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Taking the reader through a long view of American history, What Happened to the Vital Center? offers a novel and important contribution to the ongoing scholarly and popular discussion of how America fell apart and what might be done to end the Cold Civil War that fractures the country and weakens the national resolve. In What Happened to the Vital Center?, Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney Milkis tackle a foundational question within American political history: Is current partisan polarization, aggravated by populist disdain for constitutional principles and institutions, a novel development in American politics? Populism is not a new threat to the country's democratic experiment, but now insurgent...
The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside, and the entire governing system is threatened by one-party dominance. After Donald Trump’s surprising victories throughout rural America, pundits and journalists went searching for answers, popping into roadside diners and opining from afar. Rural Americans are supposedly bigots, culturally backward, lazy, scared of the future, and radical. But is it that simple? Is the country splintering between two very different Americas—one rural, one urban? This pathbreaking book pinpoints forces behind t...
The key to understanding the current wave of American political division is the attention people pay to politics.
How did democracy become so vulnerable in America? Donald Trump is a shrill warning of the political system's fragility, but he alone is not the problem. The vulnerability is broader and deeper-and looms still. Even before Trump ran for president, his disdain for the rules and norms of democracy and the US Constitution was well-known by many prominent Republicans who were unable to stop his nomination. Trump's presidency is the culmination of a series of political decisions since the late 18th century that ceded party nominations to small cliques of ideologues. Democracy Under Fire provides a readable, if disturbing, history of American democracy and proposes recommendations to restore it.
This definitive book examines and engages with the work of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, along with the Bloomington School of Political Economy more generally. The contributors emphasize the continuing relevance of the Ostroms’ work on collective action, self-governance, and institutional diversity for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities. This book’s wide array of topics and approaches will be a valuable resource to readers in a variety of fields, including: political science, economics, philosophy, sociology, public administration, environmental studies, and political economy.
My Fellow Americans compiles the inaugural addresses of all US presidents and offers incisive and accessible interpretations of each by the nation's leading presidential historians.
Christ is present and at work in rural communities. How do we lead from that reality? The temptation to operate from a scarcity mindset is stronger than ever. The tensions unleashed over the past few years—which led to skepticism, breakdowns of trust, declining church attendance, and uncertainty around community ministry—continue to linger in and among our rural churches. Yet God’s loving, redemptive work is happening in all places, no matter how small or far-flung. In Flyover Church, Brad Roth, the author of God’s Country, describes how rural ministry shares soul-deep commonalities with the church in every place. And he speaks a hopeful message into the distinct challenges—and promises—faced by rural communities. Tracing Jesus’ ministry and bountiful work among the small-town people and places in the gospel of Mark, this book offers a vision for ministry tailored to rural settings. Pastors and leaders everywhere will be encouraged to approach ministry from the reality of God’s abundance.
This book examines how polarization threatens democracy and the sources of political and institutional resilience that can help sustain it.
Violence exploding in public spaces, corruption by political figures and economic elites, the will of the people thwarted in both elections and votes in the senate, military misadventures abroad, and rampant economic inequality at home diminishing a shared sense of the common good – in sum, a republic in disarray. These descriptions are not only familiar from ancient Roman political and social life but are also recognizable to any United States citizen who follows the news and American civic life. On the Republic proceeds chronologically through the fall of the Roman Republic beginning in 133 BCE and continuing down to around 14 CE, providing a continuous narrative of the fall of the Roman Republic juxtaposed with the contemporary political landscape of the United States. In 20 short chapters, On the Republic explores how the United States now faces many of the same challenges that toppled the Roman Republic - political divisions, economic inequality, and creeping authoritarianism. How we respond to these challenges today will determine the future of American democracy.
Democracy is in crisis. Washington is failing. Government is broken. On these counts many politicians, policy experts, and citizens agree. What is less clear is why—and what to do about it. These questions are at the heart of Dynamics of American Democracy, which goes beneath the surface of current events to explore the forces reshaping democratic politics in the United States and around the world. Bringing together leading scholars and practitioners of politics and governance, this volume charts a twenty-first-century landscape beset by ideological polarization and political tribalism; rapid demographic, economic, and technological change; the influence of online news and social media; an...