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We analyze a dynamic extension of a parsimonious model of lawmaking in which preferences evolve over time and today's policy becomes tomorrow's status quo. Unlike in existing models of pivotal politics, policy makers' voting behavior depends on the institutional environment and on their expectations about future economic and political shocks. Relative to sincere voting, the equilibrium behavior exhibits a strategic polarization effect, which increases with the degree of consensus required by the institution, the volatility of the policy environment, and the expected ideological polarization of the future policy makers. The equilibrium behavior also exhibits a strategic policy bias, which works against any exogenous policy bias embedded in the voting rule. Our analysis implies that the existing literature underestimates the inertial effect of checks and balances and overestimates the impact of institutional biases such as fiscally conservative budget procedures. ; Loeper gratefully acknowledges support from the Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), Grants No. RYC-2015-18326, No. ECO 2013-42710-P, No. MDM 2014-0431, and Comunidad de Madrid, MadEco-CM (S2015/HUM-3444)

Red, White, and Blue addresses the pervasive presence of five general theories of American constitutional law. These theories reflect particular jurisprudential ideologies governing, among other things, the legitimacy of certain arguments, the appropriateness of certain occasions for judicial intervention and the constitutional basis for judicial review. What makes this book interesting and important is that it provides an unwitting or at least unself-conscious example of the general theorizing it wishes to explain. For this reason, its descriptions of the particular family of theories that characterize American constitutional jurisprudence are distorted, while it disclaims any account of the particular set of objections that the author poses to these theories. Instead, Professor Tushnet relies on the most recent version of the reductionism of law to politics to explain the failure of these theories: "the crisis of contemporary liberal political theory. But whatever its etiology, this current crisis can scarcely account for earlier occurrences of these fundamental general theories of constitutional argument. I hope the reader of this review will be able to see why this reduction, and why the array of arguments deployed by Professor Tushnet against the theories he presents (and even his own explanations of those theories), are largely dictated by the approach he has adopted – an approach that is as much a part of the traditional family of general theories as any of the others and to which the current crisis in liberalism, if such it be, is equally irrelevant.

The Atomic Bomb. In 1869, Walter Bagehot wrote an interesting volume entitled Physics and Politics. Today we look again at this topic, but in a new and blinding light. The atomic bomb is an index of dynamic and revolutionary changes, the end of which is not in sight, and which I do not have the temerity to forecast. Even before the bomb was made, there were revolutionary changes on the way. We were on notice that physics, biochemistry, psychology, medicine, were bursting with possibilities which staggered the imagination of the most starry-eyed. This was before the bomb was dropped. Now we know that we were on the beam. We are now confronted by revolution, dimming in meaning all human revolutions rolled into one.First of all, the meaning of controlled atomic energies is often wholly misunderstood. The real marvel is not that these vast forces exist, but that they are found and harnessed by the human mind. The real explosive force is that of the mind that unleashed these giants and made them available for the service of mankind. The mind is king, not the atom. We trapped the atom; we have mastered some secrets of its latent forces, not by accident, but by deliberate design, by organization and ingenuity. We may marvel at the display of physical force, but the deeper force of mind made this triumph possible, and will bring still greater triumphs as we move along through eras of discovery and invention.

Focuses on environmental groups active in global civil society, showing how they operate outside of state-to-state interaction, yet engage in genuine political activity. Some focus on pressuring corporations and empowering local communities.

This article analyzes John Howard Yoder's vision of the church as a polis which, through its embodiment of particular practices, serves as an analogical anticipation of God's Kingdom, and thereby offers an alternative to utilitarian and agonal understandings of politics. After describing Yoder's ecclesiologically based vision of politics and examining prominent critiques of Yoder's ecclesiology, the theological framework for Yoder's understanding of the state is discussed. Placing the state within the Pauline cosmology of "principalities and powers," Yoder outlined a Christian relationship to the state marked both by subordination as well as by occasional disobedience, a disobedience which included participation in nonviolent direct action.

Urban Politics After Apartheid presents an understanding of gendered urban politics in South Africa as an interactive process. Based on long-term fieldwork in the former townships 20 years after the end of apartheid, it provides an in-depth analysis of how activists and local politicians engage with each other. Sandrine Gukelberger contributes to the ongoing debate on urban governance by adding a new historicising perspective as an entry point into the urban governance arena, based upon the political trajectories of ward councillors and activists. Integrating urban governance studies with new perspectives on policy and social movements provides insight on the everyday events in which people engender, negotiate, and contest concepts, policies, and institutions that have been introduced under the catch-all banner of democracy. By conceptualising these events as encounters at different knowledge interfaces, the book develops a locus for an anthropology of policy, highlighting everyday negotiations in urban politics. Urban Politics After Apartheid dissects the social life of policies such as Desmond Tutu's rainbow nation metaphor beyond national symbolism, and academic and public discourse that largely portray participation in South Africa to be weak, local politicians to be absent, and social movements to be toothless tigers. Proving the inaccuracy of these portrayals, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South African politics, urban studies, political anthropology and political sociology.