Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - National

Against the backdrop of U.S. drug policy and strategy, this important work, written by an experienced Intelligence and Special Operations Officer and Scholar, peels away the rhetoric to present an insider's view of cocaine trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. From the Huallaga and Chapare Valleys, through the cocaine transit countries to the U.S. border, this book compares and contrasts the enormous success of the traffickers to the monolithic U.S. drug policy that produces no end-game and conceals its failures behind a classified stamp. Drawing on his experience as the Counter Drug...

This groundbreaking book examines in detail relations between the states and the roles of United States Congress and Supreme Court in determining the nature of such relations--a distinguishing characteristic of a federal system. The neglect of interstate relations by scholars is surprising in view of the long and ongoing struggle between state power and federal power in the U.S. This new text provides a comprehensive examination of interstate relations, with up-to-date information and analysis relative to interstate suits, full faith and credit, privileges and immunities, tax exportation...

Numerous studies have revealed that the poor disproportionately bear the burden of environmental problems in America today. Issues range from higher levels of poisonous wastes, carbon dioxide, and ozone, to greater than normal incidences of asthma and lead poisoning. The environmental justice movement, which has emerged in working class and low-income African American and Latino communities since the early 1990s, is an effort that is reinterpreting the definition of the environment as where we live, work, and play to connect new constituencies traditionally outside of the postwar...

Throughout this century, organized interest groups have played a central role in U.S. Supreme Court litigation on issues of civil rights and liberties. Yet in recent decades, the Court has been less willing to protect many rights and has discouraged the use of federal court forums. With the federal courts inhospitable or unavailable, interest groups have had greater incentive to enter state judiciaries. Proponents of the new judicial federalism urge groups and other litigants to seek greater individual protection based on state constitutions than that required under federal constitutional...

In the last two decades there has been an unprecedented increase in the use of imprisonment in the United States. This expansion of the imprisonment rate did not happen in the other Western democracies and, more importantly, it happened very unevenly among the fifty states. Professor Davey examines the change in the rate of imprisonment in relationship to the crime rate as well as six other socio-economic variables. Davey then examines a number of states in detail to assess the key factors that resulted in increased imprisonment.

Professor Davey concludes from the analyses that law and...

The eleven essays in this collection examine the relationship between institutional structures and community integration, offering practical insights to increase social capital and strengthen social institutions.

A variety of social institutions are analyzed. Three chapters cover political legal issues, two cover religion, three address education, and two examine the macrostructures of the military and the economy. An important collection for scholars and other researchers interested in the communitarian movement, sociology, and political science, particularly for those in public...

As Americans seem bent on dismantling the safety net of the New Deal era, the most popular version of the culture wars' thesis paints an arguably cosmic battle between defenders of religious orthodoxy who embrace laissez-faire capitalism and secular elites who have imposed a Marxist welfare state upon an unsuspecting populace. Walsh shows that this thesis ignores the role of religious leaders in legitimizing the types of programs embodied in America's approach to the welfare state.

Walsh explores the arguments of William Jennings Bryan, America's foremost fundamentalist who opposed the...

Moore argues that there is a fundamental incompatibility between race and governance. She examines the formal procedures used to enact the thirteen major civil rights laws and the policy concessions necessitated by the use of those procedures and notes the impact of the divisive nature of the politics of race upon procedure and substance.

Her analysis of 40 years of congressional civil rights lawmaking reveals that whenever race is introduced into the normal policy process, that process breaks down. In its place emerges an abnormal policy process--one that is inordinately demanding with...

How can Americans develop a coherent overview of the presidency? The Preamble of the Constitution provides a historical foundation to assess the major patterns, events, and policies of seven important presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. From the 1790s to the 1950s, presidents have faced challenges to the meaning and existence of the Union, the definition and implementation of justice, the necessity of domestic tranquility, the formulation of defense policy to enhance national security,...

Are American political parties really in decay? Have American voters really given up on the major parties? Taking issue with widely accepted theories of dealignment and party decay, Paulson argues that the most profound realignment in American history occurred in the 1960s, and he presents an alternative theory of realignment and party revival.

In the 1964-1972 period, factional struggles within the major American political parties were resolved, with conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats emerging as the majority factions within their parties. The result was a critical...

Greenbaum examines the use of use of myth as a means of social control and examines the corporate mythology of the Gilded Age. Progressive politicians led the opposition to these myths, arguing that government was not to be used to enrich corporations, but to reduce their economic and political power and to increase equity. The progressive challenge redirected government to serve the larger commonwealth and, thus, transformed ordinary lives. Gilded Age mythology, resurrected in the 1980s, restored corporate domination and economic inequity.

Through his extensive analysis of the lives of...

This volume is the fifth in a series of analyses of elections in the South beginning with the 1984 general elections and continuing in 1988, 1992, and 1996. While the presidential election has been the focus, other important aspects of contemporary Southern electoral politics have also been examined, including congressional and state elections as well as the overall status of party development and competition in each Southern state.

Steed and Moreland continue the general organization plan of the previous publications in this volume, beginning with an introductory chapter on general...

Valenty, Feldman, and their contributors challenge the current state of political leadership studies by offering a variety of analytical methods from scholars around the world. While focused on American political leadership, the different approaches and vantage points offer fresh insights of the roles of cultural and political context, including the historical circumstance, environmental factors, and socialization agents that affect and shape American political leadership and performance.

The highly unusual and valuable approach includes multidisciplinary perspectives with contributors...

In the past four decades, the United States has spent $85 billion pursuing the fantasy of an effective missile defense system to shield our nation against the threat of a nuclear attack. Recent public tests, while less exotic than some of the original Star Wars proposals, were spectacular failures and call into question the whole program's rationale. Neither the land-based system proposed by the Clinton administration, nor the alternatives proposed by earlier administrations, would ever work--regardless of how much R&D money is channeled into the project. Rather than enhancing national...

The history of twentieth-century American foreign policy presents an indictment of classical and structural realism and systemic theories of international relations more generally. Examining five crucial movements of transition in American foreign policy making - before and after each of the world wars and the end of the Cold War - Shonberg argues that the national interest resides mostly in the eye of the beholder, and that the idiosyncratic perceptions, beliefs, and values of individuals are of vital importance in the policy process. Thus, America's recent experiences in global politics,...

The relationship between American Indians and the U.S. political system is both vitally important and unique. Yet American Indians--as individuals and as tribal nations--typically receive scant attention in introductory courses on American government and politics. This is the only reader on Native America and U.S. politics designed to be incorporated into introductory government courses. It will help students to obtain a clearer understanding of such contemporary issues as Indian fishing rights and gaming casinos and to see topics central to the course--the Constitution, the structure of...

This book provides a comparative analysis of 30 American interventions into Third World countries. An historical approach is used to place the featured cases into a more general history of American Diplomacy. The author uses his assessments to prove that U.S. foreign policy has been driven by the goal of being the ultimate power in the global capitalist economic system. The author makes his work unique by giving a critical view of America's place in the world during an anticipated time of war and raised patriotism. He provides a scholarly look at U.S. diplomacy leading up to the era of the...

The relationship between American Indians and the U.S. political system is both vitally important and unique. Yet American Indians--as individuals and as tribal nations--typically receive scant attention in introductory courses on American government and politics. This is the only reader on Native America and U.S. politics designed to be incorporated into introductory government courses. It will help students to obtain a clearer understanding of such contemporary issues as Indian fishing rights and gaming casinos and to see topics central to the course--the Constitution, the structure of...

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of state-society development in the most volatile region of the world. In the Middle East, various anti-systemic movement and radical Islam often clashed and resisted the political, cultural, economic, and military domination of the region by the world's major imperial powers. Emadi investigates state, revolution, and development in the Middle Eastern states of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in the immediate post-World War II period. Maintaining that the state is an instrument of class domination, exhibiting a certain degree of autonomy in...

The Historian's Wizard of Oz synthesizes four decades of scholarly interpretations of L. Frank Baum's classic children's novel as an allegory of the Gilded Age political economy and a comment on the gold standard. The heart of the book is an annotated version of The Wizard of Oz that highlights the possible political and monetary symbolism in the book by relating characters, settings, and incidents in it to the historical events and figures of the 1890s, the decade in which Baum wrote his story. Dighe simultaneously values the leading political interpretations of Oz as...