'Achieving Democracy' explains and explores the dynamic and changing nature of contemporary government and the future of the regulatory state. In a critique of the last 30 years of neoliberal government in the United States, Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain demonstrate how to regain essential democratic losses, under a successful framework of a progressive government, to ultimately construct a good society for all citizens.

A Progressive History of American Democracy Since 1945: American Dreams, Hard Realities offers a social, political, and cultural history of the United States since World War II. Unpacking a period of profound transformation unprecedented in the national experience, this book takes a synthetic approach to the history of the 1940s to the present day. It examines how Americans descended from a mid-century apogee of boundless expectations to the unsettling premise that our contemporary historical moment is fraught with a sense of crisis and national failure. The book’s narrative explores the question of decline and more importantly, how the history of this transformation can point the way toward a recovery of shared national values. Chris J. Magoc also gives extensive treatments to the following: Grassroots movements that have expanded the meaning of American democracy, from the 1950s human rights struggle in the South to contemporary movements to confront systemic racism and the existential crisis of climate change. The resilience of American democracy in the face of antidemocratic forces. The impacts of a decades-long economic transformation. The consequences of America’s expanding global military footprint and national security state. Fracturing of a nation once held together by a post-war liberal consensus and broadly shared societal goals to an America facing an attack from within on empirical truth and democracy itself. This book will be of interest to students of modern U.S. history, social history, and American Studies, and general readers interested in recent U.S. history.

George E. Hein explores the impact on current museum theory and practice of early 20th-century educational reformer John Dewey’s philosophy, covering philosophies that shaped today’s best practices.

The Public's Law is a theory and history of democracy in the American administrative state. The book describes how American Progressive thinkers - such as John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Woodrow Wilson - developed a democratic understanding of the state from their study of Hegelian political thought. G.W.F. Hegel understood the state as an institution that regulated society in the interest of freedom. This normative account of the state distinguished his view from later German theorists, such as Max Weber, who adopted a technocratic conception of bureaucracy, and others, such as Carl Schmitt, who prioritized the will of the chief executive. The Progressives embraced Hegel's view of the connection between bureaucracy and freedom, but sought to democratize his concept of the state. They agreed that welfare services, economic regulation, and official discretion were needed to guarantee conditions for self-determination. But they stressed that the people should participate deeply in administrative policymaking. This Progressive ideal influenced administrative programs during the New Deal. It also sheds light on interventions in the War on Poverty and the Second Reconstruction, as well as on the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. The book develops a normative theory of the state on the basis of this intellectual and institutional history, with implications for deliberative democratic theory, constitutional theory, and administrative law. On this view, the administrative state should provide regulation and social services through deliberative procedures, rather than hinge its legitimacy on presidential authority or economistic reasoning.

David Reynolds explains how grassroots activists are translating mass discontent into new people-driven parties in America. This is the first and only book to look beyond the superficial media coverage of Ross Perot to the real movement for fundamental change.

Democracy in Print captures many of the most influential voices from a century of United States history who have spoken out on the struggle to make real the promise of democracy for all Americans, railed against abuses of corporate power, renounced American empire, championed environmental causes, opposed war, and waged peace. It chronicles voices of the women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement, the labor movement, and the gay rights movement. And on every page, it declares the importance of an independent media, by culling the best of The Progressive magazine over the last one hundred years. Readers will discover the vision of the magazine’s founder, Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, and his suffragist wife, Belle Case La Follette. They’ll find historic gems from the likes of Jane Addams, Carl Sandburg, Huey Long, and John Kenneth Galbraith, and profound essays by Theodore Dreiser, Barbara Ehrenreich, Noam Chomsky, Upton Sinclair, Arundhati Roy, James Baldwin, Edwidge Danticat, and Edward Said. The collection is leavened with humor from Kate Clinton, Will Durst, Michael Feldman, and Molly Ivins, and graced by poems from such writers as Mahmoud Darwish, Rita Dove, Martín Espada, Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich, and Sandra Cisneros. Fascinating interviews bring readers into conversations with prominent cultural figures, including Chuck D, the Dalai Lama, Allen Ginsberg, Amy Goodman, Harold Pinter, Patti Smith, Susan Sarandon, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Eminently browsable, this book is for anyone concerned with American democracy, the global community, and the perils of the planet. With contributions by actors and Supreme Court justices, comedians and Nobel Prize-winners, Democracy in Print offers all readers nourishing food for thought.