Some 150,000 copies of this book have been sold around the world, making Alan Ball's Modern Politics and Government one of the most widely used introductory texts available. Clearly written and straightforward, it demands no prior knowledge and is equally suitable for political science students and those taking a politics course as part of another social science degree. Starting from the definition of politics and the history of its study, it proceeds to introduce a variety of approaches and substantive aspects of political life, drawing examples from a wide range of states and political systems. The author discusses such basic concepts as power, authority, legitimacy, and political culture. He analyzes the characteristics underlying the different systems, including the post-communist systems that have emerged in the former USSR and Eastern Europe since 1989. The book looks at the major elements of the political process, judiciaries, and the political role of the military. The final part has been rewritten to analyze fully the nature of political change in the light of new approaches in political science and the collapse of communism.

This substantially revised 7th edition of a classic text includes a new chapter on globalization and regionalization and broader coverage of democratic politics, interests and movements; of the media; of social and cultural influences on political behaviour and of public management. It has been systematically revised and updated throughout in the accessible down-to-earth style that has made it such a popular student choice for over 30 years.

This revised new edition is a short introduction to politics, which has been updated to cover a wide variety of new themes and issues from neo-institutionalism and public choice to governance, globalization, regional integration, civil society and democratization.

Organized to follow the structure of a standard introduction to American politics text, this unique reader highlights the role of diversity in U.S. politics through exploration of engaging, contemporary political issues. Based on the thesis that demographic diversity in America plays an important role in political outcomes and policy processes, this reader covers a wide range of contemporary issues and encompasses a myriad of group cleavages. Carefully selected readings from both academic and popular sources, in conjunction with introductions by the editors and end of chapter resources, present complex issues in an accessible, engaging way.

This even-handed and thorough text explores Israeli government and politics. First tracing the history and development of the state, Mahler then examines the social, religious, economic, and cultural contexts within which Israeli politics takes place. The book explains the operation of political institutions and behavior in Israeli domestic politics, as well as Israel's foreign policy setting and apparatus, the Palestinian conflict and the question of Jerusalem, and the Middle East peace process overall. This clear and concise text provides an invaluable starting point for all readers needing a cogent introduction to Israel today.

This long-promised sequel to Ophuls’s influential and controversial classic Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity is an equally provocative critique of the liberal philosophy of government. Ophuls contends that the modern political paradigm—that is, the body of political concepts and beliefs bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment—is no longer intellectually tenable or practically viable. Our attempt to live individualistically, hedonistically, and rationally has failed utterly, causing a comprehensive crisis that is at once political, military, economic, ecological, ethical, psychological, and spiritual. Liberal politics has abandoned virtue, rejected community, and flouted nature, thereby becoming the author of its own demise. By exposing the intrinsically contradictory and self-destructive character of Hobbesian political systems, Ophuls subverts our conventional wisdom at every turn. Indeed, his impassioned text reads more like a Greek tragedy than a conventional political argument. He critiques feminism, multiculturalism, the welfare state, and a host of other “liberal” shibboleths—but Ophuls is not yet another neoconservative. The aim of his thesis is far more radical and progressive, offering a political vision that entirely transcends the categories of liberal thought. His is a Thoreauvian vision of a “politics of consciousness” rooted in ecology as the moral and intellectual basis for governance in the twenty-first century. Ophuls holds that a polity based on a renewed erotic connection with nature offers a genuine solution to this crisis of contemporary civilization and that only within such a polity will it be possible to fulfill the worthy liberal goal of individual self-development. Ophuls’s work will interest and challenge a wide spectrum of readers, though it will not necessarily be well liked or easily accepted. No one will put down this book with his or her settled convictions about American culture intact, nor will readers ever again take modern civilization and its survival for granted.

"Utah Politics and Government covers Utah's religious heritage and territorial history, its central political institutions, and its political culture, while situating Utah within the broader American political setting"--