Voting As A Rite

Author : Joshua Hill
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684175933
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Voting as a Rite written by Joshua Hill and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, voting has been a surprisingly common political activity in China. Voting as a Rite examines China’s experiments with elections from the perspective of intellectual and cultural history. Rather than arguing that such exercises were either successful or failed attempts at political democracy, the book instead focuses on a previously unasked question: how did those who participated in Chinese elections define success or failure for themselves? Answering this question reveals why Chinese elites originally became enamored of elections at the end of the nineteenth century, why critics complained about elections that featured real competition in the early twentieth century, and why elections continued to be held after the mid-twentieth century even though outcomes were predetermined by the state. While no mainland Chinese government has ever felt that its rule required validation at the ballot box, the discourses that surrounded elections reveal much about important tensions within modern Chinese political thought. What is the best means to identify talent? Can the state trust the people to act responsibly as citizens? As Joshua Hill shows, elections are vital, not peripheral, to understanding these concerns fully.

Author : Joshua Hill
Publisher : Harvard East Asian Monographs
ISBN 13 : 9780674237223
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Voting as a Rite written by Joshua Hill and published by Harvard East Asian Monographs. This book was released on 2019 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, voting has been a surprisingly common political activity in China. Voting as a Rite examines China's experiments with elections from the perspective of intellectual and cultural history. Rather than arguing that such exercises were either successful or failed attempts at political democracy, the book instead focuses on a previously unasked question: how did those who participated in Chinese elections define success or failure for themselves? Answering this question reveals why Chinese elites originally became enamored of elections at the end of the nineteenth century, why critics complained about elections that featured real competition in the early twentieth century, and why elections continued to be held after the mid-twentieth century even though outcomes were predetermined by the state. While no mainland Chinese government has ever felt that its rule required validation at the ballot box, the discourses that surrounded elections reveal much about important tensions within modern Chinese political thought. What is the best means to identify talent? Can the state trust the people to act responsibly as citizens? As Joshua Hill shows, elections are vital, not peripheral, to understanding these concerns fully.

Author : Ron Hirschbein
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Voting Rites written by Ron Hirschbein and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1999-12-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does it really matter if a voter decides to vote-or, as a significant number of Americans do each election, not vote? Ron Hirschbein explores this issue and shows why enfranchisement cannot be understood unless it is placed in context and history. Clearly, the meaning of a vote depends upon the situation: a vote cast among the 400 of Athens or in the College of Cardinals has one significance; this is considerably different from pulling a lever every four years in a mass society of spectacles and commodities. Hirschbein also examines how voting was transformed from an expression of the political will of the Athenian polity into a sacred natural right-only to be turned to a ritual of mass society. First, Hirschbein looks at the right to vote as the centerpiece of American civic religion. He contrasts civic myths about enfranchisement with anthropological realities. Specifically he argues that, given the intractable mathematics of mass society, the chances that a single vote will determine the outcome of an election approach the infinitesimal. However, he suggests that voting plays a neglected ritual function by constructing, legitimizing, and celebrating political reality for players and spectators alike. Hirschbein then explicates the origins and evanescent meanings of enfranchisement by examining the theory and practice of voting among the citizenry of ancient Athens, medieval ecclesiastical bureaucrats, Enlightenment natural law thinkers, and the founders of the Virtuous Republic. He concludes with speculation about possible futures. A controversial and important analysis, this will be of interest to the general public as well as scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with election issues and theories of democracy.

Author : Ted Lewis
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1498270352
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Electing Not to Vote written by Ted Lewis and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical discourse about the institution of voting rarely includes the option of abstaining for principled reasons. This collection of nine articles widens the discussion in that direction by giving readers a new question: At what point and on what grounds might one choose not to vote as an act of conscience? Contributors offer both ethical and faith-based reasons for not voting. For some, it is a matter of candidates not measuring up to high standards; for others it is a matter of reserving political identity and allegiance for the church rather than the nation-state. These writers--representing a wide range of Christian traditions--cite texts from diverse sources: Mennonites, Pentecostals, and pre-Civil Rights African Americans. Some contributors reference the positions of Catholic bishops, Karl Barth, or John Howard Yoder. New Testament texts also figure strongly in these cases for "conscientious abstention" from voting. In addition to cultivating the ethical discussion around abstention from voting, the contributors suggest alternative ways beneficially to engage society. This volume creates a new freedom for readers within any faith tradition to enter into a dialogue that has not yet been welcomed in North America.

Author : Martin P. Wattenberg
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674044959
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Where Have All the Voters Gone? written by Martin P. Wattenberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the confusion over the ballots in Florida in 2000 demonstrated, American elections are complex and anything but user-friendly. This phenomenon is by no means new, but with the weakening of political parties in recent decades and the rise of candidate-centered politics, the high level of complexity has become ever more difficult for many citizens to navigate. Thus the combination of complex elections and the steady decline of the party system has led to a decline in voter turnout. In this timely book, Martin Wattenberg confronts the question of what low participation rates mean for democracy. At the individual level, turnout decline has been highest among the types of people who most need to have electoral decisions simplified for them through a strong party system--those with the least education, political knowledge, and life experience. As Wattenberg shows, rather than lamenting how many Americans fail to exercise their democratic rights, we should be impressed with how many arrive at the polls in spite of a political system that asks more of a typical person than is reasonable. Meanwhile, we must find ways to make the American electoral process more user-friendly.

Author : Jon Grinspan
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469627353
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Virgin Vote written by Jon Grinspan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-02-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was a time when young people were the most passionate participants in American democracy. In the second half of the nineteenth century--as voter turnout reached unprecedented peaks--young people led the way, hollering, fighting, and flirting at massive midnight rallies. Parents trained their children to be "violent little partisans," while politicians lobbied twenty-one-year-olds for their "virgin votes"—the first ballot cast upon reaching adulthood. In schoolhouses, saloons, and squares, young men and women proved that democracy is social and politics is personal, earning their adulthood by participating in public life. Drawing on hundreds of diaries and letters of diverse young Americans--from barmaids to belles, sharecroppers to cowboys--this book explores how exuberant young people and scheming party bosses relied on each other from the 1840s to the turn of the twentieth century. It also explains why this era ended so dramatically and asks if aspects of that strange period might be useful today. In a vivid evocation of this formative but forgotten world, Jon Grinspan recalls a time when struggling young citizens found identity and maturity in democracy.

Author : Benjamin E. Griffith
Publisher : American Bar Association
ISBN 13 : 9781590319727
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book America Votes! written by Benjamin E. Griffith and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2008 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a snapshot of America's voting and electoral practices, problems, and most current issues. The book addresses a variety of fundamental areas concerning election law from a federal perspective such as the Help America Vote Act, lessons learned from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, voter identification, and demographic and statistical experts in election litigation, and more. It is a useful guide for lawyers as well as law school professors, election officials, state and local government personnel, and election workers.

Author : Julia Cagé
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067424611X
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Price of Democracy written by Julia Cagé and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why and how systems of political financing and representation in Europe and North America give outsized influence to the wealthy and undermine democracy, and what we can do about it. One person, one vote. In theory, everyone in a democracy has equal power to decide elections. But it’s hardly news that, in reality, political outcomes are heavily determined by the logic of one dollar, one vote. We take the political power of money for granted. But does it have to be this way? In The Price of Democracy, Julia Cagé combines economic and historical analysis with political theory to show how profoundly our systems in North America and Europe, from think tanks and the media to election campaigns, are shaped by money. She proposes fundamental reforms to bring democracy back into line with its egalitarian promise. Cagé shows how different countries have tried to develop legislation to curb the power of private money and to develop public systems to fund campaigns and parties. But these attempts have been incoherent and unsystematic. She demonstrates that it is possible to learn from these experiments in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to design a better system that would increase political participation and trust. This would involve setting a strict cap on private donations and creating a public voucher system to give each voter an equal amount to spend in support of political parties. More radically, Cagé argues that a significant fraction of seats in parliamentary assemblies should be set aside for representatives from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. At a time of widespread political disenchantment, The Price of Democracy is a bracing reminder of the problems we face and an inspirational guide to the potential for reform.

Author : Byron E. Shafer
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674045590
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The American Political Landscape written by Byron E. Shafer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social scientists and campaign strategists approach voting behavior from opposite poles. Reconciling these rival camps through a merger of precise statistics and hard-won election experience, The American Political Landscape presents a full-scale analysis of U.S. electoral politics over the past quarter-century. Byron Shafer and Richard Spady explain how factors not usually considered hard data, such as latent attitudes and personal preferences, interact to produce an indisputably solid result: the final tally of votes. Pundits and pollsters usually boil down U.S. elections to a stark choice between Democrat and Republican. Shafer and Spady explore the significance of a third possibility: not voting at all. Voters can and do form coalitions based on specific issues, so that simple party identification does not determine voter turnout or ballot choices. Deploying a new method that quantifiably maps the distribution of political attitudes in the voting population, the authors describe an American electoral landscape in flux during the period from 1984 to 2008. The old order, organized by economic values, ceded ground to a new one in which cultural and economic values enjoy equal prominence. This realignment yielded election outcomes that contradicted the prevailing wisdom about the importance of ideological centrism. Moderates have fared badly in recent contests as Republican and Democratic blocs have drifted further apart. Shafer and Spady find that persisting links between social backgrounds and political values tend to empty the ideological center while increasing the clout of the ideologically committed.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Youth Voter Participation written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of the youth vote to any democracy is central to this cross-cultural analysis of the unique role of elections—and the dangers of abstention—in a democratic society. Comparative data from the parliamentary elections of 15 European democracies illustrate the scope of the problem of low youth turnout, and analyses of the reasons for such negligible participation are presented. Specially commissioned interviews conducted in several countries worldwide bring the opinions and views of young people themselves into the study. Additionally, descriptions of specific programmes for increasing youth participation enacted in Chile, Russia, South Africa, and the United States and included, as are proposals for a variety of activities that governmental and nongovernmental organizations can use to draw young citizens into the electoral arena.