| Summary: | Imagining Politics is an interrogation of two interpretations of government. The first, coming from popular culture fictions about politics, the second coming from academic theories about government, particularly the assumptions of mainstream U.S. political science. Stephen Benedict Dyson argues that fictions and theories both function as attempts at meaning making -- making sensible the otherwise insensible realm of political behavior. By taking fiction seriously, and by arguing that political science theory is homologous to fictions, the book offers a radical new perspective on both. The specialist is challenged to think anew not just about fictions such as The West Wing, House of Cards, Borgen, Black Mirror, and Scandal, but about the assumptions that construct the discipline of political science itself. It is also about our political moment. The two populist shocks of our time -- Brexit and the election of Trump -- are set in a new context here as we trace the development of an image of politics as an insider game through fictions and academic theory, and look at how Brexit and Trump took on that image, and won.
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