Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - Legislative Branch

Observing the polarized, debilitating politics of today's Congress, one wonders whether change is possible on Capitol Hill. In Thinking about Congress, Lawrence Dodd reminds us that Congress seemed equally intransigent at times the past, yet change and rejuvenation came. Reading his classic essays, one sees Congress move from Committee Government in mid-twentieth century to Liberal Democratic reforms in the 1970s to the 1994 Republican Revolution to Party Government today. Simultaneously, one proceeds with Dodd to an ever-deeper understanding of the dynamic character of...

The unrepresentativeness of the U.S. House of Representatives--in terms of ethnicity, gender, race, and socio--economic status--and its nearly closed system for election have generated questions about the legitimacy and authority of the House as an institution which represents citizens and whether House membership should mirror directly the diverse population of the nation.

This essay collection examines the causes of the unrepresentative character of the House and offers recommendations to make it a more representative deliberative body. The single-member district system is the major...

The unrepresentativeness of the U.S. House of Representatives--in terms of ethnicity, gender, race, and socio--economic status--and its nearly closed system for election have generated questions about the legitimacy and authority of the House as an institution which represents citizens and whether House membership should mirror directly the diverse population of the nation.

This essay collection examines the causes of the unrepresentative character of the House and offers recommendations to make it a more representative deliberative body. The single-member district system is the major...

During the early 1990s the Department of Justice used its Voting Rights Act power to object to racially unfair redistricting laws to force states to maximize minority congressional districts. The results were dramatic: Congressional Black Caucus membership swelled from 25 to 38 and nine new Hispanic congresspersons were sworn in. Only three years later, the maximization strategy lay in ruins. The courts forced many of the new minority districts to be redrawn and the judiciary reserved especially harsh criticism for the Department.

Cunningham examines and analyzes how the Department came...

Sheckels provides the first book-length study of Congressional debating. The limited work on the topic in the communication discipline has argued that such debating is tedious and inconsequential. Sheckels, however, offers a new paradigm, derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, that counteracts this assumption. This paradigm also counters the often unvoiced assumption that debates are inherently biopolar with the initial premise that they are instead polyphonic. The polyphony, however, goes beyond the recognition of the multiple speakers who participate and the drama they enact, to the...

In the waning moments of the 1973 session, Washington's state legislators voted salary increases for all elected officials. Charles H. Sheldon and Frank P. Weaver (who was one of the special judges) provide a unique insider's account of this important episode.

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Once a prominent feature of most theories on the structure and function of political systems, in recent years, social class or status has become one of the most neglected variables in research on contemporary American politics. This study analyzes the relationship between social status and referendum voting in an effort to refocus attention on social stratification in political science.