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

This book explores how intra-party politics affects government formation and termination in parliamentary systems, where the norm is the formation of coalition governments.

The authors look beyond party cohesion and discipline in parliamentary democracies to take a broader view, assuming a diversity of preferences among party members and then exploring the incentives that give rise to coordinated party behaviour at the electoral, legislative and executive levels. The chapters in this book share a common analytical framework, confronting theoretical models of government formation...

At least five U.S. presidential elections have been won by the second most popular candidate, but these results were not inevitable. In fact, such an unfair outcome need never happen again, and as William Poundstone shows in Gaming the Vote, the solution is lurking right under our noses.

In all five cases, the vote was upset by a "spoiler"--a minor candidate who took enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election to someone else. The spoiler effect is more than a glitch. It is a consequence of one of the most surprising intellectual discoveries of the...

During the 2008 election season, politicians from both sides of the aisle promised to rid government of lobbyists undue influence. For the authors of Lobbying and Policy Change, the most extensive study ever done on the topic, these promises ring hollow not because politicians fail to keep them but because lobbies are far less influential than political rhetoric suggests.
Based on a comprehensive examination of ninety-eight issues, this volume demonstrates that sixty percent of recent lobbying campaigns failed to change policy despite millions of dollars spent trying. Why? The...

• Includes documents relating to aspects of constitutional history, such as disputes over parliamentary elections, the payment of the wages of members of the commons, and the evolution of the parliamentary privilege of freedom from arrest
• Illustrates a variety of aspects of the life of the medieval parliament and the members of both houses
• Contains texts never before...

The Brazilian experience is a pace setter in the transition from an authoritarian regime to the establishment of stable and democratically responsible political institutions. This insightful analysis, based on decades of field work, is the very first of its kind on a legislature outside the United States. Moreover, it addresses important issues regarding the role of executive and congressional bureaucracies in the system of government. There is no other book like this. It is very useful for understanding the Brazilian military regime and how Brazil emerged from it. The author, because of...

This volume is a detailed account of President Clinton's foreign policy during 1992-2000, covering the main substantive issues of his administration, including Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The book emphasizes Clinton's adaptation of the elder Bush's 'New World Order' outlook and his relationship to the younger Bush's 'Americanistic' foreign policy. In doing so, it discusses in detail such key policy areas as foreign economic policy; humanitarian interventionism; policy towards Russia and China, and towards European and other allies; defence priorities; international terrorism; and...

There's a reason The Nation, America's leading progressive magazine, named Robert Wexler the country's "Most Valuable Congressman." It's the same reason right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh refers to him as "disgusting." It's because for the last twelve years Wexler has been Congress's most outspoken liberal -- taking on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales, General David Petraeus, and, when necessary, even his own party.

In Fire-Breathing Liberal, Wexler brings readers onto the floor of the House and puts them at the center of some of the...

This book presents a wide range of perspectives on the role of national parliaments in EU politics and policy-making. Many accounts of the role of national parliaments portray them as passive victims of European integration. This study instead examines their role within the EU policy-making process, looking at efforts to address perceived democratic and information 'deficits'.

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of European studies, public policy analysis, and legislative research, this new volume provides:

• a thorough and wide-ranging synthetic analysis of...