Richard J Ellis
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 380401 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Richard J Ellis |
| PRENOMES | Richard J |
| SOBRENOME | Ellis |
| ASSINATURA | ELLIS R J |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Willamette University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2690-9090 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 57 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 221 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 55 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 4 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1986 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Benjamin Urner, Utopian Socialism, and the Origins of Direct Legislation
Historians have long identified Benjamin Urner as the first exponent of direct legislation in the United States, a claim that has been repeated without ever being carefully examined. In this article, I excavate Urner’s career and political thought and show that while the oft-repeated account may give Urner too much credit as a direct democracy pioneer, it also neglects an important transatlantic socialist utopian strand in nineteenth-century radi…
Reimagining Democracy
The initiative and referendum are commonly characterized as quintessentially Populist or Progressive reforms, but transatlantic socialism deserves pride of place in the intellectual history of direct legislation in the United States. A decade and a half before the People’s Party famously commended the idea of direct legislation at its 1892 nominating convention in Omaha, Nebraska, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) made the demand for direct legisla…
The Opportunist
Little remembered today, James W. Sullivan wrote the book that, more than any other, catalyzed the initiative and referendum movement in the United States. Crucial to the success of Sullivan’s Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum was his immersion in the labor radicalism of New York City in the 1880s, including as editor of the Boycotter and Union Printer and labor editor of Henry George’s Standard. Especial…
A Case of Command
So often celebrated as Abraham Lincoln's defining achievement, the Emancipation Proclamation is best understood as a “painful last resort” that Lincoln turned to only after repeatedly failing to persuade others to back his preferred policy of gradual, compensated emancipation, accompanied by the voluntary colonization of freed Blacks. For all its fame, the proclamation is a classic “case of command” in which the reliance on unilateral power revea…
J eremy D. B ailey . The Idea of Presidential Representation
Edmund S. Morgan once observed that all “government requires make-believe” (Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America [1988], 13), and few political fictions seem more fantastical than that of the American president representing the diverse views of several hundred million American people. The story of how Americans came to accept—and continued to contest—this fiction is the subject of Jeremy D. Bailey’s The Ide…
Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox
Politics, Policy, and Culture
This new set of original case studies is designed to offer an empirical counterpart to Cultural Theory (Westview, 1990), the landmark statement of political culture theory authored by Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, and to extend and challenge the analysis developed there. Here, the theoretical concepts laid out in that book are operationalized and applied in textbook fashion to key areas in methodology, public policy, and h…
Politics, Policy, and Culture
The Social Construction of Slavery
This chapter explores the social construction thesis by examining the understanding of slave culture in the United States that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Cultural theory begins from the premise that the world is socially constructed. To claim that the world is socially constructed is to say more than just that the world is filtered through categories rather than directly experienced. To draw attention to the wa…
Siemers David J. The Myth of Coequal Branches
Toward the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, Utah’s Republican Senator Mike Lee launched what he billed as the Article One Project, with the aim of restoring Congress to its rightful place as the “
Culture Matters
Culture Matters
Cultural Theory
Why do people want what they want? Why does one person see the world as a place to control, while another feels controlled by the world? A useful theory of culture, the authors contend, should start with these questions, and the answers, given different historical conditions, should apply equally well to people of all times, places, and walks of life.Taking their cue from the pioneering work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, the authors of Cultural…
Pluralism
A constant irritation to the townspeople'? Local, Regional and National Politics and London's County Asylums at Epsom
In 1908, The Times described London County Council's asylums near Epsom as ‘a constant irritation to the townspeople’. The article was specifically concerned with the patient walking parties that made their way into the town. This, and references to the site of the asylum, focused on the sense of imposition as local residents were forced to contend with London's insane population. As the ‘townspeople’ negotiated the impact of the asylums, the Urb…
'I know for certain . . . that these are bad people'
In 2003 George W. Bush offered a black and white depiction of the detainees held within Guantánamo Bay. Having removed all their legal and constitutional protections and imposed an absolute executive authority, Bush baldly asserted that they were 'bad people'. Yet, ironically, by taking these measures, Bush also visited upon the US problems and threats that Barack Obama still struggles to resolve. Bush's solution created a new set of dilemmas, si…
Transnational American Studies - for what? A partial stocktaking
(2008). Transnational American Studies — for what? A partial stocktaking. Comparative American Studies An International Journal: Vol. 6, Special Issue on Transnational American Studies — For What?, pp. 3-4
Policy Speech in the Nineteenth Century Rhetorical Presidency
Jeffrey Tulis's The Rhetorical Presidency (1987) is among the most influential accounts of the historical development of the American presidency. According to Tulis, the nineteenth‐century presidency embodied the founders' proscriptions against the rhetorical presidency in several ways. Chief among these were that “unofficial” speeches were generally few in number and limited to vague, innocuous utterances that avoided specific policies or partis…
Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World
Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the oth…
USAmerican Studies in the United Kingdom
It is first necessary to lay down some framing parameters to the study of the USA in the UK’s Higher Education (HE) institutions—its Universities and Colleges: -A 2004 article in The Guardian by Polly Toynbee, widely read around the world -the introduction of “top-up” fees which UK and EU citizens wishing to enter UK HE -USAmerican Studies’ “critical mass” in any one institution; -the quinquennial government-imposed “Research Assessment” Exercise…
E Pluribus Multitudinum
As part of the "international initiative" at the 2004 meeting of the Ameri-can Studies Association in Atlanta, a roundtable took place at which nineteen editors of American studies journals from different countries introduced their publications and discussed the current state of the field. However, as with a similar workshop held at the First Congress of the International American Studies Association in Leiden one year earlier, the ultimate effec…
The Presidency and Political Science
Postamerican Studies? Something is happening here
The Joy of Power
Political scientist James David Barber (1972) built bis well-known theory of presidential character on the premise that psychological health could be measured by whether a president enjoys the exercise of political power. Although this psychological theory may predict presidential success in the twentieth century, the theory fails to illuminate the behavior of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century presidents. None of the great or near great nineteen…
To the Flag
For over one hundred years, it has been deeply ingrained in American culture. Saluting the flag in public schools began as part of a national effort to Americanize immigrants, its final six words imbuing it with universal hope and breathtaking power. Now Richard Ellis unfurls the fascinating history of the Pledge of Allegiance and of the debates and controversies that have sometimes surrounded it. For anyone who has ever recited those thirty-one …
Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World
Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the oth…
Culture and the Environment in the Pacific Northwest
Douglas and Wildavsky argue that environmental activism is rooted in an egalitarian cultural bias. Others, like Paehlke, counter that environmental commitments and concerns are autonomous from redistributive concerns. Students of the "New Politics" agree that environmentalism is autonomous from conventional left-right distributive concerns but also argue that environmental attitudes and beliefs are embedded in "postmaterial" values, such as citiz…
A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming of the Civil War
Any basic interpretation of American history,' one prominent historian contends, 'will have to account for...the coming of the Civil War.' Yet the two basic interpretations that have dominated the study of American politics, the progressive and consensus paradigms, have spawned partial and unsatisfactory explanations for what is arguably the most central event in the American past. After briefly analyzing the insights and limitations of these app…
The case for cultural theory
In an essay in these pages, Jeffrey Friedman charged that Cultural Theory obscures the unity and uniqueness of modern egalitarian individualism; reduces culture to society; ignores history; is only applicable to contemporary, Western politics; provides an unsatisfactory account of preference formation and preference change; and leaves no place for the vitally important debate over what we should prefer. Although some of Friedman's criticisms stem…
Policy Speech in the Nineteenth Century Rhetorical Presidency
Jeffrey Tulis's The Rhetorical Presidency (1987) is among the most influential accounts of the historical development of the American presidency. According to Tulis, the nineteenth‐century presidency embodied the founders' proscriptions against the rhetorical presidency in several ways. Chief among these were that “unofficial” speeches were generally few in number and limited to vague, innocuous utterances that avoided specific policies or partis…
Speaking to the People
Journal Article Speaking to the People: The Rhetorical Presidency in Historical Perspective. Ed. by Richard J. Ellis. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998. x, 283 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 1-55849-158-9. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 1-55849-159-7.) Get access David Zarefsky David Zarefsky Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 86, I…
The Age of Great Dreams
Journal Article The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s. By David Farber. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. viii, 296 pp. Cloth, $25.00, ISBN0-8090-2401-2. Paper, $11.95, ISBN 0-8090-1567-6.) Get access Richard J. Ellis Richard J. Ellis Willamette University, Salem, Oregon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Pages 360–361, https://doi.org/10.2307/…
Rival Visions of Equality in American Political Culture
This article distinguishes between a competitive individualist process-oriented vision of equality and an egalitarian results-oriented vision of equality, and examines the changing relationship between these visions of equality in the American past. What is “exceptional” about the United States is not, as is often claimed, that it lacked a tradition of equal results but that those who favored equalizing results believed that equal process was a s…
Explaining the Occurrence of Charismatic Leadership in Organizations
Charisma is commonly regarded as disruptive and unpredictable. Its origins are treated as mysterious and unexplainable. This view of charisma is due in part to a tendency to reify charisma, but more importantly to the lack of an adequate theory of social organization. After clearing up some methodological confusions surrounding the concept of charisma, I present a theory that predicts the type of organization, and the type of organizational situa…
Presidential Mandates in the Nineteenth Century
A central paradox of the modern American presidency is that citizens regularly call for strong presidential leadership while at the same time their political culture predisposes them to be reluctant followers.1 One of the ways contemporary presidents resolve this paradox is by invoking an electoral mandate. By persuading others that he possesses a mandate from the voters to pursue a particular policy agenda, a president can disguise his leadershi…
The Opportunist
Little remembered today, James W. Sullivan wrote the book that, more than any other, catalyzed the initiative and referendum movement in the United States. Crucial to the success of Sullivan’s Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum was his immersion in the labor radicalism of New York City in the 1880s, including as editor of the Boycotter and Union Printer and labor editor of Henry George’s Standard. Especial…
A constant irritation to the townspeople'? Local, Regional and National Politics and London's County Asylums at Epsom
In 1908, The Times described London County Council's asylums near Epsom as ‘a constant irritation to the townspeople’. The article was specifically concerned with the patient walking parties that made their way into the town. This, and references to the site of the asylum, focused on the sense of imposition as local residents were forced to contend with London's insane population. As the ‘townspeople’ negotiated the impact of the asylums, the Urb…
"Pluralist Political Science & "The State
The debate over "bringing the state back in" to political analysis typically combines two distinct issues: state autonomy and state coherence. This article contends that pluralist and other mainstream political scientists are reluctant to speak of "the state," not, as their statist critics charge, because their explanations are society-centered, but rather because they doubt that governmental actors and institutions are coherent enough to warrant…
Radical Lockeanism in American Political Culture
American political culture is commonly portrayed, to borrow a phrase from Emerson as the lengthened shadow of John Locke. In recent years a debate over how best to interpret Locke's views on property has raged among students of political philosophy. According to some, Locke was the bourgeois philosopher of possessive individualism who sanctioned unlimited accumulation and competitive capitalism. Although Thomas Paine apparently never read Locke, …
Legitimating Slavery in the Old South
“Hegemony” has become a fashionable catchword in a number of intellectual circles. One encounters it among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, even (or, perhaps, especially) literary critics. Many a frustrated radical finds it a useful explanation for the quiescence of the masses. Marxist scholars frequently see it as a liberating departure from Marx's economic reductionism. More mainstream social scientists often det…
E Pluribus Multitudinum
As part of the "international initiative" at the 2004 meeting of the Ameri-can Studies Association in Atlanta, a roundtable took place at which nineteen editors of American studies journals from different countries introduced their publications and discussed the current state of the field. However, as with a similar workshop held at the First Congress of the International American Studies Association in Leiden one year earlier, the ultimate effec…
The Joy of Power
Political scientist James David Barber (1972) built bis well‐known theory of presidential character on the premise that psychological health could be measured by whether a president enjoys the exercise of political power. Although this psychological theory may predict presidential success in the twentieth century, the theory fails to illuminate the behavior of eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century presidents. None of the great or near great nineteen…
Polarization and presidentialism
The Presidential Candidate, Then and Now
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRichard J. EllisRichard J. Ellis is an associate professor and the chair of politics at Willamette University. Mark Dedrick is a recent graduate of Willamette University
Romancing the Oppressed
In the 1960s, the New Left sought to transform American society by mobilizing the most oppressed and excluded groups—blacks, the poor, unemployed youths. This article explores both the causes and consequences of the powerful attraction that the American New Left felt for the oppressed and downtrodden. The political thought and actions of the New Left cannot be reduced to psychological motives but must instead be rooted in the New Left's commitmen…
A Pluralistic Model of Culture
Narrative, Myth and the Turner Thesis
American National Identity and the Structure of Myth
This paper will contend that what Frederic Jameson calls 'the immense Utopian appeal of Nationalism' derives from Nationalism's functional structure, established in what Jameson describes as the text's 'unconscious', where ideologies and myth interact.1 It thereby constitutes a structural mechanism effecting a repression of history in a duplicit process of revelation and concealment. This process, I believe, operates with an almost emblematic pot…
A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming of the Civil War
Any basic interpretation of American history,' one prominent historian contends, 'will have to account for...the coming of the Civil War.' Yet the two basic interpretations that have dominated the study of American politics, the progressive and consensus paradigms, have spawned partial and unsatisfactory explanations for what is arguably the most central event in the American past. After briefly analyzing the insights and limitations of these app…
Legitimating Slavery in the Old South
“Hegemony” has become a fashionable catchword in a number of intellectual circles. One encounters it among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, even (or, perhaps, especially) literary critics. Many a frustrated radical finds it a useful explanation for the quiescence of the masses. Marxist scholars frequently see it as a liberating departure from Marx's economic reductionism. More mainstream social scientists often det…
A Pluralistic Model of Culture
Explaining the Occurrence of Charismatic Leadership in Organizations
Charisma is commonly regarded as disruptive and unpredictable. Its origins are treated as mysterious and unexplainable. This view of charisma is due in part to a tendency to reify charisma, but more importantly to the lack of an adequate theory of social organization. After clearing up some methodological confusions surrounding the concept of charisma, I present a theory that predicts the type of organization, and the type of organizational situa…
Building Better Comparative Social Theory through Alternative Conceptions of Rationality
Charles Lockhart, Richard M. Coughlin, Building Better Comparative Social Theory through Alternative Conceptions of Rationality: A Review Essay, The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 793-809
Rival Visions of Equality in American Political Culture
This article distinguishes between a competitive individualist process-oriented vision of equality and an egalitarian results-oriented vision of equality, and examines the changing relationship between these visions of equality in the American past. What is “exceptional” about the United States is not, as is often claimed, that it lacked a tradition of equal results but that those who favored equalizing results believed that equal process was a s…
"Pluralist Political Science & "The State
The debate over "bringing the state back in" to political analysis typically combines two distinct issues: state autonomy and state coherence. This article contends that pluralist and other mainstream political scientists are reluctant to speak of "the state," not, as their statist critics charge, because their explanations are society-centered, but rather because they doubt that governmental actors and institutions are coherent enough to warrant…
Radical Lockeanism in American Political Culture
American political culture is commonly portrayed, to borrow a phrase from Emerson as the lengthened shadow of John Locke. In recent years a debate over how best to interpret Locke's views on property has raged among students of political philosophy. According to some, Locke was the bourgeois philosopher of possessive individualism who sanctioned unlimited accumulation and competitive capitalism. Although Thomas Paine apparently never read Locke, …
The case for cultural theory
In an essay in these pages, Jeffrey Friedman charged that Cultural Theory obscures the unity and uniqueness of modern egalitarian individualism; reduces culture to society; ignores history; is only applicable to contemporary, Western politics; provides an unsatisfactory account of preference formation and preference change; and leaves no place for the vitally important debate over what we should prefer. Although some of Friedman's criticisms stem…
American Political Cultures
American Political Cultures
American Political Cultures
The Shaping of American Liberalism
Presidential Mandates in the Nineteenth Century
A central paradox of the modern American presidency is that citizens regularly call for strong presidential leadership while at the same time their political culture predisposes them to be reluctant followers.1 One of the ways contemporary presidents resolve this paradox is by invoking an electoral mandate. By persuading others that he possesses a mandate from the voters to pursue a particular policy agenda, a president can disguise his leadershi…
The Politics Presidents Make
THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION Stephen Skowronek's wholly innovative study demonstrates that presidents are persistent agents of change, continually disrupting and transforming the political landscape. In an afterword to this new edition, the author examines leadership as it has been practiced by Bill Clinton and others. These leaders are neither great repudiators nor orthodox innovators. They challenge received political categ…
American Political Cultures
Journal Article American Political Cultures. By Richard J. Ellis. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xiv, 251 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-19-507900-0.) Get access James T. Kloppenberg James T. Kloppenberg Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 4, March 1995, Pages 1669–1670, https://doi.org/10.2307/2081662 Published: 01 March …
The Age of Great Dreams
Journal Article The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s. By David Farber. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. viii, 296 pp. Cloth, $25.00, ISBN0-8090-2401-2. Paper, $11.95, ISBN 0-8090-1567-6.) Get access Richard J. Ellis Richard J. Ellis Willamette University, Salem, Oregon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Pages 360–361, https://doi.org/10.2307/…
American Political Cultures
Romancing the Oppressed
In the 1960s, the New Left sought to transform American society by mobilizing the most oppressed and excluded groups—blacks, the poor, unemployed youths. This article explores both the causes and consequences of the powerful attraction that the American New Left felt for the oppressed and downtrodden. The political thought and actions of the New Left cannot be reduced to psychological motives but must instead be rooted in the New Left's commitmen…
Culture Matters
Foreword Gabriel A. Almond. * Preface: Remembering Aaron Wildavsky, the Cultural Theorist * Introduction Michael Thompson and Richard J. Ellis. Rational Choice And Cultural Choice * Social Science as Cultural Science, Rational Choice as Metaphysics Harry Eckstein. * Rational Choice and Culture: Clashing Perspectives or Complementary Modes of Analysis? Sun-Ki Chai. Institutions And Culture * A Cultural Theory of Organizations Dennis J. Coyle. * Cu…
The Presidential Candidate, Then and Now
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRichard J. EllisRichard J. Ellis is an associate professor and the chair of politics at Willamette University. Mark Dedrick is a recent graduate of Willamette University
Culture and the Environment in the Pacific Northwest
Douglas and Wildavsky argue that environmental activism is rooted in an egalitarian cultural bias. Others, like Paehlke, counter that environmental commitments and concerns are autonomous from redistributive concerns. Students of the "New Politics" agree that environmentalism is autonomous from conventional left-right distributive concerns but also argue that environmental attitudes and beliefs are embedded in "postmaterial" values, such as citiz…
Big John Drunk In Mexico”
(1998). “big John Drunk In Mexico”: JACK KEROUAC'S FAILED TRAVELLER IN TRISTESSA. Studies in Travel Writing: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 128-143
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