In this major contribution to the power debate, Clarissa Rile Hayward challenges the prevailing view of power as something powerful people have and use. Rather than seeing it as having a "face," she argues for a view of power as a complex network of social boundaries--norms, identities, institutions--which define individual freedom, for "powerful" and "powerless" alike. The book's argument is supported by a comparative analysis of relationships within two ethnically-diverse educational settings--a low-income, predominantly African-American urban school; and an affluent, predominantly white,...

How is a sense of belonging to a political community created? Rogers Smith suggests that Stories of Peoplehood, narratives which include racial, religious, ethnic and cultural elements, serve to make membership of a political group part of an individual's identity. He argues that competition over accounts of a nation's history and culture is thus an important part of political life. Examples from around the world since the 18th century are included. In particular, Smith traces the history of competing conceptions of national identity and citizenship in the United States from the revolution to...

Is there a public good? A prevalent view in political science is that democracy is unavoidably chaotic, arbitrary, meaningless, and impossible. Such scepticism began with Condorcet in the eighteenth century, and continued most notably with Arrow and Riker in the twentieth century. In this powerful book, Gerry Mackie confronts and subdues these long-standing doubts about democratic governance. Problems of cycling, agenda control, strategic voting, and dimensional manipulation are not sufficiently harmful, frequent, or irremediable, he argues, to be of normative concern. Mackie also examines...

Kok-Chor Tan argues that the cosmopolitan idea of global justice may be understood in such a way that it can accept nationalist and patriotic commitments. Tan believes that cosmopolitan justice need not deny the worth of the ordinary non-impartial values even as it defends a vision of global egalitarianism. Properly understood, it can set the limits for nationalist and patriotic efforts without denying the moral independence of these partial pursuits.

John Keane offers an original account of the origins of violence, its consequences, its uses and remedies, and the relationship between violence and democracy. Rejecting the view that "human nature" is violent, Keane demonstrates why democracies do not wage war upon each other, and are unusually sensitive to violence. He emphasizes ethical questions, such as the circumstances in which violence can be justified, and argues that violence can and should be "democratized" and made publicly accountable.

Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism explores the tensions that arise when culturally diverse democratic states pursue both justice for religious and cultural minorities and justice for women. Sarah Song provides a distinctive argument about the circumstances under which egalitarian justice requires special accommodations for cultural minorities while emphasizing the value of gender equality as an important limit on cultural accommodation. Drawing on detailed case studies of gendered cultural conflicts, including conflicts over the 'cultural defense' in criminal law,...

Amid fears of terrorism, rising tides of xenophobia, and protests, John Keane explores the contradictory arguments and traces the historical origins, contemporary meanings and political potential of globalization. Defending the idea of a global civil society, Keane stresses the need for new democratic ways of living and demonstrates how it is linked with such developments as turbocapitalism, social movements and the political institutions of "cosmocracy." Keane's provocative reflections in Global Civil Society? draw upon a variety of scholarly sources and offer a fresh perspective on...

Tracing the political origins of the Mexican indigenous rights movement, from the colonial encounter to the Zapatista uprising, and from Chiapas to Geneva, Courtney Jung locates indigenous identity in the history of Mexican state formation. She argues that indigenous identity is not an accident of birth but a political achievement that offers a new voice to many of the world's poorest and most dispossessed. The moral force of indigenous claims rests not on the existence of cultural differences, or identity, but on the history of exclusion and selective inclusion that constitutes indigenous...

Tracing the political origins of the Mexican indigenous rights movement, from the colonial encounter to the Zapatista uprising, and from Chiapas to Geneva, Courtney Jung locates indigenous identity in the history of Mexican state formation. She argues that indigenous identity is not an accident of birth but a political achievement that offers a new voice to many of the world's poorest and most dispossessed. The moral force of indigenous claims rests not on the existence of cultural differences, or identity, but on the history of exclusion and selective inclusion that constitutes indigenous...

The language of rights is ubiquitous. It shapes the way we construct our debates over issues such as abortion, affirmative action and sexual freedom. This provocative new study challenges the very concept of rights, arguing that they jeopardize our liberty and undermine democratic debate. By re-conceptualizing our ideas about limited government, it suggests that we can limit the reasons or rationales on which the polity may act. Whereas we once used the language of rights to thwart democratic majorities, Bedi argues that we should now turn our attention to the democratic state's reason for...