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Fight for the Bay
In this important new book on the declining health of one of America's leading environmental treasures, Howard Ernst reveals a Chesapeake bay that has become functionally dead. He argues that the Chesapeake Bay succumbed to a 'light green' environmental movement that has too often adopted a philosophy of compromise over confrontation and that has fueling a 'political dead zone' where political leaders posture but fail to make the hard decisions needed to achieve real improvement in the Bay's health. While blunt in his evaluation of past and present failures to restore the Bay, Ernst believes that there is still time to turn the restoration effort around and sets out new 'dark green' strategies to do so. In the concluding chapter, five long-time bay activists provide first-person accounts of their battles and hopes for the future. Hailed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as 'a must read for anyone concerned about environmental protection,' this challenging book provides a wake-up call for everyone concerned about the future of the Chesapeake Bay and other ecological treasures through out America.
You Call This an Election?
Those who do not have their heads buried too deeply in partisan sands will know that there is something awry with the American form of electoral democracy. Florida's continuing ability to misplace votes recently and in the 2000 Presidential election is only part of the iceberg we have been made privy to-and Steven Schier takes a good, hard, evaluative look not only at what is there in plain sight, but that which lurks below the surface (and not only in Florida and not only with the electoral college). He further proposes practical improvements that will make our surprisingly peculiar democratic processes healthy, whole, and responsive again. Identifying four essential evaluative criteria for...
Developing Cultures
Developing Cultures: Essays on Cultural Change is a collection of 21 expert essays on the institutions that transmit cultural values from generation to generation. The essays are an outgrowth of a research project begun by Samuel Huntington and Larry Harrison in their widely discussed book Culture Matters the goal of which is guidelines for cultural change that can accelerate development in the Third World. The essays in this volume cover child rearing, several aspects of education, the world's major religions, the media, political leadership, and development projects. The book is companion volume to Developing Cultures: Case Studies.(0415952808).
The Indirect Effect of Direct Legislation
"To demonstrate this, the author models the incentives that the initiative process creates for interests to organize and for how they communicate their preferences to policy makers. Interests that represent a broader range of the public are found to gain the most from the option to propose initiatives, implying that the set of organized interests in initiative states should reflect this advantage. Ironically, an effect of direct legislation is to potentially increase the effectiveness of special interest lobbying in state legislatures - in a sense, the opposite of the direct control that gives direct legislation its theoretical appeal. Yet, the clear effect is one of empowering voices that traditionally had very little effect in the legislative process.
In Our Name
When a government in a democracy acts in our name, are we, as citizens, responsible for those acts? What if the government commits a moral crime? The protestor's slogan--"Not in our name!"--testifies to the need to separate ourselves from the wrongs of our leaders. Yet the idea that individual citizens might bear a special responsibility for political wrongdoing is deeply puzzling for ordinary morality and leading theories of democracy. In Our Name explains how citizens may be morally exposed to the failures of their representatives and state institutions, and how complicity is the professional hazard of democratic citizenship. Confronting the ethical challenges that citizens are faced with ...
Chesapeake Bay Blues
The Chesapeake Bay restoration effort has been touted as the nation's premier environmental restoration program. Yet the Bay and the living systems it supports remain in dismally poor condition, with fisheries in decline and drinking water in danger. This book addresses the Chesapeake Bay as a political problem and reveals how the political process has worked against the interests of science, the public, and environmental advocates all at once. Author Howard Ernst shows that the forces driving environmental degradation are sown deeply into the political soul of America, posing menacing challenges to those fighting to restore large ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay. The book serves as a political roadmap for the future, suggesting how a different course of policy action is needed to 'Save the Bay.'
Striper Wars
When commercial overfishing sent striped bass populations into free fall in the 1980s, Dick Russell emerged as a key spokesman in a long-shot crusade by dedicated fishermen to save them. Striper Wars is Russell's vibrant account of their thrilling, yet tenuous victory, complete with heroes and villains. In one of nature's great comebacks, groundbreaking moratoriums allowed the striper population to rebound more than tenfold. Yet today, the striper faces new threats, including a deadly bacterial disease. While perils persist, Dick Russell's inspiring account offers fundamental lessons about the power of civic action and the necessity of a holistic approach to conservation.
Soft Corruption
New Jersey has long been a breeding ground for political corruption, and most of it is perfectly legal. Public officials accept favors from lobbyists, give paid positions to relatives, and rig the electoral process to favor their cronies in a system where campaign money is used to buy government results. Such unethical behavior is known as “soft corruption,” and former New Jersey legislator William E. Schluter has been fighting it for the past fifty years. In this searing personal narrative, the former state senator recounts his fight to expose and reform these acts of government misconduct. Not afraid to cite specific cases of soft corruption in New Jersey politics, he paints a vivid po...
Direct Democracy in the United States
Experts assess the connection between characteristics of petitioners, how they are able to influence their communities beyond the ballot box and how large an influence they are on specific areas of policy.
Let the People Rule
How referendums can diffuse populist tensions by putting power back into the hands of the people Propelled by the belief that government has slipped out of the hands of ordinary citizens, a surging wave of populism is destabilizing democracies around the world. As John Matsusaka reveals in Let the People Rule, this belief is based in fact. Over the past century, while democratic governments have become more efficient, they have also become more disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The solution Matsusaka advances is familiar but surprisingly underused: direct democracy, in the form of referendums. While this might seem like a dangerous idea post-Brexit, there is a great dea...
