1st Edition
The Dark Side of Politics Essays on the Unpleasant Realities of Political Life
This series of scholarly chapters explores the unpleasant realities of modern politics – and American politics in particular – by examining how self- interest, war, violence, deception and institutional failure continue to characterize the political landscape.
Author Benjamin Ginsberg argues that the political world in which we like to think we live – the world of civic engagement, representative government and principled political discourse – is fleeting and fragile, resting uneasily upon the foundation of a harsh and dark reality.
Making a fundamental contribution to our understandings of politics, this book is an important read for students and scholars of American Politics and Government.
Chapter 1. Violence.
Chapter 2. War.
Chapter 3. Rewriting History.
Chapter 4. Bureaucracy.
Chapter 5. Duplicity.
Chapter 6. Surveillance and Secrecy.
Chapter 7. Legitimacy.
Epilogue: Death.
Biography
Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University, USA. He is the author, co- author or editor of 30 books including The Fall of the Faculty; Presidential Government; Downsizing Democracy; The Captive Public; Politics by Other Means; and America’s State Governments: A Critical Look at Disconnected Democracies (Routledge, 2021). Ginsberg received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1973 and was Professor of Government at Cornell until 1992 when he joined the Hopkins faculty.
