Representative Government Books - Page 4

COMPARING POST SOVIET LEGISLATURES: A THEORY OF INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN AND POL (PARLIAMENTS & LEGISLATURES)

JOEL M. OSTROW

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Customer Reviews:
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Editorial Review:

One dilemma facing new or newly independent states, such as those of the former Soviet Union, is how to design effective legislatures when political parties are weak and fragmented or even nonexistent. In this book, Joel M. Ostrow develops a comparative institutional framework to explain marked differences in behavior across three post-Soviet legislatures: the Russian Supreme Soviet, the Russian State Duma, and the Estonian legislature. He argues that these differences in ability to manage political conflict can be explained in large measure by the design of the legislatures. Most significant is the choice of whether and how to include parties or partisan factors.

Legislatures are an omnipresent component of modern democracy. Ostrow's comparative institutional design confirms the presumption of many political scientists that parties are essential for legislative consensus building. However, it also reveals that parties may have paradoxical effects on a legislature's performance. In following the budget process in Russia and Estonia, Ostrow explores the consequences that different institutional designs have had on post-Soviet legislatures. He has found that how parties are included may determine how capable a legislature is at managing political conflict, both internally and with the executive branch of the government. The author was present at many of the committee hearings and legislative sessions he describes, and his firsthand observations and interviews with committee members enhance his analysis.

How Democratic Is the Constitution (Aei Studies, 294.)

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Democracy, Accountability, and Representation (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy)

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Editorial Review:

This book examines whether mechanisms of accountability characteristic of democratic systems are sufficient to induce the representatives to act in the best interest of the represented. The first part of the volume focuses on the role of elections, distinguishing different ways in which they may cause representation. The second part is devoted to the role of checks and balances, between the government and the parliament as well as between the government and the bureaucracy. Overall, the essays combine theoretical discussions, game-theoretic models, case studies, and statistical analyses, within a shared analytical approach and a standardized terminology. The empirical material is drawn from the well established democracies as well as from new democracies.

Representation and Party Politics: A Comparative Perspective (Comparative Politics)

B. D. Graham

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Editorial Review:

Representation and party politics is one of the core themes of the comparative study of politics. What function do parties serve? What is the essential relationship between people and parties? Are parties simply a way of reproducing a political elite that rules and governs? These are some of the questions Graham asks in his analysis of our understandings of political parties, their internal structures and external relations. While surveying a rich literature on parties and party systems, emphasising the continuing relevance of earlier writings, the authors sets out the main problems that should be addressed in the study of political parties. We are then lucidly led through a range of empirical cases illustrating party performance in relation to electoral behaviour, and introduced to a range of theoretically-driven models of performance, behaviour and recruitment. The book culminates in a discussion of factionalism within parties, and an exploration of populism in mass politics. Graham's work introduces and reveals aspects of party dynamics and representation which should be essential to students of politics and political scientists alike.

Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France, 1814-1871

Pamela M. Pilbeam

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Parliament and the People: The Reality and the Public Perception (Commonwealth Parliamentary Association)

Philip Laundy

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The Phantom Respondents: Opinion Surveys and Political Representation (Michigan Studies in Political Analysis)

John O. Brehm

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

An excellent resource for those interested in opinion polls 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Brehm's book is an excellent treatment of the problem of survey non-response. It is a well-known fact that in academic surveys of public opinion and attitudes that it is getting increasingly difficult to get people to agree to spend even a few minutes on the phone answering any type of survey questions. There is strong reason to believe that this problem is even worse for non-academic surveys, since they have less incentive to pursue possible survey respondents. Brehm develops a theoretical framework in his book which allows for a clear and coherent understanding of why it is people don't agree to answer surveys. He performs a number of tests of his framework, and even delves into the politically-sensitive question of whether or not survey non-response influences the reported results of surveys. While the effects he demonstrates in this latter analyis aren't horribly strong, they are strong enough (in the context of an academic survey) that they clearly call into question the quality of non-academic survey results.

Editorial Review:

Examines a fundamental problem for opinion polls and those who use them.

The Will of the People: The Legacy of George Mason, The George Mason Lecture Series, Volume VI (George Mason Lecture)

George R. Johnson

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General

Editorial Review:

Americans are justly proud of their tradition of representative government. In fact, America's is the longest continuous representative government in existence. Ironically, it may be that, because of the two hundred uninterrupted years of the republic's existence, we take it for granted that we view its continuation as guaranteed. Although our republic has endured for more than two hundred years, it has not always existed in its present "form," it has not always represented many people who now routinely view its protections and guarantees as birthrights. The unlanded masses, women, blacks and other minorities, all were for a great part of our history not represented in the American body politic. Now all of these groups, at least legally speaking, are full participants in the body politic and in the public affairs of this country. This volume examines the development of the American notion of popular sovereignty from its colonial and revolutionary origins, from the days of its severely restricted meaning through its progress toward inclusion of more of "the people." Four distinguished commentators examine the social and political developments that have accompanied the growth and expansion of "the will of the people."

Classifying by Race

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The contemporary debate over racial classification has been dominated by fringe voices in American society. Cries from the right say history should be abrogated and public policy made color-blind, while zealots of the left insist that all customs, language, institutions, and practices are racially tinged and that only aggressive, color-conscious programs can reverse the course of American history. The essays in this volume, however, recognize that racial classification is an issue that cuts too deep and poses too many constitutional questions to be resolved by slogans of either the right or the left.

The contributors to this volume are James Alt, Kenneth Benoit, Henry Brady, John Bruce, Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Andrew Gelman, Lani Guinier, Fredrick C. Harris, Gary King, Robert C. Lieberman, David Ian Lublin, David Metz, Paul E. Peterson, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Kenneth Shepsle, Theda Skocpol, Katherine Tate, Richard Valelly, Sidney Verba, and Margaret Weir.

The Trace of Political Representation (S U N Y Series in Radical Social and Political Theory)

Brian Seitz

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Editorial Review:

A philosophical analysis of the discourses, practices, and effects of representation in political institutions, focusing on American democracy.

The Trace of Political Representation is a philosophical analysis of the discourses, practices, and effects of representation in political institutions, with an ultimate interest in contemporary American democracy. The perspective governing its approach is derived largely from Foucault, and tempered by a range of contemporary philosophers, including Derrida, Pitkin, and Castoriadis.

Seitz explores and questions the traditional, metaphysical notion that what gets represented in the apparatuses and processes of representation is a political subject or identity (for example, will, opinion, interests) that exists fundamentally independent of and prior to that process. To accomplish this, he sketches out a historical articulation of several prominent formations of political representation from the past and then focuses on more contemporary political developments and dynamics, including the impact of "communications" technology and culture on the processes and institutions of representation.