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| 1 |
ID:
165491
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| Summary/Abstract |
In federal political systems such as the United States, there has long existed a view that citizens should be more politically competent at the local level than at the federal level of government. Recent studies have challenged this view. This article argues that these findings may reflect only one part of the broader picture. Through a review of two recent studies, I contend that research in this realm must consider more than only the level of government. Odd as this sounds, assumptions about varying levels of political competence at different levels of government have always been premised on the notion that local-level politics is smaller and less complex than federal-level politics. However, when local politics takes place today against the backdrop of small villages and towns as well as in large cities, these are assumptions that must be reevaluated.
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| 2 |
ID:
138163
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| Summary/Abstract |
Fuelled by unparalleled recent development, China has by necessity been reaching outward in search of foreign resources and international recognition. The three books reviewed in this essay all speak to China's spectacular global ascendency of the past two decades—and to the political consequences and international reactions that have followed. What unites these three volumes—Tongdong Bai's China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (2012), Peter Nolan's Is China Buying the World? (2012) and William Callahan and Elena Barabantseva's edited volume, China Orders the World: Normative Soft Power and Foreign Policy (2011)—is their focus on the uniquely Chinese norms that now underpin China's soft power in the twenty-first century. How will China go about ordering the world and will it succeed? The answers to these questions, as these authors demonstrate, may have less to do with China's present than with its ancient past.
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