Deze serie duikt in de ingewikkeldheden van de Amerikaanse politiek, met een bijzondere focus op de dynamiek binnen Chicago. Het onderzoekt politieke processen, sleutelfiguren en maatschappelijke krachten die het politieke landschap vormgeven. Elk deel biedt een diepgaande inkijk in de werking van Amerikaans bestuur en kiesstelsels. Het is essentiële lectuur voor iedereen die geïnteresseerd is in politicologie en de Amerikaanse geschiedenis.
Backed by careful analysis of public opinion surveys, the authors show how, despite changing American politics, those issues that receive extended coverage in the national news become more important to viewers, while those that are ignored lose credibility.
Lays out the underlying logic of contemporary poverty governance in the United States. This book argues that poverty governance - how social welfare policy choices get made, how authority gets exercised, and how collective pursuits get organized - has been transformed in the United States by two significant developments.
This is a study of the losers in three major episodes in American political history and shows how their ideas ended up, at least partially, winning, in the long run. The authors consider the campaign of the anti-Federalists against the adoption of the Constitution; the failed presidency of Andrew Johnson; and the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, as political losses that later heavily influenced American politics later. Sometimes the losers, because they articulate a vision of American government that resonates with some part of America, later contribute to a new political order. This is not an effort to explain winning or losing in American politics. Rather, it is intended to offer a new understanding of American political development as the product of a kind of dialectic between different political visions that have opposing ideas, particularly about the size and role of the federal government and about whether America is exclusively a liberal regime or one in which illiberal ideas on topics such as race, play an important role.
An analysis of how all politics became non-local-how US politics has increasingly become nationalized, so that local races break down on the same partisan lines and issues as national ones, even if that wouldn't necessarily make sense at a glance.
The 2009 financial stimulus bill ran to more than 1,100 pages, yet it wasn’t even given to Congress in its final form until thirteen hours before debate was set to begin, and it was passed twenty-eight hours later. How are representatives expected to digest so much information in such a short time. The answer? They aren’t. With Legislating in the Dark, James M. Curry reveals that the availability of information about legislation is a key tool through which Congressional leadership exercises power. Through a deft mix of legislative analysis, interviews, and participant observation, Curry shows how congresspersons—lacking the time and resources to study bills deeply themselves—are forced to rely on information and cues from their leadership. By controlling their rank-and-file’s access to information, Congressional leaders are able to emphasize or bury particular items, exploiting their information advantage to push the legislative agenda in directions that they and their party prefer. Offering an unexpected new way of thinking about party power and influence, Legislating in the Dark will spark substantial debate in political science.
Surveying critical episodes in the development of American political parties, this book shows how they address three fundamental problems of democracy: how to regulate the number of people seeking public office, how to mobilize voters, and how to achieve and maintain the majorities needed to accomplish goals once in office.
Legislative style and congressional careers -- Measuring legislative style (with Daniel Sewell) -- The styles -- Explaining freshman styles -- Transitions in style -- The electoral consequences of legislative style -- Styles, lawmaking, and legislative success -- Career advancement and legislative styles -- Legislative styles and evaluations of Congress
Since the founding of the American Republic, the North and South have followed remarkably different paths of political development. Among the factors that have led to their divergence throughout much of history are differences in the levels of competition among the political parties. While the North has generally enjoyed a well-defined two-party system, the South has tended to have only weakly developed political parties—and at times no system of parties to speak of. With Why Parties Matter, John H. Aldrich and John D. Griffin make a compelling case that competition between political parties is an essential component of a democracy that is responsive to its citizens and thus able to address their concerns. Tracing the history of the parties through four eras—the Democratic-Whig party era that preceded the Civil War; the post-Reconstruction period; the Jim Crow era, when competition between the parties virtually disappeared; and the modern era—Aldrich and Griffin show how and when competition emerged between the parties and the conditions under which it succeeded and failed. In the modern era, as party competition in the South has come to be widely regarded as matching that of the North, the authors conclude by exploring the question of whether the South is poised to become a one-party system once again with the Republican party now dominant.
We live in an age of media saturation, where with a few clicks of the remote - or mouse - we can tune in to programming where the facts fit our ideological predispositions. This title demonstrates that the strong effects of media exposure found in past research are simply not applicable in today's more saturated media landscape.
Combining existing research with novel data from US presidential archives, this book shows that presidents make policy by largely ignoring the views of most citizens in favor of affluent and well-connected political insiders. It is suitable for those interested in US politics, public opinion, democratic theory, and more.
Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This book shows that for several decades, unelected insiders in both major parties effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.
The United States is once again experiencing a major influx of immigrants. Rather than simply characterizing Americans as either nativist or nonnativist, this book argues that controversies over immigration policy are best understood as questions of political membership and belonging to the nation.
In a democracy, we have come to assume that people know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. But does this actually happen? This book looks at citizens' views on candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, and natural disasters.
Congress is crippled by ideological conflict. The political parties are more polarized today than at any time since the Civil War. Americans disagree, fiercely, about just about everything, from terrorism and national security, to taxes and government spending, to immigration and gay marriage. Well, American elites disagree fiercely. But average Americans do not. This, at least, was the position staked out by Philip Converse in his famous essay on belief systems, which drew on surveys carried out during the Eisenhower Era to conclude that most Americans were innocent of ideology. In Neither Liberal nor Conservative, Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe argue that ideological innocence applies nearly as well to the current state of American public opinion. Real liberals and real conservatives are found in impressive numbers only among those who are deeply engaged in political life. The ideological battles between American political elites show up as scattered skirmishes in the general public, if they show up at all. If ideology is out of reach for all but a few who are deeply and seriously engaged in political life, how do Americans decide whom to elect president; whether affirmative action is good or bad? Kinder and Kalmoe offer a persuasive group-centered answer. Political preferences arise less from ideological differences than from the attachments and antagonisms of group life.
The book explores how exposure to partisan programming influences American viewers, leading to increased certainty in their beliefs. It highlights that such programming makes individuals less open to considering opposing viewpoints and less inclined to compromise, supported by experiments and survey data.
"Since the election of Scott Walker, Wisconsin has been seen as ground zero for debates about the appropriate role of government in the wake of the Great Recession. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall that brought thousands of protesters to Capitol Square, he was subsequently reelected. How could this happen? How is it that the very people who stand to benefit from strong government services not only vote against the candidates who support those services but are vehemently against the very idea of big government?"--Amazon.com.