Since retiring as Premier of Western Australia in 2006, Geoff Gallop has returned to his pre-political career as an academic. In the role of public intellectual, Gallop has focused on matters of the self within: society, contemporary politics, pragmatics, fundamentalism, fairness, and the meaning and importance of well-being for public policy and the person. From the international to the national, and down to the individual, Gallop brings a measured voice to the many debates that are universal, relevant, and personal. Gathered from public speeches and newspaper columns, this book of Gallop's essays is gently provocative and intellectually admirable, yet retains a personal voice.

How to deal with the relationship between the individual and society as it reveals itself through politics is the large theme of these erudite and stylish essays by a leading scholar whose lifelong concerns have included political behavior, decision-making by groups, and legislative deportment. Truly interdisciplinary in his approach, Heinz Eulau has drawn on all the social sciences in his thirty years of research into the political behavior of citizens in the mass and of legislative elites at the state and local levels of government. Utilizing a variety of social and political theories--theories of reference group behavior, social role, organization, conflict, exchange functions and purposive action--he enriches the methodology of political science while tackling substantive issues such as social class behavior in elections, public policies in American cities, the structures of city councils, and the convergence of politics and the legal system. Eulau is ranked among the few scholars who have shaped the agenda of political science, and his latest work should also prove valuable for sociologists, social psychologists, and theorists of the social sciences.

"This book demonstrates that the internal political dynamics in states and self-determination groups strongly influences when groups seeking self-determination will be accommodated, when they will engage in civil war, and when they will experience internecine violence within the group"--

This book focuses on the discursive processes that allow activists to make sense of themselves and of the modes of politics they engage in. It shows how political and metadiscursive awareness develop in tandem with a reconfiguration of one’s sense of self. The author offers an integrated pragmatic and poststructuralist perspective on self and subjectivity. He draws on Essex style discourse theory, early pragmatist philosophy, and linguistic pragmatics, arguing for a notion of discourse as a multi-dimensional practice of articulation. Demonstrating the analytical power of this perspective, he puts his approach to work in an analysis of activist discourse on integration and minority issues in Flanders, Belgium. Subjects articulate a whole range of norms, values, identities and narratives to each other when they engage in political discourse. This book offers a way to analyse the logics that structure political awareness and the associated boundaries for discursive self-interpretation.

Contrary to what news reports might suggest, the majority of politicians behave ethically and are never subject to investigations. Is this because of the elaborate system of rules Congress has constructed to regulate the conduct of its members as well as the fear of electoral reprisal? Drawing on economic literature on the behavior of firms, Glenn Parker answers no. He argues that members of Congress behave ethnically not because of the fear of punishment but because of their concern for their reputations. He draws parallels between politicians and businesses, since both stand to suffer significantly when accused of wrongdoing. Just as business' poor behavior can cause brand names to be tarnished, prices to plummet, and future business to disappear, dishonest politicians stand to sacrifice the human capital invested in their careers, and premiums for honesty, such as electoral security and prestigious post-elective employment. Parker explores public attitudes toward the behavior of members of Congress and shows how those attitudes shape the way members conduct their professional lives. Written from the perspective of public choice, this book offers a novel approach to the question of how to keep politicians honest.

This book explores how our social and economic contexts profoundly affect our mental health and wellbeing, and how modern neuroscientific and psychodynamic research can both contribute to and enrich our understanding of these wider discussions. It therefore looks both inside and outside - indeed one of the main themes of The Political Self is that the conceptually discrete categories of 'inner' and 'outer' in reality constantly interact, shape, and inform each other. Severing these two worlds, it suggests, has led both to a devitalised and dissociated form of politics, and to a disengaged and disempowering form of therapy and analysis.