Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity.

It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock's new book . . . that people who make prediction their business--people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables--are no better than the rest of us. When they're wrong, they're rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. . . . It would be nice if there were fewer partisans on television disguised as "analysts" and "experts". . . . But the best lesson of Tetlock's book may be the one that he seems most reluctant to draw: Think for yourself.

《公共论丛·第八辑-社会理论的两种传统》，本书内容简介：社会理论与近代社会共生，而尤为重视对于现代性的反思。古典社会理论中，以英国苏格兰启蒙传统与法国传统影响最著。本辑的主题，是从这两种社会理论的分疏入手，探讨英法两国不同的社会理论传统与政治社会结构，更重要的是这两种理论传统对于当下世界的影响与意义。

Studying a social science degree? Need to know how to develop your research methods and write up your results more effectively? In the fourth edition of this lively and engaging textbook, Alan Bryman presents students with an updated and all-encompassing guide to the principle techniques and methodology in the field of Social Research. Adopting a coherent and student-friendly format, the book offers an encyclopaedic introduction to social research methodology, and considers a broad range of qualitative and quantitative methods to help students identify and evaluate the best approach for their research needs. Building on the success of the previous editions, this book is concerned with the ways that social researchers approach their craft. Bryman guides the reader through all aspects of the research process including formulating objectives, choosing research methods, securing research participants, as well as advice on how to effectively collect, analyse and interpret data and disseminate those findings to others. This fourth edition features a new 'supervisor experience' feature, which offers helpful tips from the supervisor's perspective on successful research, as well as a new chapter which tackles the sampling issues faced by qualitative researchers in a more consolidated fashion than in previous editions. Substantial updates have also been made to the existing material, particularly the internet research section, which has been fully revised to accommodate the extensive developments in this area. An Online Resource Centre accompanies the text and includes: For students: A student researcher's toolkit, providing guidance and advice on every aspect of social research Student experience podcasts Self-marking multiple choice questions for revision Annotated web links to useful articles, reviews, models and research guides A guide to using Excel in data analysis For lecturers: A lecturer's guide including lecture outlines, reading lists and teaching activities A suite of customisable PowerPoint slides Figures and tables from the text Case studies

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules.
But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination--propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process.

阿列克西•德•托克维尔可以说是美国历史上最具影响力的法国政治思想家，他的《论美国的民主》在政治学领域一直都享有盛誉。与此同时，托克维尔在法国的政治圈中还是一位颇有抱负和表现积极的政治家。美国重要的政治理论家谢尔顿•S. 沃林在这部著作中首次将托克维尔的政治生活和理论生活完整地联结在一起，并借此对托克维尔的主要著作，以及他在过去二百多年西方政治思想史上的历史地位给出了广泛的全新阐释。

Why do poor people often vote against their material interests? This puzzle has been famously studied within wealthy Western democracies, yet the fact that the poor voter paradox also routinely manifests within poor countries has remained unexplored. This book studies how this paradox emerged in India, the world's largest democracy. Tariq Thachil shows how arguments from studies of wealthy democracies (such as moral values voting) and the global south (such as patronage or ethnic appeals) cannot explain why poor voters in poor countries support parties that represent elite policy interests. He instead draws on extensive survey data and fieldwork to document a novel strategy through which elite parties can recruit the poor, while retaining the rich. He shows how these parties can win over disadvantaged voters by privately providing them with basic social services via grassroots affiliates. Such outsourcing permits the party itself to continue to represent the policy interests of their privileged base.
Extends the study of why poor citizens vote against their interests to the non-Western world
The first book to provide a theory of social services as an electoral strategy, explaining why parties use social services for electoral purposes, how services win votes, and when this strategy succeeds or fails
Offers a comparison of religious parties across a diverse set of cases (India, Egypt, Yemen and Indonesia)

This seminal study and critique of propaganda from one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1962. Taking not only a psychological approach, but a sociological approach as well, Ellul’s book outlines the taxonomy for propaganda, and ultimately, it’s destructive nature towards democracy. Drawing from his own experiences fighting for the French resistance against the Vichy regime, Ellul offers a unique insight into the propaganda machine.

In the past decade, Jeffrey Olick has established himself as one of the world's pre-eminent sociologists of memory (and, related to this, both cultural sociology and social theory). His recent book on memory in postwar Germany, "In the House of the Hangman" (University of Chicago Press, 2005) has garnered a great deal of acclaim. This book collects his best essays on a range of memory related issues and adds a couple of new ones. It is more conceptually expansive than his other work and will serve as a great introduction to this important theorist. In the past quarter century, the issue of memory has not only become an increasingly important analytical category for historians, sociologists and cultural theorists, it has become pervasive in popular culture as well. Part of this is a function of the enhanced role of both narrative and representation - the building blocks of memory, so to speak - across the social sciences and humanities. Just as importantly, though, there has also been an increasing acceptance of the notion that the past is no longer the province of professional historians alone. Additionally, acknowledging the importance of social memory has not only provided agency to ordinary people when it comes to understanding the past, it has made conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the past more fraught, particularly in light of the terrible events of the twentieth century. Olick looks at how catastrophic, terrible pasts - Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa - are remembered, but he is particularly concerned with the role that memory plays in social structures. Memory can foster any number of things - social solidarity, nostalgia, civil war - but it always depends on both the nature of the past and the cultures doing the remembering. Prior to his studies of individual episodes, he fully develops his theory of memory and society, working through Bergson, Halbwachs, Elias, Bakhtin, and Bourdieu.

Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us--not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In "How Propaganda Works," Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy--particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality--and how it has damaged democracies of the past.

Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States.

"How Propaganda Works" shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.

【编辑推荐】
★梁文道、刘瑜、熊培云、许知远联袂主编——“理想国译丛”（MIRROR）系列之一（010）——保持开放性的思想和非功利的眼睛，看看世界的丰富性与复杂性。本书有刘瑜专文导读“西方的危机？”。★《大断裂》是一部不但重要，还有野心的作品。它试图在保守派和自由派之间搭建起一座桥梁，从而给陈腐不堪且风格化的争论注入活力并使讨论更为贴近现实。——美国著名政治作家弗吉尼亚?波斯特尔（VirginiaPostrel）★在有自由的地方，社会危机通常总有出路，因为自由允许并鼓励试错与纠错，从而避免了故步自封。在这个意义上，西方人隔三差五的“西方没落论”，与其说是一种幸灾乐祸的“唱衰”，不如说是一种居安思危的警报。福山的《大断裂》也同样如此。——刘瑜（清华大学政治学系）
【内容简介】
《大断裂：人类本性与社会秩序的重建》二十世纪中叶以降，西方主要发达国家相继迈入了所谓的后工业时代，在这一时期，以信息技术为核心的技术进步给经济和社会的传统运行模式和组织方式带来了重大的改变，旧有的社会规范和文化价值也遭到严重的冲击，在西方发达资本主义社会普遍表现为犯罪率、离婚率、未婚生育率的大幅下降和社会信任度的明显降低，福山将此种种与“社会资本”有关的指标的恶化现象总结为“大断裂”。究竟何种原因导致了发达社会大断裂的出现？这是否是资本主义社会转型不可避免的宿命？它们又是如何走出大断裂的？本书对上述问题进行了探索。在福山看来，资本主义社会中，个人主义的不断膨胀尽管造成了传统权威和社会规范不同程度的消解，但基于个体理性和竞争关系自发产生的互惠利他合作仍然是形成各种形式社会联结和社会资本的基石。在新技术条件下，社会组织结构的扁平化促成了社会网络的兴起，使得社会资本对于构建社会秩序的重要性更大，但等级制依然保有不可替代的作用。福山相信，即使面临技术、经济和社会的重大转型，社会秩序始终都会在既有等级制又有自发性的源泉中产生。大断裂不可避免，但社会规范的重建也始终可期。他列举了20世纪90年代以后，发达资本主义社会的大断裂乱象逐渐消退、社会资本重新积累的若干证据，对此结论进行了说明。在本书中，福山一如既往地对资本主义社会及其制度表示了信心。他认为，现时代的后工业资本主义经济会产生对社会资本的持续需求，长远看，它也有能力提供足够数量的社会资本以满足其需求。他甚至对技术发展能够帮助人类生活实现人的整全性表示出乐观。在社会和道德领域表现出的历史周期性，需要也终将通过人类自身重建社会秩序的强大能力来克服。

这是一部令人豁然开朗的著作，内容是创造了近现代世界的全球政治和经济体系的诞生和崛起，这一体系首先由英国支撑，如今靠美国维系。
沃尔特•拉塞尔•米德是美国最为杰出的外交政策专家之一，他解释了英美两国卓越地位之关键在于盛行于英美的宗教中的个人主义意识形态。米德解释了为何这种 意识形态在适应在两国都繁荣兴旺的资本主义的过程中起到独一无二的文化作用。我们从中可以看到两国如何能够创立一个自由民主的体系，其经济和社会影响持续在全球增长。
依靠自己的才智、气魄和绝佳的洞察力，米德实际上详述了英语民族及其敌人数世纪以来的战争故事。依靠对周围海洋的掌控而得以维持，英国和它的美国继承者在过去的三百年间建立了一个政治、权力、投资和贸易全球体系。沿此路前行，两国发展出复杂精密的大战略，这令英语国家的全球权力和威望达到历史上前所未有的高峰。

How did today's rich states first establish modern fiscal systems? To answer this question, Political Transformations and Public Finances by Mark Dincecco examines the evolution of political regimes and public finances in Europe over the long term. The book argues that the emergence of efficient fiscal institutions was the result of two fundamental political transformations that resolved long-standing problems of fiscal fragmentation and absolutism. States gained tax force through fiscal centralization and restricted ruler power through parliamentary limits, which enabled them to gather large tax revenues and channel funds toward public services with positive economic benefits. Using a novel combination of descriptive, case study and statistical methods, the book pursues this argument through a systematic investigation of a new panel database that spans eleven countries and four centuries. The book's findings are significant for our understanding of economic history and have important consequences for current policy debates.

这是一本同时具有严肃凝重的学术内容与通俗易懂的小说效果，能让您始终怀着激情一读到底且意犹未尽的书，也是一本影响了美国有关言论自由的著名司法判决的书。这就是由美国著名学者亚历山大.米克尔约翰所著、候建先生翻译，并由贵州人民出版社2003年出版的公法译丛中的《表达自由的法律限度》。虽然全书不足十万字，但透过其细致深刻和富有逻辑的论证和反思，我们似乎在事实与规范之外感受到保障具有公共性质的表达自由的更多价值与现实意义。

《政治学》系统地阐述了政治学的理论及其发展脉络，内容涉及政治理论、民族与全球化、政治互动、政府机构、政策与绩效。作者将政治哲学与政治科学有机地勾连起来，梳理了针对同一政治现象的不同理论和思想，并详尽分析了每种理论的优点、缺点以及不同理论之间的争论。
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What is Islam? How do we grasp a human and historical phenomenon characterized by such variety and contradiction? What is "Islamic" about Islamic philosophy or Islamic art? Should we speak of Islam or of islams? Should we distinguish the Islamic (the religious) from the Islamicate (the cultural)? Or should we abandon "Islamic" altogether as an analytical term?
In What Is Islam?, Shahab Ahmed presents a bold new conceptualization of Islam that challenges dominant understandings grounded in the categories of "religion" and "culture" or those that privilege law and scripture. He argues that these modes of thinking obstruct us from understanding Islam, distorting it, diminishing it, and rendering it incoherent.
What Is Islam? formulates a new conceptual language for analyzing Islam. It presents a new paradigm of how Muslims have historically understood divine revelation—one that enables us to understand how and why Muslims through history have embraced values such as exploration, ambiguity, aestheticization, polyvalence, and relativism, as well as practices such as figural art, music, and even wine drinking as Islamic. It also puts forward a new understanding of the historical constitution of Islamic law and its relationship to philosophical ethics and political theory.
A book that is certain to provoke debate and significantly alter our understanding of Islam, What Is Islam? reveals how Muslims have historically conceived of and lived with Islam as norms and truths that are at once contradictory yet coherent.

Despite efforts to attain a more balanced approach, Western historians have largely interpreted China's modern period in terms of China's 'response to the West.' This book, by a scholar who is neither Chinese nor Western, goes far to set the balance right. Min Tu-ki, Korea's leading Sinologist, shows how China's own internal agenda has conditioned Chinese political life during the transition to modernity.