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One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles. In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners. Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.
In a world of increasing austerity measures, democratic politics comes under pressure. With the need to consolidate budgets and to accommodate financial markets, the responsiveness of governments to voters declines. However, democracy depends on choice. Citizens must be able to influence the course of government through elections and if a change in government cannot translate into different policies, democracy is incapacitated. Many mature democracies are approaching this situation as they confront fiscal crisis. For almost three decades, OECD countries have - in fits and starts - run deficits and accumulated debt. As a result, an ever smaller part of government revenue is available today for discretionary spending and social investment and whichever party comes into office will find its hands tied by past decisions. The current financial and fiscal crisis has exacerbated the long-term shrinking government discretion; projects for political change have lost credibility. Many citizens are aware of this situation: they turn away from party politics and stay at home on Election Day. With contributions from leading scholars in the forefront of sociology, politics and economics, this timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences as well as general readers.
Provides researchers with a novel methodological tool to study interactions between governments, challengers, and third-party actors.
"How neoliberal political economy shapes writing assessments, curricula, teacher agency, program administration, and funding distribution. How neoliberal political economy dictates direction of scholarship, because the economic and political agenda shaping the terms of work, the methods, and the ways of assessing writing also shapes directions of scholarship"--Provided by publisher.
This provocative look at the global financial crisis argues that the United States, the European Union and Japan have intentionally and unwittingly adopted wrong-headed economic policies in a futile attempt to deal with sovereign debt resulting from the global financial crisis. It offers persuasive evidence of how the politics of austerity fail to encourage economic recovery, and proposes instead a number of alternative ideas and solutions. The book begins with a detailed breakdown of the financial crisis and the government response in the United States, with particular focus on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The author then puts forth a basic three-part plan calling for (1) fundamental tax and entitlement reform; (2) massive economic stimulus in the form of public and private investment to modernize the countryÍs aging infrastructures; and (3) mortgage relief to revitalize the nationÍs housing markets. The book concludes with specific policy proposals designed to achieve these goals and return the US economy to a state of full employment and robust economic growth. This timely and insightful volume will appeal to students and scholars of economics, public policy and finance, as well as anyone with an interest in the recent economic history of the United States.
As much as any country, England bore the brunt of Germany's aggression in World War II, and was ravaged in many ways at the war's end. Celebrated historian David Kynaston has written an utterly original, and compellingly readable, account of the following six years, during which the country rebuilt itself. Kynaston's great genius is to chronicle the country's experience from bottom to top: coursing through through the book, therefore, is an astonishing variety of ordinary, contemporary voices, eloquently and passionately evincing the country's remarkable spirit. Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, gamely endures the tribulations of rationing; Mary King, a retired schoolteacher in Birmingham, observes how well-fed the Queen looks during a royal visit; Henry St. John, a persnickety civil servant in Bristol, is oblivious to anyone's troubles but his own. Together they present a portrait of an indomitable people and Kynaston skillfully links their stories to bigger events thought the country. Their stories also jostle alongside those of more well-known figures like celebrated journalist-to-be John Arlott (making his first radio broadcast), Glenda Jackson, and Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa and struck by the leveling poverty of post-war Britain. Kynaston deftly weaves into his story a sophisticated narrative of how the 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic, and social landscape for the next three decades.
This timely, necessary collection of essays provides feminist analyses of a recession-era media culture characterized by the reemergence and refashioning of familiar gender tropes, including crisis masculinity, coping women, and postfeminist self-renewal. Interpreting media forms as diverse as reality television, financial journalism, novels, lifestyle blogs, popular cinema, and advertising, the contributors reveal gendered narratives that recur across media forms too often considered in isolation from one another. They also show how, with a few notable exceptions, recession-era popular culture promotes affective normalcy and transformative individual enterprise under duress while avoiding meaningful critique of the privileged white male or the destructive aspects of Western capitalism. By acknowledging the contradictions between political rhetoric and popular culture, and between diverse screen fantasies and lived realities, Gendering the Recession helps to make sense of our postboom cultural moment. Contributors. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Hamilton Carroll, Hannah Hamad, Anikó Imre, Suzanne Leonard, Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Sinéad Molony, Elizabeth Nathanson, Diane Negra, Tim Snelson, Yvonne Tasker, Pamela Thoma
In the current context of financial retrenchment on public-sector budgets, public policing in England and Wales today faces the prospect of dramatic change. While the question of role and function has been the bedrock of classical sociological theorizing on police, this book grounds such theorising in explicating how British policing has arisen through a schismatic process, why it is in a present mess, and what it should be doing in the future The central themes of this critical text are An analysis of the congeries of roles and functions that our public police in England and Wales currently undertake and how they got there An examination of the effect of arbitrary reduction in police services, including a reading of policing politics in an age of austerity A comparative critique of the British Brand of Policing The development of a normative manifesto for the future of British Policing. This book will be essential for reading for students, researchers and academics alike in criminology, police studies and public and social policy.
'Walden Bello is the world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary.' - Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine In this eye-opening and often scathing book, Walden Bello provides a forensic dissection of contemporary capitalism's multiple crises. Trenchant but constructive, Bello's analysis of the collapse of the global real economy, covering such issues as the Wall Street meltdown, the disintegration of the Greek economy, and the rise of China, emphasizes the ever more pressing need to engage in a radical process of deglobalization towards a decentralized, pluralistic world system. Only then will we be able to construct a fairer and more equitable society. A stirring call to arms for all those interested in global economic justice.
This collection is designed to offer a comparative analysis of street-level protest movements, setting them in international, socio-economic, and cross-cultural perspective in order to help us understand why movements emerge, what they do, how they spread, and how they fit into both local and worldwide historical contexts.