Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - National

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...

"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 useful and...

As the 2000 presidential election suggests, the particular type of voting system employed in a given venue can impact the outcome of elections, not only within an individual state, but, as Fyfe and Miller explore, across the states as well. Yet the scholarly community has paid little attention to the nature and impact of voting systems on electoral outcomes to date.

Using Elazar's model of political culture in the American states as a logistical framework on which to build analysis of these voting systems, they indicate that culture is a fundamental variable to consider when attempting...

While the 2000 presidential election had a number of unique features, including the decisive role of the Supreme Court, it actually was quite similar to three earlier television-age campaigns. For the fourth time since 1960, an incumbent president retired and his party nominated the vice president as a potential successor. The nomination of the vice president has become so commonplace that we now expect it. Unfortunately, we lack theoretical explanations of why vice presidents win nominations while often losing the general election. Dover seeks to advance this needed theory.

Dover looks...

Members come and go, reforms are attempted and abandoned, but congressional norms of seniority, specialization, and reciprocity adapt, survive, and continue to influence the course of American government. In the first major look at congressional normative behavior in 25 years, Choate argues these resilient folkways survive because members value the institutional stability and continuity they provide. Working from extensive on-the-record interviews with past and present House members, Choate's work is the first to study the unsettling effects on norms brought on by party switching.

This book examines the underlying causes of the tumult of the 1920s in America that has since captivated writers, readers, moviegoers, and television viewers. During the 1920s, Americans were aware of the momentous changes taking place in their lives. It was an introspective decade. Magazines and newspaper articles, books and anthologies explored the causes, nature, and implications of those changes. The impact of radio, and to a lesser extent motion pictures, rivaled the effects that the invention of printing had had on human society hundreds of years earlier. Add to these developments...

Members of Congress often delegate power to bureaucratic experts, but they fear losing permanent control of the policy. One way Congress has dealt with this problem is to require reauthorization of the program or policy. Cox argues that Congress uses this power selectively, and is more likely to require reauthorization when policy is complex or they do not trust the executive branch. By contrast, reauthorization is less likely to be required when there are large disagreements about policy within Congress. In the process, Cox shows that committees are important independent actors in the...