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• SECTION I: THEORETICAL INNOVATION
• SECTION II: CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
• SECTION III: NEW EMPIRICAL HORIZONS
• SECTION IV: DISCUSSION AND DEBATE.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

There is a mounting body of evidence pointing towards rising levels of public dissatisfaction with the formal political process. Depoliticization refers to a more discrete range of contemporary strategies that add to this growing trend towards anti-politics by either removing or displacing the potential for choice, collective agency, and deliberation. This book examines the relationship between these two trends as understood within the broader shift towards governance. It brings together a number of contributions from scholars who have a varied range of concerns but who nevertheless share a common interest in developing the concept of depoliticization through their engagement with a set of theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical questions. This volume explores these questions from a variety of different perspectives and uses a number of different empirical examples and case studies from both within the nation state as well as from other regional, global, and multi-level arenas. In this context, this volume examines the potential and limits of depoliticization as a concept and its position and contribution in the nexus between the larger and more established literatures on governance and anti-politics.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• INTRODUCTION
• INDIVIDUAL LEVEL PATTERNS
• CONTEXTUAL PATTERNS
• IMPLICATIONS.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The dilemma of democracy arises from two contrasting trends. More people in the established democracies are participating in civil society activity, contacting government officials, protesting, and using online activism and other creative forms of participation. At the same time, the importance of social status as an influence on political activity is increasing. The democratic principle of the equality of voice is eroding. The politically rich are getting richer-and the politically needy have less voice. This book assembles an unprecedented set of international public opinion surveys to identify the individual, institutional, and political factors that produce these trends. New forms of activity place greater demands on participants, raising the importance of social status skills and resources. Civil society activity further widens the participation gap. New norms of citizenship shift how people participate. And generational change and new online forms of activism accentuate this process. Effective and representative government requires a participatory citizenry and equal voice, and participation trends are undermining these outcomes. The Participation Gap both documents the growing participation gap in contemporary democracies and suggests ways that we can better achieve their theoretical ideal of a participatory citizenry and equal voice.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Power to the People?
• 2. Why Citizen Assemblies and How Did They Work?
• 3. Who Were the participants?
• 4. How Did the Decisions Come About?
• 5. Did the Citizen Assemblies Make the Right Decisions?
• 6. Did the Participants Decide by Themselves?
• 7. Did Participants Become Better Citizens?
• 8. Why Were the Assemblies' Reform Proposals Rejected?
• 9. Should we let Citizens Decide?
• Appendix 1: Description of Electoral Systems
• Appendix 2: Question Labels, Wordings, and Codings for Chapter 5
• Appendix 3: Question Labels, Wordings, and Codings for Chapter 7
• Appendix 4: Question Labels, Wordings, and Codings for Chapter 8
• References.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Three unprecedented large-scale democratic experiments have recently taken place. Citizen assemblies on electoral reform were conducted in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. Groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. In each case, the participants spent almost an entire year learning about electoral systems, consulting the public, deliberating, debating, and ultimately deciding what specific institution should be adopted. When Citizens Decide uses these unique cases to examine claims about citizens' capacity for democratic deliberation and active engagement in policy-making. It offers empirical insight into numerous debates and provides answers to a series of key questions: 1) Are ordinary citizens able to decide about a complex issue? Are their decisions reasonable? 2) Who takes part in such proceedings? Are they dominated by people dissatisfied by the status quo? 3) Do some citizens play a more prominent role than others? Are decisions driven by the most vocal or most informed members? 4) Did the participants decide by themselves? Were they influenced by staff, political parties, interest groups, or the public hearings? 5) Does participation in a deliberative process foster citizenship? Did participants become more trusting, tolerant, open-minded, civic-minded, interested in politics, and active in politics? 6) How do the other political actors react? Can the electorate accept policy proposals made by a group of ordinary citizens? The analyses rely upon various types of evidence about both the inner workings of the assemblies and the reactions toward them outside: multi-wave panel surveys of assembly members, content analysis of newspaper coverage, and public opinion survey data. The lessons drawn from this research are relevant to those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr. The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgements Map of Avon Valley Introduction: Blood & Salt - Niall Lucy 1. Herewith the (Auto) Razo: Activism and the Poet 2. Standing Up to Aggressors 3. Why I Am a Pacifist 4. Plagues & Bioethics 5. Refugees & Australia 6. Wheatbelt Isohalines & the Making of Isopleths:The 'Annihilation of Distance' & Other Subtexts associated with the Creation of a Sequence of Poems 7. Half-Masts: A Prosody of Telecommunications 8. Geodysplasia: Geographical Abnormalities & Anomalies of an Activist Poetics 9. Activist Readings of Three Australian Poems 10. Working with Coral Hull on Zoo (A Collaboration) 11. De-mapping & Reconnoitring Notions of Boundaries -Mutually Said: Blogging & Acting 12. Poetry, Justice & the Court 13. The School of Environmental Poetics & Creativity Coda: Visitors
• Appendix 1. On Anarchism: Tracy Ryan Interviews John Kinsella
• Appendix 2. Dialogue on Vegan Ethics: John Kinsella & Tracy Ryan Reference Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

John Kinsella is known internationally as the acclaimed author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, but in tandem with - and often directly through - his creative and critical work, Kinsella is also a prominent activist. In this important collection of essays the vegan anarchist pacifist poet claims that poetry can act as a vital form of resistance to a variety of social and ethical ills, in particular ecological damage and abuse. Kinsella builds on his earlier notion of 'linguistic disobedience' evolving out of civil disobedience, and critiques the figurative qualities of his poems in a context of resistance. The book includes explorations of anarchism, veganism, pacifism, and ecological poetics. For Kinsella all poetry is political and can be a call to action.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface
• Chapter 1 Creative Participation and Civic Innovation
• Chapter 2 The Environment and Creative Participation
• Chapter 3 Combating Political Corruption
• Chapter 4 Political Consumerism
• Chapter 5 Political Consumerism in Four Post-Communist Countries: An Exploratory Look, by Catherine Griffiths
• Chapter 6 Transnational Participation
• Chapter 7 Conclusion Bibliography About the Author.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Boycotts and Dixie Chicks introduces the concept of 'creative political participation', collective political actions which do not use traditional methods and which are innovative, collaborative and creative in character. Andrew S. McFarland discusses creative participation on issues concerning the environment, political corruption, consumer rights, and transnational issues. He draws on specific examples including anti-corruption demonstrations in contemporary rural China, community action in 1890s Wisconsin, consumer boycotts of Shell Oil, ExxonMobil, the Nestle Corporation, and the Dixie Chicks music group, the 'colour revolutions' and transnational fair trade and transparency activism. Written in an engaging, everyday language and using a wide variety of sources and case studies, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks is highly recommended for students of alternative social and political movements and sociology.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Comparing participatory systems
• 3. The modes of democratic participation
• 4. The puzzle
• 5. Individual propensities and institutional constraints: a model
• 6. Parties and organisations
• 7. Individual and institutional forces: the model applied
• 8. Some variations on our model: parties of the left and right
• 9. Social segmentation and political equality: expectations
• 10. Social segmentation and political equality: application
• 11. Party and participation in Yugoslavia
• 12. Men and women: sex-related differences in political activity
• 13. the community context of participation
• 14. Stratification and politics: some consequences
• Appendices.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In this survey of political participation in seven nations - Nigeria, Austria, Japan, India, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and the United States - the authors examine the relationship between social, economic, and educational factors and political participation. The book provides insight into an ongoing debate among political scientists and sociologist: why is political participation in some nations distributed evenly across economic, social, and educational lines, whereas other nations foster participation only by their privileged classes? The book treats politics not only as a dependent variable influenced by socioeconomic factors, but also as an independent variable that affects levels of political participation through variations in party systems and linkages between parties and other organizations.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)