Download or read book The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth Century America written by Richard R. Beeman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of the American Revolution there existed throughout the British-American colonial world a variety of contradictory expectations about the political process. Not only was there disagreement over the responsibilities of voters and candidates, confusion extended beyond elections to the relationship between elected officials and the populations they served. So varied were people's expectations that it is impossible to talk about a single American political culture in this period. In The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America, Richard R. Beeman offers an ambitious overview of political life in pre-Revolutionary America. Ranging from Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania to the backcountry regions of the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and northern New England, Beeman uncovers an extraordinary diversity of political belief and practice. In so doing, he closes the gap between eighteenth-century political rhetoric and reality. Political life in eighteenth-century America, Beeman demonstrates, was diffuse and fragmented, with America's British subjects and their leaders often speaking different political dialects altogether. Although the majority of people living in America before the Revolution would not have used the term "democracy," important changes were underway that made it increasingly difficult for political leaders to ignore "popular pressures." As the author shows in a final chapter on the Revolution, those popular pressures, once unleashed, were difficult to contain and drove the colonies slowly and unevenly toward a democratic form of government. Synthesizing a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Beeman offers a coherent account of the way politics actually worked in this formative time for American political culture.
Download or read book The American Political Economy written by Jacob S. Hacker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.
Download or read book The American Political Landscape written by Byron E. Shafer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social scientists and campaign strategists approach voting behavior from opposite poles. Reconciling these rival camps through a merger of precise statistics and hard-won election experience, The American Political Landscape presents a full-scale analysis of U.S. electoral politics over the past quarter-century. Byron Shafer and Richard Spady explain how factors not usually considered hard data, such as latent attitudes and personal preferences, interact to produce an indisputably solid result: the final tally of votes. Pundits and pollsters usually boil down U.S. elections to a stark choice between Democrat and Republican. Shafer and Spady explore the significance of a third possibility: not voting at all. Voters can and do form coalitions based on specific issues, so that simple party identification does not determine voter turnout or ballot choices. Deploying a new method that quantifiably maps the distribution of political attitudes in the voting population, the authors describe an American electoral landscape in flux during the period from 1984 to 2008. The old order, organized by economic values, ceded ground to a new one in which cultural and economic values enjoy equal prominence. This realignment yielded election outcomes that contradicted the prevailing wisdom about the importance of ideological centrism. Moderates have fared badly in recent contests as Republican and Democratic blocs have drifted further apart. Shafer and Spady find that persisting links between social backgrounds and political values tend to empty the ideological center while increasing the clout of the ideologically committed.
Download or read book The Navajo Political Experience written by David E. Wilkins and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native nations, like the Navajo nation, have proven to be remarkably adept at retaining and exercising ever-increasing amounts of self-determination even when faced with powerful external constraints and limited resources. Now in this fourth edition of David E. Wilkins' The Navajo Political Experience, political developments of the last decade are discussed and analyzed comprehensively, and with as much accessibility as thoroughness and detail.
Download or read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics written by Richard Hofstadter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, ” The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.
Download or read book History of American Political Thought written by Bryan-Paul Frost and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 963 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and updated, this long-awaited second edition provides a comprehensive introduction to what the most thoughtful Americans have said about the American experience from the colonial period to the present. The book examines the political thought of the most important American statesmen, activists, and writers across era and ideologies, helping another generation of students, scholars, and citizens to understand more fully the meaning of America. This new second edition of the book includes chapters on several additional historical figures, including Walt Whitman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, as well as a new chapter on Barack Obama, who was not prominent in public life when the first edition was published. Significant revisions and additions have also been made to many of the original chapters, most notably on Antonin Scalia, which now updates his full legacy, increasing the breadth and depth of the collection.
Download or read book Race and the Making of American Political Science written by Jessica Blatt and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and the Making of American Political Science shows that racial thought was central to the academic study of politics in the United States at its origins, shaping the discipline's core categories and questions in fundamental and lasting ways.
Download or read book Jockeying for the American Presidency written by Lara M. Brown and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book will compel scholars to take a new look at the role of "political opportunism" in the presidential selection process. Lara Brown provides a fresh, innovative exploration of the roots of opportunism, one that challenges conventional wisdom as it advances our understanding of this complex topic."--Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount University.
Download or read book Public Space and Political Experience written by David Antonini and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary politics is dominated by discussions of rights and liberties as the proper subjects about which citizens should be concerned in the political sphere. In Public Space and Political Experience: An Arendtian Interpretation, David Antonini argues that Hannah Arendt conceived of politics differently and that her thought can help us retrieve a more authentic sense of politics as the site where citizens can speak and act together about matters of shared concern. Antonini shows that citizens can experience politics together if they approach it not as a realm where privately interested individuals compete for their rights or liberties but instead as a space where plural human beings come together as distinct yet equal creatures. Antonini argues that if we read Arendt as primarily concerned with political experience, we can reimagine common political concepts such as freedom, power, revolution, and civil disobedience. The book posits that politics should be considered a fundamental form of human experience, one rooted in what Arendt refers to as the existential condition of politics—human plurality. If plurality is the existential condition out of which our political life emerges, we can enliven and reimagine the possibilities that political life can provide for contemporary citizens.
Download or read book Asian American Political Participation written by Janelle S. Wong and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asian Americans are a small percentage of the U.S. population, but their numbers are steadily rising—from less than a million in 1960 to more than 15 million today. They are also a remarkably diverse population—representing several ethnicities, religions, and languages—and they enjoy higher levels of education and income than any other U.S. racial group. Historically, socioeconomic status has been a reliable predictor of political behavior. So why has this fast-growing American population, which is doing so well economically, been so little engaged in the U.S. political system? Asian American Political Participation is the most comprehensive study to date of Asian American political behavior, including such key measures as voting, political donations, community organizing, and political protests. The book examines why some groups participate while others do not, why certain civic activities are deemed preferable to others, and why Asian socioeconomic advantage has so far not led to increased political clout. Asian American Political Participation is based on data from the authors’ groundbreaking 2008 National Asian American Survey of more than 5,000 Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, and Japanese Americans. The book shows that the motivations for and impediments to political participation are as diverse as the Asian American population. For example, native-born Asians have higher rates of political participation than their immigrant counterparts, particularly recent adult arrivals who were socialized outside of the United States. Protest activity is the exception, which tends to be higher among immigrants who maintain connections abroad and who engaged in such activity in their country of origin. Surprisingly, factors such as living in a new immigrant destination or in a city with an Asian American elected official do not seem to motivate political behavior—neither does ethnic group solidarity. Instead, hate crimes and racial victimization are the factors that most motivate Asian Americans to participate politically. Involvement in non-political activities such as civic and religious groups also bolsters political participation. Even among Asian groups, socioeconomic advantage does not necessarily translate into high levels of political participation. Chinese Americans, for example, have significantly higher levels of educational attainment than Japanese Americans, but Japanese Americans are far more likely to vote and make political contributions. And Vietnamese Americans, with the lowest levels of education and income, vote and engage in protest politics more than any other group. Lawmakers tend to favor the interests of groups who actively engage the political system, and groups who do not participate at high levels are likely to suffer political consequences in the future. Asian American Political Participation demonstrates that understanding Asian political behavior today can have significant repercussions for Asian American political influence tomorrow.
Download or read book Political Parties and the State written by Martin Shefter and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1993-12-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collects a number of Martin Shefter's most important articles on political parties. They address three questions: Under what conditions will strong party organizations emerge? What influences the character of parties--in particular, their reliance on patronage? In what circumstances will the parties that formerly dominated politics in a nation or city come under attack? Shefter's work exemplifies the "new institutionalism" in political science, arguing that the reliance of parties on patronage is a function not so much of mass political culture as of their relationship with public bureaucracies. The book's opening chapters analyze the circumstances conducive to the emergence of strong political parties and the changing balance between parties and bureaucracies in Europe and America. The middle chapters discuss the organization and exclusion of the American working classes by machine and reform regimes. The book concludes by examining party organizations as instruments of political control in the largest American city, New York.
Download or read book Steadfast Democrats written by Ismail K. White and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Over the last half century, there has been a marked increase in ideological conservatism among African Americans, with nearly 50% of black Americans describing themselves as conservative in the 2000s, as compared to 10% in the 1970s. Support for redistributive initiatives has likewise declined. And yet, even as black Americans shift rightward on ideological and issue positions, Democratic Party identification has stayed remarkable steady, holding at 80% to 90%. It is this puzzle that White and Laird look to address in this new book: Why has ideological change failed to push black Americans into the Republican party? Most explanations for homogeneity have focused on individual dispositions, including ideology and group identity. White and Laird acknowledge that these are important, but point out that such explanations fail to account for continued political unity even in the face of individual ideological change and of individual incentives to defect from this common group behavior. The authors offer instead, or in addition, a behavioral explanation, arguing that black Americans maintain political unity through the establishment and enforcement of well-defined group expectations of black political behavior through a process they term racialized social constraint. The authors explain how black political norms came about, and what these norms are, then show (with the help of survey data and lab-in-field experiments) how such norms are enforced, and where this enforcement happens (through a focus on black institutions). They conclude by exploring the implications of the theory for electoral strategy, as well as explaining how this framework can be used to understand other voter communities"--
Download or read book Governing America written by Julian E. Zelizer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-04 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the study of American political history.
Download or read book The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Political and Legal History written by Donald T. Critchlow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 1208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Political and Legal History brings together an unparalleled wealth of information about the laws, institutions, and actors that have governed America throughout its history. Entries key political figures, important legislation and governmental institutions, broad political trends relating to elections, voting behavior, and party development, as well as key court cases, legal theories, constitutional interpretations, Supreme Court justices, and other major legal figures. Emphasizing the interconnectedness of politics and law, the more than 430 expertly written entries in the Encyclopedia provide an invaluable and in-depth overview of the development of America's political and legal frameworks.
Download or read book The American Road Trip and American Political Thought written by Susan McWilliams Barndt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans love road trips. They love to go on road trips. They love to read about road trips. They love to watch road trip stories unfold on television and film. Road trip stories are a consistent feature of the American landscape, a central part of American mythology, and an important piece of the American dream. In The American Road Trip and American Political Thought, Susan McWilliams argues that the American fascination with road trip stories is about more than mere escapism or wanderlust. She shows, in walking through stories like On the Road and The Grapes of Wrath, that American road trip stories are a key expression of American political thought. They are not just stories of personal journeys. They are stories of the American nation. McWilliams Barndt shows how Americans have long used road trip stories to raise and explore central questions about American politics in theory and practice. They talk about freedom and equality and diversity and take those vaunted American ideals for a test drive. American road trip stories are where the rubber meets the road in American political thought. The American Road Trip and American Political Thought includes explorations of a wide variety of American authors, from Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau to Erika Lopez and Cheryl Strayed, from Mark Twain and John Steinbeck to Solomon Northup and Hunter S. Thompson. It covers topics including gender, labor, place, race, and technology in American political life. This is a book that will change the way you think about the great American road trip and the great American story.
Download or read book The Search for American Political Development written by Karen Orren and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-24 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orren and Skowronek survey past and current 'APD' scholarship and outline a course of study for the future.
Download or read book Race and American Political Development written by Joseph E. Lowndes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race has been present at every critical moment in American political development, shaping political institutions, political discourse, public policy, and its denizens’ political identities. But because of the nature of race—its evolving and dynamic status as a structure of inequality, a political organizing principle, an ideology, and a system of power—we must study the politics of race historically, institutionally, and discursively. Covering more than three hundred years of American political history from the founding to the contemporary moment, the contributors in this volume make this extended argument. Together, they provide an understanding of American politics that challenges our conventional disciplinary tools of studying politics and our conservative political moment’s dominant narrative of racial progress. This volume, the first to collect essays on the role of race in American political history and development, resituates race in American politics as an issue for sustained and broadened critical attention.
