American Politics : upso

Why Not Parties?

Nathan W. Monroe, Jason M. Roberts, and David W. Rohde — 2013-03-21

Author:: Nathan W.MonroeJason M.RobertsDavid W.Rohde
ISBN:: 9780226534879
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226534947.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Recent research on the U.S. House of Representatives largely focuses on the effects of partisanship, but the strikingly less frequent studies of the Senate still tend to treat parties as secondary considerations in a chamber that gives its members far more individual leverage than congressmen have. In response to the recent increase in senatorial partisanship, this book corrects this imbalance with a series of chapters that focus exclusively on the effects of parties in the workings of the upper chamber. Illuminating the growing significance of these effects, the chapters explore three major areas, including the electoral foundations of parties, partisan procedural advantage, and partisan implications for policy. In the process, they investigate such issues as whether party discipline can overcome Senate mechanisms that invest the most power in individuals and small groups; how parties influence the making of legislation and the distribution of pork; and whether voters punish senators for not toeing party lines.

Who Leads Whom?

Brandice Canes-Wrone — 2013-03-21

Author:: Brandice Canes-Wrone
ISBN:: 9780226092805
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226092492.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

This title is an ambitious study that addresses some of the most important questions in contemporary American politics: Do presidents pander to public opinion by backing popular policy measures that they believe would actually harm the country? Why do presidents “go public” with policy appeals? And do those appeals affect legislative outcomes? Analyzing the actions of modern presidents ranging from Eisenhower to Clinton, the book demonstrates that presidents' involvement of the mass public, by putting pressure on Congress, shifts policy in the direction of majority opinion. More importantly, it also shows that presidents rarely cater to the mass citizenry unless they already agree with the public's preferred course of action. With contemporary politics so connected to the pulse of the American people, this book offers much-needed insight into how public opinion actually works in our democratic process.

Us Against Them

Donald R. Kinder and Cindy D. Kam — 2013-03-21

Author:: Donald R. Kinder, Cindy D. Kam
ISBN:: 9780226435701
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226435725.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Ethnocentrism—our tendency to partition the human world into in-groups and out-groups—pervades societies around the world. Surprisingly, though, few scholars have explored its role in political life. This book fills the gap with an explanation of how ethnocentrism shapes American public opinion. Arguing that humans are broadly predisposed to ethnocentrism, the book explores its impact on our attitudes toward an array of issues, including the war on terror, humanitarian assistance, immigration, the sanctity of marriage, and the reform of social programs. The authors ground their study in previous theories from a wide range of disciplines, establishing a new framework for understanding what ethnocentrism is and how it becomes politically consequential. They also marshal a vast trove of survey evidence to identify the conditions under which ethnocentrism shapes public opinion. While ethnocentrism is widespread in the United States, the authors demonstrate that its political relevance depends on circumstance. Exploring the implications of these findings for political knowledge, cosmopolitanism, and societies outside the United States, they add a new dimension to our understanding of how democracy functions.

The Two Reconstructions

Richard M. Valelly — 2013-03-21

Author:: Richard M. Valelly
ISBN:: 9780226845289
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226845272.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

The Reconstruction era marked a huge political leap for African Americans, who rapidly went from the status of slaves to voters and officeholders. Yet this hard-won progress lasted only a few decades. Ultimately a “second reconstruction”—associated with the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act—became necessary. How did the first reconstruction fail so utterly, setting the stage for the complete disenfranchisement of Southern black voters, and why did the second succeed? These are among the questions answered in this book. The fate of black enfranchisement, the book argues, has been closely intertwined with the strengths and constraints of our political institutions. It shows how effective biracial coalitions have been the key to success and traces how and why political parties and the national courts either rewarded or discouraged the formation of coalitions. Revamping our understanding of American race relations, the book explains a puzzle that lies at the heart of America's development as a political democracy.

The Total Survey Error Approach

Herbert F. Weisberg — 2013-03-21

Author:: Herbert F. Weisberg
ISBN:: 9780226891279
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226891293.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

In 1939, George Gallup's American Institute of Public Opinion published a pamphlet optimistically titled The New Science of Public Opinion Measurement. At the time, though, survey research was in its infancy, and only now, six decades later, can public opinion measurement be appropriately called a science, based in part on the development of the total survey error approach. This handbook presents a unified method for conducting good survey research centered on the various types of errors that can occur in surveys—from measurement and nonresponse error to coverage and sampling error. Each chapter is built on theoretical elements drawn from specific disciplines, such as social psychology and statistics, and follows through with detailed treatments of the specific types of error and their potential solutions. Throughout, the author is attentive to survey constraints, including time and ethical considerations, as well as controversies within the field and the effects of new technology on the survey process—from Internet surveys to those completed by phone, by mail, and in person. Practitioners and students will find this comprehensive guide particularly useful now that survey research has assumed a primary place in both public and academic circles.

Talking Together

Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini — 2013-03-21

Author:: Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, Michael X. Delli Carpini
ISBN:: 9780226389868
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226389899.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Challenging the conventional wisdom that Americans are less engaged than ever in national life and the democratic process, this book paints a comprehensive portrait of public deliberation in the United States and explains why it is important to the country's future. The authors' reveal how, when, and why citizens talk to each other about the issues of the day. They find that—in settings ranging from one-on-one conversations to e-mail exchanges to larger and more formal gatherings—two-thirds of Americans regularly participate in public discussions about such pressing issues as the Iraq War, economic development, and race relations. Pinpointing the real benefits of public discourse while considering arguments that question its importance, the book presents an authoritative and clear-eyed assessment of deliberation's function in American governance. In the process, it offers concrete recommendations for increasing the power of public talk to foster political action.

Talking about Race

Katherine Cramer Walsh — 2013-03-21

Author:: Katherine Cramer Walsh
ISBN:: 9780226869063
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226869087.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

It is a perennial question: how should Americans deal with racial and ethnic diversity? More than 400 communities across the country have attempted to answer it by organizing discussions among diverse volunteers in an attempt to improve race relations. This book takes a look at this strategy to reveal the reasons behind the method and the effects it has in the cities and towns that undertake it. With extensive observations of community dialogues, interviews with the discussants, and analysis of national data, the book shows that while meeting organizers usually aim to establish common ground, participants tend to leave their discussions with a heightened awareness of differences in perspective and experience. Drawing readers into these intense conversations between ordinary Americans working to deal with diversity and figure out the meaning of citizenship in our society, it challenges many preconceptions about intergroup relations and organized public talk. Finally disputing the conventional wisdom that unity is the only way forward, the book prescribes a practical politics of difference that compels us to reassess the place of face-to-face discussion in civic life and the critical role of conflict in deliberative democracy.

Talking about Politics

Katherine Cramer Walsh — 2013-03-21

Author:: Katherine Cramer Walsh
ISBN:: 9780226872186
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226872216.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Whether at parties, around the dinner table, or at the office, people talk about politics all the time. Yet while such conversations are a common part of everyday life, political scientists know very little about how they actually work. In this book, the book provides an innovative, intimate study of how ordinary people use informal group discussions to make sense of politics. It examines how people rely on social identities—their ideas of who “we” are—to come to terms with current events. The book shows how political conversation, friendship, and identity evolve together, creating stronger communities and stronger social ties.

Specializing the Courts

Lawrence Baum — 2013-03-21

Author:: Lawrence Baum
ISBN:: 9780226039541
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039565.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Most Americans think that judges should be, and are, generalists who decide a wide array of cases. Nonetheless, we now have specialized courts in many key policy areas. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of this growing trend toward specialization in the federal and state court systems. It explores the scope, causes, and consequences of judicial specialization in four areas that include most specialized courts: Foreign policy and national security, criminal law, economic issues involving the government, and economic issues in the private sector. The book examines the process by which court systems in the United States have become increasingly specialized and the motives that have led to the growth of specialization. It also considers the effects of judicial specialization on the work of the courts by demonstrating that under certain conditions, specialization can and does have fundamental effects on the policies that courts make. For this reason, the movement toward greater specialization constitutes a major change in the judiciary.

Speak No Evil

Jon B. Gould — 2013-03-21

Author:: Jon B. Gould
ISBN:: 9780226305530
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226305134.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Opponents of speech codes often argue that liberal academics use the codes to advance an agenda of political correctness. But this book, based on an enormous amount of empirical evidence, reveals that the real reasons for their growth are to be found in the pragmatic, almost utilitarian, considerations of college administrators. Instituting hate speech policy was often a symbolic response taken by university leaders to reassure campus constituencies of their commitment against intolerance. In an academic version of “keeping up with the Joneses,” some schools created hate speech codes to remain within what they saw as the mainstream of higher education. Only a relatively small number of colleges crafted codes out of deep commitment to their merits. Although college speech codes have been overturned by the courts, this book argues that their rise has still had a profound influence on curtailing speech in other institutions such as the media and has also shaped mass opinion and common understandings of constitutional norms. Ultimately, the book contends, this kind of informal law can have just as much power as the Constitution.

Same Sex, Different Politics

Gary Mucciaroni — 2013-03-21

Author:: Gary Mucciaroni
ISBN:: 9780226544083
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226544106.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Why is it so much harder for American same-sex couples to get married than it is for them to adopt children? And why does the United States military prevent gays from serving openly even though jurisdictions nationwide continue to render such discrimination illegal? Illuminating the conditions that engender these contradictory policies, this book explains why gay rights advocates have achieved dramatically different levels of success from one policy area to another. The first book to compare results across a wide range of gay rights struggles, this volume explores debates over laws governing military service, homosexual conduct, adoption, marriage and partner recognition, hate crimes, and civil rights. It reveals that in each area, the gay rights movement's achievements depend both on Americans' perceptions of its demands and on the political venue in which the conflict plays out. Adoption policy, for example, generally takes shape in a decentralized system of courts that enables couples to target sympathetic judges, while fights for gay marriage generally culminate in legislation or ballot referenda against which it is easier to mount opposition. Brilliantly synthesizing all the factors that contribute to each kind of outcome, this book establishes a new framework for understanding the trajectory of a movement.

Rules and Restraint

David M. Primo — 2013-03-21

Author:: David M. Primo
ISBN:: 9780226682594
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226682617.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Government spending has increased dramatically in the United States since World War II despite the many rules intended to rein in the insatiable appetite for tax revenue most politicians seem to share. Drawing on examples from the federal and state governments, this book explains why these budget rules tend to fail, and proposes alternatives for imposing much-needed fiscal discipline on our legislators. One reason budget rules are ineffective, the author shows, is because politicians often create and preserve loopholes to protect programs that benefit their constituents. Another is that legislators must enforce their own provisions, an arrangement which is seriously compromised by their unwillingness to abide by rules that demand short-term sacrifices for the sake of long-term gain. Convinced that budget rules enacted through such a flawed legislative process are unlikely to work, the author ultimately calls for a careful debate over the advantages and drawbacks of a constitutional convention initiated by the states—a radical step that would bypass Congress to create a path toward change.

Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race

Kevin J. McMahon — 2013-03-21

Author:: Kevin J. McMahon
ISBN:: 9780226500867
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226561127.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Many have questioned Franklin D. Roosevelt's record on race, suggesting that he had the opportunity but not the will to advance the civil rights of African Americans. This book challenges this view, arguing instead that Roosevelt's administration played a crucial role in the Supreme Court's increasing commitment to racial equality—which culminated in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The author shows how Roosevelt's attempt to strengthen the presidency and undermine the power of conservative Southern Democrats dovetailed with his efforts to seek racial equality through the federal courts. By appointing a majority of rights-based liberals deferential to presidential power, Roosevelt ensured that the Supreme Court would be receptive to civil rights claims, especially when those claims had the support of the executive branch.

Real Democracy

Frank M. Bryan — 2013-03-21

Author:: Frank M. Bryan
ISBN:: 9780226077963
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226077987.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Relying on a collection of more than three decades of firsthand research, this book examines one of the purest forms of American democracy, the New England town meeting. At these meetings, usually held once a year, all eligible citizens of the town may become legislators; they meet in face-to-face assemblies, debate the issues on the agenda, and vote on them. And although these meetings are natural laboratories for democracy, very few scholars have systematically investigated them. This book now does just that. Studying 1,500 town meetings in the state of Vermont, this book's author and his students recorded a staggering amount of data about them—238,603 acts of participation by 63,140 citizens in 210 different towns. Drawing on this evidence as well as on evocative “witness” accounts—from casual observers to no lesser a light than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—the book paints a vivid picture of how real democracy works. Among the many fascinating questions it explores: why attendance varies sharply with town size, how citizens resolve conflicts in open forums, and how men and women behave differently in town meetings. In the end, the book interprets this brand of local government to find evidence for its considerable staying power as the most authentic and meaningful form of direct democracy.

The Race to 270

Daron R. Shaw — 2013-03-21

Author:: Daron R. Shaw
ISBN:: 9780226751337
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226751368.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

The Electoral College has played an important role in presidential politics since America's founding, but surprisingly little information exists about precisely how it affects campaign strategy. This book goes inside the past two presidential elections and reveals how the race to 270 was won—and lost. The author's nonpartisan study lays out how both the Democrats and the Republicans developed strategies to win decisive electoral votes by targeting specific states and media markets. Drawing on his own experience with Republican battle plans, candidate schedules, and advertising purchases—plus key contacts in the Gore and Kerry camps—the author goes on to show that both sides used information on weekly shifts in candidate support to reallocate media buys and schedule appearances. Most importantly, he uses original research to prove that these carefully constructed plans significantly affected voters' preferences and opinions—not in huge numbers, but enough to shift critical votes in key battlegrounds. Bridging the gap between those who study campaigns and those who conduct them, the book provides insights about the new strategies that stem from one of America's oldest institutions.

The Private Abuse of the Public Interest

Lawrence D. Brown and Lawrence R. Jacobs — 2013-03-21

Author:: Lawrence D. Brown, Lawrence R. Jacobs
ISBN:: 9780226076423
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226076454.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Despite George W. Bush's professed opposition to big government, federal spending has increased under his watch more quickly than it did during the Clinton administration, and demands on government have continued to grow. Why? This book shows that conservative efforts to expand markets and shrink government often have the ironic effect of expanding government's reach by creating problems that force legislators to enact new rules and regulations. Dismantling the flawed reasoning behind these attempts to cast markets and public power in opposing roles, the book urges citizens and policy makers to recognize that properly functioning markets presuppose the government's ability to create, sustain, and repair them over time. The book supports this pragmatic approach with evidence drawn from in-depth analyses of education, transportation, and health care policies. In each policy area, initiatives such as school choice, deregulation of airlines and other carriers, and the promotion of managed care have introduced or enlarged the role of market forces with the aim of eliminating bureaucratic inefficiency. But in each case, the chapters in this book show, reality proved to be much more complex than market models predicted. This complexity has resulted in a political cycle that culminates in public interventions to sustain markets while protecting citizens from their undesirable effects. Situating these case studies in the context of more than two hundred years of debate about the role of markets in society, the chapters call for a renewed focus on public-private partnerships that recognize and respect each sector's vital role.

The Partisan Sort

Matthew Levendusky — 2013-03-21

Author:: Matthew Levendusky
ISBN:: 9780226473642
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226473673.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

As Washington elites drifted toward ideological poles over the past few decades, did ordinary Americans follow their lead? This book reveals that Americans have responded to this trend, but not, for the most part, by becoming more extreme themselves. While polarization has filtered down to a small minority of voters, it also has had the more significant effect of reconfiguring the way Americans sort themselves into political parties. In a marked realignment since the 1970s — when partisan affiliation did not depend on ideology and both major parties had strong liberal and conservative factions — liberals today overwhelmingly identify with Democrats, as conservatives do with Republicans. This “sorting,” the book contends, results directly from the increasingly polarized terms in which political leaders define their parties. Exploring its far-reaching implications for the American political landscape, the book demonstrates that sorting makes voters more loyally partisan, allowing campaigns to focus more attention on mobilizing committed supporters. Ultimately, the book concludes, this new link between party and ideology represents a sea change in American politics.

The Paradoxes of Integration

J. Oliver — 2013-03-21

Author:: J. Oliver
ISBN:: 9780226626628
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226626642.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

The United States is rapidly changing from a country monochromatically divided between black and white into a multiethnic society. This book helps us to understand America's racial future by revealing the complex relationships among racial integration, racial attitudes, and neighborhood life, demonstrating that the effects of integration differ tremendously, depending on which geographical level one is examining. Living among people of other races in a larger metropolitan area corresponds with greater racial intolerance, particularly for America's white majority, but when whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans actually live in integrated neighborhoods, they feel less racial resentment. Paradoxically, this racial tolerance is usually also accompanied by feeling less connected to their community; it is no longer “theirs.” Basing its findings on our most advanced means of gauging the impact of social environments on racial attitudes, this book explores the benefits and the at times, heavily borne, costs of integration.

The Most Activist Supreme Court in History

Thomas M. Keck — 2013-03-21

Author:: Thomas M. Keck
ISBN:: 9780226428840
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226428864.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

When conservatives took control of the federal judiciary in the 1980s, it was widely assumed that they would reverse the landmark rights-protecting precedents set by the Warren Court and replace them with a broad commitment to judicial restraint. Instead, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist has reaffirmed most of those liberal decisions while creating its own brand of conservative judicial activism. Ranging from 1937 to the present, this book traces the legal and political forces that have shaped the modern Court. The book argues that the tensions within modern conservatism have produced a court that exercises its own power quite actively, on behalf of both liberal and conservative ends. Despite the long-standing conservative commitment to restraint, the justices of the Rehnquist Court have stepped in to settle divisive political conflicts over abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, presidential elections, and much more. The book focuses in particular on the role of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, whose deciding votes have shaped this uncharacteristically activist Court.

In Time of War

Adam J. Berinsky — 2013-03-21

Author:: Adam J. Berinsky
ISBN:: 9780226043586
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226043463.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history, but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this revelation, this book explores conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It argues that the Americans' response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics—such as what they cost in lives and resources—than by the same political interests and group affiliations that influence their ideas about domestic issues. With the help of World War II-era survey data, the book begins by disproving the myth of “the good war” that Americans all fell in line to support after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The attack did not significantly alter public opinion, but merely punctuated interventionist sentiment that had already risen in response to the ways that political leaders at home had framed the fighting abroad. The book also sheds new light on American reactions to other crises. It shows, for example, that American attitudes toward restricted civil liberties during Vietnam and after 9/11 stemmed from the same kinds of judgments they make during times of peace. With Iraq and Afghanistan now competing for attention with urgent issues within the United States, this book offers a reminder of the full extent to which foreign and domestic politics profoundly influence each other.

In Defense of Negativity

John G. Geer — 2013-03-21

Author:: John G. Geer
ISBN:: 9780226284989
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226285009.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Americans tend to see negative campaign ads as just that: negative. Pundits, journalists, voters, and scholars frequently complain that such ads undermine elections and even democratic government itself. But the author of this book takes the opposite stance, arguing that when political candidates attack each other, raising doubts about each other's views and qualifications, voters—and the democratic process—benefit. In this study of negative advertising in presidential campaigns from 1960 to 2004, the author asserts that the proliferating attack ads are far more likely than positive ads to focus on salient political issues, rather than politicians' personal characteristics. Accordingly, the ads enrich the democratic process, providing voters with relevant and substantial information before they head to the polls. The author concludes that if we want campaigns to grapple with relevant issues and address real problems, negative ads just might be the solution.

Going Home

Richard F. Fenno — 2013-03-21

Author:: Richard F. Fenno
ISBN:: 9780226241302
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226241326.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Thirty years ago there were nine African Americans in the U.S. House of Representatives. Today there are four times that number. This book explores what representation has meant—and means today—to black voters and to the politicians they have elected to office. It follows the careers of four black representatives—Louis Stokes, Barbara Jordan, Chaka Fattah, and Stephanie Tubbs Jones—from their home districts to the halls of the Capitol. The author finds that while these politicians had different visions of how they should represent their districts (in part based on their individual preferences, and in part based on the history of black politics in America), they shared crucial organizational and symbolic connections to their constituents. These connections, which draw on a sense of “linked fates,” are ones that only black representatives can provide to black constituents.

God's Economy

Lew Daly and E. J. Dionne Jr. — 2013-03-21

Author:: Lew Daly, E. J. Dionne Jr.
ISBN:: 9780226134833
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226134857.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

President Barack Obama has signaled a sharp break from many policies of George W. Bush's administration, but he remains committed to federal support for religious social service providers. Like Bush's faith-based initiative, though, Obama's version of the policy has generated loud criticism as the communities that stand to benefit suffer through an ailing economy. This book reveals that virtually all of the critics, as well as many supporters, have long misunderstood both the true implications of faith-based partnerships and their unique potential for advancing social justice. Unearthing the intellectual history of the faith-based initiative, the book locates its roots in the pluralist tradition of Europe's Christian democracies, in which the state shares sovereignty with social institutions. It argues that Catholic and Dutch Calvinist ideas played a crucial role in the evolution of this tradition, as churches across nineteenth-century Europe developed philosophical and legal defenses to protect their education and social programs against ascendant governments. Tracing the influence of this heritage on the past three decades of American social policy and church-state law, the book finally untangles the radical beginnings of the faith-based initiative. A major contribution from an important new voice at the intersection of religion and politics, this book points the way toward policymaking that combines strong social support with a new moral focus on the protection of families and communities.

God and Government in the Ghetto

Michael Leo Owens — 2013-03-21

Author:: Michael Leo Owens
ISBN:: 9780226642062
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226642086.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

In recent years, as government agencies have encouraged faith-based organizations to help ensure social welfare, many black churches have received grants to provide services to their neighborhoods' poorest residents. This collaboration, activist churches explain, is a way of enacting their faith and helping their neighborhoods. But as this book demonstrates, this alliance also serves as a means for black clergy to reaffirm their political leadership and reposition moral authority in black civil society. Drawing on both survey data and fieldwork in New York City, the author reveals that African American churches can use these newly forged connections with public agencies to influence policy and government responsiveness in a way that reaches beyond traditional electoral or protest politics. The churches and neighborhoods, he argues, can see a real benefit from that influence—but it may come at the expense of less involvement at the grassroots.

The Foreign Policy Disconnect

Benjamin I. Page and Marshall M. Bouton — 2013-03-21

Author:: Benjamin I. Page, Marshall M. Bouton
ISBN:: 9780226644615
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226644592.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

With world affairs so troubled, what kind of foreign policy should the United States pursue? This book looks for answers in a surprising place: among the American people. Drawing on a series of national surveys conducted between 1974 and 2004, the authors reveal that—contrary to conventional wisdom—Americans generally hold durable, coherent, and sensible opinions about foreign policy. Nonetheless, their opinions often stand in opposition to those of policymakers, usually because of different interests and values, rather than superior wisdom among the elite. The book argues that these gaps between leaders and the public are harmful, and that by using public opinion as a guideline, policymakers could craft a more effective, sustainable, and democratic foreign policy. The authors support this argument by painting a comprehensive portrait of the military, diplomatic, and economic foreign policies Americans favor. They show, for example, that protecting American jobs is just as important to the public as security from attack, a goal the current administration seems to pursue single-mindedly. And contrary to some officials' unilateral tendencies, the public consistently and overwhelmingly favors cooperative multilateral policy and participation in international treaties. Moreover, Americans' foreign policy opinions are seldom divided along the usual lines: majorities of virtually all social, ideological, and partisan groups seek a policy that pursues the goals of security and justice through cooperative means.

For the Many or the Few

John G. Matsusaka — 2013-03-21

Author:: John G. Matsusaka
ISBN:: 9780226510811
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226510873.001.0001
Published in print:: 2004
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Direct democracy is alive and well in the United States. Citizens are increasingly using initiatives and referendums to take the law into their own hands, overriding their elected officials to set tax, expenditure, and social policies. This book provides an even-handed and historically based treatment of the subject. Drawing upon a century of evidence, the author argues against the popular belief that initiative measures are influenced by wealthy special interest groups that neglect the majority view. Examining demographic, political, and opinion data, he demonstrates how the initiative process brings about systematic changes in tax and expenditure policies of state and local governments that are generally supported by the citizens. The author concludes that, by and large, direct democracy in the form of the initiative process works for the benefit of the many rather than the few.

Democracy at Risk

Jennifer L. Merolla and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister — 2013-03-21

Author:: Jennifer L. Merolla, Elizabeth J. Zechmeister
ISBN:: 9780226520544
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226520568.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

How do threats of terrorism affect the opinions of citizens? Speculation abounds, but until now no one had marshaled hard evidence to explain the complexities of this relationship. Drawing on data from surveys and original experiments conducted in the United States and Mexico, this book shows how our strategies for coping with terrorist threats significantly influence our attitudes toward fellow citizens, political leaders, and foreign nations. It reveals, for example, that some people try to restore a sense of order and control through increased wariness of others — especially of those who exist outside the societal mainstream. Additionally, voters under threat tend to prize “strong leadership” more highly than partisan affiliation, making some politicians seem more charismatic than they otherwise would. The book argues that a wary public will sometimes continue to empower such leaders after they have been elected, giving them greater authority even at the expense of institutional checks and balances. Having demonstrated that a climate of terrorist threat also increases support for restrictive laws at home and engagement against terrorists abroad, the book concludes that our responses to such threats can put democracy at risk.

Dangerous Frames

Nicholas J. G. Winter — 2013-03-21

Author:: Nicholas J. G. Winter
ISBN:: 9780226902364
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226902388.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

In addition to their obvious roles in American politics, race and gender also work in hidden ways to influence profoundly the way we think—and vote—about a vast array of issues that don't seem related to either category. As this book reveals, politicians and leaders often frame these seemingly unrelated issues in ways that prime audiences to respond not to the policy at hand but instead to the way its presentation resonates with their deeply held beliefs about race and gender. The book shows, for example, how official rhetoric about welfare and Social Security has tapped into white Americans' racial biases to shape their opinions on both issues over the past two decades. Similarly, the way politicians presented health care reform in the 1990s divided Americans along the lines of their attitudes toward gender. Combining cognitive and political psychology with innovative empirical research, the book illuminates the emotional underpinnings of politics in the United States.

Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics

Stephen Hart — 2013-03-21

Author:: Stephen Hart
ISBN:: 9780226318172
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226318196.001.0001
Published in print:: 2001
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Why have conservatives fared so much better than progressives in recent decades, even though polls show no significant move to the right in public opinion? This book highlights one reason: that progressives often adopt impoverished modes of discourse, ceding the moral high ground to their conservative rivals. The book also shows that some progressive groups are pioneering more robust ways of talking about their issues and values, providing examples other progressives could emulate. Through case studies of grassroots movements—particularly the economic justice work carried on by congregation-based community organizing and the pursuit of human rights by local members of Amnesty International—the book shows how these groups develop distinctive ways of talking about politics and create characteristic stories, ceremonies, and practices. According to this book, the way people engage in politics matters just as much as the content of their ideas: when activists make the moral basis for their activism clear, engage issues with passion, and articulate a unified social vision, they challenge the recent ascendancy of conservative discourse. On the basis of these case studies, the book addresses currently debated topics such as individualism in America and whether strains of political thought strongly informed by religion and moral values are compatible with tolerance and liberty.

Citizen Speak

Andrew J. Perrin — 2013-03-21

Author:: Andrew J. Perrin
ISBN:: 9780226660790
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226660783.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

When we think about what constitutes being a good citizen, routine activities such as voting, letter writing, and paying attention to the news spring to mind. But this book argues that these activities are only a small part of democratic citizenship—a standard of citizenship that requires creative thinking, talking, and acting. For it, the author met with labor, church, business, and sports organizations and proposed to them four fictive scenarios: what if your senator is involved in a scandal, or your police department is engaged in racial profiling, or a local factory violates pollution laws, or your nearby airport is slated for expansion? The conversations these challenges inspire, he shows, require imagination. And what people can imagine doing in response to those scenarios depends on what's possible, what's important, what's right, and what's feasible. By talking with one another, an engaged citizenry draws from a repertoire of personal and institutional resources to understand and reimagine responses to situations as they arise. Building on such political discussions, the book shows how a rich culture of association and democratic discourse provides the infrastructure for a healthy democracy.

Beyond Ideology

Frances E. Lee — 2013-03-21

Author:: Frances E. Lee
ISBN:: 9780226470740
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226470771.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

This book argues that the congressional agenda includes many issues about which liberals and conservatives generally agree. Even over these matters, though, senators from the Democratic Party and Republican Party tend to fight with each other. What explains this discord? This book contends that many partisan battles are rooted in competition for power rather than disagreement over the rightful role of government. This is the first book to systematically distinguish Senate disputes centering on ideological questions from the large proportion of them that do not, and it foregrounds the role of power struggle in partisan conflict. Presidential leadership, for example, inherently polarizes legislators who can influence public opinion of the president and his party by how they handle his agenda. Senators also exploit good government measures and floor debate to embarrass opponents and burnish their own party's image — even when the issues involved are broadly supported or low-stakes. Moreover, the book suggests that the congressional agenda itself amplifies conflict by increasingly focusing on issues that reliably differentiate the parties. With the new president pledging to stem the tide of partisan polarization, this book provides a timely taxonomy of exactly what stands in his way.

Affirmative Advocacy

Dara Z. Strolovitch — 2013-03-21

Author:: Dara Z. Strolovitch
ISBN:: 9780226777405
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226777450.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

The United States boasts scores of organizations that offer crucial representation for groups that are marginalized in national politics, from women to racial minorities to the poor. This systematic study of these organizations explores the challenges and opportunities they face in the new millennium, as waning legal discrimination coincides with increasing political and economic inequalities within the populations they represent. Drawing on data from a survey of 286 organizations and interviews with forty officials, the author finds that groups too often prioritize the interests of their most advantaged members: male rather than female racial minorities, for example, or affluent rather than poor women. But she also finds that many organizations try to remedy this inequity, and concludes by distilling their best practices into a set of principles that she calls affirmative advocacy—a form of representation that aims to overcome the entrenched but often subtle biases against people at the intersection of more than one marginalized group.

The Affect Effect

George E. Marcus, W. Russell Neuman, and Michael MacKuen — 2013-03-21

Author:: George E.MarcusW. RussellNeumanMichaelMacKuen
ISBN:: 9780226574417
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574431.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2013-03-21

Passion and emotion run deep in politics, but researchers have only recently begun to study how they influence our political thinking. Contending that the long-standing neglect of such feelings has left unfortunate gaps in the understanding of political behavior, this book provides a comprehensive overview of current research on emotion in politics and where it is likely to lead. In sixteen chapters, thirty scholars approach this topic from an array of angles that address four major themes. The first section outlines the philosophical and neuroscientific foundations of emotion in politics, while the second focuses on how emotions function within and among individuals. The final two sections branch out to explore how politics work at the societal level and suggest the next steps in modeling, research, and political activity itself.

Sharing Democracy

Michaele L. Ferguson — 2013-01-24

Author:: Michaele L. Ferguson
ISBN:: 9780199921584
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, Political Theory, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199921584.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

It is frequently assumed that the “people” must have something in common, or else democracy will fail. This assumption that democracy requires commonality – such as a shared nationality, a common culture, or consensus on a core set of values – sets theorists and political actors alike on a futile search for what we have in common, and generates misplaced anxiety when it turns out that this commonality is not forthcoming. Sharing Democracy argues that this preoccupation with commonality misdirects our attention toward what we share and away from how we share in democracy. This produces an ironically anti-democratic tendency to emphasize the passive possession of commonality at the expense of promoting the active exercise of political freedom. This book counteracts this tendency by exposing the reasons for the persistent allure of the common. Sharing Democracy offers in its stead a radical vision of democracy grounded in political freedom: the capacity of ordinary people to make and remake the world in which they live. This vision of democracy is exemplified in protest marches: cacophonous, unpredictable, and self-authorizing collective enactments of our world-building freedom.

The Gulf

Michael F. Cairo — 2013-01-24

Author:: Michael F. Cairo
ISBN:: 9780813136721
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136721.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Despite the appearance of familiar faces in both Bush administrations, significant differences existed between the foreign policies of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The Gulf refers to these differences and argues that they can be explained by the personal beliefs and styles of each George Bush. Describing George H.W. Bush as an “enlightened” realist and George W. Bush as a “cowboy” liberal, the book begins by exploring the life experiences that contributed to each president’s belief system. Comparing and contrasting each president throughout, it focuses on each administration’s policy in the Middle East, with specific attention given to the Persian Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Madrid Peace Conference, and the Road Map for peace. The book suggests that presidents rarely fit into a realist or liberal model and combines the two approaches to explain presidential worldviews. George H.W. Bush’s emphasis on defensive rather than offensive strategies, and international organizations rather than the power of democracy to foster peace and stability, combine to create an “enlightened” realist worldview. George W. Bush’s emphasis on offensive strategies and the power of democracy to foster peace and stability combine to create the “cowboy” liberal worldview. The book concludes by offering general and specific lessons illuminated by the cases. Suggesting that the study is more than an isolated comparison of the Bushes, the book offers examples of the importance of understanding presidential leadership styles and worldviews.

Follow the Money

Sarah Reckhow — 2013-01-24

Author:: Sarah Reckhow
ISBN:: 9780199937738
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937738.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In this book, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and analyzes the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts, New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Meanwhile, a slower, but possibly more transformative set of reforms has been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control.

Digital Cities

Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert, and William Franko — 2013-01-24

Author:: Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert, William Franko
ISBN:: 9780199812936
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics, Democratization
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812936.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2013-01-24

In an age when the United Nations has declared access to the Internet a human right, and universal access to high-speed broadband is a national goal, urban areas have been largely ignored by federal policy. Federal policies have focused on rural infrastructure. Yet, the U.S. is a metropolitan nation, and urban applications offer unparalleled advantages for addressing both innovation and inequalities in broadband access. This neglect may result in the failure to realize the social benefits of broadband and a broadly-connected digital society. Connecting various levels of analysis, from the nation to the neighborhood, the authors break new ground and challenge assumptions in several areas. Offering evidence that mobile-only Internet users have dramatically lower levels of online activity and skill, they argue that this has become a second-class form of access, affecting many minorities and urban poor. Digital citizenship and full participation in economic, social, and political life requires home access. Using multilevel statistical models, the authors present new data ranking broadband access and use in the nation's 50 largest cities and metropolitan areas, showing considerable variation across places. Unique, neighborhood data from Chicago examines the impact of poverty and segregation on access in a large and diverse city, and parallels analysis of national patterns in urban, suburban and rural areas. Together, the chapters demonstrate the significance of place for shaping our digital future, and the need for policies that recognize cities as critical for addressing both social inequality and opportunity.

The United States and Iraq since 1979

Steven Hurst — 2012-09-20

Author:: Steven Hurst
ISBN:: 9780748627677
Publisher:: Edinburgh University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627677.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book examines American policy toward Iraq between 1979 and 2009. In that period American policy evolved through a series of stages: Initially, the Iranian Revolution and fear of an Iranian threat to America's regional allies and interests led to a ‘tilt’ toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq that then became a full-blown effort to co-opt Iraq as an American regional proxy. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 then precipitated a policy reversal and propelled Iraq to the status of regional enemy number one. The Bush administration sought to destroy the Iraqi threat in the 1991 Gulf War but left Saddam in power. The Clinton administration then sought to contain Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programmes through the application of sanctions and weapons inspections. Finally, believing containment to have failed, and motivated and empowered by fears generated by the attacks of September 11th 2001, the administration of George W. Bush sought to eliminate the Iraqi threat in the Iraq War of 2003, only to find no weapons of mass destruction and to become mired in a failing effort to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. The book explains this policy trajectory in terms of the American effort to restore a regional hegemonic position lost in 1979 and uses a theoretical framework that emphasises the American role in managing the global economy, the centrality of Persian Gulf oil to that role and long-term change in the American political system.

Taking Our Country Back

Daniel Kreiss — 2012-09-20

Author:: Daniel Kreiss
ISBN:: 9780199782536
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199782536.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

This book presents the previously untold history of the use of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than fifty political staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 electoral cycle, and archival research, the book follows a group of technically skilled Internet staffers who came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in campaign organization, tools, and practice. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed a number of prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama’s historic bid for the presidency. The book contributes to an interdisciplinary body of scholarship from communication, sociology, and political science. The book theorizes processes of innovation in online electoral politics. It shows how the innovations of the Dean and Obama campaigns were the product of the movement of staffers between industries, organizational structures that provided a space for technical development, and incentives for experimentation. The book also analyzes how Dean’s former staffers created an infrastructure for Democratic new media campaigning after the 2004 elections that helped transfer knowledge, practice, and tools across electoral cycles and campaigns. The book shows how organizational contexts shaped the use of tools by the Obama campaign, analyzes the emergence of data systems that facilitate electoral coordination, and reveals how cultural work mobilizes supporters to participate in collective action.

The Rational Southerner

M. V. Hood III, Quentin Kidd, and Irwin L. Morris — 2012-09-20

Author:: M. V. Hood III, Quentin Kidd, Irwin L. Morris
ISBN:: 9780199873821
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199873821.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

Since 1950, the South has undergone the most dramatic political transformation of any region in the country. The Solid (Democratic) South is now overwhelmingly Republican, and long-disenfranchised African Americans vote at levels comparable to those of whites. This book's theory of relative advantage provides a new perspective on this party system transformation. Specifically, this work advances the idea that local strategic dynamics, namely the organizational development of the Republican Party and the mobilization of the black electorate, were the centerpieces of political change in the region. Written more than six decades ago, V. O. Key’s seminal work on the region highlighted the fact that the politics of the South was permeated by the issue of race. The central finding of his work is that race was, and still is, the locus of political change in the South. This conclusion stands in stark contrast to recent scholarship that points to in-migration, economic growth, or religious factors as being more pivotal agents of change. Besides the direct contribution this work makes to the study of Southern politics, it also contains implications for our understanding of party system change (including realignments), racial politics, and the role that state and local political dynamics play with regard to national politics and policymaking.

Obama's America

Carl Pedersen — 2012-09-20

Author:: Carl Pedersen
ISBN:: 9780748638949
Publisher:: Edinburgh University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638949.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

The year 2008 will be remembered as the moment when the United States elected its first African American president. This book seeks to place the extraordinary rise of Barack Obama within the larger context of a possible historic political realignment in the U.S. and of limits to U.S. power in the world. For 2008 also offered a number of history lessons that will surely inform studies of the election and its aftermath. This book is an attempt to engage with these history lessons. It examines the demographic changes that will likely change the nature of American national identity. It also assesses the extent to which the grassroots organisations that were crucial in winning the election for Obama may influence the way he governs the nation. Moreover, the book maps the contours of an Obama Doctrine in foreign policy by looking at how his identity has shaped his views on the role of the U.S. in the world and how he, in turn, has been influenced by his foreign policy advisers. It examines the challenges Obama faces in confronting a post-American world in which the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower. Will Obama be a transformative president?

The MoveOn Effect

David Karpf — 2012-09-20

Author:: David Karpf
ISBN:: 9780199898367
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199898367.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

The internet is facilitating a generational transition within America’s advocacy group system. New “netroots” political associations have arisen in the past decade and play an increasingly prominent role in citizen political mobilization. At the same time, the organizations that mediate citizen political engagement and sustained collective action are changing. They rely upon modified staff structures and work routines. They employ novel strategies and tactical repertoires. Rather than “organizing without organizations,” the new media environment has given rise to “organizing through different organizations.” This book provides a richly detailed analysis of this disruptive transformation. It highlights changes in membership and fundraising regimes—established industrial patterns of supporter interaction and revenue streams—that were pioneered by MoveOn.org and have spread broadly within the advocacy system. Through interviews, content analysis, and direct observation of the leading netroots organizations, the book offers fresh insights into 21st-century political organizing. The book highlights important variations among the new organizations—including internet-mediated issue generalists like MoveOn, community blogs like DailyKos.com, and neo-federated groups like DemocracyforAmerica.com. It also explores a wider set of netroots infrastructure organizations that provide supporting services to membership-based advocacy associations. The rise of the political netroots has had a distinctly partisan character: conservatives have repeatedly tried and failed to build equivalents to the organizations and infrastructure of the progressive netroots. The book investigates these efforts, as well as the late-forming Tea Party movement, and introduces the theory of Outparty Innovation Incentives as an explanation for the partisan adoption of political technology.

Governing Animals

Kimberly K. Smith — 2012-09-20

Author:: Kimberly K. Smith
ISBN:: 9780199895755
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, Political Theory, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199895755.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

What is the role of government in protecting animal welfare? What principles should policy makers draw on as they try to balance animal welfare against human liberty? Much has been written in recent years on our moral duties toward animals, but scholars and activists alike have neglected the important question of how far the state may go to enforce those duties. This book fills that gap by exploring how liberal political principles apply to animal welfare policy. Focusing on animal welfare in the United States, the book argues that some animals (most prominently pets and livestock) may be considered members of the liberal social contract. That conclusion justifies limited state intervention to defend their welfare—even when such intervention may harm human citizens. The book also examines such questions as whether citizens may enjoy property rights in animals, what those rights entail, how animals may be represented in our political and legal institutions, and what strategies for reform are most compatible with liberal principles. More generally, this study asks, what sort of liberalism is suitable for the twenty-first-century United States? It argues that investigating the political morality of our treatment of animals gives us insight into how to design institutions that protect the most vulnerable members of our society, thus making of our shared world a more fitting home for both humans and the nonhumans to which we are so deeply connected.

Assessing the George W. Bush Presidency

Andrew Wroe and Jon Herbert — 2012-09-20

Author:: AndrewWroeJonHerbert
ISBN:: 9780748627400
Publisher:: Edinburgh University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627400.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-09-20

In one of the first volumes assessing the full two terms of the George W. Bush presidency, this book has gathered the work of leading American and European scholars. In fifteen chapters, authorities offer assessments of the Bush administration's successes and failures. Extensive attention is paid to Bush's foreign policy, including ‘The War on Terror’, but the focus is broadened to absorb not only the Bush Doctrine and its repercussions, but also his trade and homeland security policies. The president's domestic leadership in economics and social policy is investigated, as are his dealings as president with the other institutions of the U.S. political system.

The Unsustainable American State

Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King — 2012-07-20

Author:: LawrenceJacobsUniversity of Minnesotahttp://www.hhh.umn.edu/people/ljacobs/DesmondKingNuffield College, Oxford Universityhttp://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/profile/desmond-king.html
ISBN:: 9780195392135
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392135.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2012-07-20

The complexity of the American economy and polity has grown at an explosive rate in our era of globalization. Yet as the 2008 financial crisis revealed, the evolution of the American state has not proceeded apace. The crisis exposed the system's manifold political and economic dysfunctionalities. This book is a historically informed account of the American state's development from the 19th century to the present. It focuses in particular on the state-produced inequalities and administrative incoherence that became so apparent in the post-1970s era. The book offers an unsettling account of the growth of racial and economic inequality, the ossification of the state, the gradual erosion of democracy, and the problems deriving from imperial overreach. Utilizing the framework of sustainability, a concept that is currently informing some of the best work on governance and development, the chapters in this book show how the USA's current trajectory does not imply an impending collapse, but rather a gradual erosion of capacity and legitimacy. That is a more appropriate theoretical framework, the book contends, because for all of its manifest flaws, the American state is durable. That durability, however, does not preclude a long relative decline.

The United States Congress

Ross English — 2012-07-19

Author:: Ross English
ISBN:: 9780719063084
Publisher:: Manchester University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7228/manchester/9780719063084.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2012-07-19

The role of the Congress is essential to any study of American government and politics. It would be impossible to gain a complete understanding of the American system of government without an appreciation of the nature and workings of this essential body. This text looks at the workings of the United States Congress, and uses the Republican period of ascendancy, which lasted from 1994 until 2000, as an example of how the Congress works in practice. The book illustrates the basic principles of Congress using contemporary and recent examples, while also drawing attention to the changes that took place in the 1990s. The period of Republican control is absent from many of the standard texts and is of considerable academic interest for a number of reasons, not least the 1994 election, the budget deadlock in 1995 and the Clinton impeachment scandal of 1999. The book traces the origin and development of the United States Congress, before looking in depth at the role of representatives and senators, the committee system, parties in Congress, and the relationship between Congress and the President, the media and interest groups.

The Bush Administration, Sex and the Moral Agenda

Edward Ashbee — 2012-07-19

Author:: Edward Ashbee
ISBN:: 9780719072765
Publisher:: Manchester University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7228/manchester/9780719072765.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2012-07-19

This book considers the policy of the George W. Bush administration towards issues such as abortion, sex education, obscenity and same-sex marriage. It suggests that, although accounts have often emphasised the ties between George W. Bush and the Christian right, the administration's strategy was, at least until early 2005, largely directed towards the courting of middle-ground opinion. The study offers a detailed and comprehensive survey of policy making; assesses the political significance of moral concerns; evaluates the role of the Christian Right; and throws new light on George W. Bush's years in office and the character of his thinking.

The Age of Obama

Tom Clark, Robert D. Putnam, and Edward Fieldhouse — 2012-07-19

Author:: Tom Clark, Robert D. Putnam, Edward Fieldhouse
ISBN:: 9780719082771
Publisher:: Manchester University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.7228/manchester/9780719082771.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2012-07-19

Drawing on collaborative research from a team at Harvard and Manchester universities, this book asks how two very different societies are responding to the tide of diversity that is being felt around the rich world. Injustice, it turns out, still blights the lives of many UK and US minorities – particularly African Americans – and there are signs that the new diversity strains community life. Yet in both countries, public opinion is running irreversibly in favour of tolerance. That augurs well for the future – and suggests that a British Obama cannot be ruled out.

How Women Represent Women

Tracy L. Osborn — 2012-05-24

Author:: Tracy L. Osborn
ISBN:: 9780199845347
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199845347.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

In How Women Represent Women: Political Parties, Gender and Representation in the State Legislatures, Tracy Osborn examines two avenues through which political parties fundamentally affect how women legislators represent women by creating women’s issues policies. First, women’s party identities shape the types of policy alternatives they offer to solve women’s policy problems. Second, parties organize the legislative process by holding majority control, to varying degrees, over agenda setting and policy creation, promoting some women legislators’ policy proposals over others. Osborn tests these two avenues of influence by comparing partisan women’s legislative behavior toward the creation of women’s issues policies across different party environments in the U.S. state legislatures. She uses original election, sponsorship, and roll call data in nearly all ninety-nine state legislative chambers in 1999-2000. She concludes that Republican and Democratic women offer different solutions to women’s policy problems based in their party identities. Depending on which party controls the legislative process and how strongly they do so, this party control promotes one set of partisan policy alternatives over the other. Thus, political parties determine which women’s issues policies become law. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how essential parties are to understanding how women elected to public office translate their interest in women’s issues into substantive public policy.

Enlisting Masculinity

Melissa T. Brown — 2012-05-24

Author:: Melissa T. Brown
ISBN:: 9780199842827
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics, International Relations and Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199842827.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book explores how the U.S. military branches have deployed gender and, in particular, ideas about masculinity to sell military service to potential recruits. Military service has strong historical ties to masculinity, but conscription ended during a period when masculinity was widely perceived to be in crisis and women’s roles were expanding. The central question the book asks is whether, in the era of the all-volunteer force, masculinity is the underlying basis of military recruiting appeals and if so, in what forms It also asks how women fit into the gendering of service. Based on an analysis of more than 300 print advertisements published between the early 1970s and 2007, as well as television commercials and recruiting Websites, the book argues that masculinity is still a foundation of the appeals, but each branch deploys various constructions of masculinity that serve its particular personnel needs and culture, with conventional martial masculinity being only one among them. While the Marines rely almost exclusively on a traditional, warrior form of masculinity, the Army, Navy, and Air Force draw on various strands of masculinity that are in circulation in the wider culture, including economic independence and breadwinner status, dominance and mastery through technology, and hybrid masculinity which combines egalitarianism and compassion with strength and power. The inclusion of a few token military women in recruiting advertisements has become routine, but the representations of service make it clear that men are the primary audience and combat their exclusive domain.

Engines of Change

Daniel DiSalvo — 2012-05-24

Author:: Daniel DiSalvo
ISBN:: 9780199891702
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199891702.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

To properly understand American political parties one must look beneath their labels. Beneath those labels are factions that have goals, incentives, and resources that conflict with the larger party in which they reside. This book provides the first full account of the role of national intra-party “factions” in American politics. A faction, as defined here, is a party sub-unit that has enough ideological consistency, organizational capacity, and temporal durability to sustain intra-party conflict. Factions are loosely organized networks made up of members of Congress, party activists, pressure groups, policy entrepreneurs, and intellectuals. They are engines of political change that develop new ideas, refine them into workable policies, and promote them in government. Because America’s big-tent parties are cumbersome instruments, factions help account for changes in public policy, modes of electoral mobilization, and the parties’ ideological positions. This study explains how factions’ shape the parties’ ideologies, impact presidential nominations, distribute power in Congress, structure patterns of presidential governance, and impact the development of the American state. It shows how factions are often as or more important than the parties in driving political change. Ultimately, by trying to command the party in which they reside, factions seek the authority to put their stamp on the nation.

The Diversity Paradox

Kristin Kanthak and George Krause — 2012-05-24

Author:: Kristin Kanthak, George Krause
ISBN:: 9780199891726
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199891726.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

“From the Iraqi Parliament to the U.S. House of Representatives, policymakers and scholars alike have long argued that it is critical that the composition of elected assemblies represent the diversity of the broader polity. This book proffers the claim that increases in minority group representation in political parties result in poorer treatment of minority group members by both their majority group counterparts and fellow minority group members. This condition, referred to as “asymmetric tokenism”, undermines the link between descriptive and substantive forms of representation. Yet this condition can be offset when a minority group is sufficiently large, since its members are able to have divergent policy preferences without facing heavy sanctions from colleagues. The Diversity Paradox is the first study to examine systematically the “black box” of how descriptive representation might, or might not, translate to substantive representation, via the effect of group dynamics on colleague valuation. Using a combination of analytical, statistical, and qualitative methods, Kanthak and Krause are able to assess the full-scale consequences of diversity in American national and state legislatures The authors’ core claim is both powerful and simple - fully enjoying the benefits of diversity in representative institutions requires that minority groups not only attain sufficient descriptive representation within the institution, but also overcome their intra-group coordination problems. The Diversity Paradox highlights the consequences of increasing diversity in political organizations, and how best to remedy these problems to ensure that minority group voices are fully heard.”

Caring for America

Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein — 2012-05-24

Author:: Eileen Boris, Jennifer Klein
ISBN:: 9780195329117
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195329117.001.0001
Published in print:: 2012
Published Online:: 2012-05-24

This book helps to explain why there is no adequate long-term care in America. Through a sweeping analytical narrative, from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Great Recession of today, Caring for America shows how law and social policy shaped home care into a low-waged job and a means-tested social service, stigmatized as part of public welfare, primarily funded through Medicaid, and relegated to the bottom of the medical hierarchy. It became a job for African American and immigrant women that kept them in poverty, while providing independence from institutionalization for needy elderly and disabled people. But while the state organized home care, it did not do so without contestation and confrontation. Caring for America also traces the intertwined, sometimes conflicting search of care providers and receivers for dignity, self-determination, security, and personal and social worth. It highlights social movements of senior citizens and disability rights/independent living, the civil rights organizing of women on welfare and domestic workers, the battles of public sector unions, and the unionization of health and service workers. It rethinks both the history of the American welfare state from the perspective of carework and the strategies of the U.S. labor movement in terms of a growing carework economy, arguing for care as a right deserving a living wage and social support.

The Foreign Policy of Lyndon B. Johnson

Jonathan Colman — 2012-03-22

Author:: Jonathan Colman
ISBN:: 9780748640133
Publisher:: Edinburgh University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640133.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

Drawing on recently declassified documents as well as some of the latest published research, this book provides a fresh general account of President Johnson's handling of US foreign relations. It begins with an exploration of the Johnson White House, and then considers US policies towards Vietnam, Britain and France, the NATO alliance, the Soviet Union and communist China, the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere, and the international economy. The book contends that although the war in Vietnam could have been prosecuted more effectively, overall Johnson dealt with the world beyond the borders of the United States very capably. In particular, he dealt with successive challenges to the NATO alliance in a skilled and intelligent manner, leaving it politically stronger when he left office in 1969 than it had been in 1963. The book provides the most sympathetic general account of Johnson's foreign policy thus far and confounds the traditional image of him as maladroit in the realm of diplomacy.

Cold War US Foreign Policy

Steven Hurst — 2012-03-22

Author:: Steven Hurst
ISBN:: 9780748620791
Publisher:: Edinburgh University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748620791.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2012-03-22

This book provides a comprehensive description and critique of the six most important historical interpretations of US Cold War foreign policy: traditionalism, revisionism, post-revisionism, corporatism, world systems theory, and post-structuralism. The book uses the ‘levels of analysis’ approach to demonstrate how each of these perspectives can be understood as an explanatory framework combining different types of factors located at different levels of the international system. This original way of explaining the work of the historians discussed helps the reader to see past the narrative and empirical elements of their writings and to grasp more clearly the underlying theoretical assumptions. In each chapter a description of the perspective's underlying theoretical framework and how it explains US foreign policy is followed by a critique of that theory and explanation. A central theme, developed throughout the book, is the difficulty of managing the constant tension between the explanatory power of theory and the historian's desire to encompass the complex totality of historical events. This critical companion can be read alongside the works of the historians themselves, showing how they have sought to explain US Cold War foreign policy and the key differences between their perspectives.

The Delegated Welfare State

Kimberly J. Morgan and Andrea Louise Campbell — 2012-01-19

Author:: Kimberly J. Morgan, Andrea Louise Campbell
ISBN:: 9780199730346
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730346.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

This book explores the delegation of authority over American social programs to private actors. In the development of the American welfare state, policy-makers have often avoided direct governmental provision of benefits and services, turning instead to private actors for the governance of social programs. More recent versions of delegated governance seek also to create social welfare marketplaces in which consumers can choose from an array of private providers. This book examines both the reasons behind this persistent delegation of authority and the consequences. Focusing on the case study of Medicare—and, in particular, the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act—the book argues that fundamental contradictions in American public opinion help explain the prevalence of delegated governance. Americans want both social programs and small government, leaving policy-makers in a bind. To square the circle, policy-makers have contracted out public programs to non-state actors, including voluntary organizations and for-profit entities, as a way to mask the role of the state. Such arrangements also pull in interest group allies—the providers of these programs—who can help pass policies in a political landscape that is fraught with obstacles. Although delegated governance has been politically expedient, it has frequently come at the cost of effective administration and created problems of fraud and abuse. Social welfare marketplaces also suffer from the difficulties individuals have in making choices about the benefits they need. In probing both the causes and consequences of delegated governance, this book offers a novel interpretation of both American social welfare politics and the nature of the American state.

Access Points

Sean D. Ehrlich — 2012-01-19

Author:: Sean D. Ehrlich
ISBN:: 9780199737536
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737536.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2012-01-19

Access Points develops a new theory about how democratic institutions influence policy outcomes. Access Point Theory argues that the more points of access that institutions provide to interest groups, the cheaper lobbying will be, and, thus, the more lobbying will occur. This will lead to more complex policy, as policymakers insert specific provisions to benefit special interests, and, if one side of the debate has a lobbying advantage, to more biased policy, as the advantaged side is able to better take advantage of the cheaper lobbying. This book then uses Access Point Theory to explain why some countries have more protectionist and more complex trade policies than others; why some countries have stronger environmental and banking regulations than others; and why some countries have more complicated tax codes than others. In policy area after policy area, this book finds that more access points lead to more biased and more complex policy. Access Points provides scholars a powerful tool to explain how political institutions matter and why countries implement the policies they do.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics

Ronald M. PETERS, Jr. and Cindy Simon Rosenthal — 2011-10-03

Author:: Ronald M. PETERS, Jr., Cindy Simon Rosenthal
ISBN:: 9780195383737
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383737.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

When the Democrats retook control of the United States House of Representatives in January 2007 after twelve years in the wilderness, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker in American history. This book provides a comprehensive account of how Pelosi became speaker and what this tells us about Congress in the 21st century. It considers the key issues that Pelosi’s rise presents for American politics, highlights the core themes that have shaped, and continue to shape, her remarkable career, and discusses the challenges that women face in the male-dominated world of American politics, particularly at its highest levels. The book also sheds light on Pelosi’s political background: first as the scion of a powerful Baltimore political family whose power base lay in East Coast urban ethnic politics, and later as a successful politician in what is probably the most liberal city in the country, San Francisco. The book traces how she built her base within the House Democratic Caucus and ultimately consolidated enough power to win the Speakership. It shows how twelve years out of power allowed her to fashion a new image for House Democrats, and it concludes with an analysis of her institutional leadership style.

Righting Feminism

Ronnee Schreiber — 2011-10-03

Author:: Ronnee Schreiber
ISBN:: 9780195331813
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331813.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

When we think of women's activism in America, figures such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan invariably come to mind—those liberal doyennes who have fought for years to chip away at patriarchy and achieve gender equality. But women's interests are not synonymous with organizations like NOW anymore. As this book shows, the conservative ascendancy that began in the Reagan era has been accompanied by the emergence of a broad-based conservative women's movement. And while firebrands like Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly may be the public face of right-wing women's activism, a handful of large and established women's organizations have proven to be the most effective promoters of the conservative agenda. This book shows that one of the key—albeit overlooked—developments in political activism since the 1980s has been the emergence of conservative women's organizations. It focuses on the most prominent of these groups, Concerned Women for America (CWA) and the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), to reveal how they are using feminist rhetoric for conservative ends: outlawing abortion, restricting pornography, and bolstering the traditional family. But ironically, these organizations face a paradox: to combat the legacy of feminism—particularly its appeal to the majority of American women—they must use the rhetoric of women's empowerment. Indeed, the book illustrates how conservative activists are often the beneficiaries of the very feminist politics they oppose. Yet just as importantly, it demolishes two widely believed truisms: that conservatism holds no appeal to women and that modern conservatism is hostile to the very notion of women's activism.

Race and the Making of American Liberalism

Carol A. Horton — 2011-10-03

Author:: Carol A. Horton
ISBN:: 9780195143485
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195143485.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book traces the roots of the contemporary crisis of progressive liberalism deep into the nation's racial past. It argues that the contemporary conservative claim that the American liberal tradition has been rooted in a “color blind” conception of individual rights is inaccurate and misleading. In contrast, American liberalism has alternatively served both to support and oppose racial hierarchy, as well as socioeconomic equity more broadly. Racial politics in the United States have repeatedly made it exceedingly difficult to establish powerful constituencies that understand socioeconomic equity as vital to American democracy and aspire to limit gross disparities of wealth, power, and status. Revitalizing such equalitarian conceptions of American liberalism, the book suggests, will require developing new forms of racial and class identity that support, rather than sabotage such fundamental political commitments.

Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy

Nathaniel Persily, Jack Citrin, and Patrick J. Egan — 2011-10-03

Author:: NathanielPersilyColumbia UniversityJackCitrinUniversity of California, BerkeleyPatrick J.EganNew York Universityhttp://politics.as.nyu.edu/object/PatrickEgan
ISBN:: 9780195329414
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195329414.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

American politics is most notably characterized by the heated debates on constitutional interpretation at the core of its ever-raging culture wars, and the coverage of these lingering disputes is often inundated with public-opinion polls. Yet for all their prominence in contemporary society, there has never been an all-inclusive, systematic study of public opinion and how it impacts the courts and electoral politics. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of American public opinion on the key constitutional controversies of the 20th century, including desegregation, school prayer, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, gay rights, assisted suicide, and national security, to name just a few. With chapters focusing on each issue in-depth, the book utilizes public-opinion data to illustrate these contemporary debates, methodically examining each one and how public attitudes have shifted over time, especially in the wake of prominent Supreme Court decisions. The chapters join the “popular constitutionalism” debate between those who advocate a dominant role for courts in constitutional adjudication and those who prefer a more pluralized constitutional discourse. Each chapter also details the gap between the public and the Supreme Court on these hotly contested issues and analyzes how and why this divergence of opinion has grown or shrunk over the last fifty years.

Party/Politics

Michael Hanchard — 2011-10-03

Author:: Michael Hanchard
ISBN:: 9780195176247
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176247.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This treatment of “party” life traces the many different forms of communal expression that underlie black parties. It reveals new dimensions to the way we think about the cultural and political sphere, both nationally and transnationally. This book draws broadly on examples from popular culture, literature, social movements, and daily life to explore an array of themes ranging from black ideologies, the demise of Black power and Third Worldism as emancipatory projects for liberation, to more contemporary issues and debates on multiculturalism and transnational forms of identity. Capturing what is often overlooked due to an emphasis on nations, on surveys, and on formal institutions, it offers an expansive, integrated framework for the study of not only black politics but of political and social theory the world over.

A New Engagement?

2011-10-03

Author:: Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, Michael X. Delli Carpini
ISBN:: 9780195183177
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183177.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

In searching for answers as to why young people differ vastly from their parents and grandparents when it comes to turning out the vote, this book challenges the conventional wisdom that today's youth is plagued by a severe case of political apathy. In order to understand the current nature of citizen engagement, it is critical to separate political from civic engagement. Using the results from an original set of surveys and primary research, the book concludes that while older citizens participate by voting, young people engage by volunteering and being active in their communities.

Living the Policy Process

Philip B. Heymann — 2011-10-03

Author:: Philip B. Heymann
ISBN:: 9780195335385
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335385.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Policymaking in large bureaucracies is hardly a simple process. Even the most respected policymakers have to contend with obstacles that seemingly have little to do with the issue at hand—office politics, work structure, and shifting political environments. Yet learning to manage such complex environments is necessary for good policymaking. This book outlines the complex thought processes of policymakers as they struggle to influence both foreign and domestic policy decisions from within the United States government bureaucracy. Focusing on three critical situations to illuminate the politics of policy choice—the successful attempt to sell missiles to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s; the Iran-Contra scandal; and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s attempt to regulate smoking as well as the efforts to do the same by an outside lobbyist—the book dissects the intuitive yet rigorous framework that highly skilled policymakers follow in order to influence government outcomes. Throughout, this book offers detailed accounts of the policy process at work in the Reagan, first Bush, and Clinton administrations, from the cabinet level down to the middle tiers of the federal bureaucracy. The book describes the shifting real-world conditions that government officials face as they struggle to shape the policy agenda, offering a look at the complex considerations involved from all perspectives, with concrete examples.

The Liberty of Strangers

Desmond King — 2011-10-03

Author:: Desmond King
ISBN:: 9780195306439
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306439.001.0001
Published in print:: 2006
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Spanning the entire 20th century and encompassing immigration policies, the nationalistic fallout from both world wars, the civil rights movement, and nation-building efforts in the postcolonial era, this book advances a major new interpretation of American nationalism and the future prospects for diverse democracies. Tracing how Americans have confronted and relinquished, but mostly clung to group identities over the past century, the book debunks one of the guiding assumptions of American nationhood, namely that group distinction and identification would gradually dissolve over time, creating a “postethnic” nation. The divisions in American society have consistently proven themselves too strong to dissolve and, for better or for worse, the often-disparaged politics of multiculturalism are here to stay, with profound implications for America's democracy.

In Search of the Black Fantastic

Richard Iton — 2011-10-03

Author:: Richard Iton
ISBN:: 9780195178463
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178463.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Prior to the 1960s, when African Americans had little access to formal political power, black popular culture was commonly seen as a means of forging community and effecting political change. But as this book shows, despite the changes brought about by the civil rights movement, and contrary to the wishes of those committed to narrower conceptions of politics, black artists have continued to play a significant role in the making and maintenance of critical social spaces. The book offers a portrait of the relationship between popular culture and institutionalized politics, tracing the connections between artists such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Pryor, Bob Marley and Erykah Badu and those individuals working in the protest, electoral, and policy making arenas. With an emphasis on questions of class, gender, sexuality, diaspora and coloniality, the book also illustrates how creative artists destabilize modern notions of the proper location of politics, and politics itself.

How Congress Evolves

Nelson W. Polsby — 2011-10-03

Author:: Nelson W. Polsby
ISBN:: 9780195182965
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182965.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book argues that among other things, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Congress evolved. In short, the book argues that air conditioning altered the demography of the southern states, which in turn changed the political parties of the South, which transformed the composition and in due course the performance of the US House of Representatives. This evolutionary process led to the House’s liberalization and later to its transformation into an arena of sharp partisanship, visible among both Democrats and Republicans. This book offers an explanation for important transformations in the congressional environment.

Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair

James A. Morone and Lawrence R. Jacobs — 2011-10-03

Author:: James A.MoroneBrown UniversityLawrence R.JacobsUniversity of Minnesotahttp://www.hhh.umn.edu/people/ljacobs/
ISBN:: 9780195170665
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170665.001.0001
Published in print:: 2005
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

America may be one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but its citizens rank near the bottom in health status. Americans have lower life expectancy, more infant mortalities, and higher adolescent death rates than most other advanced industrial nations—and even some developing countries. Though Americans are famous for tolerating great inequality in wealth, the gross inequities in the health system are less well recognized. In this book, a group of health policy experts chart the stark disparities in health and wealth in the United States. The authors explain how the inequities arise, why they persist, and what makes them worse. Growing income inequality, high poverty rates, and inadequate health-care coverage: all three trends help account for the U.S.'s health troubles. The corrosive effects of market ideology and government stalemate, the contributors argue, have also proved a powerful obstacle to effective and more egalitarian solutions. A call for a populist uprising to end the stalemate over health reform, the book outlines concrete policy proposals for reform—tapping bold new ideas as well as incremental changes to existing programs.

Exposing Men

Cynthia R. Daniels — 2011-10-03

Author:: Cynthia R. Daniels
ISBN:: 9780195148411
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195148411.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book examines how ideals of masculinity have long skewed our societal—and scientific—understanding of one of the pillars of male identity: reproductive health. Only with the recent public exposure of men's reproductive troubles has the health of the male body been thrown into question, and along with it, deeper masculine ideals. Whereas once, men's sexual and reproductive abilities were the most taboo of topics, today, erectile dysfunction is a multi-billion dollar business, and magazine articles trumpet male reproductive decline with headlines such as “You're Half the Man Your Father Was.” The author looks at our world of plummeting sperm counts, spiking reproductive cancers, sperm banks, and pharmacological cures for impotence, in order to assess the true state of male health. What she finds is male reproductive systems damaged by toxins and war, and proof piling up that through sperm, men pass on harm to the children they father. Yet, despite the evidence that men's health, as much as women's, significantly affects the vitality of their offspring, the author also sees a society holding on to outdated assumptions, one in which men ignore blatant health risks as they struggle to live up to antiquated ideas of manliness.

Conservative Protestant Politics

Steve Bruce — 2011-10-03

Author:: Steve Bruce
ISBN:: 9780198293927
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198293927.001.0001
Published in print:: 1998
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

This book examines the place and nature of religion in industrial societies through a comparative analysis of conservative Protestant politics in a variety of ‘first world’ societies. Rejecting the popular, but misleading, grouping of diverse movements under the heading of ‘fundamentalism’, this book presents a series of detailed case studies of the Christian Right in the United States, Protestant unionism in Northern Ireland, anti-Catholicism in Scotland, Afrikaner politics in South Africa, and Empire Loyalism in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. It examines the constraints that culturally diverse societies place on those who wish to promote political agendas based on religious ideas or on religiously informed ethnic identities.

Conservatism and American Political Development

Brian J. Glenn and Steven M. Teles — 2011-10-03

Author:: Brian J.GlennEmerson CollegeSteven M.TelesUniversity of Marylandhttp://krieger.jhu.edu/newfaculty/teles.html
ISBN:: 9780195373929
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195373929.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

American political development (APD) is a core subfield in American political science, and focuses on political and policy history. For a variety of reasons, most of the focus in the twentieth century APD has been on liberal policymaking. Yet since the 1970s, conservatives have gradually assumed control over numerous federal policymaking institutions. This book offers an overview of the impact of conservatism on 20th-century American political development, locating its origins in the New Deal and then focusing on how conservatives acted within government once they began to achieve power in the late 1960s. The book is divided into three eras, and in each it focuses on three core issues: social security, the environment, and education. Throughout, the authors emphasize the ironic role of conservatism in the expansion of the American state. Scholars of the state have long focused on liberalism because liberals were the architects of state expansion. However, as conservatives increased their presence in the federal apparatus, they were frequently co-opted into maintaining of ever-expanding public fiscal and regulatory power. At times, conservatives also came to accept the existence of the liberal state, but attempted to use it to achieve conservative policy ends. Despite conservatives' power in US politics and governance, the American state remains gargantuan. As this book shows, the new right has not only helped shape the state, but has been shaped by it as well.

The Anti-Intellectual Presidency

Elvin T. Lim — 2011-10-03

Author:: Elvin T. Lim
ISBN:: 9780195342642
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195342642.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-10-03

Why has it been so long since an American president has effectively and consistently presented well-crafted, intellectually substantive arguments to the American public? Why have presidential utterances fallen from the rousing speeches of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, and FDR to a series of robotic repetitions of talking points and 60-second soundbites, largely designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate? This book draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents' ability to communicate with the public. The book argues that the ever-increasing pressure for presidents to manage public opinion and perception has created a “pathology of vacuous rhetoric and imagery” where gesture and appearance matter more than accomplishment and fact. The book tracks the campaign to simplify presidential discourse through presidential and speechwriting decisions made from the Truman to the present administration, explaining how and why presidents have embraced anti-intellectualism and vague platitudes as a public relations strategy. The book sees this anti-intellectual stance as a deliberate choice rather than a reflection of presidents' intellectual limitations. Only the smart, it suggests, know how to dumb down. The result, it shows, is a dangerous debasement of our political discourse and a quality of rhetoric which has been described, charitably, as “a linguistic struggle” and, perhaps more accurately, as “dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.”

Niche News

Natalie Jomini Stroud — 2011-09-22

Author:: Natalie Jomini Stroud
ISBN:: 9780199755509
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755509.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Rush Limbaugh Show, National Public Radio—a list of available political media sources could continue without any apparent end. This book investigates how people navigate these choices. It asks whether people are using media sources that express political views matching their own, a behavior known as partisan selective exposure. By looking at newspaper, cable news, news magazine, talk radio, and political website use, this book offers a look to-date at the extent to which partisanship influences our media selections. Using data from numerous surveys and experiments, the results provide broad evidence about the connection between partisanship and news choices. This book also examines who seeks out likeminded media and why they do it. Perceptions of partisan biases in the media vary—sources that seem quite biased to some don't seem so biased to others. These perceptual differences provide insight into why some people select politically likeminded media—a phenomenon that is democratically consequential. On one hand, citizens may become increasingly divided from using media that coheres with their political beliefs. In this way, partisan selective exposure may result in a more fragmented and polarized public. On the other hand, partisan selective exposure may encourage participation and understanding. Likeminded partisan information may inspire citizens to participate in politics and help them to organize their political thinking. But, ultimately, the partisan use of niche news has some troubling effects. It is vital that we think carefully about the implications both for the conduct of media research and, more broadly, for the progress of democracy.

Crisis of Conservatism?

Joel D. Aberbach and Gillian Peele — 2011-09-22

Author:: Joel D.AberbachUniversity of California-Los Angeleshttp://www.polisci.ucla.edu/people/faculty-pages/joel-d-aberbachGillianPeeleLady Margaret Hall, Oxford Universityhttp://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/profile/gillian-peele.html
ISBN:: 9780199764013
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764013.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-09-22

This volume explores the problems facing the contemporary conservative movement and the Republican Party in the United States. The chapters analyze a range of issues confronting the American right, including the factionalism and fissures within its different strands and the policy and strategic dilemmas which its faces. They delineate the evolution of the conservative movement and its relationship with the Republican Party both in historical context and in the Bush years. The volume examines the potential for rebuilding the Republican Party and the congruence of elite and mass attitudes with conservative and GOP positions on a variety of issues. The roles and positions of various parts of the conservative coalition, including the religious right, women's groups, and conservative thinks tanks are examined. Policy areas that are highly relevant to debates in conservative and Republican circles, including domestic, foreign, economic and deregulation policy are examined to assess their content, strengths and weaknesses. The book concludes with a discussion of the general themes argued by the contributors, focusing on the strengths but also the on the conflicted nature of contemporary American conservatism and on what these strengths and conflicts imply for the future of conservative and Republican politics.

Vietnam’s Second Front

Andrew L. Johns — 2011-09-14

Author:: Andrew L. Johns
ISBN:: 9780813125725
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125725.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

The Vietnam War has been analyzed, dissected, and debated from multiple perspectives for decades, but domestic considerations—such as partisan politics and election-year maneuvering—are often overlooked as determining factors in the evolution and outcome of America's longest war. This book assesses the influence of the Republican Party—its congressional leadership, politicians, grassroots organizations, and the Nixon administration—on the escalation, prosecution, and resolution of the Vietnam War. It also sheds new light on the relationship between Congress and the imperial presidency as they struggled for control over U.S. foreign policy. Beginning the analysis in 1961 and continuing through the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the book argues that the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations failed to achieve victory on both fronts of the Vietnam War—military and political—because of their preoccupation with domestic politics. It details the machinations and political dexterity required of all three presidents and of members of Congress to maneuver between the countervailing forces of escalation and negotiation, offering a provocative account of the ramifications of their decisions.

Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution

George Anastaplo — 2011-09-14

Author:: George Anastaplo
ISBN:: 9780813125336
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125336.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

The role of law in government has been increasingly scrutinized as courts struggle with controversial topics such as assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, and torture. This book explores such issues by using classical standards of morality as a starting point for understanding them. Drawing on works of literature and philosophy, and on U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the book examines the intimate relationship between human nature and constitutional law.

One Nation Under Siege

Jocelyn J. Evans — 2011-09-14

Author:: Jocelyn J. Evans
ISBN:: 9780813125886
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125886.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America's political institutions underwent radical changes as they adapted to comprehensive security reforms. While the media exhaustively covered new security protocols in the executive office, little attention was paid to other federal agencies and branches that overhauled their systems to accommodate heightened security requirements. As a congressional fellow living in Washington, the author of this book was an eyewitness to the institutional culture of Capitol Hill before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as during the subsequent anthrax scare. This book uses personal experiences as the foundation for a richly researched analysis of how Congress changed as an institution and a national symbol in the wake of 9/11. The book reveals not only physical transformations but also internal policy shifts that threaten democracy by limiting citizens' access to their elected leaders.

In Defense of the Bush Doctrine

Robert G. Kaufman — 2011-09-14

Author:: Robert G. Kaufman
ISBN:: 9780813124346
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813124346.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shattered the prevalent optimism in the United States that had blossomed during the tranquil and prosperous 1990s, when democracy seemed triumphant and catastrophic wars were a relic of the past. President George W. Bush responded with a bold and controversial grand strategy for waging a preemptive Global War on Terror, which has ignited passionate debate about the purposes of American power and the nation's proper role in the world. This book offers a vigorous argument for the principles of moral democratic realism that inspired the Bush administration's policy of regime change in Iraq. The Bush Doctrine rests on two main pillars—the inadequacy of deterrence and containment strategies when dealing with terrorists and rogue regimes, and the culture of tyranny in the Middle East, which spawns aggressive secular and religious despotisms. Two key premises shape the book's case for the Bush Doctrine's conformity with moral democratic realism. The first is the fundamental purpose of American foreign policy since its inception: to ensure the integrity and vitality of a free society “founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.” The second premise is that the cardinal virtue of prudence (the right reason about things to be done) must be the standard for determining the best practicable American grand strategy. This book provides a broader historical context for the post-September 11 American foreign policy that will transform world politics well into the future. The book connects the Bush Doctrine and current issues in American foreign policy, such as how the U.S. should deal with China, to the deeper tradition of American diplomacy. Drawing from positive lessons as well as cautionary tales from the past, the book concludes that moral democratic realism offers the most compelling framework for American grand strategy, as it expands the democratic zone of peace and minimizes the number and gravity of threats the United States faces in the modern world.

From Berlin to Baghdad

Hal Brands — 2011-09-14

Author:: Hal Brands
ISBN:: 9780813124629
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813124629.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

Containing Communism was the primary goal of American foreign policy for four decades, allowing generations of political leaders to build consensus atop a universally accepted foundation. This book dissects numerous attempts, after the collapse of Communism, to devise a new grand strategy that could match containment's moral clarity and political efficacy. In the 1990s, the Bush and Clinton administrations eventually acknowledged that they could not reduce America's multifaceted post-Cold War objectives to a single fundamental precept. After 9/11, George W. Bush promoted the war on terror as America's new global mission, but this potential successor to containment lost much of its strength as conflicts in the Middle East weakened public morale. This book aims to shed new light on America's search for purpose in the politically volatile new world of the twenty-first century.

Foreign Policy, Inc.

Lawrence Davidson — 2011-09-14

Author:: Lawrence Davidson
ISBN:: 9780813125244
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125244.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

Elected officials, and especially presidential candidates, are increasingly asked to define their relationships to special interest groups. Such special, or private, interests play a disproportionate role in politics and legislation, whether in the form of large commercial or ethnic lobbies or in the shadowy realm of backroom dealmaking. This book argues that widespread public disinterest in global affairs, a prevailing characteristic of American political culture, has given private interest groups a paramount influence over the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. These well-organized, well-funded groups affect all levels of government, disguising their own interests as vital national interests. The book draws from numerous historical examples, dating from America's founding to the present, to examine the causes and the serious consequences of Americans' apathy toward foreign policy. This unique historical analysis of our increasingly privatized system of government offers compelling evidence that the United States is a democracy not of individuals, but of competing and powerful private groups.

Cowboy Conservatism

Sean P. Cunningham — 2011-09-14

Author:: Sean P. Cunningham
ISBN:: 9780813125763
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125763.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

This book is about political change as it evolved in one of America's largest and most important states during the tumultuous seventeen-year period between John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas and Ronald Reagan's ascension to the presidency in 1980. Partisan realignment is the most obvious aspect of that change. Texas was once as solidly Democratic as any state in the nation. By the end of the twentieth century, it was among the most solidly Republican. A simplistic analysis of this transformation based in large part on the perception that Texas has always been a conservative place, might suggest that—as Ronald Reagan, the preeminent icon of modern conservatism, once similarly quipped—Texas didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left Texas. However, the political changes that gripped Texas during the last decades of the twentieth century resulted from a more complex mélange. This book analyses this in detail.

Congressional Ambivalence

Jasmine Farrier — 2011-09-14

Author:: Jasmine Farrier
ISBN:: 9780813192628
Publisher:: University Press of Kentucky
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.5810/kentucky/9780813192628.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2011-09-14

Is the United States Congress dead, alive, or trapped in a moribund cycle? When confronted with controversial policy issues, members of Congress struggle to satisfy conflicting legislative, representative, and oversight duties. These competing goals, along with the pressure to satisfy local constituents, cause members of Congress to routinely cede power on a variety of policies, express regret over their loss of control, and later return to the habit of delegating their power. This pattern of institutional ambivalence undermines conventional wisdom about congressional party resurgence, the power of oversight, and the return of the so-called imperial presidency. This book examines Congress's frequent delegation of power by analyzing primary source materials such as bills, committee reports, and the Congressional Record. The book demonstrates that Congress is caught between abdication and ambition and that this ambivalence affects numerous facets of the legislative process. Explaining specific instances of post-delegation disorder, including Congress's use of new bills, obstruction, public criticism, and oversight to salvage its lost power, the book exposes the tensions surrounding Congress's roles in recent hot-button issues such as base-closing commissions, presidential trade promotion authority, and responses to the attacks of September 11. It also examines shifting public rhetoric used by members of Congress as they emphasize, in institutionally self-conscious terms, the difficulties of balancing their multiple roles.

Power from Powerlessness

Laura Evans — 2011-05-01

Author:: Laura Evans
ISBN:: 9780199742745
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199742745.001.0001
Published in print:: 2011
Published Online:: 2011-05-01

As American Indian tribes seek to overcome centuries of political and social marginalization, they face daunting obstacles. The successes of some tribal casinos have lured many outside observers into thinking that gambling revenue alone can somehow mend the devastation of culture, community, natural resources, and sacred spaces. The reality is quite different. Tribal officials often plan and execute their strategies amidst dilapidated offices, meager budgets, and populations that struggle against the ravages of shockingly low incomes. Yet we find examples of Indian tribes persuading states, localities, and the federal government to pursue policy change that addresses important tribal concerns. How is it that Indian tribes sometimes succeed against very dim odds? To answer this question, this book brings together ideas about the politics of the powerless and about political institutions. The book illustrates how political underdogs can build particular types of external relationships—that is termed in this book institutional niches—to provide small but needed subsidies for cultivating expertise, which then provide unobtrusive foundations for future political victories. Disadvantaged groups do not suddenly begin winning high-profile battles. Instead, the effects are indirect, of low visibility, and far flung throughout the federalist system. In isolation, each new quiet success seems unremarkable; cumulatively, the effects are impressive.

Social Movements and the Transformation of American Health Care

Jane Banaszak-Holl, Sandra Levitsky, and Mayer Zald — 2010-09-01

Author:: Jane Banaszak-Holl, Sandra Levitsky, Mayer Zald
ISBN:: 9780195388299
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388299.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-09-01

Social Movements and the Transformation of American Health Care examines dynamics of change in health care institutions through the lens of contemporary theory and research on collective action. Bringing together scholars from medicine, health management and policy, history, sociology, and political science, the book conceptualizes the American health care system as being organized around multiple institutions—including the state, biomedical fields, professions, and health delivery organizations. By shifting attention toward the organizing structures and political logics of these institutions, the essays in this book illuminate the diversity in both sites of health‐related collective action and the actors seeking transformations in health institutions. The book considers health‐related social movements at four distinct levels of analysis. At the most macro level, essays analyze social movements that seek changes from the state in the regulation, financing, and distribution of health resources. A second set of essays considers field‐level analyses of institutional changes in such wide‐ranging areas as public health, bio‐ethics, long‐term care, abortion, and AIDS services. A third set of essays examines the relationship between social movements and professions, examining the “boundary crossing” that occurs when professionals participate in social movements or seek changes in existing professions and the health practices they endorse. A final set of essays analyzes the cultural dominance of the medical model for addressing health problems in the United States and its implications for collective attempts to establish the legitimacy of particular issues, framings, and political actors in health care reform.

Parliament and Congress: Representation and Scrutiny in the Twenty-First Century

William McKay and Charles W. Johnson — 2010-09-01

Author:: William McKay, Charles W. Johnson
ISBN:: 9780199273621
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics, UK Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273621.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-09-01

The constitutional background of both legislatures and their procedures are described and where possible compared. Currently unsolved problems often have much in common, in vexed areas such as ethics requirements or how procedural rules permit minorities fair access to legislative time before majorities prevail. British successes include the enhanced authority and effectiveness of select committees and the acquisition of more debating time by the creation of a parallel Chamber. Unsolved problems at Westminster begin with the powers and status of the Lords, and go on through the search for more effective review of EU activities, adapting parliamentary scrutiny to more sophisticated government financial information, and making better use of legislative time without diminishing back‐bench rights. The accelerated pace and extent of procedural changes in Congress is problematic. Constant pursuit of campaign funds, increased party exploitation of Members' ethical shortcomings, and partisan reapportionments have diminished collegiality and compromise. Business is conducted with greater predictability, with fewer quorum calls, postponement and clustering of votes, and by utilization of ad hoc special orders, often in derogation of openness and minority rights in the House. Minority complaints have been frequent and occasionally extreme. Conversely, constant filibuster threats in the Senate have enhanced minority party power there. An ‘inverse ratio’ between the greater complexity, importance, and urgency of pending legislation on the one hand, and diminution of deliberative capacity, fairness, and transparency on the other, has been repeatedly demonstrated, especially at the stage of final compromises between the Houses.

Reforming Jim Crow

Kimberley Johnson — 2010-05-01

Author:: Kimberley Johnson
ISBN:: 9780195387421
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387421.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

Historians of the Civil Rights era typically treat the key events of the 1950s Brown v. Board of Education — sit-ins, bus boycotts, and marches — as contributing toward a revolutionary social upheaval that upended a rigid caste system. While the 1950s was a watershed era in Southern and civil rights history, the tendency has been to paint the preceding Jim Crow era as a brutal system that featured none of the progressive reform impulses so apparent at the federal level and in the North. As the author shows in this reappraisal of the Jim Crow era, this argument is too simplistic, and is true to neither the 1950s nor the long era of Jim Crow that finally solidified in 1910. Focusing on the political development of the South between 1910 and 1954, this book considers the genuine efforts by white and black progressives to reform the system without destroying it. These reformers assumed that the system was there to stay, and therefore felt that they had to work within it in order to modernize the South. Consequently, white progressives tried to install a better — meaning more equitable — separate-but-equal system, and elite black reformers focused on ameliorative (rather than confrontational) solutions that would improve the lives of African Americans. The book concentrates on local and state reform efforts throughout the South in areas like schooling, housing, and labor. Many of the reforms made a difference, but they had the ironic impact of generating more demand for social change among blacks. The author is able to show how demands slowly rose over time, and how the system laid the seeds of its own destruction. The reformers' commitment to a system that was less unequal — albeit not truly equal — and more like the North, led to significant policy changes over time. As this book demonstrates, our lack of knowledge about the cumulative policy transformations resulting from the Jim Crow reform impulse, impoverishes our understanding of the Civil Rights revolution. Reforming Jim Crow aims to rectify that.

The Logic of Discipline

Alasdair Roberts — 2010-05-01

Author:: Alasdair Roberts
ISBN:: 9780195374988
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374988.001.0001
Published in print:: 2010
Published Online:: 2010-05-01

The era of economic liberalization, spanning 1978 to 2008, is often regarded as a period in which government was simply dismantled. In fact, government was reconstructed to meet the needs of a globalized economy. Central banking, fiscal control, tax collection, regulation, port and airport management, infrastructure development—in all of these areas, radical reforms were made to the architecture of government. A common philosophy shaped all of these reforms: the logic of discipline. It was premised on deep skepticism about the ability of democratic processes to make sensible policy choices. It sought to impose constraints on elected officials and citizens, often by shifting power to technocrat-guardians who were shielded from political influence. It placed great faith in the power of legal changes—new laws, treaties, and contracts—to produce significant alterations in the performance of governmental systems. Even before the global economic crisis of 2007-2009, the logic of discipline was under assault. Faced with many failed reform projects, advocates of discipline realized that they had underestimated the complexity of governmental change. Opponents of discipline emphasized the damage to democratic values that followed from the empowerment of new groups of technocrat-guardians. The financial crisis did further damage to the logic of discipline, as governments modified their attitudes about central bank independence and fiscal control, and global financial and trade flows declined. It was the market that now appeared to behave myopically and erratically, and which now insisted that governments should abandon precepts about the role of government that it had once insisted were inviolable. An account of neoliberal governmental restructuring across the world, The Logic of Discipline offers an analysis of how this undemocratic model is unravelling in the face of a monumental and ongoing failure of the market.

Unanticipated Gains

Mario Luis Small — 2009-09-01

Author:: Mario Luis Small
ISBN:: 9780195384352
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384352.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-09-01

Social capital theorists have shown that inequality arises in part because some people enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? This book argues that the answer lies less in people's deliberate “networking” than in the institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. This book introduces a model of social inequality that takes seriously the embeddedness of networks in formal organizations, proposing that what people gain from their connections depends on where those connections are formed and sustained. The model is illustrated and developed through a study of the experiences of mothers whose children were enrolled in New York City childcare centers. As a result of the routine practices and institutional conditions of the centers—from the structure of their parents' associations, to apparently innocuous rules such as pick‐up and drop‐off times—many of these mothers dramatically increased their social capital and measurably improved their wellbeing. Yet how much they gained depended on how their respective centers were organized. This book identifies the mechanisms through which childcare centers structured the networks of mothers, and shows that similar mechanisms operate in many other routine organizations, from beauty salons and bath houses to colleges and churches. The book makes a case for the importance of organizational embeddedness in the study of personal ties.

The Politics of Imprisonment

Vanessa Barker — 2009-09-01

Author:: Vanessa Barker
ISBN:: 9780195370027
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195370027.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-09-01

This book examines how the democratic process and social trust shape penal sanctioning in the United States. The research shows that higher levels of civic engagement tend to support milder punishments whereas lower levels tend to support more coercive criminal justice policies. The book challenges a taken‐for‐granted assumption about the democratic process and punishment. It shows that the apparent link between public participation, punitiveness, and harsh justice is not only historically contingent but dependent on specific institutional contexts and patterns of civic engagement, patterns that tend to vary within the United States and across liberal democracies. But perhaps more importantly, the research suggests the opposite relationship: increased democratization can support and sustain less coercive penal regimes. By comparing state‐level imprisonment variation and state‐level democratic traditions, this book highlights the importance of place, locality, and context in a globalizing social world.

The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse

Nancy Whittier — 2009-09-01

Author:: Nancy Whittier
ISBN:: 9780195325102
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325102.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-09-01

This book studies activism against child sexual abuse, tracing it from its emergence in feminist anti‐rape efforts, through the development of mainstream self‐help, conflicts with an opposing movement, and entry into mass media and public policy. Activists sought to change their feelings about child sexual abuse, to challenge its cultural invisibility, and to gain institutional resources. Elaborating a “therapeutic politics,” activists saw tactics for changing the self and emotion as crucial for widespread social change and combined them with efforts to change institutions and the state. The book argues that these tactics were a challenge to efforts by the state and powerful institutions to shape the self; activists against child sexual abuse played an important part in developing and disseminating the therapeutic politics that have become important to many social movements. The book conceptualizes the selection processes by which some movement goals entered mainstream media and public policy, while others did not. As activists engaged with the state and opposing movements, shifting political winds pulled them toward formulations of child sexual abuse as a medical or criminal problem and away from emphases on gender and power. Like many social movements, it achieved social change that was a mixture of compromise, cooptation, and gains. The book thus sheds light on the processes of incomplete social change that characterize contemporary politics in the United States.

Governance, Order, and the International Criminal Court

Steven C. Roach — 2009-09-01

Author:: Steven C.RoachAssistant Professor, University of South Floridahttp://gia.usf.edu/faculty/sroach/
ISBN:: 9780199546732
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics, International Relations and Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546732.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-09-01

Since entering into force in July 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has emerged as one of the most intriguing models of global governance. This book investigates the challenges facing the ICC, including the dynamics of politicized justice, US opposition, an evolving and flexible institutional design, the juridification of political evil, negative and positive global responsibility, the apparent conflict between peace and justice, and the cosmopolitanization of law. It argues that realpolitik has tested the ICC's capacity in a mostly positive manner, and that the ambivalence between realpolitik and justice constitutes a novel predicament for extending global governance. The arguments of each chapter are framed by an approach designed to assess the nuanced relationship between realpolitik and global justice. The approach — which interweaves four International Relations approaches, rationalism, constructivism, communicative action theory, and moral cosmopolitanism — is guided by the metaphor of the switch levers of train tracks, in which the Prosecutor and Judges serve as the pivotal agents switching the (crisscrossing) tracks of realpolitik and cosmopolitanism. With this visual aid, this book shows just how the ICC has become one of the most fascinating points of intersection between law, politics, and ethics.

Race and the Politics of Solidarity

Juliet Hooker — 2009-05-01

Author:: Juliet Hooker
ISBN:: 9780195335361
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335361.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-05-01

This book examines how the social fact of race shapes the ethical-political orientations of citizens in diverse democracies. It develops the concept of racialized solidarity; explores its impact on current conceptions of racial justice, particularly as formulated in theories of multiculturalism; and suggests how it might begin to be addressed. Political solidarity is the reciprocal relation of trust and obligation between members of a political community necessary for them to live together on terms of fairness, reciprocity, and mutual respect. The contours of political solidarity continue to be indelibly shaped by race, however. Racialized solidarity is thus an important obstacle to racial justice. Weaving together insights drawn from African American political philosophy, theories of multiculturalism, and the literature on solidarity in political theory, the book develops a distinctive approach to questions of racial justice. Against the prevailing tendency to claim that the best way to deal with racism is to abandon the concept of race altogether, the book suggests that one way to begin to confront the racialized politics of solidarity is to attempt to transform the ethical-historical perspectives of dominant groups by making whiteness visible. This requires confronting past collective injustices and transforming the content of the political community's public memory so that it reflects the ethical-political perspectives of both dominant and subordinated groups. The book provides a detailed analysis of Latin American models of multiculturalism, which are compared to those developed in the United States and Canada.

The Law Market

Larry E. Ribstein and Erin O'Hara — 2009-05-01

Author:: Larry E. Ribstein, Erin O'Hara
ISBN:: 9780195312898
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195312898.001.0001
Published in print:: 2009
Published Online:: 2009-05-01

Cheaper transportation, faster communication, and lowered trade barriers have made people, firms, and their assets much more mobile. This increasing mobility has strained traditional notions that laws operate within geographic borders. Instead, some nations find their laws powerless to control or regulate behavior, while others pass laws that have profound effects on assets and activities worldwide. Today, states increasingly act as hawkers of legal rules in a market for law where people and firms often can shop for those regimes that they find most desirable. A California resident can incorporate her shipping business in Delaware, register her ships in Panama, hire her employees from Hong Kong, place her earnings in an asset-protection trust formed in the Cayman Islands, and enter into a same-sex marriage in Massachusetts or Canada, and in doing so, she can enjoy the California sunshine while at least potentially avoiding many facets of the state's laws. The law market carries the promise of improving our lives as well as the quality of the laws that govern us because it helps to discipline interest group attempts to pass laws that impose costs on society. But the law market also threatens governments' ability to protect its citizens from harmful private conduct. Given this trade-off, the book argues that simple contractual choice-of-law rules can help maximize the beneficial effects of the law market while tempering its costs. This approach often is superior to attempts to federalize legal rules in the United States or to harmonize legal rules across nations. Moreover, lawmakers have powerful incentives to enforce parties' bargains regarding the applicable law in order to attract or retain mobile firms and residents. The book shows how their insights and recommendations apply across a wide variety of legal problems, including corporate governance, securities, franchise, trust, property, marriage, living will, surrogacy, and general contract regulations. This book therefore provides a useful template for analyzing the role of law in an increasingly mobile world.

The Perils of Federalism

Lisa L. Miller — 2009-01-01

Author:: Lisa L. Miller
ISBN:: 9780195331684
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331684.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2009-01-01

This book compares interest group participation in the development of crime and justice policy across the local, state and national levels of government and has three main contributions to law, policy and criminology scholarship. First, it provides a detailed analysis of the narrow and often parochial nature of national and state crime politics, in contrast to the active and intense local political mobilization on crime by racial minorities and the urban poor. The book illustrates the ways the structure of U.S. federalism has contributed to the current situation in which national policy responses to crime overlook black and poor victims of violence and how highly organized, narrowly focused interest groups, such as the National Rifle Association, have a disproportionate influence in crime politics. This study also demonstrates that urban minorities and the poor mobilize locally to address crime as one of many social ills, though their tactics are often unconventional and their resources limited. Second, it illustrates how the absence of these groups from the policy process at the state and national levels has encouraged the development of policy frames that are highly skewed in favor of police, prosecutors, and narrow citizen interests, whose policy preferences often converge on increasing punishments for offenders. That this is true even at the national level, where policy scholars often assume the policy process is more open and porous than at subregional levels, is a major contribution of the book. Finally, the comparison of group participation across legislative venues on a single policy issue contributes to our understanding of group theory.

Just Another Major Crisis?

Geir Lundestad — 2009-01-01

Author:: GeirLundestadDirector of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Professor of international history at the University of Oslo.
ISBN:: 9780199552030
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics, European Union
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552030.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2009-01-01

The Iraq War in 2003 led to a deep crisis in American–European relations. France and Germany, not Russia and China, emerged as the major critics of the US intervention. Some spoke about the death of NATO, to be replaced by “coalitions of the willing”; more temperate voices referred to transatlantic drift. Deep structural forces were allegedly at work: the end of the cold war, a turn to the right in the United States, the emergence of a more independent Europe. Yet, there had always been crises in NATO. They had come and gone ever since the organization was founded in 1949. In George W. Bush's second term relations between the United States and Europe improved considerably. The United States discovered that it needed allies; the Democrats took control of Congress. Under Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy Germany and France again moved closer to the USA; the defeat of the constitutional treaty slowed the independence of the EU. So, did the initial Bush years represent just another crisis in Atlantic relations, already come and gone like the many crises of the past, or did they represent deep, structural forces at work? In this book leading historians and political scientists on both sides of the Atlantic give different, but always stimulating answers to this question.

The Power of Precedent

Michael J. Gerhardt — 2008-05-01

Author:: Michael J. Gerhardt
ISBN:: 9780195150506
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195150506.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2008-05-01

In this book Professor Michael Gerhardt provides the first comprehensive effort to use both social science methods and conventional legal analysis to explain the role of precedent in constitutional law. His analysis demonstrates how precedent influences more than social scientists claim, but less than most scholars claim. He further shows how precedent, broadly understood, performs multiple significant but underappreciated functions in constitutional decision making both inside courts and outside of them. Last, but not least, his analysis explains a fundamental tension in constitutional adjudication in which precedent is generally respected as an abstract principle but particular precedents rarely constrain the decisions of courts and nonjudicial actors.

Copyright's Paradox

Neil Weinstock Netanel — 2008-05-01

Author:: Neil Weinstock Netanel
ISBN:: 9780195137620
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195137620.001.0001
Published in print:: 2008
Published Online:: 2008-05-01

Copyright is at once an engine of free expression and impediment to free expression. Copyright law underwrites much literature, journalism, music, art, and film. Yet copyright often stands in the way of speech that would build upon existing expression to convey new messages and artistic perspectives. In a seminal 1970 article, Melville Nimmer, the leading copyright and First Amendment scholar of his day, aptly termed the copyright‐free speech conflict a “largely ignored paradox.” Yet today that conflict has come virulently to the fore, and copyright is increasingly chastised as a tool of private censorship. Why has that happened? What values and practices does the copyright‐free speech conflict put at stake? How should the conflict be resolved? These are the principal questions this book seeks to answer. This book explores the copyright‐free speech conflict as it cuts across traditional and digital media alike. In so doing, it juxtaposes the dramatic expansion of copyright holders' proprietary control against individuals' newly found ability to digitally cut, paste, edit, remix, and distribute popular sound recordings, movies, TV programs, graphics, and texts the world over. It tests whether, in light of these developments and others, copyright still serves as a vital engine of free expression and assesses how copyright does—and does not—burden speech. Taking First Amendment values as its lodestar, the book argues that copyright should be delimited by how it can best promote robust debate and expressive diversity, and it presents a blueprint for how that can be accomplished.

American Credo

Michael Foley — 2008-01-01

Author:: Michael Foley
ISBN:: 9780199232673
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232673.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2008-01-01

American society may be hostile to the thought of ideologies, but it possesses a sophisticated but little understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development. This book asks how this occurs; how the sources, traditions, and usages of core ideas and their derivative compounds animate political discourse and structure the basis of political conflict; and how it is possible to sustain a high incidence of competitive value-laden argument and principled political conflict within a stable political order. The fundamental aim of this book is to examine the traditions and usages of American political ideas within the arena of practical politics. By locating them in their respective contexts, it is possible to assess both their changing meanings and their shifting relationships to one another. In surveying America's core ideas, the book facilitates an informed awareness of their political and cultural leverage as forms of persuasion and sources of legitimacy. The book roots the examination of American political ideas firmly in the milieu of social drives, political movements, and contemporary issues within which the ideas themselves are embedded. This not only allows the study to investigate the interior properties and traditional priorities of America's key values, but permits the theoretical implications and practical consequences of these ideas to be traced and evaluated.

The Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush

George C Edwards III and Desmond King — 2007-09-01

Author:: George CEdwards IIIDistinguished Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M Universityhttp://www-polisci.tamu.edu/faculty/edwards/DesmondKingAndrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government and Professorial Fellow, University of Oxfordhttp://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/profile/desmond-king.html
ISBN:: 9780199217977
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217977.001.0001
Published in print:: 2007
Published Online:: 2007-09-01

This book examines the foreign and domestic policies of President George W. Bush's administration. The analysis begins with an account of how highly polarized — in terms of public opinion and electoral patterns — this presidency has proved to be (in a chapter by the editors). This is followed by chapters on the use of unilateral executive powers (by Louis Fisher and William Howell) and prerogative powers (by Richard Pious). Because the policy choices of the Bush presidency have had such fundamental effects both in domestic policy and in US foreign policy, three contributors (Thomas Langston, John Burke, James Pfiffner) then address the processes of decision making especially in respect to the war against Iraq. How the administration governs by a recurring process of campaigning is examined in chapters on public opinion and war (by Gary Jacobson), the promotional presidency (by Larry Jacobs), mobilizing congressional support for war (by Scott Blinder), and the White House communications system (by Martha Kumar). Finally, the way in which the Bush White House relates to congress and the process of building congressional coalitions to enact laws is the subject of chapters on ‘executive style’ of this administration (by Charles O. Jones) and the failure to reform social security (by Fiona Ross).

A Revolution in Favor of Government

Max. M Edling — 2005-01-20

Author:: Max. M Edling
ISBN:: 9780195148701
Publisher:: Oxford University Press
Subjects:: Political Science, American Politics
DOI:: 10.1093/0195148703.001.0001
Published in print:: 2003
Published Online:: 2005-01-20

In this new interpretation of America's origins, the author argues that during the Constitutional debates, the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a state able to act vigorously in defense of American national interests. By transferring the powers of war making and resource extraction from states to the national government, the US Constitution created a nation‐state invested with all the important powers of Europe's eighteenth‐century “fiscal‐military states.” However, the political traditions and institutions of America, whose people had a deeply ingrained distrust of unduly concentrated authority, were incompatible with a strong centralized government based on the European pattern. To secure the adoption of the Constitution, the Federalists needed to build a very different state – they had to accommodate the formation of a powerful national government to the strong current of anti‐statism in the American political tradition. They did so by designing an administration that would be powerful in times of crisis, but would make limited demands on citizens and entailed sharp restrictions on the physical presence of the national government in society. The Constitution was the Federalists’ promise of the benefits of government without its costs – statecraft rather than strong central authority as the solution to governing. The book takes advantage of a newly published edition of the constitutional debates in recovering a neglected strand of Federalist argument, and making a case for rethinking the formation of the federal American state. It is arranged in three main parts: I. Interpreting the Debate over Ratification (four chapters); II. Military Powers (five chapters); and III. Fiscal Powers (five chapters).