Politics Another Perspective

Over the past 8 years there have been significant shifts in the American political landscape. The election of Senator Barack Obama as America’s 44th and first African American president signaled a giant leap forward in the American social, cultural, and political landscape. It has taken America 219 years to reach this point. Based upon Senator Obama’s campaign promises many people looked forward to a more transparent and inclusive government. Others saw this election as a signal of a new post-racial America, but America has always been a country in conflict. As many basked in the comfort of Obama’s historic election, others feared its backlash. History tells us that white supremacy dies hard in America and its proponents would not take America’s victory lying down. The bigoted rants of the Tea Party and the ultra-right wing’s obstructionist agenda have resulted in a political stalemate unlike any other in recent American history. These reactionary politics coupled with the Democratic Party and Obama Administration’s inability to articulate an effective counter-narrative and employ effective countermeasures has left America in a political abyss. Politics Another Perspective: Analysis of Race, War, Ethics and the American Political Landscape in the Age of Obama is a collection of Op Ed’s written by Wilmer J. Leon, III, Ph.D. As a collection, these writings provide cutting edge analysis of the various issues that influenced the American geopolitical landscape since 2006 and insight into the direction that the country is headed. “Wilmer Leon is one of the few Black prophetic voices in the age of Obama. This book confirms this status – courageous, visionary and consistent!” —Dr. Cornel West Dr. Wilmer Leon has assembled a collection that asks the right questions about race and democracy. In an era when too many are silenced for fear of rocking the boat of the status quo, Wilmer Leon has signaled his willingness to go out on a limb and speak truth to power. Bravo! —Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Economist and Author Are We Better Off: Race, Obama and Public Policy.

A textbook your students will want to read. "If you would like students to understand hard political concepts, this work makes it accessible for them. By using pop culture, we can open ideological ideas and students are not bound by their own preconceived ideas." —Leah Murray, Weber State University A Novel Approach to Politics turns the conventional textbook wisdom on its head by using pop culture references to illustrate key concepts and cover recent political events. Adopters of previous editions are thanking author Douglas A. Van Belle for some of their best student evaluations to date. With this Seventh Edition, Van Belle brings the book fully up-to-date with recent events, current policy debates, international happenings, and other assorted political matters. Understanding politics requires a willingness to engage with ideas, arguments, and information that makes you uncomfortable, Van Belle takes the most tumultuous political periods in recent history head-on. Somehow, he weaves in recent movies and books into the text as he works in a solid foundation in institutions, ideology, and economics controversies into all that sizzle, which is certain to captivate students. Included with this title: LMS Cartridge: Import this title′s instructor resources into your school’s learning management system (LMS) and save time. Don′t use an LMS? You can still access all of the same online resources for this title via the password-protected Instructor Resource Site. Select the Resources tab on this page to learn more.

Over the past 8 years there have been significant shifts in the American political landscape. The election of Senator Barack Obama as America's 44th and first African American president signaled a giant leap forward in the American social, cultural, and political landscape. It has taken America 219 years to reach this point. Based upon Senator Obama's campaign promises many people looked forward to a more transparent and inclusive government. Others saw this election as a signal of a new post-racial America, but America has always been a country in conflict. As many basked in the comfort of Obama's historic election, others feared its backlash. History tells us that white supremacy dies hard in America and its proponents would not take America's victory lying down. The bigoted rants of the Tea Party and the ultra-right wing's obstructionist agenda have resulted in a political stalemate unlike any other in recent American history. These reactionary politics coupled with the Democratic Party and Obama Administration's inability to articulate an effective counter-narrative and employ effective countermeasures has left America in a political abyss. Politics Another Perspective: Analysis of Race, War, Ethics and the American Political Landscape in the Age of Obama is a collection of Op Ed's written by Wilmer J. Leon, III, Ph.D. As a collection, these writings provide cutting edge analysis of the various issues that influenced the American geopolitical landscape since 2006 and insight into the direction that the country is headed. "Wilmer Leon is one of the few Black prophetic voices in the age of Obama. This book confirms this status - courageous, visionary and consistent!" --Dr. Cornel West Dr. Wilmer Leon has assembled a collection that asks the right questions about race and democracy. In an era when too many are silenced for fear of rocking the boat of the status quo, Wilmer Leon has signaled his willingness to go out on a limb and speak truth to power. Bravo! --Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Economist and Author Are We Better Off: Race, Obama and Public Policy.

"Brawley provides us with a remarkably balanced, systematic, and nevertheless accessible survey of the facts and debates pertaining to the issue of globalization." - Daniel Verdier, Ohio State University

Four distinguished scholars in political science analyze American democracy from a comparative point of view, exploring how the U.S. political system differs from that of thirty other democracies and what those differences ultimately mean for democratic performance. This essential text approaches the following institutions from a political engineering point of view: constitutions, electoral systems, and political parties, as well as legislative, executive, and judicial power. The text looks at democracies from around the world over a two-decade time frame. The result is not only a fresh view of the much-discussed theme of American exceptionalism but also an innovative approach to comparative politics that treats the United States as but one case among many. An ideal textbook for both American and comparative politics courses.

Knoke explains the relevance of network theory in political science.

This revised and expanded second edition of African Politics in Comparative Perspective reviews fifty years of research on politics in Africa and addresses some issues in a new light, keeping in mind the changes in Africa since the first edition was written in 2004. The book synthesizes insights from different scholarly approaches and offers an original interpretation of the knowledge accumulated in the field. Goran Hyden discusses how research on African politics relates to the study of politics in other regions and mainstream theories in comparative politics. He focuses on such key issues as why politics trumps economics, rule is personal, state is weak and policies are made with a communal rather than an individual lens. The book also discusses why in the light of these conditions agriculture is problematic, gender contested, ethnicity manipulated and relations with Western powers a matter of defiance.

This comprehensive book compares the intersection of political forces and legal practices in five industrial nations--the United States, England, France, Germany, and Japan. The authors, eminent political scientists and legal scholars, investigate how constitutional courts function in each country, how the adjudication of criminal justice and the processing of civil disputes connect legal systems to politics, and how both ordinary citizens and large corporations use the courts. For each of the five countries, the authors discuss the structure of courts and access to them, the manner in which politics and law are differentiated or amalgamated, whether judicial posts are political prizes or bureaucratic positions, the ways in which courts are perceived as legitimate forms for addressing political conflicts, the degree of legal consciousness among citizens, the kinds of work lawyers do, and the manner in which law and courts are used as social control mechanisms. The authors find that although the extent to which courts participate in policymaking varies dramatically from country to country, judicial responsiveness to perceived public problems is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

A Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award New York Times Bestseller A SeattleTimes pick for Summer Reading Roundup 2017 The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years. Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion. Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

This book presents a systematic overview and assessment of the impacts of politics on the media, and of the media on politics, in authoritarian, transitional and democratic regimes in Russia, Spain, Hungary, Chile, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. Its analysis of the interactions between macro- and micro-level factors incorporates the disciplinary perspectives of political science, mass communications, sociology and social psychology. These essays show that media's effects on politics are the product of often complex and contingent interactions among various causal factors, including media technologies, the structure of the media market, the legal and regulatory framework, the nature of basic political institutions, and the characteristics of individual citizens. The authors' conclusions challenge a number of conventional wisdoms concerning the political roles and effects of the mass media on regime support and change, on the political behavior of citizens, and on the quality of democracy.