Reform And Retrenchment

Why do new, democratizing states often find it so difficult to actually govern? Why do they so often fail to provide their beleaguered populations with better access to public goods and services? Using original and unusual data, this book uses post-communist Russia as a case in examining what the author calls this broader 'weak state syndrome' in many developing countries. Through interviews with over 800 Russian bureaucrats in 72 of Russia's 89 provinces, and a highly original database on patterns of regional government non-compliance to federal law and policy, the book demonstrates that resistance to Russian central authority not so much ethnically based (as others have argued) as much as generated by the will of powerful and wealthy regional political and economic actors seeking to protect assets they had acquired through Russia's troubled transition out of communism.

The direct primary, in which voters rather than party leaders or convention delegates select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century. Yet after decades of practice and study, scholars have found little clear evidence that direct primaries changed the outcomes of party nominations. The conventional wisdom has always been that once the Progressive movement declined and voters became distracted by more pressing issues, parties slowly reasserted their control over candidate selection. This book shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Exploring changes in American primary election laws from the 1920s to the 1970s, Robert G. Boatright argues in Reform and Retrenchment that the introduction of the direct primary created far more chaos in American elections than most scholars realize. As he shows, political parties, factions, and reform groups manipulated primary election laws in order to gain an advantage over their opponents, often under the guise of enhancing democracy. Today there is widespread dissatisfaction with primaries, and we are again in a period of experimentation. Boatright looks at how this history can help us understand the reform ideas before us today, ultimately suggesting that, for all of its flaws, there is likely little that can be done to improve primaries, and those who would seek to change American politics are best off exploring reforms to other areas of elections and governance.

Theories of Race and Racismis an important and innovative collection that brings together the work of scholars who have helped to shape the study of race and racism as a historical and contemporary phenomenon. The Reader'scontributons have been chosen to reflect the different theoretical perspectives and to help readers gain a feel for the changing terms of the race and racism debate over time. Theories of Race and Racismis divided into the following main sections: Origins and Transformations Sociology, Race and Social Theory Racism and Anti-Semetism Colonialism, Race and the Other Feminism, Difference and Identity Changing Boundaries and Spaces The editors go futher to shed light on the relatively new areas of interest that are likely to attract attention in years to come. Contributors include; Theodor Adorno, K. Anthony Appiah, Michael Banton, Zygmunt Bauman, Ruth Benedict , Homi Bhabha, Chetan Bhatt, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Avtar Brah, Hazel Carby, Barbara Christian, Oliver C. Cox, Richard Dyer, Frantz Fanon, Ruth Frankenberg, Sander Gilman, Paul Gilroy, David T. Goldberg, Stuart Hall, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Max Horkheimer, Winthrop Jordan, Michael Keith, Anne McClintock, Kobena Mercer, Robert Miles, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, George Mosse, Gunnar Myrda, Robert Park, John Rex, John Solomos, Stephen Steinberg, Ann Laura Stoler, Tzvetan Todorov, Russo and Lourdes Torres, Patrica Williams, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Howard Winant, Lola Young, Slavoj Zizek.

This book shows how an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has undermined the enforcement of rights through strategies rejected by Congress.

In common with republicanism or socialism in continental Europe, Liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain was a mass movement. By focussing on the period between the 1860s and the 1880s, this book sets out to explain why and how that happened, and to examine the people who supported it, their beliefs, and the way in which the latter related to one another and to reality. Popular suport for the Liberal party was not irrational in either its objectives or its motivations: on the contrary, its dissemination was due to the fact that the programme of reforms proposed by the party leaders offered convincing solutions to some of the problems perceived as being the most urgent at the time. This is a revealing, innovative synthesis of the history of popular support for the Liberal party, which emphasises the extent to which Liberalism stood in the common heritage of European and American democracy.

Looks at the issue of governance capability by using post-communist Russia as an example.