Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - National

The most definitive report ever on verdict effects, this book gives striking new evidence that media assessments of presidential debates sway voters. The authors conducted 2,350 surveys and extensive analysis of news reports to scrutinize the post-debate news of 1988. They also examined the effects of the attack ads used by Bush and Dukakis. They found that the news media consistently downplay debate content and instead emphasize their own views on candidate performance--media verdicts influence voters as much as the debates themselves.

Extensive content analyses and more than 2,350...

This book describes what the authors identify as an emerging political crisis in U.S. politics: the possible winning of the presidency by a candidate with far fewer votes than his or her opponent. David W. Abbott and James P. Levine stress both the irrationality and peculiar nature of the current electoral system, emphasizing recent and current political developments. On the basis of their computer analysis of past elections and modern political realities, the authors predict that within twenty years it is very likely that the United States will produce a wrong winner. In explaining how...

The conclusions in this book challenge most traditional and conventional American political scientific thinking on the value and practicality of direct citizen participation in agenda setting, planning, and policy making. It does this not only by applying a new physically-based paradigm of political theory to the problem, but also by offering a wealth of original, empirical evidence to support its conclusion.

Basing her arguments on research in a new method of public-opinion/citizen-participation experiments, Slaton's book: (1) provides a new theoretical and practical response to those...

During recent years, American states have launched programs to promote direct foreign investment and product export, but there has been little self-scrutiny of these efforts. This book presents the findings of Michael Frazier's detailed empirical study of four, state-supported export trade agencies. Using the evaluation techniques of Mazmanian and Sabatier (the M-S Model), Frazier pinpoints the factors that determine how well states develop an international business orientation. He also expands the M-S model by identifying additional variables that should be considered in future program...

Given the apparent failure of the War on Drugs to eliminate or even substantially decrease the use, sale, and trafficking of drugs, and given the negative social consequences of a Prohibition-like enforcement strategy, scholars and policy makers have often wondered why the administration continues to follow its policy of criminalization and enforcement. In Power, Ideology, and the War on Drugs, criminologist Christina Jacqueline Johns demonstrates that while the War on Drugs has been a failure in some respects, it has been highly successful in others. The War on Drugs has, for example,...

This book is the first full-length work to present debates over the constitutional amending process as a perennial theme in American political thought. Beginning with a discussion of the views of political philosophers, publicists, and legal commentators who may have influenced the views of legal change held by the American Founding Fathers, the work proceeds to look at the historical influences on and discussions surrounding the amending process that was incorporated into Article V of the U.S. Constitution. The reader will gain a new respect for the way the amending process has served and...

American politics and government are so moribund, according to Erwin Jaffe, that serious political dialogue is a stranger in a land celebrated for freedom of expression. "Healing the Body Politic" examines the sources of this condition, among them the loss of connectedness (society's orientation toward mobility and its relative disinterest in place, neighborhood, and community), widespread misunderstanding of the distinction and relationship between power and violence, and a distorted image of political life and responsibility. This broad-based work examines these problems and proposes,...

This is the third of a series of studies of presidential election politics in the South (the first two addressing the 1984 and 1988 elections, respectively). It examines the nomination process in the region, presents a state-by-state analysis of the 1992 presidential election results, and offers some general conclusions regarding contemporary developments in southern electoral and party politics. The volume presents election data of interest to students of presidential elections, the U.S. party system, and southern politics. As such, the work represents a significant contribution to the...

This history of American crime policy at the federal level compiles and examines for the first time the record of recent presidential administrations in the area of crime control--their agendas and the legislation actually enacted by the Congress. Nancy Marion analyzes the relationship between politics and criminal justice and concludes, after reviewing the administrations of Kennedy through Clinton, that the federal response to crime has been largely symbolic, and that federal policies tend to have provided political benefit to elected officials while not actually reducing crime by any...

This pioneering volume advances the thesis that there exists a significant linkage between Black politics and Black political behavior, heretofore treated as separate and distinct areas of study. This is the first work to bring the two together and to support such an approach with empirical studies. Chapter authors explore and analyze basic and fundamental areas of linkage providing a provocative and insightful contribution to the literature of Black politics and political behavior in America. Organized into five main linkage blocks, the work examines: Theoretical linkages between Black...

In the past several decades, the country has seen some incumbent presidents win second terms by margins previously believed to be unattainable, yet has witnessed defeats of more incumbents than at any time in our national history. These outcomes are directly related to the presence of television and to the changing nature of incumbency. The relationship between incumbency and television news reporting has replaced partisanship as the leading determinant of voter choice in presidential elections since 1960. By showing how various recurring patterns in televised news reporting of...

This book] provides the kind of scholarly resource that educated citizens need to think for themselves, a rich digest of primary sources documenting--in their own words--the views, motives, and intentions of the Framers, historic commentators, legislators, and judiciary who have debated the right to keep and bear arms from the origins of our republic. "Preston K. Covey, Carnegie Mellon University "

Beginning with its origins in the English Civil War, Clayton Cramer traces the development in the United States of the right to keep and bear arms--through the Constitutional Convention,...

This study examines judicial leadership in court reform, tying biography, political science, social psychology, law, and history into court reform at the local level through the case of a nationally known jurist and reformer--Judge George Nicola of New Jersey. The work provides an important examination, in depth and over time, of true leadership in the courts and of the exceptionally innovative programs developed by Judge Nicola. The author also addresses two fundamental issues which lie at the heart of court reform and judicial leadership: the perplexing question of whether a judicial...

"Putting America's House In Order: The Nation as a Family" is a call to action for the leaders of this generation to endow their heirs with the kinds of values, prospects, and prosperity that has sustained the American family, personally and nationally, for two hundred years. The authors' proposals are specific. They range from ways to reach a zero deficit budget to substituting a tax code that favors savings, investment, and growth. They also delineate the elements of leadership--local, state, and national--that are necessary to meet America's greatest challenge since the winning of the...

This timely study examines the increasing importance of the Sunbelt and its megastates--Florida, California, and Texas--in the U.S. election process. The purpose of the work is to provide a longitudinal analysis of partisan and gender election success and incumbency in the elections of 1986, 1988, 1992, and the realignment of 1994 (bringing up to date some of the classic studies from the 1970s and 1980s). In tracing the pattern of partisan success, the effect of incumbency, and the success of males and females in each party, the author is able to project the likely success of the two...

This study examines the peculiar role and history of the New Hampshire primary in American presidential politics, through the 1996 election season. The work reviews the primary's history, analyzes the media's treatment of New Hampshire results, and provides a study of the phenomenon of momentum, and the role played by local media such as the infamous Manchester DEGREESIUnion Leader DEGREESR. There is also an examination of the strained relationship between New Hampshire's state parties and their national equivalents and of the efforts of Congress to reform the entire electoral system, with...