Government by Dissent

Government by Dissent
Author: Robert W.T. Martin
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2013-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0814745423

"The most thorough examination we have of how early Americans wrestled with what types of political dissent should be permitted, even promoted, in the new republic they were forming. Martin shows the modern relevance of their debates in ways that all will find valuable—even those who dissent from his views!"—Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania Democracy is the rule of the people. But what exactly does it mean for a people to rule? Which practices and behaviors are legitimate, and which are democratically suspect? We generally think of democracy as government by consent; a government of, by, and for the people. This has been true from Locke through Lincoln to the present day. Yet in understandably stressing the importance—indeed, the monumental achievement—of popular consent, we commonly downplay or even denigrate the role of dissent in democratic governments. But in Government by Dissent, Robert W.T. Martin explores the idea that the people most important in a flourishing democracy are those who challenge the status quo. The American political radicals of the 1790s understood, articulated, and defended the crucial necessity of dissent to democracy. By returning to their struggles, successes, and setbacks, and analyzing their imaginative arguments, Martin recovers a more robust approach to popular politics, one centered on the ever-present need to challenge the status quo and the powerful institutions that both support it and profit from it. Dissent has rarely been the mainstream of democratic politics. But the figures explored here—forgotten farmers as well as revered framers—understood that dissent is always the essential undercurrent of democracy and is often the critical crosscurrent. Only by returning to their political insights can we hope to reinvigorate our own popular politics.

The Ethics of Dissent

The Ethics of Dissent
Author: Rosemary O′Leary
Publisher: CQ Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1544357915

Winner of the 2021 “Best Book Award” from the Academy of Management Division of Public and Nonprofit Management! “Rosemary O’Leary’s The Ethics of Dissent offers a novel take on rule breakers and whistle-blowers in the federal government. Finding a book that elegantly interweaves theory, case detail, and practice in a way useful to students and researching proves challenging. O’Leary achieves those aims.” —Randall Davis, Southern Illinois University From “constructive contributors”" to “deviant destroyers,” government guerrillas work clandestinely against the best wishes of their superiors. These public servants are dissatisfied with the actions of the organizations for which they work, but often choose not to go public with their concerns. In her Third Edition of The Ethics of Dissent, Rosemary O’Leary shows that the majority of guerrilla government cases are the manifestation of inevitable tensions between bureaucracy and democracy, which yield immense ethical and organizational challenges that all public managers must learn to navigate. New to the Third Edition: New examples of guerrilla government showcase the power of public servants as well as their ethical obligations. Key concepts are connected to real examples, such as Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to sign the marriage certificates of gay couples, and Kevin Chmielewski, the deputy chief of staff for operations at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who led environmental groups to the wrong doings of EPA Administrator Scott Prewitt. A new section on the creation of “alt” Twitter accounts designed to counter and even sabotage the policies of President Donald Trump highlights the power of social media in guerrilla government activities. A new section on the U.S. Department of State “dissent channel” provides readers with a positive example of the right way to dissent as a public servant. A new chapter on Edward Snowden demonstrates the practical relevance and contemporary importance of the world’s largest security breach. A new profile of U.S. Department of State diplomat Mary A. Wright illustrates how she used her resignation to dissent about U.S. policies in Iraq.

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens
Author: Josiah Ober
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2001-12-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691089817

Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.

The Dissent of the Governed

The Dissent of the Governed
Author: Stephen L. Carter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1998-04-12
Genre: Law
ISBN:

Between loyalty and disobedience; between recognition of the law’s authority and realization that the law is not always right: In America, this conflict is historic, with results as glorious as the mass protests of the civil rights movement and as inglorious as the armed violence of the militia movement. In an impassioned defense of dissent, Stephen L. Carter argues for the dialogue that negotiates this conflict and keeps democracy alive. His book portrays an America dying from a refusal to engage in such a dialogue, a polity where everybody speaks, but nobody listens. The Dissent of the Governed is an eloquent diagnosis of what ails the American body politic—the unwillingness of people in power to hear disagreement unless forced to—and a prescription for a new process of response. Carter examines the divided American political character on dissent, with special reference to religion, identifying it in unexpected places, with an eye toward amending it before it destroys our democracy. At the heart of this work is a rereading of the Declaration of Independence that puts dissent, not consent, at the center of the question of the legitimacy of democratic government. Carter warns that our liberal constitutional ethos—the tendency to assume that the nation must everywhere be morally the same—pressures citizens to be other than themselves when being themselves would lead to disobedience. This tendency, he argues, is particularly hard on religious citizens, whose notion of community may be quite different from that of the sovereign majority of citizens. His book makes a powerful case for the autonomy of communities—especially but not exclusively religious—into which democratic citizens organize themselves as a condition for dissent, dialogue, and independence. With reference to a number of cases, Carter shows how disobedience is sometimes necessary to the heartbeat of our democracy—and how the distinction between challenging accepted norms and challenging the sovereign itself, a distinction crucial to the Declaration of Independence, must be kept alive if Americans are to progress and prosper as a nation.

Silencing Political Dissent

Silencing Political Dissent
Author: Nancy Chang
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2002-07-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781583224946

In her groundbreaking new book, Silencing Political Dissent, constitutional expert Nancy Chang examines how the Bush administration's fight against terrorism is resulting in a disturbing erosion of First Amendment rights and increase of executive power. Chang's compelling analysis begins with a historical review of political repression and intolerance of dissent in America. From the Sedition Act of 1798, through the Smith Act of the 1940s and the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, to the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO program of the 1960s, Chang recalls how during times of crisis and war, the U.S. government has unjustly detained individuals, invaded personal privacy, and hampered the free speech of Americans. Chang's expertise as a senior constitutional attorney shines through in the power and clarity of her argument. Meticulously researched and footnoted, Chang's book forces us to challenge the government when it is unpopular to do so, and to consider that perhaps "our future safety lies in the expansion, rather the contraction, of the democratic values set forth in the Constitution."

Design and Political Dissent

Design and Political Dissent
Author: Jilly Traganou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-08
Genre: Art and social action
ISBN: 9780367556242

This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing. In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book's premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate political arguments or establish positions of disagreement. Its contributors look at a wide array of material practices generated by both professional and nonprofessional design actors around the globe, exploring case studies that vary from street protests and encampments to design pedagogy and community-empowerment projects. For students and scholars of design studies, urbanism, visual culture, politics, and social movements, this book opens up new perspectives on design and its place in contemporary politics.

Dissent: Voices of Conscience

Dissent: Voices of Conscience
Author: Ann Wright
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781608465842

Stories of men and women, who risked careers, reputations, and even freedom for truth.

Why Societies Need Dissent

Why Societies Need Dissent
Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2005-04-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780674017689

Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense.

Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism

Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism
Author: Margaret Levi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1997-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521599610

Democratic governments are able to elicit, legally and legitimately, both money and men from their populations. Certainly there is tax evasion, draft evasion, and even outright resistance; yet to a remarkable extent citizens acquiesce and even actively consent to the demands of governments, well beyond the point explicable by coercion. This is a puzzle for social scientists, particularly those who believe that individuals are self-interested, rational actors who calculate only the private egoistic costs and benefits of possible choices. The provisions of collective good should never justify a quasi-voluntary tax payment and the benefits of a war could not possibly exceed the cost of dying. This book explains the institutionalization of policy in response to anticipated and actual citizen behaviour and the conditions under which citizens give, refuse and withdraw their consent. Professor Levi claims that citizens' consent is contingent upon the perceived fairness of both the government and of other citizens. Most citizens of democracies, most of the time, are more likely to give their consent if they believe that government actors and other citizens are behaving fairly toward them.

Advice and Dissent

Advice and Dissent
Author: Alan S. Blinder
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 046509418X

A bestselling economist tells us what both politicians and economists must learn to fix America's failing economic policies American economic policy ranks as something between bad and disgraceful. As leading economist Alan S. Blinder argues, a crucial cultural divide separates economic and political civilizations. Economists and politicians often talk -- and act -- at cross purposes: politicians typically seek economists' "advice" only to support preconceived notions, not to learn what economists actually know or believe. Politicians naturally worry about keeping constituents happy and winning elections. Some are devoted to an ideology. Economists sometimes overlook the real human costs of what may seem to be the obviously best policy -- to a calculating machine. In Advice and Dissent, Blinder shows how both sides can shrink the yawning gap between good politics and good economics and encourage the hardheaded but softhearted policies our country so desperately needs.