Rating Politics

Author : Zsófia Barta,Alison Johnston
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2023-04-27
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9780198878179

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Rating Politics by Zsófia Barta,Alison Johnston Pdf

How do countries' political and policy choices affect the credit ratings they receive? Sovereign ratings influence countries' cost of funding, and observers have long worried that rating agencies - these unelected, unappointed, unaccountable, for-profit organizations - can interfere with democratic sovereignty if they assign lower ratings to certain political and policy choices. The questions of whether, how, and why ratings react to policy and politics, however, remain unexplored. Rating Politics opens the black box of sovereign ratings to uncover the logic that drives rating responses to political and policy factors. Relying on statistical analysis of rating scores, interviews with sovereign rating analysts, and a close reading of the official communications of rating agencies about their decisions, Zsófia Barta and Alison Johnston show that ratings penalize center-left governments and many (though not all) policies associated with the center-left agenda. The motivation for such penalties is not rooted in assumptions about how those political and policy features affect growth and debt servicing capacity. Instead, ratings are lower in the presence of those features because they are expected to make a country more vulnerable to market panics whenever the economy is hit by unforeseen shocks, as they signal insufficient willingness and/or ability to engage in determined austerity for the sake of reassuring markets. Since market panics and the resulting "sudden stops" of funding lead to humiliating collapses of ratings, rating agencies attempt to insure themselves against "rating failures" by pre-emptively assigning lower ratings to countries with the "wrong" political and policy mix.

Author : Michel Feher
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781942130192

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Rated Agency by Michel Feher Pdf

The hegemony of finance compels a new orientation for everyone and everything: companies care more about the moods of their shareholders than about longstanding commercial success; governments subordinate citizen welfare to appeasing creditors; and individuals are concerned less with immediate income from labor than appreciation of their capital goods, skills, connections, and reputations. That firms, states, and people depend more on their ratings than on the product of their activities also changes how capitalism is resisted. For activists, the focus of grievances shifts from the extraction of profit to the conditions under which financial institutions allocate credit. While the exploitation of employees by their employers has hardly been curbed, the power of investors to select investees — to decide who and what is deemed creditworthy — has become a new site of social struggle. In clear and compelling prose, Michel Feher explains the extraordinary shift in conduct and orientation generated by financialization. Above all, he articulates the new political resistances and aspirations that investees draw from their rated agency.

Author : Ian Shapiro
Publisher : Belknap Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2018-09-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 067498675X

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Politics against Domination by Ian Shapiro Pdf

Ian Shapiro makes a compelling case that the overriding purpose of politics should be to combat domination. Moreover, he shows how to put resistance to domination into practice at home and abroad. This is a major work of applied political theory, a profound challenge to utopian visions, and a guide to fundamental problems of justice and distribution. “Shapiro’s insights are trenchant, especially with regards to the Citizens United decision, and his counsel on how the ‘status-quo bias’ in national political institutions favors the privileged. After more than a decade of imperial overreach, his restrained account of foreign policy should likewise find support.” —Scott A. Lucas, Los Angeles Review of Books “Shapiro has a brief and compelling section on the importance of hope in his first chapter. This book enacts and encourages hope, with its analytical clarity, deep engagement of complicated political issues that resist easy theorizing, and emphasis on the politically possible.” —Kathleen Tipler, Political Science Quarterly “Offers important insights for thinking about democracy’s prospects.” —Christopher Hobson, Perspectives on Politics

Author : Zeynep Pamuk
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2021-12-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780691218939

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Politics and Expertise by Zeynep Pamuk Pdf

A new model for the relationship between science and democracy that spans policymaking, the funding and conduct of research, and our approach to new technologies Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other. Politics and Expertise offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists’ judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial “science court” to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies. Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 790 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 1865
Category : Electronic
ISBN : STANFORD:36105010387368

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The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art by Anonim Pdf

Author : David Bromwich
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2020-10-20
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781681374635

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Writing Politics by David Bromwich Pdf

Explore the tradition of the political essay with this brilliant anthology. David Bromwich is one of the most well-informed, cogent, and morally uncompromising political writers on the left today. He is also one of our finest intellectual historians and literary critics. In Writing Politics, Bromwich presents twenty-seven essays by different writers from the beginning of the modern political world in the seventeenth century until recent times, essays that grapple with issues that continue to shape history—revolution and war, racism, women’s rights, the status of the worker, the nature of citizenship, imperialism, violence and nonviolence, among them—and essays that have also been chosen as superlative examples of the power of written English to reshape our thoughts and the world. Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mohandas Gandhi, Virginia Woolf, Martin Luther King, and Hannah Arendt are here, among others, along with a wide-ranging introduction.

Author : Louise Penny,Hillary Rodham Clinton
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2021-10-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781982173692

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State of Terror by Louise Penny,Hillary Rodham Clinton Pdf

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER​ Named one of the most anticipated novels of the season by People, Associated Press, Time, Los Angeles Times, Parade, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. From the #1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise—State of Terror. After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state. There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate. As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an anonymous source. Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning. What begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its heels in the international arena. As the horrifying scale of the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most. To defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary of state. State of Terror is a unique and utterly compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling novelist.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 822 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 1874
Category : Art
ISBN : UIUC:30112109672110

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The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, Art, and Finance by Anonim Pdf

Author : Christopher H. Achen,Larry M. Bartels
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2017-08-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781400888740

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Democracy for Realists by Christopher H. Achen,Larry M. Bartels Pdf

Why our belief in government by the people is unrealistic—and what we can do about it Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels deploy a wealth of social-scientific evidence, including ingenious original analyses of topics ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters—even those who are well informed and politically engaged—mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly. Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Now with new analysis of the 2016 elections, Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.

Author : David Van Reybrouck
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2018-04-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781609808112

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Against Elections by David Van Reybrouck Pdf

A small book with great weight and urgency to it, this is both a history of democracy and a clarion call for change. "Without drastic adjustment, this system cannot last much longer," writes Van Reybrouck, regarded today as one of Europe's most astute thinkers. "If you look at the decline in voter turnout and party membership, and at the way politicians are held in contempt, if you look at how difficult it is to form governments, how little they can do and how harshly they are punished for it, if you look at how quickly populism, technocracy and anti-parliamentarianism are rising, if you look at how more and more citizens are longing for participation and how quickly that desire can tip over into frustration, then you realize we are up to our necks." Not so very long ago, the great battles of democracy were fought for the right to vote. Now, Van Reybrouck writes, "it's all about the right to speak, but in essence it's the same battle, the battle for political emancipation and for democratic participation. We must decolonize democracy. We must democratize democracy." As history, Van Reybrouck makes the compelling argument that modern democracy was designed as much to preserve the rights of the powerful and keep the masses in line, as to give the populace a voice. As change-agent, Against Elections makes the argument that there are forms of government, what he terms sortitive or deliberative democracy, that are beginning to be practiced around the world, and can be the remedy we seek. In Iceland, for example, deliberative democracy was used to write the new constitution. A group of people were chosen by lot, educated in the subject at hand, and then were able to decide what was best, arguably, far better than politicians would have. A fascinating, and workable idea has led to a timely book to remind us that our system of government is a flexible instrument, one that the people have the power to change.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 918 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1911
Category : Art
ISBN : MINN:31951001919301D

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The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art by Anonim Pdf

Author : Alex Ross
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 784 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-15
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781429944540

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Wagnerism by Alex Ross Pdf

Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics—an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence. For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil. In Wagnerism, Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. As readers of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.

Author : Lea Ypi
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2022-01-18
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780393867749

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Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi Pdf

Shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Biography Award The Sunday Times Best Book of the Year in Biography and Memoir A Financial Times Best Book of 2021 (Critics' Picks) The New Yorker, Best Books We Read in 2021 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021 A Guardian Best Book of the Year A reflection on "freedom" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And when the early ’90s saw Albania and other Balkan countries exuberantly begin a transition to the “free market,” Western ideals of freedom delivered chaos: a dystopia of pyramid schemes, organized crime, and sex trafficking. With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic young political thinkers and a prominent leftist voice in the United Kingdom, Lea offers a fresh and invigorating perspective on the relation between the personal and the political, between values and identity, posing urgent questions about the cost of freedom.

Author : B. Paudyn
Publisher : Springer
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2014-06-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781137302779

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Credit Ratings and Sovereign Debt by B. Paudyn Pdf

Bartholomew Paudyn investigates how governments across the globe struggle to constitute the authoritative knowledge underpinning the political economy of creditworthiness and what the (neoliberal) 'fiscal normality' means for democratic governance.

Author : Cheryl N. Collier,Jonathan Malloy
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2016-12-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781442609150

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The Politics of Ontario by Cheryl N. Collier,Jonathan Malloy Pdf

Ontario is the most populous of Canada's provinces, contains the country's largest city, and continues to be the centre of finance, IT, and media. It is also experiencing significant changes and upheavals. The Politics of Ontario is the first comprehensive book on Ontario's politics, government, and public policy since Graham White's The Government and Politics of Ontario in 1997. Although The Politics of Ontario follows in the same tradition, it departs in several ways. While not losing sight of the enduring themes of Ontario politics and political culture, it reflects the fact that Ontario is no longer Canada's primary economic engine. Instead of emphasizing the continuity and gradual evolution of Ontario politics, it focuses on change, disruption, and the uncertainty of the political and policy environment through explorations of fiscal and economic policy, the environment, labour, multiculturalism, and the complexities of urbanization, with particular attention given to greater Toronto. The book is divided into four parts: Settings, Institutions, Politics, and Policy. It contains 28 charts, tables, and graphs, and features contributions by virtually all of the leading scholars in the field, including an introductory chapter by Graham White.