Big City Politics: A Comparative Guide to the Political Systems of Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, St. Louis [and

Politics & Social Sciences

Banfield, Edward

Politics & Government

Random House]

Political Influence

In government, influence denotes one's ability to get others to act, think, or feel as one intends. A mayor who persuades voters to approve a bond issue exercises influence. A businessman whose promises of support induce a mayor to take action exercises influence. In Political Influence, Edward C. Banfield examines the structures and dynamics of influence in determining who actually makes the decisions on vital issues in a large metropolitan area. This edition includes an introduction by James Q. Wilson, who provides an intellectual profile of Banfield and a review of his life and work. Banfield locates his analysis in Chicago, focusing on a broad range of representative urban issues. An introductory chapter defines Banfield's method through four leading questions: Who has influence and who is subject to it? How does influence work? What are the terms upon which influence is expended? How is action concerted by influence? Banfield's conceptual scheme is applied at three levels. He offers six case studies of political influence, showing in considerable detail how influence was used in certain civic controversies. Then Banfield interprets these case studies, drawing from them a set of low-level empirical generalizations. At the third and highest level of generality, he explores the logical structure of significant aspects of influence and recasts the empirical findings in analytical terms, developing theories that apply generally to situations involving political influence. He also defines the key roles played by officeholders, the newspapers, business interests, the city council and minority groups. Political Influence is notable for its depth and sophistication. This rare combination of good reporting and insightful analysis is essential reading for political scientists, urban affairs specialists, policymakers, and sociologists.

History

Americas

Routledge

How do civility and citizenship, aspects of the individual's attachment to a liberal democratic society, affect the nature and future of that society? This book reminds us of the fragility of a good political order and the complexities of maintaining liberal democracy, even when actions of citizens are wise and virtuous.Professor Banfield states that history and reflection tell us that a majority may tyrannize cruelly over a minority. What we want is not majority rule simply, but majority rule plus the protection of certain rights that pertain to individuals. This is the difference between democracy and liberal democracy; in the latter there is a private sphere into which the governing authority may not intrude.Citizenship implies a sense of shared responsibility for the conduct of a regime; a regime is fully liberal but less than fully democratic if rights are protected but significant numbers of persons are denied, or decline to accept and exercise, the duties of citizenship. It will be found that by this test the number of nations that approach the ideal of liberal democracy - that are at once very liberal and democratic - is painfully small and that the most liberal are not those in which citizenship is most widely held and exercised.If a liberal democratic society is to continue as such there must be widely respected institutions, practices, and modes of thought that encourage or demand the making of concessions where necessary to preserve the degree of harmony without which the society could not continue as a going concern. The obligation of the citizen to obey the law is one such safeguard of order. The idea of civic virtue is another. Civility, the culturally ingrained willingness to tolerate behavior that is offensive, is yet another.The first chapter by Edward Shils distinguishes the "civil person" and the "state" and points to conditions of modern life that threaten to erode civility and endanger liberal democracy.Katherine Auspitz tells how certain British and continental writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century sought to encourage the motivations they deemed essential for a free society.Charles Kesler describes the American founders' conception of public interest.Clifford Orwin views this subject in the contrasting lights of ancient and modern philosophy.Robert Goldwin maintains, through an examination of the American experience, that the tension between rights and democracy and between rights and citizenship renders liberal democracy impossible except as civility intervenes.James Q. Wilson explores the relationship between economic progress, the cultural changes brought about by the Enlightenment and increased criminality.Elie Kedourie examines the prospects for civility and liberal consensus in what has been called the "Third World."The final chapter, Myron Weiner discussed the problem of citizenship and migration of peoples in relation to liberal democracies, especially in regard to the demand from people in low-income developing countries to enter advanced industrial democracies.

Civility Citizenship (World Social Systems)

Paragon_House

Civility Citizenship

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

In government, influence denotes one's ability to get others to act, think, or feel as one intends. A mayor who persuades voters to approve a bond issue exercises influence. A businessman whose promises of support induce a mayor to take action exercises influence. In Political Influence, Edward C. Banfield examines the structures and dynamics of influence in determining who actually makes the decisions on vital issues in a large metropolitan area. This edition includes an introduction by James Q. Wilson, who provides an intellectual profile of Banfield and a review of his life and work.Banfield locates his analysis in Chicago, focusing on a broad range of representative urban issues. An introductory chapter defines Banfield's method through four leading questions: Who has influence and who is subject to it? How does influence work? What are the terms upon which influence is expended? How is action concerted by influence? Banfield's conceptual scheme is applied at three levels. He offers six case studies of political influence, showing in considerable detail how influence was used in certain civic controversies. Then Banfield interprets these case studies, drawing from them a set of low-level empirical generalizations. At the third and highest level of generality, he explores the logical structure of significant aspects of influence and recasts the empirical findings in analytical terms, developing theories that apply generally to situations involving political influence. He also defines the key roles played by officeholders, the newspapers, business interests, the city council and minority groups.Political Influence is notable for its depth and sophistication. This rare combination of good reporting and insightful analysis is essential reading for political scientists, urban affairs specialists, policymakers, and sociologists.

Most of the essays in this volume have appeared in scholarly journals or in books edited by others. A few are published here for the first time. None has been taken from one of my books. A would-be reader would have to go to much trouble to find them; that is the reason for bringing them together. Collections of essays are frequently miscellanies. This one is not. Except for the final two chapters, all deal with some aspect of the American political system. Some have to do with the structure and functioning of the federal system, others with the nature of publi(}-and incidentally other-organization, and still others with the causes and supposed cures of the social problems that government is nowadays expected to solve or cope with. The two final chapters are about the relationship between economics and political science; for lack of a better term they may be methodological.

Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science)

Springer

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