30-Second Politics

The 50 most thought-provoking ideas in politics, each explained in half a minute

Steven L. Taylor

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781848314276
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

You may be OK with standard stuff like Conservatism and Democracy, but do you really know what Patrimonialism is? And what about Oligarchy? Anarcho-syndicalism? Politics is, we are willing to bet, the most passionately argued-over subject matter, and yet how many of us flounder around in confrontational debates because we have no grip on political theory, just a vague notion that they are all out to get us? 30-Second Politics will help dispel this fog mistrust and paranoia. It challenges political theorists of all colors to come up with no-frill, no-spin, tell-it-like-it-is explanations of the 50 most important political -isms, -archies, and -ocracies that have pertained since the time of Periclean Athens. At no public expense, the book explains each political theory in nothing more than two pages, 300 words, and some propaganda-style imagery, for we all know that a picture opportunity is worth a thousand words of dull interview.

APPENDICES

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

CONSULTANT EDITOR

Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science at Troy University, Alabama. He is the author of Voting Amid Violence: Electoral Democracy in Colombia and is currently working on a project comparing the United States to 29 other democracies. He has also contributed a number of the entries to this present volume.

WRITERS

Michael Bailey is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Berry College, Georgia. He has published book chapters and journal articles on the presidency, issues of church and state and democratic theory. He is married and has three daughters.

Elizabeth Blum is an Associate Professor of History at Troy University, Alabama. She completed her first book, Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism in 2008. She is currently working on another project examining the variety of environmental messages in children’s popular culture since the First World War.

G. Doug Davis is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Troy University, Alabama. His interests include the international political economy, international relations, political methodology, ontology and Catholic theology.

Christopher N. Lawrence is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M International University at Laredo. He studies public opinion, voting behaviour and legislative politics in the United States and other advanced industrialized democracies, as well as the application of advanced statistical methods to political questions.

Feng Sung is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Troy University, Alabama.

Gregory Weeks is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of nu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Basics: Who Governs?
• Rule by the Few
• Rule by the Many
• Elements of Democracy
• Communism
• Political Economy
• International Relations
• Appendices