Tag: Meddling

Free Download Tyson Reeder, James Romick (Narrator), "Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America"
English | ASIN: B0DC7PDNJ7 | 2024 | MP3@64 kbps | ~12:41:00 | 349 MB
Tyson Reeder’s book traces early America’s rocky beginnings, when foreign interference and political conflict threatened to undermine its aspirations and ideals, even its very existence. Spanning the period from the Revolution to the War of 1812, and focusing on the presidency of James Madison, it reveals a nation adjusting to rancorous partisan politics, aggravated by the untested and imperfect new tools of governance and the growing power of media.
No figure was more in the center of it all than James Madison. As a leading delegate at the Constitutional Convention, Republican congressional leader, secretary of state, and president, Madison grappled with foreign meddling for over three decades. He emerged as a political leader, feeding the very partisanship that bred foreign intrigues. As chief executive, he presided over the calamitous barrage of accusations and counteraccusations of foreign collusion that culminated in the War of 1812.
The United States remains vulnerable to forces that test whether the constitutional system Madison was so central in implementing can withstand outside meddling while accommodating partisan conflict. Madison’s successes and failures, along with his original vision of the Constitution and party politics, illuminate the ongoing struggle between domestic polarization and foreign interference.

Free Download Democratic Vulnerability and Autocratic Meddling: The "Thucydidean Brink" in Regressive Geopolitical Competition By Mika Aaltola
2021 | 205 Pages | ISBN: 3030546012 | PDF | 2 MB
This book investigates complex regressive dynamics in contemporary Western democracies. They include not only severe polarization in domestic politics, but also efforts by external autocratic powers to co-opt the increasingly digitalized political processes in the West. The discussion on democratic vulnerability and regression has rarely been historically and theoretically reflective. The aim is to fill this relative void by drawing on classical sources to inform about the political anxieties and agitations of our present time as the Western world moves towards new critical elections. The key concept of the analysis, a Thucydidean brink, refers to a critical point where the attraction felt towards an outside geopolitical competitor becomes stronger than the political affinity felt towards one’s domestic political opponent. As political polarization, societal decomposition and the collusive tendencies grow in strength, political factions and political candidates in western societies can be(come) drawn to autocratic actors. Perhaps most alarmingly, the resulting nexus between democracies and autocracies can further intensify mutual regression and form downwards-sloping spirals that are not ultimately under any strategic control. This book draws from the experiences of recent elections in major Western democracies to illustrate the widening and deepening underlying regressive tendency.