Restoring Real Representation


Book Description

Popular representation, seen by constitutional founders including James Madison as the pivot of republicanism, has been gradually ritualized and discounted. Robert Grady maintains that contemporary pluralist theory devalues citizens' civic roles and reduces elections to symbolic exercises. In its more recent incarnations as interest group liberalism and corporatism, he believes, pluralism undercuts the grounds for real representation in favor of representation for the organized and privileged. In Restoring Real Representation, Grady argues for restoration of real citizen representation through democratic functional jurisdictions rather than by means of the usual electoral and political party reforms. In fact, he says, many critics of contemporary politics have proposed reforms that inadequately account for constitutional principles. Analyzing pluralist, corporatist, and participatory theory, Grady shows how these jurisdictions - principally the workplace community, but, by extension, other ethnic, religious, and geographic associations - can serve as constituent organizations for participation and reaffirm the pivotal role of representation.




Representation in Crisis


Book Description

Confronting a fundamentally important but often neglected reality in American politics, this book shows the powerful influence of the courts in determining the shape and operation of our politics. The author exhaustively details how the Supreme Court has impoverished the constitutional standing of political parties in areas of redistricting, campaign finance, ballot access, patronage, and party primaries, opting instead for superficially appealing notions of group-based representation. Ryden demonstrates how the Supreme Court, by checking virtually everything undertaken by the more "political" branches, of government, has exerted powerful influence on how the political system operates and how politics plays out at the most practical level. The book details the Court's attraction to group-based approaches to representation currently in vogue and offers persuasive evidence that while well-intended,such approaches only feed the crisis of representation afflicting this country. These approaches, Ryden aruges, compartmentalize and separate out those being represented rather than cultivate a more unified, inclusive, and ultimately healthier scheme of representation. This compelling indictment of the Supreme Court's constitutional theory of representation offers a much-needed prescription for how the Court might better perform its role as ultimate guardian of representative government.




Our Elusive Constitution


Book Description

This volume explores the relationship between religion and politics. It brings a varied sample of richly detailed comparative and case studies together with a set of analytical paradigms in an integrated framework. It is a major statement on a timely subject, and a plea for the acknowledgment of normative pluralism as firmly rooted in the history of religion. The editor shows that the fact of political diversity in the history of world religions compels the acceptance of pluralism as a normative principle.




Analysis, Conservation, and Restoration of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage


Book Description

Communities have witnessed a fundamental shift in the ways they interact with heritage sites. Much of this change has been driven by the rapid democratization and widespread adoption of enabling technologies. As expediency is embraced in the collection and analysis of data, there may also be a certain amount of intimacy lost with both the tangible and intangible vestiges of the past. Analysis, Conservation, and Restoration of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage is a collection of innovative research on the quantitative methods and digital workflows transforming cultural heritage. There is no contesting the value of advanced non-destructive diagnostic imaging techniques for the analysis of heritage structures and objects. Highlighting topics including 3D modeling, conservation, and digital surveying, this book is ideally designed for conservation and preservation specialists, archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, academicians, and students seeking current research on data-driven, evidence-based decision making to improve intervention outcomes.




Black Faces in the Mirror


Book Description

Here, Katherine Tate examines the significance of race in the U.S. system of representative democracy for African Americans. Presenting important new findings, she offers the first empirical study to take up the question of representation from both sides of the constituent-representative relationship. The first half of the book examines whether black members of the U.S. House legislate and represent their constituents differently than white members do. Representation is broadly conceptualized to include not only legislators' roll call voting behavior and bill sponsorship, but also the symbolic acts in which they engage. The second half looks at the issue of representation from the perspective of ordinary African Americans based on a landmark national survey. Tate's findings are mixed. But, in the main, legislators' race does shape how they represent their constituents and how constituents evaluate them. African Americans view black representatives more positively than they do white representatives, even those who belong to their own political party. Black legislators, however, are just as likely as white representatives to sponsor and gain passage of bills in the House. Tate also concludes that black House members are more liberal as a group than are their black constituents, but that there is considerable divergence in the quality and type of representation they provide. The findings reported here will generate controversy in the fields of politics, law, and race, particularly as debate commences over renewing the Voting Rights Act, which is set to expire in 2007.




A New Handbook of Political Science


Book Description

The New Handbook of Political Science is an authoritative survey of developments in the discipline compiled by 42 of the most famous political scientists worldwide, analysing progress over the past twenty years and assessing this in the context of historical trends in the field. Discussion of each of the main subdisciplines: political institutions political behaviour comparative politics international relations political theory public policy and administration political economy political methodology breaks down into four sections: an overview of the field analysis from two key perspectives in the field Old and new: an eminent scholar in the field assesses the new developments in the light of older traditions in the discipline International in its scope, systematic in its coverage, A New Handbook of Political Science will become the reference book for political scientists, and those tracking their work, into the next century. The New Handbook of Political Science is an authoritative survey of developments in the discipline compiled by 42 of the most famous political scientists worldwide, analysing progress over the past twenty years and assessing this in the context of historical trends in the field. `The New Handbook of Political Science is the most comprehensive and well-done effort to describe the state of political science extant. It contains much which will be required reading. I strongly recommend it'. Seymour Martin Lipset `The Handbook is a masterly and authoritative survey, comprehensive yet compact, by a stellar international cast of contributors...a most worthy successor to the old Greenstein-Polsby Handbook, published two decades ago'. Arend Lijphart `This is an extraordinarily useful mapping of what has happend in the discipline in the last twenty years, since the classic 1975 Handbook was published...Scholars are well advised to read this new, single-volume Handbook in its entirety. For this volume is not only a collection of brilliant contributions, but also a much needed cross-fertilizing endeavour'. Giovanni Sartori




Advances in Electric Power and Energy Systems


Book Description

A comprehensive review of state-of-the-art approaches to power systems forecasting from the most respected names in the field, internationally Advances in Electric Power and Energy Systems is the first book devoted exclusively to a subject of increasing urgency to power systems planning and operations. Written for practicing engineers, researchers, and post-grads concerned with power systems planning and forecasting, this book brings together contributions from many of the world’s foremost names in the field who address a range of critical issues, from forecasting power system load to power system pricing to post-storm service restoration times, river flow forecasting, and more. In a time of ever-increasing energy demands, mounting concerns over the environmental impacts of power generation, and the emergence of new, smart-grid technologies, electricity price forecasting has assumed a prominent role within both the academic and industrial arenas. Short-run forecasting of electricity prices has become necessary for power generation unit schedule, since it is the basis of every maximization strategy. This book fills a gap in the literature on this increasingly important topic. Following an introductory chapter offering background information necessary for a full understanding of the forecasting issues covered, this book: Introduces advanced methods of time series forecasting, as well as neural networks Provides in-depth coverage of state-of-the-art power system load forecasting and electricity price forecasting Addresses river flow forecasting based on autonomous neural network models Deals with price forecasting in a competitive market Includes estimation of post-storm restoration times for electric power distribution systems Features contributions from world-renowned experts sharing their insights and expertise in a series of self-contained chapters Advances in Electric Power and Energy Systems is a valuable resource for practicing engineers, regulators, planners, and consultants working in or concerned with the electric power industry. It is also a must read for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers involved in power system planning and operation.




Ethnicity and Group Rights


Book Description

Within Western political philosophy, the rights of groups has often been neglected or addressed in only the narrowest fashion. Focusing solely on whether rights are exercised by individuals or groups misses what lies at the heart of ethnocultural conflict, leaving the crucial question unanswered: can the familiar system of common citizenship rights within liberal democracies sufficiently accommodate the legitimate interests of ethnic citizens. Specifically, how does membership in an ethnic group differ from other groups, such as professional, lifestyle, or advocacy groups? How important is ethnicity to personal identity and self-respect, and does accommodating these interests require more than standard citizenship rights? Crucially, what forms of ethnocultural accommodations are consistent with democratic equality, individual freedom, and political stability? Invoking numerous cases studies and addressing the issue of ethnicity from a range of perspectives, Ethnicity and Group Rights seeks to answer these questions.




Music and Belonging Between Revolution and Restoration


Book Description

In what ways is music implicated in the politics of belonging? How is the proper at stake in listening? What role does the ear play in forming a sense of community? Music and Belonging argues that music, at the level of style and form, produces certain modes of listening that in turn reveal the conditions of belonging. Specifically, listening shows the intimacy between two senses of belonging: belonging to a community is predicated on the possession of a particular property or capacity. Somewhat counter-intuitively, Waltham-Smith suggests that this relation between belonging-as-membership and belonging-as-ownership manifests itself with particular clarity and rigor at the very heart of the Austro-German canon, in the instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Music and Belonging provocatively brings recent European philosophy into contact with the renewed music-theoretical interest in Formenlehre, presenting close analyses to show how we might return to this much-discussed repertoire to mine it for fresh insights. The book's theoretical landscape offers a radical update to Adornian-inspired scholarship, working through debates over relationality, community, and friendship between Derrida, Nancy, Agamben, Badiou, and Malabou. Borrowing the deconstructive strategies of closely reading canonical texts to the point of their unraveling, the book teases out a new politics of listening from processes of repetition and liquidation, from harmonic suppressions and even from trills. What emerges is the enduring political significance of listening to this music in an era of heightened social exclusion under neoliberalism.




The Impotency Poem from Ancient Latin to Restoration English Literature


Book Description

The first book length study of the motif of impotency in poetry from early antiquity through to the late Restoration, this book explores the impotency poem as a recognisable form of poetry in the longer tradition of erotic elegy. Hannah Lavery’s central claim is that the impotency motif is adopted by poets in recognition of its potential to signify satirically through its use as symbol and allegory. By drawing together analysis of works in the tradition, Lavery shows how the impotency motif is used to engage with anxieties as to what it means to enact ’service’ within political and social contexts. She demonstrates that impotency poems can be seen on one level to represent bawdy escapism, but on the other to offer positions of resistance and opposition to social and political concerns contemporary to a particular time. Whilst the link between the 'Imperfect Enjoyment' poems by Ovid and Rochester is well known, Lavery here looks further back to the origins of the concept of male impotency as degradation in the works of earlier Roman poets. This is an important context for considering how the impotency poem then first appears in the French and English vernaculars during the sixteenth century, leading to translations and adaptations throughout the seventeenth century. Lavery's close readings of the poems consider both the nature of the literary form, and the political and social contexts within which the works appear, in order to chart the intertextual development of the impotency poem as a distinct form of writing in the early modern period.