Suchergebnisse

AbstractSidney Verba's distinguished career, particularly his books, demonstrate a talent for finding superb collaborators, a deep normative concern about the health of civil society, and a commitment to using social science methods to understand the working of democratic systems. A re-reading of these books shows the development of an increasingly complex theory of political participation undergirding a complex portrait of American representative democracy, with all its flaws and strengths.

As political scientists, many of us encourage our students to get
involved in community activities and local politics; and in fact
many of our political science colleagues have run for state and
local (and, less frequently, national) office. While the literature
on parties, elections, and voting behavior may help provide us with
some context when we (or our students) enter the political arena,
there is a striking dearth of literature on voting behavior (and
candidate behavior) in local elections. What Herson (1957) referred to as "the lost world of
municipal government" can still be so characterized today, though a
few recent studies have attempted to predict winners of municipal
races (for example, McGleneghan and Ragland 2002; Lieske 1989). This
article analyzes my own education in local politics, which resulted
from my candidacy for the Town Council of Cazenovia, New York in
November, 2005. I came to the experience of participating in a local
campaign with expectations shaped by my teaching and research in
American politics at the national level, and found that these
expectations often gave way to the specifics of context. Jennifer
Lawless, a political scientist running for Congress in 2006,
expressed this sentiment as: "Political science is all generalities.
Politics is all individual circumstances" (Fischer 2006).