Understanding Politics: Ideas, Institutions, and Issues
Thomas M. Magstadt
Language: English
Pages: 721
ISBN: 1285452356
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
With its strong, engaging "politics are pertinent" theme and current, cutting-edge coverage, UNDERSTANDING POLITICS: IDEAS, INSTITUTIONS, AND ISSUES, is the proven best-selling text for the introduction to political science course. Thomas Magstadt fascinates students with his coverage of three fundamental premises: 1) politics is a pervasive force in modern society; 2) government is too important to be left in the hands of a few; and 3) in a democracy, everyone has both the opportunity and the obligation to participate in public life. The Ninth Edition focuses on such vital concepts as democracy, dictatorship, citizenship, voting behavior, elections, leadership, ideologies, war, revolution, world politics, and public policy--fundamental concepts that provide students with a view of politics and economics that is at once lucid, nuanced, and empowering.
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One of the distinguishing features of many extreme right-wing ideologies is a blatant appeal to popular prejudices and hatred.3 Such an appeal often strikes a responsive chord when large numbers of people, who are part of the racial or ethnic majority, have either not shared fully in the benefits of society or have individually and collectively suffered severe financial reversals. In turbulent times, people are prone to follow a demagogue, to believe in conspiracy theories, and to seek
after World War I, rather than the Great Depression era, represent the high-water marks of socialism in the United States. Why? U.S. adults tend to be individualistic and distrustful of “big government.” In addition, they came to identify socialism with communism, communism with Stalinism, and Stalinism with the totalitarian state. After World War II, the Soviet Union became the enemy of the Free World—the “evil empire” as President Ronald Reagan called it. Nonetheless, many public programs that
in Germany was reborn after World War II, when the nation was exhausted by war, defeated, and occupied by foreign armies. The Allied powers, led by the United States, were determined to prevent a new German state from again launching a campaign of military aggression in Europe. The best way to do that, they reasoned, was to inoculate Germany against the virus of dictatorship. The “vaccine” they decided to use was democratic federalism. How could federalism possibly prevent the rise of a new
attempts to come up with a new, universal model of democracy. RECOMMENDED READING Adair, Douglass. Fame and the Founding Fathers. New York: Norton, 1974. The author argues that the key Founders were motivated by a strong sense of history and moral probity, that they desired above all to be remembered for founding a just new political order (“fame”), and that they were not driven by personal political ambition or financial gain, as some revisionist historians have suggested. Brodie, Fawn. Thomas
as a catalyst. A leader such as Lenin or Mao, then, is to a mass movement what a detonator is to a bomb. Ideology Whatever the quality of leadership, total revolutions depend in the final analysis on the willingness of converts to engage in extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice in the name of the cause. Such reckless devotion cannot be inspired by rational appeals. It must arise, rather, from the true believer’s blind faith in the absolute truth provided by a comprehensive political doctrine.