Table of Contents

1. Introducing the Ancient Debate: The Ideal versus the Real
2. Why Government? Security, Anarchy, and Some Basic Group Dynamics
3. Governing Society: We Know Who You Are
4. Government’s Role in the Economy: The Offer You Can’t Refuse
5. Structures and Institutions
6. El Grande Loco Casa Blanca-The Executive (in Bad Spanish)
7. The Confederacy of Dunces-The Legislative (Not in Bad Spanish)
8. Brazilian Bureaucracy-Do we even need to bother with the Jokes?
9. Courts and Law: Politics behind the Gavel, Obviously, but What’s Under the Gown?
10. Not Quite Right, but Still Good: The Democratic Ideal in Modern Politics
11. Media, Politics and Government: Talking Heads are Better than None
12. International Politics: Apocalypse Now and Then
13. Chapter 13 was Confiscated for Your Protection
14. Political Culture: Sex & Agriculture, Getting Rucked Explains it All
15. The Lastest and Bestest Chapter: The Study of Politics

About the Author

Douglas A. Van Belle is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He is currently examining how science fiction as thought experiment shapes the conceptual space between science and society. Other areas of research include simulations of international politics, rational choice and revolutionary collective action, global media freedom, the social nature of science and SETI, Palaeontology and scientific progress in the Social Sciences, media’s influence on foreign aid bureaucracies, international information flows and the necessary conditions for the adoption of disaster risk reduction policies, the role of science fiction in society, and the use of science fiction to teach politics. His latest novel, A World Adrift, is set in the skies of Venus, 800 years after it was first colonized, and explores the human impact of the politics of extreme resource scarcity.