Invisible Politics

With a view that behavioralism has distorted perceptions of black political activity, Hanes Walton, Jr., here reformulates the assumptions of behavioralism to arrive at a more realistic understanding of the political actions of black Americans. Considering the cultural and historical events that have shaped black lives, Walton examines voting patterns, socialization, and the development of political opinion. his analysis of leadership includes not only legislative and judicial leaders, but also leaders of those organizations so influential in black political culture: civil rights, churches, and grassroots organizations. Whether he looks at how local politics have changed through the years of civil rights action or how blacks' ideas on foreign policy have developed, Walton provides a long-needed reassessment of the role of black participation in American politics.

The Crown is not only Canada’s oldest continuing political institution, but also its most pervasive, affecting the operation of Parliament and the legislatures, the executive, the bureaucracy, the courts, and federalism. However, many consider the Crown to be obscure and anachronistic. David E. Smith’s The Invisible Crown was one of the first books to study the role of the Crown in Canada, and remains a significant resource for the unique perspective it offers on the Crown’s place in politics. The Invisible Crown traces Canada’s distinctive form of federalism, with highly autonomous provinces, to the Crown’s influence. Smith concludes that the Crown has greatly affected the development of Canadian politics due to the country’s societal, geographic, and economic conditions. Praised by the Globe and Mail’s Michael Valpy as “a thoroughly lucid, scholarly explanation of how the Canadian constitutional monarchy works,” it is bolstered by a new foreword by the author speaking to recent events involving the Crown and Canadian politics, notably the prorogation of Parliament in 2008.

What is absence? What is presence? How are these two phenomena related? Is absence merely not being present? This book examines these and other questions relating to the role of absence and presence in everyday politics. Absence and presence are used as political tools in global events and everyday life to reinforce ideas about space, society, and belonging. Between Absence and Presence contains six empirically-focussed chapters introducing case study locations and contexts from around the world. These studies examine how particular groups’ relationships with places and spaces are characterized by experiences that are neither wholly present nor wholly absent. Each author demonstrates the variety of ways in which absence and presence are experienced – through silence, forgetting, concealment, distance, and the virtual – and constituted – through visual, aural, and technological. Such accounts also raise philosophical questions about representation and belonging: what must remain absent, and what is allowed to be present? Who decides, and how? Whose voices are heard? Recognizing the complexity of these questions, Between Absence and Presence provides a significant contribution in reconciling theorizations of absence with everyday life. This book was published a sa special issue of Space and Polity.

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication; rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” In recent decades, federal policymakers have increasingly shunned the outright disbursing of benefits to individuals and families and favored instead less visible and more indirect incentives and subsidies, from tax breaks to payments for services to private companies. These submerged policies, Mettler shows, obscure the role of government and exaggerate that of the market. As a result, citizens are unaware not only of the benefits they receive, but of the massive advantages given to powerful interests, such as insurance companies and the financial industry. Neither do they realize that the policies of the submerged state shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, exacerbating inequality. Mettler analyzes three Obama reforms—student aid, tax relief, and health care—to reveal the submerged state and its consequences, demonstrating how structurally difficult it is to enact policy reforms and even to obtain public recognition for achieving them. She concludes with recommendations for reform to help make hidden policies more visible and governance more comprehensible to all Americans. The sad truth is that many American citizens do not know how major social programs work—or even whether they benefit from them. Suzanne Mettler’s important new book will bring government policies back to the surface and encourage citizens to reclaim their voice in the political process.

With a view that behavioralism has distorted perceptions of black political activity, Hanes Walton, Jr., here reformulates the assumptions of behavioralism to arrive at a more realistic understanding of the political actions of black Americans. Considering the cultural and historical events that have shaped black lives, Walton examines voting patterns, socialization, and the development of political opinion. his analysis of leadership includes not only legislative and judicial leaders, but also leaders of those organizations so influential in black political culture: civil rights, churches, and grassroots organizations. Whether he looks at how local politics have changed through the years of civil rights action or how blacks' ideas on foreign policy have developed, Walton provides a long-needed reassessment of the role of black participation in American politics.

"Observers have been predicting the demise of China’s political system since Mao Zedong’s death over thirty years ago. The Chinese Communist state, however, seems to have become increasingly adept at responding to challenges ranging from leadership succession and popular unrest to administrative reorganization, legal institutionalization, and global economic integration. What political techniques and procedures have Chinese policymakers employed to manage the unsettling impact of the fastest sustained economic expansion in world history?As the authors of these essays demonstrate, China’s political system allows for more diverse and flexible input than would be predicted from its formal structures. Many contemporary methods of governance have their roots in techniques of policy generation and implementation dating to the revolution and early PRC—techniques that emphasize continual experimentation. China’s long revolution had given rise to this guerrilla-style decisionmaking as a way of dealing creatively with pervasive uncertainty. Thus, even in a post-revolutionary PRC, the invisible hand of Chairman Mao—tamed, tweaked, and transformed—plays an important role in China’s adaptive governance."

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A truly special book. This combination of honesty, thoughtfulness, urgency, and vulnerability is not common in leaders, and Jason demonstrates boundless occupancy of all of these traits.” – Wes Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Wes Moore From political wunderkind and former army intelligence officer Jason Kander comes a haunting, powerful memoir about impossible choices—and how sometimes walking away from the chance of a lifetime can be the greatest decision of all. In 2017, President Obama, in his final Oval Office interview, was asked who gave him hope for the future of the country, and Jason Kander was the first name he mentioned. Suddenly, Jason was a national figure. As observers assumed he was preparing a run for the presidency, Jason announced a bid for mayor of Kansas City instead and was headed for a landslide victory. But after eleven years battling PTSD from his service in Afghanistan, Jason was seized by depression and suicidal thoughts. He dropped out of the mayor’s race and out of public life. And finally, he sought help. In this brutally honest second memoir, following his New York Times best-selling debut Outside the Wire, Jason Kander has written the book he himself needed in the most painful moments of his PTSD. In candid, in-the-moment detail, we see him struggle with undiagnosed illness during a presidential bid; witness his family buoy him through challenging treatment; and, giving hope to so many of us, see him heal.