Rural Democracy

Author : B. He
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230607314
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rural Democracy in China written by B. He and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-09-17 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines village democracy and the prospects of China's democratization. It explains how three key factors - township, economy and kinship - shape village democracy and account for rural variations. It considers the extension of village to township elections, the idea of a mixed regime and its impact on political development in China.

Author : Robin Harding
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192591703
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rural Democracy written by Robin Harding and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How have African rulers responded to the introduction of democratic electoral competition? Despite the broadly negative picture painted by the prevailing focus on electoral fraud, clientelism, and ethnic conflict, the book argues that the full story is somewhat more promising. While these unfortunate practices may be widespread, African rulers also seek to win votes through the provision and distribution of public goods and services. The author's central argument is that in predominantly rural countries the introduction of competitive elections leads governments to implement pro-rural policies, in order to win the votes of the rural majority. As a result, across much of Africa the benefits of democratic electoral competition have accrued primarily in terms of rural development. This broad claim is supported by cross-national evidence, both from public opinion surveys and from individual level data on health and education outcomes. The argument's core assumptions about voting behavior are supported with quantitative evidence from Ghana, and qualitative historical evidence from Botswana presents further evidence for the underlying theoretical mechanism. Taken together, this body of evidence provides reasons to be optimistic about the operation of electoral accountability in Africa. African governments are responding to the accountability structures provided by electoral competition; in that sense, democracy in Africa is working. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The series focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford; Peace Medie, Senior Lecturer, School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies, University of Bristol.

Author : Marilyn P. Watkins
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501744909
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rural Democracy written by Marilyn P. Watkins and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to social movements in rural settings when they do not face the divisive issues of race and class? Marilyn Watkins examines the stable political climate built by successive waves of Populism, socialism, the farmer-labor movement, and the Grange, in turn-of-the-century western Washington. She shows how all of these movements drew upon the same community base, empowered farmers, and encouraged them in the belief that democracy, independence, and prosperity were realizable goals. Indeed they were—in a setting where agriculture was diversified, farmers were debt-free, and, critically, women enjoyed equal status as activists in social movements. Rural Democracy illuminates the problems that undermined Populism and other forms of rural radicalism in the South and the Midwest by demonstrating the political success of those movements where such problems were notably absent: in Lewis County, Washington. By so doing, Watkins convincingly demonstrates the continuing value of local community studies in understanding the large-scale transformations that continue to sweep over rural America.

Author : Loka Ashwood
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300235143
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book For-Profit Democracy written by Loka Ashwood and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating sociological assessment of the damaging effects of the for†‘profit partnership between government and corporation on rural Americans Why is government distrust rampant, especially in the rural United States? This book offers a simple explanation: corporations and the government together dispossess rural people of their prosperity, and even their property. Based on four years of fieldwork, this eye†‘opening assessment by sociologist Loka Ashwood plays out in a mixed†‘race Georgia community that hosted the first nuclear power reactors sanctioned by the government in three decades. This work serves as an explanatory mirror of prominent trends in current American politics. Churches become havens for redemption, poaching a means of retribution, guns a tool of self†‘defense, and nuclear power a faltering solution to global warming as governance strays from democratic principles. In the absence of hope or trust in rulers, rural racial tensions fester and divide. The book tells of the rebellion that unfolds as the rights of corporations supersede the rights of humans.

Author : Ashutosh Varshney
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521646253
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Democracy, Development, and the Countryside written by Ashutosh Varshney and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several scholars have written about how authoritarian or democratic political systems affect industrialization in the developing countries. There is no literature, however, on whether democracy makes a difference to the power and well-being of the countryside. Using India as a case where the longest-surviving democracy of the developing world exists, this book investigates how the countryside uses the political system to advance its interests. It is first argued that India's countryside has become quite powerful in the political system, exerting remarkable pressure on economic policy. The countryside is typically weak in the early stages of development, becoming powerful when the size of the rural sector defies this historical trend. But an important constraint on rural power stems from the inability of economic interests to overpower the abiding, ascriptive identities, and until an economic construction of politics completely overpowers identities and non-economic interests, farmers' power, though greater than ever before, will remain self-limited.

Author : Nicholas F. Jones
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812202376
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rural Athens Under the Democracy written by Nicholas F. Jones and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the evidence—literary, historical, documentary, and pictorial—from ancient Athens is urban in authorship, subject matter, and intended audience. The result has been the assertion of an undifferentiated monolithic "Athenian" citizen regime as often as not identifiably urban in its lifestyle, preoccupations, and attitude. In Rural Athens Under the Democracy, however, Nicholas F. Jones undertakes the first comprehensive attempt to reconstruct on its own terms the world of rural Attica outside the walls during the "classical" fifth and fourth centuries B.C. What he finds is a distinctly nonurban (and nonurbane) order dominated by a traditional, predominantly agrarian society and culture. Jones relies heavily upon the relatively neglected epigraphic record from the rural countryside and villages, as well as posing new questions of the well-known urban writings of Athenian historians, essayists, and philosophers and occasionally following the lead of Hesiod's agrarian poem Works and Days. From these sources he gleans new findings regarding settlement patterns, argues for a heretofore unrecognized system of personal patronage, explores relations between villages and the town of Athens, reconstructs the "Agrarian" Dionysia in several of its more important dimensions, and contrasts the realities of rural Attic culture with their various representations in contemporary literary and philosophical writings by Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and others. Building on Jones's previous publications on the ancient Greek city-state, Rural Athens Under the Democracy presents the first holistic examination of classical extramural Attica. He challenges the received view that ancient Athens in its heyday was marked by a uniform cultural, ideological, and conspicuously citified order and, in place of the perception of things rural as mere deficits in urbanity, proposes that we look at Attica outside the walls in its own right and in positive terms.

Author : Shi Tianjian
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814493201
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rural Democracy in China written by Shi Tianjian and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2000-02-21 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does the Chinese government allow village elections? What implications do these grass-roots level popular elections have for the democratization of China? By tracing the history of village level governance reform, one of the premier authorities on electoral reforms in China tackles these fundamental questions in this volume. According to the author, there are two roots to the emergence of village elections in China: structural changes in the village economy and bureaucratic politics. The author also identifies old guard Peng Zhen, himself victimized by lawlessness during the Cultural Revolution, and officials in the Ministry of Civil Affairs — an otherwise powerless bureaucracy that has jurisdiction over rural governance issues — as the driving force behind the reform in the government. The author believes that village elections have enormous political implications for China: they represent yet another aspect of “creeping democratization” of the country. Resistance from the status quo interests will be stiff, but democracy has a chance in the alliance between the disgruntled population and reform-minded elites in the leadership. Does economic prosperity increase the likelihood of political democracy? Using 1993 national survey data, the author examines the relationships between the level of economic development and the rate of semi-competitive village elections. Data analysis suggests that economic prosperity is positively associated with the occurrence of semi-competitive elections only to a certain point, above which the association turns negative. In other words, both the least and the most developed villages are less likely to hold semi-competitive elections for the chair of the village committee, which is officially defined as “an organization of self-governance of villagers”. The author also argues that rapid economic development may delay the process of political development because incumbent leaders can use newly acquired economic resources to consolidate their power. Contents:Electoral Reform in Rural China: The Critical First Step Toward DemocracyEconomic Development and Village Elections in Rural China Readership: General. Keywords:

Author : United States. Farm security administration
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 16 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Doors to Rural Democracy written by United States. Farm security administration and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Vijayendra Rao
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107019745
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Oral Democracy written by Vijayendra Rao and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies citizens' deliberation on governance and development in Indian democracy, and the influence of state policy and literacy, analysing three hundred village assemblies. This title is also available as Open Access.

Author : Lily L. Tsai
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139466488
Total Pages : 55 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Accountability without Democracy written by Lily L. Tsai and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-27 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The state often lacks sufficient resources to monitor its officials closely, and citizens are limited in their power to elect officials they believe will perform well and to remove them when they do not. The answer, Lily L. Tsai found, lies in a community's social institutions. Even when formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are weak, government officials can still be subject to informal rules and norms created by community solidary groups that have earned high moral standing in the community.