Former Chicago Alderman Goes Inside Urban Politics

A new book written and edited by UIC political scientist Dick Simpson examines economic and political events in Chicago, New York, Los Angles and other cities and suburbs.  Published by Pearson Longman of New York, Inside Urban Politics: Voices from America's Cities and Suburbs contains over 40 articles, speeches and reports by political scientists, journalists, and public officials.  To view the full UIC News Release click here.

Andy McFarland’s Neoplurism Book Released

Over the course of time, theorists of all stripes construct models of how things might work.  Scholars then group these ideas into paradigms and then perhaps into theories.  But what happens when the world grows, as has the world of interest groups in the United States over the past generation?  Are the old theories still at odds with one another, or has the evolution of intellectual thought brought the older postulates closer together?

Professor Andy McFarland makes the case for a theoretical consolidation in his new book, Neoplurism.  Published by the University Press of Kansas, Neopluralism argues for a consolidation of theories, one leading perhaps to an evolving inclusion of a political process theory amongst the important general approaches to study used by scholars.  Through examination of the works of the original pluralists of the 1950s and 1960s, McFarland recounts the developments around pluralistic theory to date and integrates them with more recent works on social movements, interest groups, and corporatism.

McFarland’s book has been well received.  The author of The New Liberalism:  The Rising Power of Citizen Groups, finds Neopluralism “an invaluable and enduring intellectual history of the political science discipline during the last half of the twentieth century.”  The book can be ordered directly through the University Press of Kansas.

Judd & Swanstrom’s City Politics Now in 4^th Edition

City Politics: Private Power and Public Policy is a collaborative text between two eminent urban scholars, UIC’s Dennis Judd and SUNY-Albany’s Todd Swanstrom..  City Politics exams party machines and reform crusades, the relationship between national politics and cities, and examines the fracturing of the American political community’s impact on cities.  Strong in narrative style, the new edition now features concrete examples of abstract concepts presented in “Our Take” boxes in each chapter, incorporation of 2000 census data through out the text.  The new edition also contains expanded and updated research on immigration, urban tourism, and special financing authorities.

City Politics is published by Longman.

Evan McKenzie Considers Common Interest Housing

Professor Evan McKenzie's article titled Common Interest Housing in the Communities of Tomorrow will appear in Housing Policy Debate (Fannie Mae Foundation, 2003).  Common Interest Housing includes planned communities of single family homes, housing cooperatives, and condominiums that have several common traits including common ownership of exterior features such as walks and drives, private government through a homeowner's association, and master plan envisioned by the developer.  You can preview Professor McKenzie's article by clicking here.

Three New Publications by Doris Graber

Styles of Image Management During Crises:  Justifying Press Censorship, Discourse & Society (Sage Publications, 2003).  Professor Graber identifies three common types of verbal strategies used by both sides of the post September 11^th censorship debate:  excuses, justifications, and transformation rhetoric.  Using the Bush Administration's censorship policies in the war on terrorism as a case study, Graber categorizes the arguments made for and against the policy. The analysis allows the reader a better chance to understand the rhetorical elements of the debate.

The Media and Democracy:  Beyond Myths and Stereotypes, Annual Review of Political Science (Annual Reviews, Jan. 2003).  Professor Graber addresses the question of whether current concepts of citizenship are still appropriate and whether contemporary U.S. media are an asset or a detriment to democratic governance in the United States. The full article can be viewed at http://polisci.annualreviews.org

Professor Graber contributed the second chapter titled Terrorism, Censorship and the 1^st Amendment: In Search of Policy Guidelines to Framing Terrorism - The News Media, the Government, and the Public, (Routledge, 2003).  Graber examines the historical conflicts between press freedoms and security concerns.  She draws on trade-off practices used to resolve conflicts about environmental policies to suggest mechanisms that could define appropriate relations between the press and policymakers before crisis situations occur.

Rundquist / Carsey Examine Defense Spending Distribution

The University of Oklahoma Press has published Congress and Defense Spending: The Distributive Politics of Military Procurement (2002) by Barry Rundquist and Tom Carsey (now at Florida State University). The book, in Oklahoma’s Congressional Studies Series, reports on an innovative statistical study of the geographic distribution of military procurement awards among states, congressional districts, and counties from 1963 to 1995. It finds that year-to-year changes in the geographic distribution of military procurement expenditures benefit places represented by majority party members on House and Senate defense committees at the expense of other places and that this tends to be relatively efficient both in terms of local economic development and the national interest. The book refutes a number of less comprehensive studies suggesting either that committee representation alone (regardless of party) leads to local defense benefits, or that nothing about the institutional structure of defense policy making in Congress influences the distribution of defense contracts. It also refutes the view that distributive politics in Congress results in inefficient allocations of government resources.

Dick Simpson’s Inside Urban Politics:
Voices From America’s Cities & Suburbs
Ships in December

Professor Dick Simpson’s new book titled Inside Urban Politics: Voices From America’s Cities & Suburbs (Longman Publications, December, 2003) brings together a unique blend of primary and secondary readings written by politicians, editorials by journalists, newspaper stories, interviews with activists, and research reports pushing for change.  Case studies comprise almost half of the collection and are tied together by introductions to each chapter that place the readings in the context of current social science research.  For more information visit the Longman Publications web site.

Bruhl Paper Accepted For Publication

The Journal of Business Ethics has accepted Professor Bob Bruhl’s paper titled A Possible Solution to the Principal-Agent Problem Posed by the Contemporary Corporate CEO.  Bruhl’s interest in this subject was based on current events, and states the case for making CEO’s owners rather than agents.  The date of publication is not yet set.

Englemann Book Nears Shipping Date

Professor Stephen Englemann's new book Imaging Interest in Political Thought: The Origins of Economic Rationality, (Duke University Press, 2003) argues that monistic interest--or the shaping and coordination of different pursuits through imagined economies of self and public interest--constitutes the end and the means of contemporary liberal government.

The book will ship in October.  Orders can be placed through Amazon.com

Two Ani Ruhil Articles Published

Ani Ruhil’s article titled, Urban Armageddon or Politics as Usual? The Case of Municipal Civil Service Reform, was published in the January 2003 issue of the American Journal of Political Science. 

Also in the first month of the new year, Professor Ruhil collaboration with the Pedro J. Camões of the Universidade do Minho appeared in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.  The article is titled, What Lies Beneath: The Political Roots of State Merit Systems.  It can be viewed on line at the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

Amalia Pallares' Book Published

The University of Oklahoma Press has published Amalia Pallares' book: From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twentieth Century. Drawing on extensive research in Ecuador, Pallares examines the South American Indian movement in the Ecuadorian Andes and explains its shift from class politics to racial politics in the late Twentieth Century. Indigenous peoples created a positive Indian self-definition and a pan-ethnic Indian movement. They reconceived their political identity, their cultural structures, and the relationship between their social movement and the state.

For more information about this book visit the University of Oklahoma Press