Dominant representations of youth in postapartheid South Africa have tended to portray a politically apathetic cohort, especially in comparison to prior generations. Yet, how did a cohort that is “disengaged” and “not committed to democracy” end up organizing a powerful national movement that led to a swift policy change? In this chapter, we address this gap by examining the ways in which youth have, and continue to be, active political agents within South African communities. Through examining two noteworthy cases of contemporary youth organizing – Equal Education and the Fallists movements – this chapter demonstrates the ways in which youth continue to exercise collective agency and enact social change. Given that evidence from electoral returns and survey evidence have suggested political disengagement among youth, we argue that understanding shifts in community power that arise from empowerment processes linked to youth organizing holds promise for more productive theorization of young people’s political action and illuminates creative ways of advancing participatory democracy. We conclude by considering the implications for youth movements and scholarship about youth activism.

Robert Lowell both resisted and embraced the mantle of public poet. One way of tracking this ambivalence in Lowell’s poetics is by following the developments in his war poems. Though Lowell, along with Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill, is credited with pivoting poetry from the mannered verse culture of the 1950s to the autobiographical experiments of the 1960s, more recent appraisals of Lowell find a complicated grappling with whiteness and with overlapping historical and personal selves. The events of Lowell’s biography provide one rich context for thinking about his poetry’s treatment of war. Yet war is not only the near-constant background for Lowell’s life and the theater for his political engagement. It is also a spur to Lowell’s incessant revision of his poetic methods and commitments to verse forms. Focusing on war helps to bring Lowell’s prosodic changes into relief.

The typical arguments concerning privatization are instrumental, relying heavily on comparing the performance of a public functionary with that of its private counterpart. This chapter challenges this approach for leaving unaddressed other important consequences of shifting responsibilities to private entities. Privatization cuts off the link between processes of decision-making and the citizens and, therefore, erodes political engagement and its underlying notion of shared responsibility. Consequently, privatization undermines individuals’ public autonomy.

The effects of privatization are not restricted to the question of whether a public prison is better or worse qua prison than its private counterpart, or whether private forestry is better or worse qua forestry than its public counterpart. Stripping the state of its responsibilities erodes public responsibility, for privatization is not only the transformation of detention centers, trains, tax inquiry offices, forestry operations, and so on, considered one service at a time. It is also the transformation of our political system and public culture from ones characterized by robust shared responsibility and political engagement to ones characterized by fragmentation and sectarianism.

While Julio Cortázar is best known as a fiction writer, a full understanding of his oeuvre must take into account his poetry, which has mostly been ignored in the critical literature. Cortázar not only published several volumes of poetry but also included poems in many of his prose works and wrote extensively about poetry. The significance of poetry – that he read as well as wrote – is ever present in Cortázar’s overall literary vision. His poetic work registers his innovative and playful sensibility along with his increasingly politicized engagement. This essay demonstrates through close readings and archival documentation how poetry for Cortázar serves as a transitional mode. Archives of his manuscripts, drafts, unpublished poems, and personal library reveal much about the author’s poetic craft and his shifting stance on the politics of his time. A thorough articulation of Cortázar’s poetic concerns provides a fuller appreciation of the formal and linguistic innovation that undergirds his prose, shapes his ideological and aesthetic evolution, and particularly informs the last phase of his life and work. Poetry serves Cortázar as a bridge between aesthetics and the world around him as his work increasingly puts innovation to the service of sociopolitical engagement.

While Julio Cortázar is best known as a fiction writer, a full understanding of his oeuvre must take into account his poetry, which has mostly been ignored in the critical literature. Cortázar not only published several volumes of poetry but also included poems in many of his prose works and wrote extensively about poetry. The significance of poetry – that he read as well as wrote – is ever present in Cortázar’s overall literary vision. His poetic work registers his innovative and playful sensibility along with his increasingly politicized engagement. This essay demonstrates through close readings and archival documentation how poetry for Cortázar serves as a transitional mode. Archives of his manuscripts, drafts, unpublished poems, and personal library reveal much about the author’s poetic craft and his shifting stance on the politics of his time. A thorough articulation of Cortázar’s poetic concerns provides a fuller appreciation of the formal and linguistic innovation that undergirds his prose, shapes his ideological and aesthetic evolution, and particularly informs the last phase of his life and work. Poetry serves Cortázar as a bridge between aesthetics and the world around him as his work increasingly puts innovation to the service of sociopolitical engagement.

While conventional accounts of the political landscape highlight Australia’s well-established formal institutions such as the electoral system, parliament, federalism, the public service and judiciary, a holistic approach to the study of Australian politics must also include the political contributions of a wider range of citizens and the various ways in which governments attempt to structure their input.

The chapter begins with a description of the organisational landscape of citizens’ groups in Australian politics and summarises the main advantages and drawbacks arising from the active participation and engagement of citizens’ groups.

The relative merits and drawbacks ofgovernment-initiated opportunities for citizens to contribute to political debate and public policy are then discussed with reference to theoretical modelling of community engagement.

The final section of the chapter examines the new challenges arising from the growing citizen participation and demand for community engagement in Australian politics. The discussion of these issues demonstrates how the participation and engagement of citizens’ groups is evolving in 21st century Australia.

This chapter lays out one route to reinvigorating local news, by increasing demand among younger and older Americans alike. Based on survey data and a series of experiments, we show that the simple acts of informing citizens of the importance of local government and reminding them of its relevance can go a long way toward increasing local news consumption. The newspaper industry of the twentieth century is a thing of the past, but growing consumer interest in local news – from both traditional outlets as well as emerging digital sources – can create incentives for news organizations to provide the coverage of local government that democracy needs.

The story of this chapter is that when it comes to local engagement, the decline of local news affects the political behavior of citizens across the spectrum very similarly. The growing scarcity of reporting about local government has led to growing disengagement among Americans of all stripes.

At a time when political observers worry – justifiably – about the health of the US’ national political institutions, threats to local democratic governance cannot be ignored. The local news media – by providing accurate information to citizens about what is happening in city halls, county governments, school boards, and other local political institutions throughout the country – constitute a vital link in the democratic process. Political representation and government effectiveness thus depend on reinvigorating the local news media and the citizen engagement that goes along with it. It can be done, but without a collective effort by citizens, journalists, and groups committed to strengthening local journalism, the long-term health of American democracy may be in peril.

This chapter provides a thorough empirical account of the connection between local news and political engagement during the last two decades. Drawing on a variety of data sources, we go beyond the existing research to demonstrate that the demise of local newspapers we documented in Chapters 2 and 3 indeed contributes to reductions in political engagement in America’s cities and towns.

The demise of the newspaper industry in the last two decades has exacerbated the problems of limited public engagement in local politics. The downward slide of local government coverage has left the nation less knowledgeable about its local elected officials and less likely to participate in local elections. These trends are concerning enough as they have already played out. But they are particularly worrisome given local journalism’s precarious future. Without a revitalization of the local media environment, democratic accountability and quality representation in cities and towns across the United States will become increasingly elusive.

In a continuing pattern, wherein Roth’s fiction often reflects (but exaggerates and alters) elements of the author’s own life, his characters also move with him – literally. As Roth has aged, he has retreated more to his home in the Berkshires, so too have Roth’s protagonists become more situated in this area. Nathan Zuckerman, in particular, is attached to this area: as a young man, he visits E.I. Lonoff here in The Ghost Writer, and takes up residence here in Roth’s later work. This chapter will address the importance of this location in Roth’s own life, helping readers interpret its symbolic role in his fiction.

Examines how secularism affects the civic landscape. To what extent are Secularists civically engaged, including in nonpolitical activity such as community voluntarism and explicitly political action like working on a political campaign? When it comes to engagement outside of politics, Secularists pale in comparison to Religionists but shine next to Non-Religionists. Secularism, however, is a powerful predictor of political activity, and so Secularists are highly engaged in politics.

Chapter 2 develops a policy-based theory of public support for Court-curbing, which represents an alternative to process-based perspectives popular in the literature. The chapter distinguishes “broadly targeted Court-curbing,” or support for attacks on the institution’s powers and independence, from “narrowly targeted Court-curbing,” or support for attacks on the Court’s specific rulings. While disagreement with the general ideological direction of the Supreme Court strongly impacts support for broadly targeted Court-curbing, disagreement with specific rulings has a larger effect on narrowly targeted curbing. The theory also explains how and why partisan polarization reduces citizens’ willingness to defend the Court and discusses competing perspectives for how citizens’ level of political engagement moderates the effect of policy disagreement.