Empowering Citizens, Engaging the Public: Political Science for the 21st Century

✍ Scribed by Rainer Eisfeld

• Publisher: Springer Singapore;Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 213
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book is the first comprehensive study to respond to the ongoing debates on political sciences’ fragmentation, doubtful relevance, and disconnect with the larger public. It explores the implications of the argument that political science ought to become more topic-driven, more relevant and more comprehensible for "lay" audiences. Consequences would include evolving a culture of public engagement, challenging tendencies toward liars’ rule, and emphasizing the role of “large” themes in academic education and research, the latter being identified as those areas where severe democratic erosion is occurring – such as escalating income and wealth disparities pushing democracy towards plutocracy, ubiquitous change triggering insecurity and aggression, racist prejudice polarizing societies, and counter-terrorism strategies subverting civil liberties.
Political science needs to address these pressing problems ahead of other issues by in-depth research and broadly accessible public narratives, including solution-orientated normative notions. This need provides the final justification for evolving a discipline where problems would take priority over methods and public relevance over sophisticated specialization.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter ....Pages i-xxvi
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
Improving the Human Condition (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 3-14
What Is the Current Human Condition? (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 15-21
Coming to Grips with Change (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 23-32
Serving Citizens (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 33-54
The Civics of Friendly Persuasion (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 55-63
A Determination to Blow the Whistle (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 65-80
Front Matter ....Pages 81-81
Affirming Ethno-Cultural Diversity, Avoiding Tribalized Segmentation (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 83-99
Low Income, Inferior Education (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 101-118
Robust Regulatory Policies for Capitalism (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 119-144
Global Warming, Power Structures, and Living Conditions (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 145-158
Radicalization, Terrorism, Subversion of Civil Liberties (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 159-175
Front Matter ....Pages 177-177
Twenty-First-Century Political Science: Politicization of a Discipline? (Rainer Eisfeld)....Pages 179-194
Back Matter ....Pages 195-199

✦ Subjects

Political Science and International Relations; Democracy; Sociology of Citizenship; Social Philosophy