Whether at parties, around the dinner table, or at the office, people talk about politics all the time. Yet while such conversations are a common part of everyday life, political scientists know very little about how they actually work. In Talking about Politics, Katherine Cramer Walsh provides an innovative, intimate study of how ordinary people use informal group discussions to make sense of politics. Walsh examines how people rely on social identities—their ideas of who "we" are—to come to terms with current events. In Talking about Politics, she shows how political conversation, friendship, and identity evolve together, creating stronger communities and stronger social ties. Political scientists, sociologists, and anyone interested in how politics really works need to read this book.

Those who analyze public opinion have long contended that the average citizen is incapable of recounting consistently even the most rudimentary facts about current politics; that the little the average person does know is taken strictly from what the media report, with no critical reflection; and that the consequence is a polity that is ill prepared for democratic governance. And yet social movements, comprised by and large of average citizens, have been a prominent feature of the American political scene throughout American history and have experienced a resurgence. William Gamson asks, how is it that so many people become active in movements if they are so uninterested and badly informed about issues? The conclusion he reaches in this book is a striking refutation of the common wisdom about the public's inability to reason about politics.

Nina Eliasoph's vivid portrait of American civic life reveals an intriguing culture of political avoidance. Despite the importance for democracy of open-ended political conversation among ordinary citizens, many Americans try hard to avoid appearing to care about politics. To discover how, where and why Americans create this culture of avoidance, the author accompanied suburban volunteers, activists, and recreation club members for over two years, listening to them talk - and avoid talking - about the wider world, together and in encounters with government, media, and corporate authorities. She shows how citizens create and express ideas in everyday life, contrasting their privately expressed convictions with their lack of public political engagement. Her book challenges received ideas about culture, power and democracy, while exposing the hard work of producing apathy.

Traces how the Republican Party in the South after Reconstruction transformed from a biracial organization to a mostly all-white one.

For generations Islamic and Western intellectuals and policymakers have debated Islam’s compatibility with democratic government, usually with few solid conclusions. But where—Brandon Kendhammer asks in this book—have the voices of ordinary, working-class Muslims been in this conversation? Doesn’t the fate of democracy rest in their hands? Visiting with community members in northern Nigeria, he tells the complex story of the stunning return of democracy to a country that has also embraced Shariah law and endured the radical religious terrorism of Boko Haram. Kendhammer argues that despite Nigeria’s struggles with jihadist insurgency, its recent history is really one of tenuous and fragile reconciliation between mass democratic aspirations and concerted popular efforts to preserve Islamic values in government and law. Combining an innovative analysis of Nigeria’s Islamic and political history with visits to the living rooms of working families, he sketches how this reconciliation has been constructed in the conversations, debates, and everyday experiences of Nigerian Muslims. In doing so, he uncovers valuable new lessons—ones rooted in the real politics of ordinary life—for how democracy might work alongside the legal recognition of Islamic values, a question that extends far beyond Nigeria and into the Muslim world at large.

If politics as practiced is talk, then how does a political figure—especially an American President—talk politics? If someone can be all style and no substance, is there any actual political substance to style? Talking Politics looks at the alpha and omega of presidential image, its highs—Lincoln at Gettysburg—and lows—"W" at any microphone—demystifying the spun mists of political "message" on which an institution like the American presidency has always depended.

A comprehensive but accessible examination of how elite Chinese politics work covering the period from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

Honest, objective, and informed political debates are all too rare in today’s polarized and partisan climate. Public policy is increasingly driven by ideology while political spin, distortions, and even demonizing opponents by disseminating outright lies are routine practice from Washington to the local city council. Super-heated and hyper-partisan rhetoric, increasingly homogeneous political and ideological communities, and the public’s spotty knowledge about our political system all undermine informed and considered responses to policy debates. This book identifies common areas of confusion or misunderstanding about our political system—clarifying many distortions of accepted history, constitutional law, economics, and science—to help readers distinguish documented facts from the different conclusions and interpretations that may be drawn from those facts. Sheila Suess Kennedy aims to create a more informed electorate and to better ground debates in fact, from Capitol Hill to the family dinner table. Talking Politics? What You Need to Know before Opening Your Mouth provides a solid starting point from which Americans can build more persuasive arguments for their preferred policies, whatever they may be, and will interest students of political science, civics, and history, from high school to undergraduates, and the general public interested in politics and informed discussion.

Now available in its 3rd edition, with new commentary on political psychology and communication in the Trump era, Kling's book could not be any more timely, as Americans--whether as media pundits or conversing at a party--talk past one another with even greater volume, heat, and disinterest in contrary opinions.The Three Languages of Politics it is a book about how we communicate issues and our ideologies, and how language intended to persuade instead divides.

How we talk about issues in American society, not changing political institutions, is the remedy for political polarization. American politics is better understood from four impartial perspectives-Loyal, Tactful, Detached, and Caring. Immigration, climate change, and other controversial issues are better understood from the four perspectives.