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

James Lindsay offers a timely and comprehensive examination of the role the modern Congress plays in foreign policy. He shows how the resurgence of congressional activism marks a return to the pattern that was once the norm in American politics. He analyzes the distribution of decision-making authority in Congress and offers a broader understanding of how the United States will develop a new foreign policy for the post-Cold War world.

Volume XIV of this widely acclaimed series takes us to the third session of Congress in December 1790, when for the first time under the new Constitution Congress took up quarters at Philadelphia. House and Senate met in cramped Congress Hall, which, in tacit comment on the fragility of the new federal government, the nearby Pennsylvania State House overshadowed.

During this session Congress debated the federal courts, state militias and the U.S. military, the postal system, navigation bills, and other issues fundamental to the new order--which had already begun to raise suspicions....

In the last decade, and especially since the passage of California's Proposition 13, direct voter legislation has become an increasingly important part of American politics. Voters have faced referendums to cut taxes, freeze nuclear weapons, restrict homosexual rights, limit government spending, stop the development of nuclear power, and protect the victims of crime. If present trends continue, the referendum will become a more important factor in American politics of the 1980s than ever before.

Direct Legislation is the first comprehensive examination of the politics of...

The Canadian Senate in Bicameral Perspective is the first scholarly study of the Senate in over a quarter century and the first analysis of the upper house as one chamber of a bicameral legislature. David E. Smith's aim in this work is to demonstrate the interrelationship of the two chambers and the constraints this relationship poses for Senate reform. He analyses past literature on the Senate and current proposals for reform - such as a Triple-E Senate - and compares Canada's upper chamber with those of Australia, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, noting a...

In this highly original and thoroughly informed study, Cecil V. Crabb, Jr., Glenn Antizzo, and Leila S. Sarieddine identify and examine recurring modes or patterns of legislative behavior over the span of America's diplomatic experience. Although congressional involvement in foreign policy making has received much scholarly attention, this work is groundbreaking in that it focuses on those patterns of congressional conduct that have repeated themselves over time and, on the basis of experience, will probably continue to occur. Thus it creates a large, predictable framework of legislative...

Every two years American voters turn out to elect several thousand representatives to state legislatures. Only now in Representation in State Legislatures do we have a detailed examination of how these officials perceive their jobs and how they attempt to do them. To provide answers to these questions, Malcolm E. Jewell conducted intensive interviews with 220 members of houses of representatives in nine selected states. He asked each legislator how he kept in touch with his constituents, how he resolved matters of policy, how he sought government resources for his district, and what...

Twenty years ago the Kentucky General Assembly was one of the least powerful and least effective legislatures in the country, almost entirely dominated by the governor. Over the past two decades the legislature has changed -- gradually and with little public attention -- into a far more powerful, professional, and independent body.

This book is a study of that process of change: its causes, the obstacles encountered, and the political and policy consequences. It is a study of changing relationships between governor and legislature, caused in part by less aggressive gubernatorial...

Congress does most of its work in committee, and no understanding of that body can be complete without an analysis of its committees and those who shape them. Andree Reeves now offers a rare glimpse into the workings of committee chairmanship over a span of thirty-three years-how three chairmen operated and how they influenced their committee and its impact.

As Reeves demonstrates, the chair is the most important player in a congressional committee-the one who holds more cards than his colleagues and can deal a winning hand or call a bluff. His use of institutional and personal...

The British House of Commons has entered a period of substantial change, moving from a state of party cohesion and party leadership toward a more individualistic and active policy-making role. In the dynamic look at the British Parliament and its members, Philip Norton and David M. Wood highlight that change to more intensive constituency response and service on the part of individual members.

Like members of the U.S. Congress, British Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected to represent geographical districts. The relationship between the MP and the constituency in Britain has...