Medborgerskab. Statsborgerskab

In this book, street-level bureaucracy scholars from South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America analyse the conditions that shape frontline work and citizens¿ everyday experience of the state. Institutional factors such as political clientelism, resource scarcity, social inequality, job insecurity, and systemic corruption affect the way street-level bureaucrats enforce rules and implement policies. Inadvertently, they end up implementing inequities in citizens' access to rights and services -- despite efforts to repair organisational deficiencies and broker relations between vulnerable citizens and a distant state. This book illuminates these realities and challenges and provides unique insights into critical themes such as resource scarcities, bureaucratic corruption, control practices, and the complexities of dealing with vulnerable population groups.

This book explores how the uncertainties of the 21st century present existential challenges to civil society. These include changing modes of governance (through devolution and Brexit), austerity, migration, growing digital divides, issues of (mis)trust and democratic confidence, welfare delivery and the COVID-19 pandemic and the contemporary threat to minority languages and cultures. Presenting original empirical findings, this book brings together core strands of social theory to provide a new way of understanding existential challenges to the form and function of civil society. It highlights pressing social issues and transferable lessons that will inform policy and practice in today's age of uncertainty.

A burgeoning literature studies compulsory voting and its effects on turnout, but we know very little about how compulsory voting works in practice. In this Element, the authors fill this gap by providing an in-depth discussion of compulsory voting rules and their enforcement in Australia, Belgium, and Brazil. By analysing comparable public opinion data from these three countries, they shed light on citizens' attitudes toward compulsory voting. The Element examines citizens' perceptions, their knowledge of the system, and whether they support it. The authors connect this with information on citizens' reported turnout and vote choice to assess who is affected by mandatory voting and why. The work clarifies that there is no single system of compulsory voting. Each country has its own set of rules, and most voters are unaware of how they are enforced.

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond Vietnam,? part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.At New York City's Riverside Church in 1967, Dr. King stood in front of a rapt audience and criticized the Vietnam War as a destructive act of force and a cruel manipulation of the poor?for those fighting on either side. He urged Americans to confront the harsh realities of war and consequently pursue a path where everyone is presented a choice, in his words, "a choice of nonviolent coexistence instead of violent coannihilation.?This beautifully designed hardcover edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's last speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the pulpit of Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, and delivered what would be his final speech. Voiced in support of the Memphis Sanitation Worker's Strike, Dr. King's words continue to be powerful and relevant as workers continue to organize, unionize, and strike across various industries today. Withstanding the test of time, this speech serves as a galvanizing call to create and maintain unity among all people.This beautifully designed hardcover edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

A California teacher outlines lessons from American heroes that instill renewed admiration of their achievements, provides guidelines for self-improvement, and sets us on a constructive path to recovering our past.In his quarter century of teaching, Jeremy S. Adams has watched his students become increasingly disinterested in history and cynical about the American Experiment itself. Students today reject America's past, viewing it as a laundry list of corrupt people, oppressive institutions, and irrelevant out-of-date fables.As an educator and a father, Adams feels a deep responsibility to restore young people's belief in the importance of American history, how it binds us as a nation and offers crucial insights to help us in the struggle to "become a more perfect Union." In Lessons in Liberty, he carves out a fresh and surprising approach to the past, highlighting the unique human details of iconic figures and the lessons they teach, such as: Daniel Inouye, a Japanese American who carried out dangerous missions in World War II and later became a US Senator representing Hawaii, who exemplifies how true patriotism is never blind to injustice.George Washington, whose lifelong struggle to conquer his temper makes him a model for self-help and self-improvement.Eleven-year-old Clara Barton, whose experience helping her injured brother regain his health helped her develop the courage and ferocity she would need to pioneer nursing techniques during the Civil War.With this beautifully written, non-partisan, deeply researched book, Adams reclaims history for a new generation, showing the surprising ways heroes as diverse as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Arthur Ashe, and Thomas Jefferson can speak to our lives today.

This edited volume examines the implications of misinformation and youth digital life in a new information environment. This new information environment is characterized by high levels of user engagement, hidden algorithmic manipulations, and information abundance, including misinformation and disinformation. While misinformation and disinformation in the post-truth era have been previously investigated, this edited volume offers a distinctive educational focus that scholars have not yet addressed. Chapters contribute to the ongoing discussion of the role of education in democracies while uniquely contextualizing the problem of misinformation as a pedagogical opportunity. Contributions from across the globe answer the question of how education might respond to the changing information environment through engagements with educational philosophy, democracy, and everyday practices of teaching and learning. The book adds to a growing body of work exploring what it means to engage in responsive, rather than reactive or stagnant, pedagogy.

"This collection is classic Nader-exhorting us to make our world and nation a better place, even when faced with unchecked political and corporate power, and perverse market and regulatory incentives. He starts with the declaration that the national Democratic Party bureaucrats are either inept or bewildered. With its record-setting campaign fundraising, he bemoans how the Party can't seem to figure out how to go on the offensive against the overtly lying, cruel, corrupt, law-breaking, Wall Street over Main Street, Trumpian Republican Party. In another essay he praises Canada, explaining that the majority of citizens love their health care system-Medicare-for-all, free choice of doctor and hospital, everybody in, nobody out and far less expensive with better outcomes overall. Highlighting heroes like Pete Seeger, Wendell Berry, the journalist Helen Thomas, Nader also celebrates citizens like the lesser-known charismatic George S. Hawkins, general manager of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority who brought immense energy, vision, and ambitious, overdue plans to the forefront for American's public drinking water. Meanwhile, he doesn't shy away from enemies-for example Nader slams the evils of Big Pharma's strength and hold over Congress and infinite greed. Nader also brings American history to the present day with creative twists. "We need to remember Ben Franklin, our frugal forebear, who coined the phrase 'a penny saved is a penny earned, '" he writes. "Today he would say 'a trillion BTUs saved is a trillion BTUs earned.'" Ranging from hernia repair to auto safety reports and warnings about lethal super-bugs and global pandemics from 2013, Nader's essays and newspaper columns will inform and activate his legions of fans"--

This book illustrates the multiple roles of textbooks as victim, transformer, and accomplice to conflict by introducing the Intersecting Roles of Education in Conflict (IREC) framework for use in the research, development, production, distribution, and dissemination of textbooks and learning materials. The framework illustrates these three potentially overlapping roles by mapping the complex educational contexts of conflict-affected societies and considering how textbooks, learning materials, and education systems more broadly may simultaneously operate within these various roles. Country case studies from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are used to analyze primary and secondary school textbook development, content, and application from a variety of approaches that articulate conflict as protracted and/or socio-political violence. The breadth of case studies shows how conflict discourse circulates in educational systems and materials in a wide range of contexts, indicating that the complexity of the relationship between textbooks and conflict is not unique to one culture, geographic region, or type of conflict.

The worsening crises across all dimensions of American society-extreme political division, social and economic inequality, the politicization of the educational system, the looming retirement debacle, and much else-make clear that, at some point, the country took a wrong turn and that we find ourselves in a wholly new social and political situation. Most proposals for how to fix things involve policy changes coming from one or the other of the two major political parties. They offer no more than reforms to the existing system and have proven themselves incapable of bringing about needed change. But America's foundations are still intact, and we can rebuild on them.In this highly readable and wide-ranging book, the fruit of over thirty years of thought and research, Dwight Yoder makes the case that no amount of partisan-led policy reforms will get us to where we need to be as a country when we are fundamentally on the wrong path. We, as citizens, surrendered our power as citizen-rulers in exchange for the promise that technocrats would create a society that offered personal fulfillment and economic well-being. That has proven to be a bad bargain. The only solution is to return to the original vision of the Founders in which citizens themselves must bear the awesome and ennobling responsibility that freedom carries with it and reestablish our society on the basis of "self-interest, properly understood," in the words of Alexis de Tocqueville.

This book explores the complex linkages between power politics of the international arena, the profit-seeking, often elitist and at-times corrupt world of professional international sport, and the promise for harnessing sport to promote human rights, inclusive development, and sustainable peace in a violent world.

Transparency and citizen engagement remain essential to good government and sound public policy. Indeed, they may well be the key to restoring trust in government itself, currently at an all-time low in Australia. It is ironic, then, that this has occurred at a time when the technological potential for information dissemination and interaction has never been greater. Opening Government: Transparency and Engagement in the Information Age explores new horizons and scenarios for better governance in the context of the new information age, focusing on the potentials and pitfalls for governments (and governance more broadly) operating in the new, information-rich environment. Its contributors, a range of international and Australian governance academics and practitioners, ask what are the challenges to our governing traditions and practices in the new information age, and where can better outcomes be expected using future technologies. They explore the fundamental ambiguities extant in opening up government, with governments intending to become far more transparent in providing information and in information sharing, but also more motivated to engage with other data sources, data systems and social technologies.--

"A radical, urgent plan for how the Democratic Party and its supporters can maintain power at one of the most pivotal moments in the history of our nation's democracy. Why do Democrats fail to win voters to their side, and what can they do to develop new winning political strategies-especially as the very fate of democracy hangs in the balance in 2024? Too often the carefully constructed, rational arguments of the Left meet a grisly fate at the polls, where voters are instead swayed by Republican candidates hawking anger, fear, and resentment. Only when Democrats are handed an overwhelming motivational issue-like the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade-have they found a way to counter this effect. Political scientist and strategist Rachel Bitecofer came to prominence after predicting the size (to the seat) of the Democrats' rare Blue Wave in the 2018 midterms. At the heart of her prediction lay a powerful concept-negative partisanship, or the idea that voters, even most so-called independents, don't vote for their candidate so much as they vote against their candidate's opponent. Seen through this lens, Hit 'Em Where It Hurts is a deep dive into the Republicans' own playbook, sharing how Democrats can turn the Right's own tactics against them. The way for Democrats to wage-and win-electoral war, Bitecofer writes, is to present themselves as "brand ambassadors for freedom, health, wealth, safety, and common sense," the very opposite of the extremist, freedom-fearing Right. This is a last-ditch effort to armor democracy while there is still time to save and strengthen it against hijacking by a small minority of ideologues. As America careens into the election cycle that will determine its democratic future, Hit 'Em Where It Hurts is the book for any Democrat who has ever banged their head against a wall when obvious reasoning failed to sway voters over to their side. This guide is a lifeline to save American democracy in its darkest hour"--

Democracy is on the run, and elected governments are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. Legislatures are increasingly seen as unrepresentative. To give legitimacy to democratic government, experts argue that we need more democracy and more opportunities for direct citizen participation. Representative democracy needs to be complemented by forms of direct engagement, such as referendums, popular votes, the recall, citizens' juries, eDemocracy, etc. This is what we term Complementary Democracy. In this book experts from the worlds of practice and theory come together to explain - and occasionally critique - these complements to representative democracy. The volume provides an invaluable starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the new directions of democratic governance, and hopes to inspire those who seek to build stronger democracies.

Latin America and the Caribbean, as with other regions, continue to face serious challenges, including fragility of democratic institutions and increasing social and economic inequality. In the past decades, access to higher education has been demonstrated to be key in furthering democratic societies and increasing participation. In the aftermath of the pandemic crisis, the role of higher education, in developing and sustaining a culture of democracy and participation, will be even greater. Higher education must be seen as an essential means through which to support and strengthen the values and structures of a just and inclusive society. This book seeks to engage the leaders, students and staff of higher education institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean in a conversation around how we might share best practice. We consider how universities can better address the issues of social inclusion and educational access with excluded communities, such as the original peoples and the Afro‐descendants, within a framework of democratic values.This book is an important step in the creation of this Learning Community and presents an overview of the democratic mission and civic engagement across higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. It serves to bring together diverse voices and the experiences of different countries and higher education institutions. The decision to publish in English rather than Spanish, the language of the majority of the contributors, is a considered one as we see the book having a role in bringing the Latin American and Caribbean experiences and lessons to a wider global audience. Thus, Latin America and the Caribbean seek to join the global conversation on the democratic mission and civic engagement, referencing the region's own rich andvaried experience over the years.

BACK IN PRINT!The Trouble with Democracy shows that the ancient as well as American and Canadian democracies were established on practical social and political grounds vastly different from the strange modern dream of a democracy of autonomous individuals that is now venerated everywhere. Gairdner explains clearly how, in this time of heretofore unimagined wealth and the tax harvesting that it makes possible, warring utopian impulses from deep within our history have combined to produce a form of "hyperdemocracy" never before imagined in all of human history. The result is a comfortable illusion of increased personal freedom that camouflages the reality of pervasive state control in every aspect of modern life. We now live, says Gairdner, under a regime of "libertarian socialism" in which citizens imagine they have all the rights and their governments all the duties. This masterpiece of vigorous, compelling, even prophetic writing represents an exciting turning point in social thought. It challenges citizens to reconsider standard interpretations of democracy and to think much more deeply about the nature, subtlety, and complexity of our actual situation, all the while offering a new and refreshing understanding of the proper nature of a free and civil society.