Download or read book The Power of Money in Congressional Campaigns 1880 2006 written by David C. W. Parker and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new understanding of what really matters in our elections Prevailing wisdom holds that the pivot of American political campaigns has shifted over the past century from the parties to the candidate. David C. W. Parker challenges this conventional notion, arguing that campaigns center on neither orientation but are, more simply, resource dependent. The Power of Money in Congressional Campaigns examines the historical development of party, interest-group, and candidate power in the American congressional election process. Parker takes a broad view of the electoral terrain, considering both primary and general elections, and discerns distinct patterns emerging during the twentieth century. He proposes a new theoretical model based on the need for candidates to accumulate enough financing and reputation to compete successfully, showing the importance of the rules governing this process. Analyzing case studies of elections over more than a century, Parker argues that campaign behavior boils down to the determination to gather the resources needed to win. He shows that changes in electoral rules over time have affected the strategies candidates and parties use to accumulate campaign resources. He also suggests how the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 may influence the relationships among political actors and affect the quality of democratic discourse. Unlike many studies of the election process, this book provides a broad understanding of why candidates, parties, and interest groups pursue particular strategies. The Power of Money in Congressional Campaigns is a corrective analysis of how candidates campaign, and how Americans choose their leaders.
Download or read book Guide to U S Elections written by Deborah Kalb and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2015-12-24 with total page 2189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The CQ Press Guide to U.S. Elections is a comprehensive, two-volume reference providing information on the U.S. electoral process, in-depth analysis on specific political eras and issues, and everything in between. Thoroughly revised and infused with new data, analysis, and discussion of issues relating to elections through 2014, the Guide will include chapters on: Analysis of the campaigns for presidency, from the primaries through the general election Data on the candidates, winners/losers, and election returns Details on congressional and gubernatorial contests supplemented with vast historical data. Key Features include: Tables, boxes and figures interspersed throughout each chapter Data on campaigns, election methods, and results Complete lists of House and Senate leaders Links to election-related websites A guide to party abbreviations
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress written by Eric Schickler and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 1444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No legislature in the world has a greater influence over its nation's public affairs than the US Congress. The Congress's centrality in the US system of government has placed research on Congress at the heart of scholarship on American politics. Generations of American government scholars working in a wide range of methodological traditions have focused their analysis on understanding Congress, both as a lawmaking and a representative institution. The purpose of this volume is to take stock of this impressive and diverse literature, identifying areas of accomplishment and promising directions for future work. The editors have commissioned 37 chapters by leading scholars in the field, each chapter critically engages the scholarship focusing on a particular aspect of congressional politics, including the institution's responsiveness to the American public, its procedures and capacities for policymaking, its internal procedures and development, relationships between the branches of government, and the scholarly methodologies for approaching these topics. The Handbook also includes chapters addressing timely questions, including partisan polarization, congressional war powers, and the supermajoritarian procedures of the contemporary Senate. Beyond simply bringing readers up to speed on the current state of research, the volume offers critical assessments of how each literature has progressed - or failed to progress - in recent decades. The chapters identify the major questions posed by each line of research and assess the degree to which the answers developed in the literature are persuasive. The goal is not simply to tell us where we have been as a field, but to set an agenda for research on Congress for the next decade. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics. General Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III
Download or read book Congressional Parties Institutional Ambition and the Financing of Majority Control written by Eric S. Heberlig and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-03-21 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the need for ever increasing sums of money to fuel the ongoing campaign for majority control, both Republicans and Democrats have made large donations to the party and its candidates mandatory for members seeking advancement within party and congressional committee hierarchies. Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson analyze this development and discuss its implications for American government and democracy. They address the consequences of selecting congressional leaders on the basis of their fundraising skills rather than their legislative capacity and the extent to which the battle for majority control leads Congress to prioritize short-term electoral gains over long-term governing and problem-solving.
Download or read book The American Congress written by Sara L. Hagedorn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume thoroughly examines the operations and politics of the U.S. Congress. It guides readers to their own assessment of congressional politics and provides them with the basis for future reading and study of the subject. The American Congress: A Reference Handbook covers Congress from its inception to the present day, discussing the constitutional functions of Congress and how they have evolved over time. It presents a detailed discussion of 15 problems with which Congress copes, some associated concerns with those problems, and how they might be resolved. The book opens with a brief history of Congress and how it has changed over time. It discusses a series of problems and concerns, and proposed solutions to those problems. It also comprises nine original essays by other scholars and persons involved in congressional politics as well as profiles of the major organizations and actors involved. Data and documents and a detailed chronology of Congress from 1789 to 2018 allow readers to situate significant legislation within the history of Congress, while an annotated list of sources—the major books and scholarly journals concerned with Congress in addition to a number of feature-length films and videos—provide readers with vetted resources for further study.
Download or read book The American Congress written by Steven S. Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Congress provides the most current treatment of congressional politics available in an undergraduate text. Informed by the authors' Capitol Hill experience and scholarship, this book presents a crisp introduction to major features of Congress: parties and committee systems, leadership, voting and floor activity. This text contains discussions of the importance of presidents, courts and interest groups in congressional policy making. Recent developments are also discussed within the context of congressional political history. The seventh edition includes complete coverage of the first Congress of the Obama presidency, the 2010 midterm elections, healthcare reform and an early perspective on the 112th Congress with a Republican majority.
Download or read book Interest Groups and Campaign Finance Reform in the United States and Canada written by Robert G Boatright and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 2000s, the United States and Canada implemented new campaign finance laws restricting the ability of interest groups to make political contributions and to engage in political advertising. Whereas both nations' legislative reforms sought to reduce the role of interest groups in campaigns, these laws have had opposite results in the two nations. In the United States, interest groups remained influential by developing broad coalitions aimed at mobilizing individual voters and contributors. In Canada, interest groups largely withdrew from election campaigns, and, thus, important voices in elections have gone silent. Robert G. Boatright explains such disparate results by placing campaign finance reforms in the context of ongoing political and technological changes. Robert G. Boatright is Associate Professor of Political Science at Clark University. Cover photo: © iStockphoto.com / alfabravoalpharomeo
Download or read book Battle for the Big Sky written by David C.W. Parker and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle for the Big Sky delves into one of the few competitive races of the 2012 election: the US Senate campaign in Montana. Author David C.W. Parker was granted exceptional access by both candidates over the 21 months preceding the election, allowing him to tell the story of the race in rare and fascinating detail, while also exploring the impact of Citizens United and so-called "dark money" on the campaign. The Montana setting offers readers a view into the rising political influence of the West, the importance of "place" in politics, and the impact of congressional styles and constituent relationships on campaigns and elections. Parker skillfully weaves political analysis into his narrative and places the race in the broader context of congressional elections and the research literature.
Download or read book Robert H Michel written by Frank H. Mackaman and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-08-18 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As incredible as it might seem, there was a time when Congress worked—a time when partisan competition produced consensus and good public policy. At the center of it all, for four decades, was Robert H. Michel, the longest-serving Republican leader in the history of the US House of Representatives. In this book, top congressional scholars, historians, and political scientists provide a compelling picture of Bob Michel and the congressional politics of his day. Marshaling a wealth of biographical, historical, and political detail, they describe Michel’s House of Representatives and how the institution became what it is now. During the thirty-eight years that Michel represented Illinois’s 18th congressional district (January 3, 1957–January 3, 1995), the last fourteen as Republican leader in the House, his party was in the minority. Drawing on archival material that captures politics in the making, the authors of this volume show how Michel made the most of that minority status. They write about his legislative efforts, as with President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts and President George H. W. Bush’s North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations. The resulting friction between Michel’s leadership on the national stage and his responsibilities to constituents back home almost cost him reelection in 1982, forcing a change in his “home style.” Their essays also cover Michel’s strategies for House minority leadership, his party’s proposals to reform the House, and his retirement one election before Republicans became the House majority party—the result of a generational and ideological shift to a more combative style of politics practiced by Michel’s successor, Newt Gingrich. An innovative approach to biography, with its examination of Bob Michel’s career from a variety of angles, this volume offers both an unusually nuanced portrait of one important politician and a uniquely informed perspective on politics in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Underdog Politics written by Matthew N. Green and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the first comprehensive study of the subject in decades, political scholar Matthew Green disputes the conventional belief that the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives is an unimportant political player. Examining the record of the House minority party from 1970 to the present, and drawing from a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data, Green shows how and why the minority seeks to influence legislative and political outcomes and demonstrates that the party's efforts can succeed. The result is a fascinating appreciation of what the House minority can do and why it does it, providing readers with new insights into the workings of this famously contentious legislative chamber"--
Download or read book Electing the Senate written by Wendy J. Schiller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How U.S. senators were chosen prior to the Seventeenth Amendment—and the consequences of Constitutional reform From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were not directly elected by the people—instead the Constitution mandated that they be chosen by state legislators. This radically changed in 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving the public a direct vote. Electing the Senate investigates the electoral connections among constituents, state legislators, political parties, and U.S. senators during the age of indirect elections. Wendy Schiller and Charles Stewart find that even though parties controlled the partisan affiliation of the winning candidate for Senate, they had much less control over the universe of candidates who competed for votes in Senate elections and the parties did not always succeed in resolving internal conflict among their rank and file. Party politics, money, and personal ambition dominated the election process, in a system originally designed to insulate the Senate from public pressure. Electing the Senate uses an original data set of all the roll call votes cast by state legislators for U.S. senators from 1871 to 1913 and all state legislators who served during this time. Newspaper and biographical accounts uncover vivid stories of the political maneuvering, corruption, and partisanship—played out by elite political actors, from elected officials, to party machine bosses, to wealthy business owners—that dominated the indirect Senate elections process. Electing the Senate raises important questions about the effectiveness of Constitutional reforms, such as the Seventeenth Amendment, that promised to produce a more responsive and accountable government.
Download or read book Politics to the Extreme written by S. Frisch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To overcome the political deadlock that overshadows the pressing problems facing the United States, the academies top scholars address the causes and consequences of polarization in American politics, and suggest solutions for bridging the partisan divide.
Download or read book Covering American Politics in the 21st Century 2 volumes written by Lee Banville and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-12-12 with total page 787 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopedia provides a real-world guide to American political journalism and news coverage in the 21st century, from the most influential media organizations and pundits to the controversies and practices shaping modern-day political journalism. Over the last 20 years, political campaigns and the media that cover them have been fundamentally altered by a mix of technology and money. This timely work surveys the legal, financial, and technological changes that have swept through the political process, putting those changes in context to help readers appreciate how they affect what the public learns—and doesn't learn—about the candidates and lawmakers at the local, state, and federal levels. The encyclopedia offers a critical examination of a broad range of topics organized in a narrative, A-to-Z format. Written by journalists and political experts, the two volumes cover the major issues, organizations, and trends affecting both politics and the coverage of political campaigns. Some 200 entries treat everything from news organizations, think tanks, and significant individuals to questions concerning money, advertising, and campaign tactics. Objective, unbiased, and comprehensive, the encyclopedia is an unequaled resource for anyone seeking to understand American political journalism and news coverage in the 21st century.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency written by George C. Edwards and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 892 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With engaging, new contributions from major figures in the field, 'The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency' provides the key point of reference for anyone working in American politics today.
Download or read book Pay to Play Politics written by Heath Brown and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pay-to-Play Politics examines money and politics from different angles to understand a central paradox of American democracy: why, when the public and politicians decry money as the worst aspect of American politics, are there so few signs of change? Everyone from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz complains about the corrupting role of money and politics, but money is the lifeblood of their political survival. The public, too, deplores big money politics, despite regularly reelecting the richest candidates for office. The purpose of this book is to reconcile how—against many people's wishes—the connection between money and politics has come to define American democracy. Examining the issue from the perspective of the public, the courts, big business, Congress, and the presidency, Heath Brown argues that money can often be harmful to the political process, but not always in ways we expect or in ways we can directly observe. More money does not necessarily guarantee electoral, legislative, or executive victories, but money does greatly change political access, opportunity, and trust. Without a nuanced understanding of the nature of the problem, future reforms will be misguided and fruitless. Pay-to-Play Politics concludes by making concrete recommendations for reform, including feasible ways to reach bipartisan consensus.
Download or read book Why Parties written by John H. Aldrich and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-07-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its first appearance fifteen years ago, Why Parties? has become essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the nature of American political parties. In the interim, the party system has undergone some radical changes. In this landmark book, now rewritten for the new millennium, John H. Aldrich goes beyond the clamor of arguments over whether American political parties are in resurgence or decline and undertakes a wholesale reexamination of the foundations of the American party system. Surveying critical episodes in the development of American political parties—from their formation in the 1790s to the Civil War—Aldrich shows how they serve to combat 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. Aldrich brings this innovative account up to the present by looking at the profound changes in the character of political parties since World War II, especially in light of ongoing contemporary transformations, including the rise of the Republican Party in the South, and what those changes accomplish, such as the Obama Health Care plan. Finally, Why Parties? A Second Look offers a fuller consideration of party systems in general, especially the two-party system in the United States, and explains why this system is necessary for effective democracy.
Download or read book Back in the Game written by Brian J. Brox and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The years from 1996 to 2008 mark an important watershed in American politics. During this period changes in the political, demographic, regulatory, and technological landscape created an opportunity for political parties to increase their relevance in the electoral system. In Back in the Game, Brian J. Brox argues that while political parties still provide services to candidates, as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, they have now become influential and independent campaigners in their own right. In addition to providing services, parties now work with candidates as true partners, and increasingly parties act independently of their candidates to pursue collective party goals. Drawing on sources such as interviews with top party staffers and Federal Election Commission data, Brox carefully reveals how modern parties choose among races in an effort to allocate resources in a way that satisfies individual candidates, while simultaneously advancing broader party goals.