Learning Democratic Practices: Political Parties, Media and American Political Development

Product Description'Janet Youngblood summarizes in the opening chapters of her book serious deficits of late modern American democracy, such as the increasing role of the mass media, and the famous Supreme Court decision that money is speech . Her own in-depth interviews with party members discloses how all this has ruined the internal party democracy. American political parties nowadays are run as corporations, industries. The bewildering consequence is that such political parties discourage political participation, instead of what is their true mission, to stimulate participation. Janet Youngblood makes clear that this trend must and can be reversed.' Ruud van der Veen, Teachers College Columbia University 'Janet Youngblood makes an important contribution to our understanding of the process by which citizens become partisans. Her unique perspective comes from viewing the process of democracy through the lens of learning theory, and in analyzing political parties and the actors inside of those organizations as communities of practice. Youngblood s book will be of relevance to practitioners as well as scholars in education, political science, and public policy, and I recommend it most highly.' Jane Junn, Rutgers University 'This study is a very important documentation of severe problems in the US democratic system. To analyse the political parties as communities of practice, and to make use of theories of political socialization and adult learning to do so, has proved to be a very productive approach. The author s in-depth investigation reveals highly reprehensible features of the real political conditions of a nation which wants to be the democratic role model of others.' Knud Illeris, Professor of Lifelong Learning, Danish University of EducationReviewJanet Youngblood summarizes in the opening chapters of her book serious deficits of late modern American democracy, such as the increasing role of the mass media, and the famous Supreme Court decision that money is speech. Her own in-depth interviews with party members discloses how all this has ruined the internal party democracy. American political parties nowadays are run as corporations, industries. The bewildering consequence is that such political parties discourage political participation, instead of what is their true mission, to stimulate participation. Janet Youngblood makes clear that this trend must and can be reversed --Ruud van der Veen, Teachers College Columbia UniversityAbout the AuthorJanet W. Youngblood, MA, MBA, Ed D is a member of the adjunct faculty of Teachers College/Columbia University, New York City, in the Department of Organization and Leadership. She also teaches a course in American Political Development at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Department of Political Science. She is interested in democratic practices as learning opportunities for the exercise of political power. She studies the ways in which political institutions both facilitate and prevent citizens from translating social capital into political efficacy.