Government Systems

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson insisted that "the policeman is the frontline soldier in our war against crime", and police forces, arms makers, policy makers, and crime experts heeded this call to arms, bringing weapons and practices from the arena of war back home. The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies.

Hard White explains how the mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major shifts in the movement. While the book argues that white extremism will have enduring effects on American electoral politics for some time to come, it suggests that the way forward is to refocus the conversation on social solidarity, concluding with ideas for how to build this solidarity.

Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.

Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President - policies such as President Obama protecting Dreamers from deportation and President Trump banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave. This belief is a myth.

Equality is easy to grasp in theory but often hard to achieve in reality. In this accessible and wide-ranging work, American University law professor Robert L. Tsai offers a stirring account of how legal ideas that aren't necessarily about equality at all - ensuring fair play, behaving reasonably, avoiding cruelty, and protecting free speech - have often been used to overcome resistance to justice and remain vital today.

Blackout Wars is about the historically unprecedented threat to our electronic civilization from its dependence on the electric power grid. In a nationwide blackout lasting months or years, the entire population of the US could be at risk. There would be no food. No water. Communications, transportation, industry, business, and finance - all of the critical infrastructures that support modern civilization would be paralyzed. Threats to the electric power grid are posed by cyber-attack, sabotage, a geomagnetic super-storm, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon.

The true, eye-opening account of how the NHS has been failed and what we can do to save it. ‘The NHS is an institution. But it’s also a political football, kicked back and forth between politicians for the past 75 years. It’s a burden to some and a potent vote-winner for others. It’s a...

Werden wir gut regiert? Oder bleibt die Politik hinter ihren Möglichkeiten zurück? Und wenn das so ist - woran liegt das? Gibt es Techniken guten Regierens? In seinem Bestseller beschreibt Thilo Sarrazin die Mechaniken von Politik, ihre typischen Fehler und die Gründe für den Erfolg oder Misserfolg von Gesellschaften. Er verdeutlicht, warum die Träume von einer besseren Gesellschaft oft nichts Gutes hervorgebracht haben. Von hier schlägt er den Bogen zu den Fehlern der aktuellen deutschen Politik, von der Einwanderung bis zur Energiewende.

La historia de un joven que estuvo encarcelado injustamente desde sus 20 años hasta sus 33 y de cómo venció al sistema para quedar libre.

In The Politics Industry, Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis - and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework - to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change - a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws.

At a time when politics in Britain is experiencing unprecedented turmoil, this Very Short Introduction audiobook examines the past, present, and possible future of British politics. Tony Wright puts current events into a longer and larger perspective, ranging from political ideas to political institutions and offering an overview of the British political tradition.

For decades, James MacGregor Burns has been one of the great masters of the study of power and leadership in America. Now he turns his eye to an institution of government that he believes has become more powerful---and more partisan---than the Founding Fathers ever intended: the Supreme Court. Much as we would like to believe that the Court remains aloof from ideological politics, Packing the Court reveals how often justices behave like politicians in robes.

Politik, Moral und Utopie - "Für den politisch Sensiblen ist Politik überall, sie kriecht quasi durch jede Ritze. Wenn man mit dem Gang der politischen Geschäfte nicht einverstanden ist, erhitzt das die Gefühle. So entstehen politisches Engagement, aber auch Fanatismus und Frustration", schreibt Thilo Sarrazin. Wie funktioniert Politik? Wie kommen politische Fehlentscheidungen zustande? Warum sind gute Absichten oft von Erfolg gekrönt? Wo liegen die Gründe für den Erfolg oder Misserfolg von Gesellschaften?

Die alte Weltordnung zerbröselt, befeuert durch den neuen US-Präsidenten Donald Trump. Er zettelt Handelskriege an, untergräbt multilaterale Bündnisse und schleift die Schutzmechanismen der amerikanischen Demokratie. Als Systemsprenger betreibt Trump den Rückfall in eine Welt, in der jeder Nationalstaat nur auf den besten Deal aus ist und unsere Werte keine Rolle spielen. Elmar Theveßen entwirft in diesem Buch das düstere Szenario vom Abgleiten in einen Autoritarismus, der uns alle bedroht.

Al Franken reveals the alarming story of how Bush (barely) beat Kerry with his campaign of "fear, smear, and queers", and then claimed a nonexistent mandate; Republicans decided that Terri Schiavo would make "a great political issue"; Conservatives sought to undermine Social Security by using a strategy borrowed from...Vladimir Lenin; and more.

Guaranteed to give the listener a deeper understanding of America’s most powerful judicial body, John Yoo, professor of law at UC Berkeley, and Robert Delahunty, professor of law at the University of St. Thomas, detail in sprightly, slightly irreverent manner how the black-robed judges who make up the U.S. Supreme Court have swung like a pendulum from saviors of the Republic to super-legislators who usurp the roll of Congress and dictate law from the bench, back to defenders of the Constitution again—or at least for the moment.

For most of Elizabeth Sawin's career, she was not a multisolver. Instead, she worked on a single, albeit immensely important problem: climate change. Despite tremendous effort, she felt like she was chasing her tail. Unless people began to recognize the multitude of unexpected benefits from ratcheting down emissions, climate change would remain a losing political issue.

A wake-up call for middle class Americans who feel trapped in a post-crisis economic slump, The Unfair Trade is a riveting exposé of the vast global financial system whose flaws are the source of our economic malaise. Our livelihoods are now beholden to the workings of its imbalances and inequities. The trillions of dollars that make up the flow of international finance - money often steered away from people who deserve it most - have not just undermined the lives of working and middle class Americans.

Our legal system often feels like it only works for the rich and powerful - for those who have the means to use the courts to enforce their will and defend their interests. But we can fight back. Jolyon Maugham KC founded Good Law Project in 2017 with the belief that the law can also put power in the hands of ordinary people. . It has brought a series of landmark cases against a dishonest and increasingly autocratic government and won widespread acclaim in successfully reversing Boris Johnson's unlawful suspension of Parliament.

Deutschland. Vielleicht kein anderes Land auf diesem Planeten ruft ambivalentere und aufwühlendere Assoziationen hervor als der gar nicht einmal so große Staat im Herzen des europäischen Kontinents. Deutschland, das ist das Land der Nazigreuel und der Judenverfolgung, das Land der KZs und das Land, das die Welt zwei Mal in einen umfassenden Krieg gestürzt hat. Es ist das Land, das wie kaum ein Zweites die Teilung zwischen dem östlichen und dem westlichen Machtblock des Kalten Krieges verkörperte und das Land, durch dessen Mitte jahrzehntelang Stacheldrahtzäune schnitten.