Politics: A Unified Introduction to How Democracy Works

ISBN-13: 9780367025083 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 476 str.

Ian Budge

Opis

This comprehensive introduction to politics provides an essential template for assessing the health and workings of present day democracy by exploring how democratic processes bring public policy into line with popular preferences.

Spis treści

Preface: Explaining Politics Systematically.  Introduction: Politics and Policy What Do We Want to Explain and How?  Part I: Processes. Elections alternate party-based governments with different preferences and priorities thus bringing public policy into line with centrist popular preferences in the long run: Overview  1. Why Politics? Making Policies to Provide Public Goods  2. How Popular Preferences Develop  3. Measuring Electoral Preferences  4. Electors’ Policy Thinking: From a Joined Up Left-Right Perspective to Issue-by-Issue Reactions  5. Party Policy Thinking: Framing Policy Targets and Election-Based Estimates of Majority Preferences  6. Matching Public Policy to Popular Preferences  7. The ‘Web of Explanation’: Relating Process Theories to each other Within a General Political Science Context.  Part II: Rules.  Rules designate – but may misrepresent – majority preferences, thus biasing policy outcomes: Overview  8. Majority Choice of Policies: Voting Paradoxes and Attempted Solutions  9. General Elections and Election Systems: Finalizing Collective Choice of Policies.  Part III: Protagonists.  Parties and governments shape popular preferences and reflect them in public policies: Overview  10. Citizens, Parties and Governments: Interactive Preference Formation  11. Parties: Ideological Policy-Carriers  12. Governments: Prime Participants in Policy Making  13. Ministries: Separating out Policy Areas.  Part IV: States.  Collective action without binding rules: Overview  14. Globalization and World Democracy.  Part V: Explanation.  Explaining politics by specifying its processes so as to predict outcomes.  Overview: Theory-Driven Data-Analysis  15. Generating ‘Big Data’: Sources, Procedures, Error Checks  16. Simplifying ‘Big Data’: Dimensions, Majorities and the (Missing?) Middle  17. Managing ‘Big Data’: Theoretical Explanation and Statistical Analysis  18. Developing Political Science by Explaining Democracy

O autorze

Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex UK, and well known internationally as author of numerous research articles and textbooks on democratic politics.