Governing From Center Stage

This work analyzes and compares the use of communication strategies of presidents and their administrations during the television age of politics. In begins in 1961, and demonstrates that various factors can play a role in whether or not a president succeeds in controlling the political agenda.

This book offers an empirical and theoretical account of the mode of governance that characterizes the Bologna Process. In addition, it shows how the reform materializes and is translated in everyday working life among professors and managers in higher education. It examines the so-called Open Method of Coordination as a powerful actor that uses “soft governance” to advance transnational standards in higher education. The book shows how these standards no longer serve as tools for what were once human organizational, national or international, regulators. Instead, the standards have become regulators themselves – the faceless masters of higher education. By exploring this, the book reveals the close connections between the Bologna Process and the EU regarding regulative and monitoring techniques such as standardizations and comparisons, which are carried out through the Open Method of Coordination. It suggests that the Bologna Process works as a subtle means to circumvent the EU’s subsidiarity principle, making it possible to accomplish a European governance of higher education despite the fact that education falls outside EU’s legislative reach. The book’s research interest in translation processes, agency and power relations among policy actors positions it in studies on policy transfer, policy borrowing and globalization. However, different from conventional approaches, this study draws on additional interpretive frameworks such as new materialism.

Governing the Locals demonstrates that with the exception of a brief period in 1990-92 when the local soviets fostered mass mobilization, local governments in post-Soviet Russia have actively constrained grass-roots activism. Rather than serving as instruments of the 'schooling in civil society, ' or of 'making democracy work'_as the conventional wisdom holds_local governments have been used by the regional authoritarian or ethnocratic regimes as instruments of top down social control. The author suggests that this tendency has been on the rise under President Putin, whose reforms have served to integrate local government into a centralized power vertical potentially facilitating authoritarian style social mobilization non only on a regional level, but also on a nation-wide scale. The author examines the impact of local self-governing institutions on nationalist movement mobilization in Russia. Using insights from social movement theories, Lankina argues that similar to the soviets in the Soviet system, municipalities in post-Soviet Russia continue to influence local societies through their control over social networks, material resources, and public agenda setting. Accordingly, their facilitating or constraining role crucially affects movement successes or failures. This is the first study identifying the centrality of local government for understanding the nature of state-society relations in Russia, and for explaining the broader questions of social activism or lack thereof in the post-Soviet space.

Table of contents

Presidents spend millions of dollars on public opinion polling while in office. Critics often point to this polling as evidence that a “permanent campaign” has taken over the White House at the expense of traditional governance. But has presidential polling truly changed the shape of presidential leadership? Diane J. Heith examines the polling practices of six presidential administrations—those of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton—dissecting the poll apparatus of each period. She contends that while White House polls significantly influence presidential messages and responses to events, they do not impact presidential decisions to the extent that observers often claim. Heith concludes that polling, and thus the campaign environment, exists in tandem with long-established governing strategies.

Unlike most competing texts that are densely written and heavily theoretical, with little flavor of political life, this book is a readable, jargon-free introduction to real-life local politics for today's students. While it encompasses local government and politics in cities and towns across America, "Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots" gives special attention to the politics of suburbia, where many students live, and encourages them to become engaged in their own communities. The book is also distinguished by its strong emphasis on nuts-and-bolts practical politics. It provides focused discussion of institutions, roles, and personalities as well as the dynamic environment of local politics (demographics, immigration, globalization, etc.) and major policy issues (budgets, land use, transportation, education, etc.). Other texts treat communities as abstractions and readers as passive observers. "Local Politics: A Practical Guide to Governing at the Grassroots" is designed to inspire civic engagement as well as understanding. It features "In Your Community" research projects for students in every chapter along with informative tables, clear charts, essential terms, and guides to useful websites.

Center Stage Media and the Performance of American Politicstimely and accessibleexamines political and mediated discourse as forms of representational theater and explores how American civic culture is variously enriched and diminished by the ways practitioners and journalists organize narratives about our civic life. Chapters cover a range of contexts such as the presidency, Congress and the courts, foreign news reporting, and political art. The text concludes with ways to open up additional pathways for imagining our national life, ranging from Internet-supported activism to innovative uses of documentary film.

If politics is a game, who better to play it than a master showman like a mega-rock star? America has adored rock star Tyler Sloan for decades, and when he decides to leave the Las Vegas stage to run for a seat on the United States Senate, it's assumed that he'll run an unconventional campaign. He exceeds expectations--and more. No stranger to politics, Sloan's estranged father was a California governor who narrowly lost his presidential campaign. It's this experience--and his performance skills--that render a show-stopping performance as an independent candidate for Senate. He expresses disdain for the two-party system and dismisses special interests and lobbyists. Sloan immediately finds himself caught in a political campaign fraught with scandal, corruption, and conflicting loyalties--personally, politically, and romantically. Will Sloan be able to handle political turbulence and reckon with his own past while navigating the polls? As the countdown to election day begins, Tyler Sloan is focused on winning and taking center stage.

Freedom of religion did not come easily to Cuba or Puerto Rico. Only after the arrival of American troops during the Spanish-American War were non-Catholics permitted to practice their religions openly and to proselytize. When government efforts to ensure freedom of worship began, reformers on both islands rejoiced, believing that an era of regeneration and modernization was upon them. But as new laws went into effect, critics voiced their dismay at the rise of popular religions. Reinaldo L. Roman explores the changing relationship between regulators and practitioners in neocolonial Cuba and Puerto Rico. Spiritism, Santeria, and other African-derived traditions were typically characterized in sensational fashion by the popular press as "a plague of superstition." Examining seven episodes between 1898 and the Cuban Revolution when the public demanded official actions against "misbelief," Roman finds that when outbreaks of superstition were debated, matters of citizenship were usually at stake. He links the circulation of spectacular charges of witchcraft and miracle-making to anxieties surrounding newly expanded citizenries that included people of color. Governing Spirits also contributes to the understanding of vernacular religions by moving beyond questions of national or traditional origins to illuminate how boundaries among hybrid practices evolved in a process of historical contingencies.

Throughout the world more policy making and the politics that shape it take place in the urban regions where most people live. This book draws on eleven case studies of similar but disparate urban regions in France, Germany and the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. It documents the growth of this urban governance and develops a pioneering analysis of its causes and consequences. It traces the origins to the expansion and devolution of policy making, to local business mobilization and institutional interests in high-tech and service activities, and the incorporation of local social movements. Nation-states shape the possibilities for this urban governance, but operate increasingly as infrastructures for local initiatives. Where urban governance has succeeded in combining environmental quality and social inclusion with local prosperity, local officials have built on supportive infrastructures from higher levels, the local economy, civil society, and favourable positions in the global economy.