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A List
4/23/07
SLU PROFS COLLABORATE ON 'GOOD SOCIETY' TEXTBOOK
CANTON - What constitutes "the good society?" Two St. Lawrence University government
professors - one retired - have examined the question in a new textbook on comparative
politics that its publisher calls "a bold departure."
The Good Society: An Introduction to Comparative Politics will be released by Longman
Press April 27. Its authors are Professor of Government Alan L. Draper and Emeritus
Professor of Government J. Ansil Ramsay.
This thematic introduction to comparative politics, framed around and driven by the
concept of "the good society," emphasizes institutions, draws on the United States
for some of its comparisons, and includes a unique assortment of case studies - touching
on a range of countries from rich democracies to less-developed states - to make abstract
concepts concrete.
The publishers state, "The book's normative approach is a bold departure from other
books as it examines political systems and measures them against the yardstick of a
'good society.' [Draper and Ramsay] outline in their first chapter the qualities
of a good society, then compare and evaluate postindustrial democracies in the
West; less-developed countries; and communist and post-communist countries against
this standard. Not only do the authors thoroughly examine the performance of
different countries against the criteria of the good society, but they explain
why some countries are better than others at creating one."
Draper is also the author of A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Political
Education, 1955-68; Conflict of Interests: Labor and the Civil Rights Movement;
and The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government. He is
a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds two master's degrees and the
Ph.D. from Columbia, and won St. Lawrence's J. Calvin Keene Award in 1996.
Ramsay retired from the faculty in 2005, after a 35-year teaching career at the
University. He is a graduate of Florida State University, and earned the Ph.D.
at Cornell University. He is an expert on the government and economy of Southeast
Asia, particularly Thailand, and has been awarded a number of grants to conduct
research there. In 1984, he was the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study
economic difficulties in Southeast Asia. Ramsay is the author of several
books on related topics and in 2003, delivered the Piskor Faculty Lecture
on campus, on the topic "Good Societies and How to Get Them: The Political
Economy of Development."
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