Election campaigns ought to be serious occasions in the life of a democratic polity. For citizens of a democracy, an election is a time to take stock-to reexamine our beliefs; to review our understanding of our own interests; to ponder the place of those interests in the larger social order; and to contemplate, and if necessary to revise, our understanding of how our commitments are best translated into governmental policy-or so we profess to believe.
Americans, however, are haunted by the fear that our election campaigns fall far short of the ideal to which we aspire. The typical modern American election campaign seems crass, shallow, and unengaging. The arena of our democratic politics seems to lie in an uncomfortable chasm between our political ideals and everyday reality.
What Are Campaigns For? is a multidisciplinary work of legal scholarship that examines the role of legal institutions in constituting the disjunction between political ideal and reality. The book explores the contemporary American ideal of democratic citizenship in election campaigns by tracing it to its historical sources, documenting its thorough infiltration of legal norms, evaluating its feasibility in light of the findings of empirical social science, and testing it against the requirements of democratic theory.

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zlib/Society, Politics & Philosophy/Government & Politics/James A Gardner/What are Campaigns For? The Role of Persuasion in Electoral Law and Politics_2607860.pdf

Gardner, James A.

Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

German Historical Institute London

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Oxford University Press USA, Oxford, 2009

Oxford ; New York, c2009

New York, Vermont, 2009

New York, 2009-07-02

0

lg1397592

{"edition":"1","isbns":["0195392612","9780195392616"],"last_page":232,"publisher":"Oxford University Press"}

Includes bibliographical references and index.

<p>Jim Gardner's lively book probes one of the central conflicts of our political culture. We live in a democratic era that valorizes citizen equality and participation. But our political institutions and many of our legal structures harken back to our republican founding, a time that presumed rule by elites and deference from the masses. Not surprisingly, our current ideals and inherited structures come into conflict. As Gardner provocatively shows, reconciling this conflict requires challenging the way we conduct our campaigns, the role of the media, the financing of our political parties, and just about every facet of our political edifice.</p><p>What Are Campaigns For? is a masterful account by a genuinely learned and gifted academic on a subject that is critical to democracy but too-long neglected. Jim Gardner fills the gap with a book that is an absolute must-read for any student of law and democracy. What Are Campaigns For? is a truly thoughtful and useful book.</p><p>This is a thoughtful and provocative book that forces us to think more deeply about a question that seems simple but is really quite complex. Gardner makes a compelling case that our expectations regarding political campaigns are unrealistic, distracting us from the most formidable challenges that our democracy faces. Adeptly combining history, political science, and law, Gardner argues that we should pay much greater attention to engaging citizens between campaigns rather than just during them. Scholars, advocates, policymakers, and ordinary citizens would all do well to heed his advice.</p>

Election campaigns ought to be serious occasions in the life of a democratic polity—or so we profess to believe. Americans, however, are haunted by the fear that their election campaigns fall far short of the ideal to which they aspire. The typical modern American election campaign seems crass, shallow, and unengaging. The arena of our democratic politics lies in an uncomfortable chasm between our political ideals and everyday reality. This book examines the role of legal institutions in constituting the disjunction between political ideal and reality. The book explores the contemporary American ideal of democratic citizenship in election campaigns by tracing it to its historical sources, documenting its thorough infiltration of legal norms, evaluating its feasibility in light of the findings of empirical social science, and testing it against the requirements of democratic theory. The book concludes that contemporary concerns about the poor quality of modern democracy are valid, but misdirected. Such concerns are misdirected because they rest on an unrealistic conception of what campaigns are capable of accomplishing, and because they misdiagnose the problems observable in campaigns as problems of campaigns. The real challenges to democratic self-governance lie not within the confined and artificial boundaries of the formal campaign itself, but in our everyday, non-electoral politics

Election campaigns ought to be serious occasions in the life of a democratic polity. For citizens of a democracy, an election is a time to take stock-to reexamine our beliefs; to review our understanding of our own interests; to ponder the place of those interests in the larger social order; and to contemplate, and if necessary to revise, our understanding of how our commitments are best translated into governmental policy-or so we profess to believe. Americans, however, are haunted by the fear that our election campaigns fall far short of the ideal to which we aspire. The typical modern American election campaign seems crass, shallow, and unengaging. The arena of our democratic politics seems to lie in an uncomfortable chasm between our political ideals and everyday reality. __What Are Campaigns For?__

Contents 8
Preface 10
Introduction 12
1 The Political Campaign: Emergence of the Deliberative Ideal 24
2 Election Law and the Formation of Public Opinion 56
3 Campaigns and the Stability of Political Opinion 94
4 Democratic Theory and the Thin Election Campaign 126
5 The Tabulative Campaign 158
Conclusion 202
Bibliography 206
Index 224
A 224
B 224
C 224
D 226
E 226
F 226
G 227
H 227
I 227
J 227
K 227
L 227
M 227
N 228
O 228
P 228
R 229
S 229
T 229
V 230
W 230
Z 230

The political campaign : emergence of the deliberative ideal
Election law and the campaign-exogeneity of public opinion
Campaigns and the stability of political opinion
Democratic theory and the thin election campaign
The tabulative campaign.

2015-09-28