How to adapt democracy to the accelerating pace of technological change—and why it's critical that we do Successful democracies throughout history—from ancient Athens to Britain on the cusp of the industrial age—have used the technology of their time to gather information for better governance. Our challenge is no different today, but it is more urgent because the accelerating pace of technological change creates potentially enormous dangers as well as benefits. Accelerating Democracy shows how to adapt democracy to new information technologies that can enhance political decision making and enable us to navigate the social rapids ahead. John O. McGinnis demonstrates how these new technologies combine to address a problem as old as democracy itself--how to help citizens better evaluate the consequences of their political choices. As society became more complex in the nineteenth century, social planning became a top-down enterprise delegated to experts and bureaucrats. Today, technology increasingly permits information to bubble up from below and filter through more dispersed and competitive sources. McGinnis explains how to use fast-evolving information technologies to more effectively analyze past public policy, bring unprecedented intensity of scrutiny to current policy proposals, and more accurately predict the results of future policy. But he argues that we can do so only if government keeps pace with technological change. For instance, it must revive federalism to permit different jurisdictions to test different policies so that their results can be evaluated, and it must legalize information markets to permit people to bet on what the consequences of a policy will be even before that policy is implemented. Accelerating Democracy reveals how we can achieve a democracy that is informed by expertise and social-scientific knowledge while shedding the arrogance and insularity of a technocracy.

As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the price Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy. Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments into the engines of American policymaking. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. The consequences don’t stop there, however. Drawing on a wealth of new data on state policy, public opinion, money in politics, and democratic performance, Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself. Required reading for this precarious moment in our politics, Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today’s state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time—or accelerating them.

A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age is about why ordinary people in a democratizing state oppose democracy and how they leverage both traditional and social media to do so. Aim Sinpeng focuses on the people behind popular, large-scale antidemocratic movements that helped bring down democracy in 2006 and 2014 in Thailand. The yellow shirts (PAD—People’s Alliance for Democracy) that are the focus of the book are antidemocratic movements grown out of democratic periods in Thailand, but became the catalyst for the country’s democratic breakdown. Why, when, and how supporters of these movements mobilize offline and online to bring down democracy are some of the key questions that Sinpeng answers. While the book primarily uses a qualitative methodological approach, it also uses several quantitative tools to analyze social media data in the later chapters. This is one of few studies in the field of regime transition that focuses on antidemocratic mobilization and takes the role of social media seriously.

This book shows how disinformation spread by partisan organizations and media platforms undermines institutional legitimacy on which authoritative information depends.

Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

Kentucky native and national tastemaker Duncan Hines (1880--1959) published his first cookbook, Adventures in Good Cooking, in 1939 at the age of fifty-nine. This best-selling collection featured recipes from select restaurants across the country as well as crowd-pleasing family favorites, and it helped to raise the standard for home cooking in America. Filled with succulent treats, from the Waldorf-Astoria's Chicken Fricassee to the Oeufs a la Russe served at Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans to Mrs. Hines's own Christmas Nut Cake, this book includes classic recipes from top chefs and home cooks alike. Featuring a new introduction by Hines biographer Louis Hatchett and a valuable guide to the art of carving, this classic cookbook serves up a satisfying slice of twentieth-century Americana, direct from the kitchen of one of the nation's most trusted names in food. Now a new generation of cooks can enjoy and share these delectable dishes with family and friends.