{"product_id":"ruling-oneself-out-ivan-ermakoff-9780822341642","title":"Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications","description":"What induces groups to commit political suicide? This book explores the decisions to surrender power and to legitimate this surrender: collective abdications. Commonsensical explanations impute such actions to coercive pressures, actors' miscalculations, or their contamination by ideologies at odds with group interests. Ivan Ermakoff argues that these explanations are either incomplete or misleading. Focusing on two paradigmatic cases of voluntary and unconditional surrender of power-the passing of an enabling bill granting Hitler the right to amend the Weimar constitution without parliamentary supervision (March 1933), and the transfer of full executive, legislative, and constitutional powers to Marshal P騁ain (Vichy, France, July 1940)-\u003ci\u003eRuling Oneself Out\u003c\/i\u003e recasts abdication as the outcome of a process of collective alignment.\u003cp\u003eErmakoff distinguishes several mechanisms of alignment in troubled and uncertain times and assesses their significance through a fine-grained examination of actors' beliefs, shifts in perceptions, and subjective states. To this end, he draws on the analytical and methodological resources of perspectives that usually stand apart: primary historical research, formal decision theory, the phenomenology of group processes, quantitative analyses, and the hermeneutics of testimonies. In elaborating this dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, \u003ci\u003eRuling Oneself Out\u003c\/i\u003e restores the complexity and indeterminate character of pivotal collective decisions and demonstrates that an in-depth historical exploration can lay bare processes of crucial importance for understanding the formation of political preferences, the paradox of self-deception, and the makeup of historical events as highly consequential.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Ivan Ermakoff\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0822341646\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780822341642\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Duke University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/21\/2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 440\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.38lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.26h x 6.29w x 1.03d","brand":"Ivan Ermakoff","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43926532292863,"sku":"9780822341642","price":31.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_7e721b3d-53d0-4a1f-9c4a-04cf52820502.jpg?v=1681083589","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/ruling-oneself-out-ivan-ermakoff-9780822341642","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}