Political Breakdown
Why Politics Has Failed
Published on 17. January 2025
Book
Hardback
183 pages
978-1-0364-1752-9 (ISBN)
Description
This book explains the recent loss of civility in American politics. Recently, our leaders have become more and more hostile to each other. They not only disagree about policy but reject the decency that used to assuage their differences. The usual explanation is that extremists now dominate both major parties.This book shows, however, that unresolved social differences are chiefly to blame. After 1960, new divisions over race, poverty, and immigration erupted and have never been resolved. The left would extend new rights and benefits to many new claimants, while the right rejects any such idea. Both sides believe the very nature of the country is at stake. In fact, however, left and right could agree about a new America. It would be more diverse than now but retain the essential individualism of our culture. In America, life must continue to mean more than survival. It must again become a quest for distant goals.
More details
Edition
Unabridged edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Unabridged edition
Product notice
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 212 mm
Width: 148 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-0364-1752-9 (9781036417529)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2025
1st Edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
€60.84
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
01/2025
1st Edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
€226.99
Available for download
Person
Lawrence M. Mead is a Professor of Politics at New York University, USA, where he teaches American government. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Wisconsin. In many books and articles, he set out the principal theory behind the radical welfare reform of 1996-that employable recipients of welfare should have to work as a condition of aid. His own studies of welfare work programs demonstrated how best to implement these requirements. Government Matters, his in-depth study of welfare reform in Wisconsin, was a co-winner of the Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration in 2005. In Burdens of Freedom he set out a general theory of cultural difference between the West and non-West and showed how this division explains most of America's deepest problems, both at home and abroad. This current book offers a further development of this idea.