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This collection of essays by twenty-nine distinguished scholars provides readers with a complete overview of American politics and policy that can be found in any single volume. These essays reveal that American politics historically is volatile, not given easily to civility, and polarizing; at the same time, they explore important political developments in addressing real issues confronting the nation and the world.
Are corporations citizens? Is political inequality a necessary aspect of a democracy or something that must be stamped out? These are the questions that have been at the heart of the debate surrounding campaign finance reform for nearly half a century. But as Robert E. Mutch demonstrates in this fascinating book, these were not always controversial matters. The tenets that corporations do not count as citizens, and that self-government functions best by reducing political inequality, were commonly heldup until the early years of the twentieth century, when Congress recognized the strength of these principles by prohibiting corporations from making campaign contributions, passing a disclosure...
Stephen K. Medvic’s Campaigns and Elections addresses two distinct but related aspects of American electoral democracy—both the processes that constitute campaigns and elections and the players who are involved. In addition to this balanced coverage on process and actors, it also gives equal billing to both campaigns and elections, and to contests for both legislative and executive positions at the national and state and local level. The book starts by providing students with the conceptual distinctions between what happens in an election and the campaigning that proceeds it. Significant attention is devoted to setting up the context for these campaigns and elections by covering the rules of the game in the American electoral system as well as aspects of election administration and the funding of elections. Then the book systematically covers the actors at every level—candidates and their organizations, parties, interest groups, the media, and voters—and the macro level aspects of campaigns such as campaign strategy and determinants of election outcomes. The book concludes with a big picture assessment of campaign ethics and implications of the "permanent campaign".
Money greases the wheels of American politics from the local level to the White House. In the 2004 presidential campaign, President George W. Bush alone raised nearly $400 million in private and public funds—nearly twenty times the combined total raised by John Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960—to defeat challenger John F. Kerry, further fueling anxiety over the power of money to dictate political results. Melvin Urofsky, one of our nation's most respected legal historians, takes a fresh look at efforts to rein in campaign spending and counter efforts in the courts to preserve the status quo. He offers a thoughtful and balanced overview of campaign finance reform and the legal responses ...
More than fifty years have passed since the American Political Science Association published "Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System," a controversial report that addressed the lack of national cohesion within the major parties. Although parties have changed a great deal since then, they remain a critical component of American democracy. While the possibilities and limits of responsible party government have been central topics in the literature since 1950, this book is the first to reassess all aspects of the APSA report. Here a distinguished group of scholars—among them Charles O. Jones, Barbara Sinclair, Frank J. Sorauf, John Bibby, and Gerald Pomper—examine the effectiveness, acc...
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Annotation This is the third in a series of books about the United States presidential nomination process and shares the same goals as its predecessors, and . Mayer (political science, Northeastern U.) presents nine papers exploring significant components of the nomination process, including financing, incumbency, polling, and the role of organized labor. The only non-academic contributing to the proceedings is an editor , who provides a discussion of the role of the press. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Political scandals have always demonstrated the capacity of our executive officials for self-inflicted injuries, and the Clinton administration was no exception. Unilateral warmaking, claims of executive privilege and immunity, and last-minute pardons all tested the limits of presidential power, while the excesses of the Special Prosecutor cast doubts on available remedies. For eight years, Republicans and Democrats engaged in guerrilla warfare aimed at destroying the careers and lives of their adversaries while tests of presidential power were resolved by the courts, resulting in a reshaping of the scope and power of the presidency itself. This book examines the many controversial and impor...