1. Declining voter turnout and citizen participationFrom citizens to customers: The demise of participatory democracy.Benjamin Ginsberg and Matthew Crenson
Voter turnout in the United States has been declining for six decades and will likely continue to do so. And the dirty little secret is that the politicians prefer it this way, because a smaller electorate is more predictable and reliable, say two Johns Hopkins professors who have written a new book on the declining role of ordinary citizens in the United States.
It wasn't always that way. The ordinary American citizen once played an important role in the state. In order to govern, to raise taxes and to raise armies, the government needed to engage the ordinary citizen to generate mass support. In exchange for this participation, the citizen received benefits such as legal rights, pensions and the right to vote.
But as Benjamin Ginsberg and Matthew Crenson, professors of political science at The Johns Hopkins University, point out in a new book, Western governments have found ways to raise armies and taxes that do not require much involvement from their citizens, rendering people into customers rather than engaged citizens.
"The major change is that organizing citizens, who used to loom large in the political process, just don't matter much any more," said Ginsberg, who co-wrote with Crenson the book "Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public." (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
2. Control of CongressWho will control the House and Senate?Joseph Cooper
Joseph Cooper, a political scientist and expert on Congress, says that if the election were held today, the Republicans would gain control of both houses, so effectively has the discussion of war with Iraq thrown off Democratic plans to use the economy and corporate corruption against President Bush and the Republicans.
"Things are very close and, even more important, subject to great volatility," Cooper says. "The Republicans have made gains because of the war and Democratic division on it. If the election were tomorrow, the chances are that the Republicans would hold the House and take the Senate." Cooper notes that they would only need a tie in the Senate to have control.
Cooper, who has followed events in Congress closely for several decades, would be an excellent source on what's brewing in this election cycle.
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