The Promise Of Democratic Equality In The United States

The Promise of Democratic Equality in the United States explores the ways in which the American political system fails to fully respect political equality. Douglas D. Roscoe argues these deficiencies are not necessarily failures of justice, but often reflect attempts to balance important but competing principles and values. He analyzes the balance among these competing values in a variety of contexts, including congressional representation, the Electoral College, voting regulations, campaign finance, lobbying, the Senate filibuster rules, and protections for civil rights and liberties. A diverse set of methodological approaches is employed to carefully evaluate whether the limits placed on political equality are reasonable and necessary. Using a rigorous normative framework, while leaning heavily on high-quality quantitative evidence and social science research, this book provides students of democratic theory and American politics with a compact and manageable review of the degree to which democratic equality is supported in the United States.

Are the world's oldest democracies failing? In this extraordinary collection, top scholars in political science, sociology, philosophy and economics, discuss a radical shift towards inequality in an age of mass capital globalization.

Presentation of a new, ethical vision of democracy built around self-rule, civic education, and ethical cultivation.

Legitimizing Authority places the American state apparatus back in the foreground to rethink the development of the country's government in the context of its unfulfilled promise of equality. The book argues that the tensions between calls for equality and the simultaneous tolerance of inequality have accompanied the rise of modern mass society and, with it, of liberal democracy. Vormann and Lammert emphasize that government has played and continues to play a decisive role in calibrating the relationship between the interior and the exterior of the nation, moving between an extractive state, a taxation state, and a welfare state over time in order to expand social access and political participation inside the national community - while tolerating conditions that continue to belie the historical promise of equality. The authors draw on a range of literatures that transcend disciplinary boundaries to reveal how exploitative practices have been accepted. They conclude that the democratic crises of the present must be comprehended through understanding how legitimation was always maintained by a state apparatus active at multiple scales and in multiple policy fields. This interdisciplinary book is addressed to a broad audience across disciplines, including political science, political economy, political history, comparative politics, international politics, international relations, American Political Development (APD), and cultural studies.

Huntington examines the persistent gap between the promise of American ideals and the performance of American politics. He shows how Americans have always been united by the democratic creed of liberty, equality, and hostility to authority, but how these ideals have been frustrated through institutions and hierarchies needed to govern a democracy.

Examining the current state of democracy in the United States, 'The Unheavenly Chorus' looks at the political participation of individual citizens - alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests - in order to demonstrate that American democracy is marred by ingrained and persistent class-based inequality.

This collection assembles some of the country s foremost social scientists in one volume. It contains diverse investigations of metropolitan transformation, recent education policy, the (in)justice of disaster relief, the politics of aesthetics and design, immigration, the mass media, social movements, and the practice of social science itself, among others. Whatever their subjects, the writers investigate the promise and constraints of democratic practice in a time of disturbing growth in inequality and political disempowerment. Although they at times differ from one another, more often, they challenge popular received wisdom on a number of these topics. Cumulatively, the volume amounts to a critical sociological excavation of the United States from its leading social critics that will prove useful to specialists and general readers alike."