Böcker utgivna av Boston Review/Boston Critic Inc.

American democracy is broken, but partisanship alone is not to blame. Political scientist Lee Drutman places our two-party system instead at the center of the American democratic crisis. Of course, partisan conflict plays a role, forcing voters to choose between a party that they might dislike and another that is far worse. But the two party system creates this corrosive dynamic. And the results of this system are dire: more partisan division, low political legitimacy, and high citizen disaffection.This is how democracies crumble. The way to save democracy, Drutman argues, is to create more and better political parties through electoral reform and fusion voting.We Need More Parties features responses to Drutman from Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell, political scientists Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld, political theorist and former candidate for Massachusetts governor Danielle Allen, and others.The issue also includes essays on American democracy and the question of political legitimacy: Project 2025 and abuses of executive power, the anointing of J. D. Vance and the liberal embrace of "reasonable conservatives”, the politics of grief in rural America, and more.Contributors: Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Danielle Allen, Deepak Bhargava, Elizabeth Catte, Kevin Donovan, Lee Drutman, James Goodwin, Arianna Jiménez, Josh Lerner, Cerin Lindgrensavage, Bob Master, Maurice Mitchell, Joel Rogers, Sam Rosenfeld, Daniel Schlozman, Doran Schrantz, Ian Shapiro, Honora Spicer, Sunaura Taylor, Grant Tudor, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, and David Walsh

In the latest issue of Boston Review, philosopher Olfmi O. Tw leads a forum on progressive orientations to the state. He argues for a twenty-first century two-step politics that identifies fossil capital as the principal barrier to achieving a left/progressive vision of state power and social justice. Respondents include Thea Riofrancos, Martin O'Neill, Amy Kapczynski, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Ishac Diwan and Dani Rodrik, and more.The issue also includes essays by Joshua Craze on the relationship between militias and the state, Leila Farsakh on Palestinian statehood, Janice Fine on labor and the administrative state, and a discussion between Sam Huneke and Hugh Ryan on queerness and the state.

How can the speculative imagination help us build a better world?At a world-historical moment of global upheaval, speculative writing is enjoying a renaissance. This collection of poetry, stories, and essays engages speculation as both a ubiquitous feature of financial capitalism and a radical tool of collective imagination. By rejecting dominant ideas about what is possible, speculation empowers us to plot new paths to a more just world.Creative works range over violence and healing, memory and erasure, and alternative worlds, while essays span the meaning of land and community in the African diaspora, Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction, and the ethics of the far future. Taken together, these works suggest that speculation is ultimately about our relationships with each other—as one contributor puts it, "what they have been, what they are, and most important, what they could be."

Some of today’s top legal thinkers consider the ways that legal thinking has bolstered—rather than corrected—injustice.Bringing together some of today’s top legal thinkers, this volume reimagines law in the twenty-first century, zeroing in on the most vibrant debates among legal scholars today. Going beyond constitutional jurisprudence as conventionally understood, contributors show the ways in which legal thinking has bolstered rather than corrected injustice. If conservative approaches have been well served by court-centered change, contributors to Rethinking Law consider how progressive ones might rely on movement-centered, legislative, and institutional change. In other words, they believe that the problems we face today are vastly bigger than can be addressed by litigation. The courts still matter, of course, but they should be less central to questions about social justice. Contributors describe how constitutional law supported a system of economic inequality; how we might rethink the First Amendment in the age of the internet; how deeply racial bias is embedded in our laws; and what kinds of changes are necessary. They ask which is more important: the laws or how they are enforced? Rethinking Law considers these questions with an eye toward a legal system that truly supports a just society. Contributors include Jedediah Purdy, David Grewal, Jamal Greene, Reva Siegel, Jocelyn Simonson, Aziz Rana 

How we can recover from terrible ruptures, the pandemic, toxic politics, racist horrors, class warfare, gendered violence, and ecological brinksmanship.Individually and collectively, we bear deep wounds. Some of these are generations old; all have been worsened by a destructive period of pyrrhic politics that left us ill-equipped to respond to a global health catastrophe. As we struggle to recover our footing and grieve our dead, Boston Review believes that the arts must have a voice in the conversation about how we heal. In this new anthology of poetry, fiction, and essays from renowned writers and newcomers, writers explore whether and how we can repair terrible ruptures, life-threatening illnesses and the pandemic, toxic politics, racist horrors, class warfare, gendered violence, and ecological brinksmanship. ContributorsAriella Aisha Azoulay, Kemi Alabi, Donia Elizabeth Allen, Don Mee Choi, Adebe DeRango-Adem, Emma Dries, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Randall Horton, Savonna Johnson, Kim Hyesoon, Maya Marshall, Colleen Murphy, Simone Person, aureleo sans, Bishakh Som, Olúfmi O. Táíwò, Meredith Talusan, Brian Teare, Yiru Zhang

What might happen if a woman's right to vote is seen as coequal with her right to be elected? Why are other countries so much better than the United States at electing women to office? In her lead essay in this anthology, Jennifer Piscopo argues that women in the United States haven't fought for the right to be elected. A comparative political scientist, she shows that suffrage movements around the world often focused not only on the right to vote, but also the right to stand for office. As a result, when these movements succeeded, they saw the right to be elected as a positive right, enabling nationwide-efforts to both encourage and actively recruit female candidates. In her exploration of positive and negative rights in the United States, Piscopo explores what might happen if a woman's right to vote is seen as coequal with her right to be elected, considering, among other things, how our definitions of representational government could both change and restore public trust in democracy.Other essays in this anthology similarly analyze history for lessons that can be applied to today's political climate. What effects does gender parity in legislatures have both on policies enacted and government performance? How has the complicated relationship between race and gender both informed and prevented progress for both movements? And, most immediately, what will it take for a woman to be elected as president in the United States?