Spotlight: The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It
Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson
From the publisher: The authors draw on a wealth of research to explore the history of compromise in American politics, the effects of the “permanent campaign” on the political process, and the uncompromising mindset (a cluster of attitudes and arguments that encourage standing on principle and mistrusting opponents) that has become prevalent in Congress and elsewhere. They demonstrate how public opinions both value and undermine compromise, show that refusal to compromise can have unintended or negative consequences, and illustrate the importance of recognizing the compromising and uncompromising mindsets of politicians.
By providing essential background and clear, nonpartisan perspective, this book serves as a primer for restoring political compromise and an important reminder that “compromise is the hardest way to govern, except all the others.”
Amy Gutmann is president of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Dennis Thompson is the Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy at Harvard University.
Spotlight: U. S. Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes
Stephen G. Walker and Akan Malici
From the publisher: Mistakes, in the form of bad decisions, are a common feature of every presidential administration, and their consequences run the gamut from unnecessary military spending, to missed opportunities for foreign policy advantage, to needless bloodshed. This book analyzes a range of presidential decisions made in the realm of US foreign policy — with a special focus on national security — over the past half century in order to create a roadmap of the decision process and a guide to better foreign policy decision-making in the increasingly complex context of 21st century international relations.
Mistakes are analyzed in two general categories — ones of omission and ones of commission within the context of perceived threats and opportunities. The authors discuss how past scholarship has addressed these questions and argue that this research has not explicitly identified a vantage point around which the answers to these questions revolve. They propose game theory models of complex adaptive systems for minimizing bad decisions and apply them to test cases in the Middle East and Asia.
Stephen G. Walker is professor emeritus in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. Akan Malici is associate professor at Furman University.
Cashing in Across the Golden Triangle: Thailand's Northern Border Trade with China, Laos, and Myanmar, Thein Swe and Paul Chambers, University of Washington Press
The Constitution of Religious Freedom: God, Politics, and the First Amendment, Dennis J. Goldford, Baylor University Press
Conflict: African American Women and the New Dilemma of Race and Gender Politics, Cindy Hooper, Praeger
The Diversity Paradox: Political Parties, Legislatures, and the Organizational Foundations of Representation in America, Kristin Kanthak and George A. Krause, Oxford University Press
How Women Represent Women: Political Parties, Gender, and Representation in State Legislatures, Tracy L. Osburn, Oxford University Press
The Invisible Maiming Torture Enterprise of Organized Stalking Assaults: International Organized Hate Crime Based on Perceived Psychiatric Disability, Tomo Shibata, Ending Organized Stalking
It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Basis Books
Monitoring Democracy: When International Election Observation Works and Why It Often Fails, Judith G. Kelley, Princeton University Press
Political Repression: Courts and the Law, Linda Camp Keith, University of Pennsylvania Press
Political Thought of Frederick Douglass, Nicholas Buccola, New York University Press
The Politics of Policy Change: Welfare, Medicare, and Social Security Reform in the United States, Daniel Béland, Alex Waddan, Georgetown University Press
Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies: A Study of Courts in Russia and Ukraine, Maria Popova, Cambridge University Press
Power and Progress: International Politics in Transition, Jack L. Snyder, Routledge
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, Corey Robin, Oxford University Press
The State of Citizen Participation in America, Hindy Lauer Schachter and Kaifeng Yang, eds, Information Age Publishing
The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, Princeton University Press
