Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Civil Rights

Thirty years ago, in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr., appealed to the American people to support a "constructive nonviolent" struggle to create a racially integrated society. Although legal segregation has been outlawed, America today seems in many ways even more fragmented by racial and ethnic divisions. And, despite the passage of landmark legislation in 1964 and 1965, the controversy surrounding civil rights seems to have grown, with the extension of civil rights protection to "new" groups including the disabled only creating further disputes in American...

Having organized neighborhood discussion groups before World War I, Follett traces the dynamics she noticed in these forums and develops some core concepts useful for those working on questions of public deliberation today. She also shows how deliberation informs debates that raged in political theory during her own era. She discusses the works of pluralists (Harold Laski), idealists (T. H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet), and pragmatists (William James) and makes important arguments about the relationship between socialism and democracy. Her work is marked by rigorous thinking about the...

This study of civil liberties focuses on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the dispute in Skokie, Illinois over the rights of members of the Nazi party to hold public demonstrations. Because this issue promoted at least one-fourth of the membership of the ACLU to take some form of action, ranging from objecting and reducing financial contributions to resigning, this conflict presents the opportunity for a case study of the conditions under which attitudes toward civil liberties are mobilized into behavior.

"The Regulation of Political Conflict" introduces a new unit of analysis for the study of political conflict: the conflict episode. The author then elaborates on regulation models appropriate for initiation through public policy. He discusses hypothetical causes of conflict, as presented in previous literature. Included is a description of the data base and data analysis strategies. A substantial portion of the book is devoted to identifying and testing a series of hypotheses relevant to the regulation of conflict behavior and various intervention strategies.

While the crisis in Central America is receiving attention from scholars in a variety of disciplines, few works have focused on the role of nongovernment organizations in reducing levels of violence in that region. This remarkable case study examines the resilient struggle by workers at the Guatemala Coca-Cola bottling plant from 1976-1986, and documents why this union was able to survive within a repressed government to become a key factor in stimulating a larger independent labor movement in the country. Scholars of political sociology, labor studies, and the governments and politics of...

This is an authoritative study on the role of mass media in Third World development. Using broad historical, economic, and political perspectives, Gunilla L. Faringer details the obstacles to a genuinely free, mass circulation press in Black Africa and offers a thorough analysis of the African press. The volume's six chapters meticulously catalog all pertinent data on press development, performance, and goals in English-speaking, sub-Saharan Africa, with primary focus on Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, countries that represent three different courses of political development. Faringer...

Although speech in America may be more free and robust than anywhere else on earth, censorship has maintained its grip on American society and has even increased in recent years. Not only is censorship occurring in many different areas of speech, but it is also being advocated by new groups of sponsors. In recent years, liberals have taken as active a role in censorship as have conservatives. Of all the struggles waged in the 1960s, perhaps the one thought victorious was that against censorship. Yet, as adults, the generation of the 1960s is pushing a campaign of censorship more widespread...

This book is designed to explore the historical and current level of African-American political participation, to assess the fruits of participation, and to provide recommendations for improving the efficacy of African American political participation in the future. Part One focuses on the historic struggle for securing and expanding African-American voting rights; Part Two focuses on the economic, legal, philosophic, and cultural context of African-American politics; Part Three focuses on prospects for African-American politics in the future--particularly the opportunities to develop...

Hayes analyzes the situation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and what happens to them in the aftermath of implementation of two key provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) legalization and employer sanctions. Referred to by legislators as a generous and compassionate bill that would legalize much of the undocumented population in our midst, it resulted instead in placing a highly vulnerable silent subclass in deeper jeopardy. Hayes traces the history of undocumented immigration, Congressional debate and implementation of IRCA and provides direct access to...

Hayes analyzes the situation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and what happens to them in the aftermath of implementation of two key provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) legalization and employer sanctions. Referred to by legislators as a generous and compassionate bill that would legalize much of the undocumented population in our midst, it resulted instead in placing a highly vulnerable silent subclass in deeper jeopardy. Hayes traces the history of undocumented immigration, Congressional debate and implementation of IRCA and provides direct access to...

Cleary examines the origins, spread, and results of human rights movements in Latin America, and he analyzes the mark such movements have made in world politics. He shows the enormous difficulties encountered by fledgling grassroots groups which first challenged military dictatorships over the disappeared, detention, torture, and pervasive repression. He chronicles the amazingly dynamic growth of human rights organizations, affecting democratic processes in Latin America and foreign policy in the United States.

This book is particularly important because it establishes, for the first...

Since the 1970s, the international community of states has demonstrated increasing willingness to invest UN institutions with politico-ethical authority to act on its behalf in addressing human rights abuses. Through trial and error, some of these institutions have had a degree of success in securing better practical observance of international human rights standards. Flood examines the reasons why some structural approaches have had more impact than others. He argues that states must make policy choices in an environment where many political actors operate simultaneously and where several...

How might the entire citizenry of a country make the decisions that affect them? Carson and Martin provide the first accessible and comprehensive overview of random selection as a possible process for transforming our modern political systems. Building on the theoretical work of the likes of John Burnheim and Fred Emery and drawing on their own work with social action groups, they outline a set of methods that go beyond the mere tapping of community opinion to reveal not only preferences but a more active role in creating the community.

Random selection, as Carson and Martin show, has...

Prillaman argues that a sound judiciary is critical for building popular support for democracy and laying the foundations for sustainable economic development, but that most Latin American governments have made virtually no progress toward building a more effective judiciary. He shows that the traditional approach to judicial reform is flawed on several levels. Reformers are wrong to focus on a single aspect of the judiciary on the assumption that one reform naturally leads to another. In fact, all aspects of the courts are so closely related that failure to reform one aspect creates a...

"Solving Problems Without Large Government" circumvents sterile discussions of federalism and privatization by discussing the potential role of sub-local government-assisted entities in providing effective and fair access to services. Some readers will be astonished at the numerous examples of vital social functions which have already been handled at this level, in a variety of societies throughout history. The proper use of small institutions, Liebmann argues, can actually serve to foster greater economic equity and political power.

China's boldest advocate for press and speech freedom provides a collection of his 1981-1999 arguments for greater freedom of press and speech, as presented to China's government, Party officials, and its intellectual community. Sun is the former Director of the Institute of the Institute of Jouranlism and Communication and the original Director of the Committee to Draft China's Press Law. His published articles-and four new ones for this book-chronicle a continuum of painstaking, relentless, and, ultimately, influential logic. He elucidates the media's disastrous role in the Cultural...

James and Goetze bring together contributors of varied backgrounds, ranging from evolutionary theorists to game theorists to analysts of specific ethnic conflict. Their work represents a coherent attempt at evaluating the usefulness of evolutionary theories for explaining ethnic phenomena and demonstrates how these theories can be applied in attempts to elucidate real-world behaviors.

This study found that kinship theory that posits evolved dispositions to form cooperative bonds with family, ethnic groups and other social groups may go a long way in accounting for the formation of...

Cowell-Meyers examines the continued sectarian conflict on the island of Ireland from a comparative and historical framework. Analyzing the process through which sectarian conflict was managed on the continent, she identifies the unique evolution of the Irish situation. Whereas European Catholics, such as those in the new Germany, developed an institutional pillar to defend themselves and protect their interests in the modern plural state, Irish Catholics developed a radical nationalist movement in the same period at the end of the 19th century. As elements of the British political system...

Scherrer examines the ethnicized conflicts, periodic war, and genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda may have resulted in the murder of a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu, while the mass killings in Burundi, especially in 1993 when some 200,000 Hutu and Tutsi were killed, and the current ongoing war in the Congo appear to have the potential to escalate into another round of genocide in the region. Scherrer explores the background to the conflicts in the Great Lakes Region as well as what the international community might do to break this tragic cycle of violence and...

Bock begins with a description of ethnoreligious violence in the world today and then offers a case study about Hindu-Muslim riots in India that illustrates how religion is used to engineer violence by those who gain from it. The way that religion foments violence as compared to how it can be used to prevent it is analyzed in a chapter on the flash-point asymmetry problem. While religion in the direction of hatred seems to be sharp like a sword, it is argued that in some respects it is more like a butterknife in the direction of understanding and tolerance.

The second part of...