist” are advancing xenophobic, intolerant “stories of peoplehood” to justify repression and exclusions in many nations today. That Is Not Who We Are! argues that those stories must be met in part by advancing more egalitarian and inclusive national narratives. It provides criteria for developing better stories of peoplehood and explores examples from many nations around the world, including Denmark, India, Israel, and the United States. The book concludes that stories championing democracy; a more perfect union; and the Declaration of Independence’s quest to secure rights for all can help to combat the dangers of Donald Trump’s “America First” nationalist narrative.

This book explores a profound shift in the ideology of individualism, from the ethical nineteenth-century standard, in which each person cooperates with others as equals for the betterment of their lives and the community, to the contemporary “I don't give a damn” maxim. Identifying this “tyranny of the moderns” as the most radical risk that modern democracy currently faces, the book examines the critical necessity of reestablishing the role of the individual citizen as a free and equal agent of democratic society.