Bøger af David Coates

Picking up from the point at which Pursuing the Progressive Case ended, this second volume of essays observing the Obama presidency in real time charts the increasingly difficult conditions under which progressives within and beyond his administration struggled for leverage and impact during the President's second term. Foreign policy concerns play a bigger part in this second collection than in the first, reflecting the re-immersion of the US military in the Middle East conflict in spite of the run-down of the Iraqi occupation. But domestic issues surface here too, though in this volume less around presidential initiatives than around the defense of the achievements of Obama's first four years in office. Readers will find in The Progressive Case Stalled? critical reflections on economic and housing policy, on policy on poverty-alleviation and the easing of student debt, and on the contentious issue of trade deals and employment out-sourcing. Together, the essays gathered in this volume constitute an important contemporary evaluation of the blockages on progressive politics that were such a feature of Obama's second term: blockages coming from unexpected foreign developments, from unique levels of Republican Party opposition and intransigence, and from limitations in the President's own vision and leverage. Taken together with volume 1, the running commentary that is Observing Obama in Real Time will be an invaluable source of guidance both to future historians in years and to contemporary progressives attempting to build on the Obama legacy and to move beyond its shortcomings.

Written when the Obama presidency was in its infancy, Pursing the Progressive Case pondered the strengths and weaknesses of the president's first term, and pointed the way forward for those wanting to see a twenty-first century version of FDR's New Deal. The essays, many initially posted on The Huffington Post, provide a detailed commentary on the key political developments of Obama's first four years in the White House, each written as those developments were happening. Covering a wide range of issues - from financial reform and health care, through poverty and unemployment to the foreclosure crisis and the deployment of US troops abroad - the essays gathered here drew heavily on research and scholarship published simultaneously as Answering Back: Liberal Responses to Conservative Arguments and Making the Progressive Case. Republishing these essays now helps remind us of the hopes and aspirations built into the Obama presidency from its inception, and contains vital clues to the pattern of political success and failure which then followed. Written without the wisdom of hindsight, drafted indeed in the thick of the political fights themselves, the essays gathered here provide a vital contemporary record of a presidency that will be long remembered for the quality of the intellect and oratory that were its defining hallmarks. Pursuing the Progressive Case offers new and vital arguments for engaging in progressive politics, arguments that might yet make a future progressive president more successful still.

Commenting on political events in real time used to be the preserve of the well-placed political journalist and of no one else. But no longer: with the emergence of the blogosphere, commentary on contemporary events has become a privilege available to each one of us. Doing it and doing it well, however, remains a time-consuming and ultimately a highly-skilled job. If commentary is to be worth reading, it needs to be more than opinion. It needs to be opinion informed by research and scholarship. What follows here is, hopefully, opinion of that kind.

Drawing on over four decades of research and writing on the political economy of the UK and United States, David Coates offers a masterly account of the Anglo-American condition and the social and economic crisis besetting both countries. Charting the rise and fall of the social settlements that have shaped and defined the postwar years, Coates traces the history of the two economies through first their New Deal and then their Reaganite periods - ones labelled differently in the UK, but similarly marked by the development first of a Keynesian welfare state and then a Thatcherite neoliberal one. Coates exposes the failings and shortcomings of the Reagan/Thatcher years, showing how the underlying fragility of a settlement based on the weakening of organized labour and the extensive deregulation of business culminated in the financial crisis of 2008. The legacies of that crisis haunt us still - a squeezed middle class, further embedded poverty, deepened racial divisions, an adverse work-life balance for two-income families, and a growing crisis of housing and employment for the young. Flawed Capitalism deals with each in turn, and makes the case for the creation of a new transatlantic social settlement - a less flawed capitalism - one based on greater degrees of income equality and social justice. As members of the millennial generation come to their maturity on each side of the Atlantic, Flawed Capitalism offers the critical intellectual tools that they will need if they are ever to break decisively with the failed public policies of the past.

At a time of tea parties and rallies to restore sanity, the political debate in America has become nothing more than a shouting match of various soundbites. This book presents the conservative and liberal arguments related to the economic issues faced by the Obama administration, including market regulation and green economy.

Tony Blair and George Bush may have won the war in Iraq, but they are losing the peace at home.

This practical and easy-to-use book enables teachers to challenge able children to develop their potential and to extend their thinking in primary science.

Getting Immigration Right focuses on what is arguably the most important aspect of the current immigration debate: how best to understand and resolve illegal immigration from Mexico.

This book brings together in one place the liberal and conservative arguments that face the Republican and Democratic parties in the run-up to the 2008 election.

David Coates offers an important analysis of the Labour Party during the revival of radicalism within the Party during the 1970s. He examines the roots of the Party and traces developments within the Party in the 1950s, offering one of the first detailed accounts of the performance in office between 1964 and 1970.

Presents the conservative and liberal arguments on eight key policy issues: trickle-down economics, welfare, social security, health care, immigration control, religion, the war in Iraq, and economic prosperity. This book is suitable for those interested in policy reform, party politics, and American politics.

A systematic study of the early performance of New Labour in power. Each chapter examines New Labour's initial comments, charts opening policy moves, and traces policy trajectories in each major department of state.