Between Citizens and the State
Title | Between Citizens and the State PDF eBook |
Author | Christopher P. Loss |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 341 |
Release | 2014-04-07 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0691163340 |
This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political history of the United States in the twentieth century, and chronicles its transformation into a key mediating institution between citizens and the state. Framed around the three major federal higher education policies of the twentieth century--the 1944 GI Bill, the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and the 1965 Higher Education Act--the book charts the federal government's various efforts to deploy education to ready citizens for the national, bureaucratized, and increasingly global world in which they lived. Loss details the myriad ways in which academic leaders and students shaped, and were shaped by, the state's shifting political agenda as it moved from a preoccupation with economic security during the Great Depression, to national security during World War II and the Cold War, to securing the rights of African Americans, women, and other previously marginalized groups during the 1960s and '70s. Along the way, Loss reappraises the origins of higher education's current-day diversity regime, the growth of identity group politics, and the privatization of citizenship at the close of the twentieth century. At a time when people's faith in government and higher education is being sorely tested, this book sheds new light on the close relations between American higher education and politics.
Learn about the United States
Title | Learn about the United States PDF eBook |
Author | U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services |
Publisher | Government Printing Office |
Pages | 36 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Juvenile Nonfiction |
ISBN | 9780160831188 |
"Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.
Not In Their Name
Title | Not In Their Name PDF eBook |
Author | Holly Lawford-Smith |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 194 |
Release | 2019-02-14 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0192570323 |
There are many actions that we attribute, at least colloquially, to states. Given their size and influence, states are able to inflict harm far beyond the reach of a single individual. But there is a great deal of unclarity about exactly who is implicated in that kind of harm, and how we should think about responsibility for it. It is a commonplace assumption that democratic publics both authorize and have control over what their states do; that their states act in their name and on their behalf. In Not In Their Name, Holly Lawford-Smith approaches these questions from the perspective of social ontology, asking whether the state is a collective agent, and whether ordinary citizens are members of that agent. If it is, and they are, there's a clear case for democratic collective culpability. She explores alternative conceptions of the state and of membership in the state; alternative conceptions of collective agency applied to the state; the normative implications of membership in the state; and both culpability (from the inside) and responsibility (from the outside) for what the state does. Ultimately, Lawford-Smith argues for the exculpation of ordinary citizens and the inculpation of those working in public services.
The Federalist Papers
Title | The Federalist Papers PDF eBook |
Author | Alexander Hamilton |
Publisher | Read Books Ltd |
Pages | 420 |
Release | 2018-08-20 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1528785878 |
Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.
Smart Citizens, Smarter State
Title | Smart Citizens, Smarter State PDF eBook |
Author | Beth Simone Noveck |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2015-11-02 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0674915453 |
Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left “the people” out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today’s complex challenges. Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter—if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens’ expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools—what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise—are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government. Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people’s knowledge and know-how.
States and Citizens
Title | States and Citizens PDF eBook |
Author | Quentin Skinner |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 248 |
Release | 2003-10-16 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780521539265 |
States and Citizens offers a coherent survey of perceptions of the state, its history, its theoretical underpinnings, and its prospects in the contemporary world. The coverage of the Western European experience is thorough and wide-ranging, with the greatest post-colonial democratic state, India, as an important comparative example. The provocative and accessible contributions of a very distinguished and genuinely pan-European team of contributors ensure that States and Citizens provides a unique and valuable resource, of interest to students and teachers of the history of ideas, political theory and European studies.
Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States
Title | Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States PDF eBook |
Author | Avia Pasternak |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | |
Release | 2021-08-13 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0197541054 |
States are often held responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, as did Iraq in the aftermath of its invasion of Kuwait. States pay reparations for their historical wrongdoings, as did Chile to the victims of the Pinochet Regime, or Germany to Israel and other countries because of the Holocaust. Some argue that they should pay punitive damages for their international crimes as well. But state responsibility has a troubling feature: states are corporate agents, comprising flesh and blood citizens. When they turn to the public purse to finance their corporate liabilities, it is their citizens who pay the price. Even citizens who protested against their state's policies, did not know about them, or had no influence on policy makers end up sharing the burden. Why should these citizens pay for their state's wrongdoings, if they don't carry the blame? Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States develops a fresh justification for citizens' duties to share the burden of their state's wrongdoings. This justification revolves around citizens' participation in their state: drawing on recent debates in the philosophy of collective action, Avia Pasternak shows that citizens are acting together in their state and that their state policies are the product of this collective action. Given this participation, citizens ought to share the burden of remedying harmful wrongs their state policies bring about. However, she also argues that not all citizens in all states are participating in their state. In many authoritarian states, citizens' participation in the state is highly restricted or coerced. Here, ordinary citizens do not share responsibility for their state policies and should not be forced to pay for them. These conclusions carry significant real-world implications for the way domestic international law holds various types of states, and their citizens, responsible for their wrongdoings. This work is essential for political theorists and philosophers grappling with citizen responsibility and duty.