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Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674072565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
Even today, when it is often viewed as an institution in decline, the national party convention retains a certain raw, emotional, populist fascination. Bifurcated Politics is a portrait of the postwar convention as a changing institution--a changing institution that still confirms the single most important decision in American politics. With the 1988 elections clearly in mind, Byron Shafer examines the status of the national party convention, which is created and dispersed within a handful of days but nevertheless becomes a self-contained world for participants, reporters, and observers alike. He analyzes such dramatic developments as the disappearance of the contest over the presidential nomination and its replacement by struggles over the publicizing of various campaigns, the decline of party officials and the rise of the organized interests, and the large and growing disjunction between what is happening at the convention hall and what the public sees--between the convention on site and the convention on screen. He argues that, despite its declining status, the postwar convention has attracted--and mirrored--most of the major developments in postwar politics: the nationalization of that politics and the spread of procedural reform, a changing connection between the general public and political institutions, even the coming of a new and different sort of American politics. Bifurcated Politics tells the story of most of the postwar conventions, along with the nominating campaigns that preceded them. But it also develops a picture of the changing American politics around those stories. It will become the definitive study of the national party convention.
Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674072565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Get Book Here
Book Description
Even today, when it is often viewed as an institution in decline, the national party convention retains a certain raw, emotional, populist fascination. Bifurcated Politics is a portrait of the postwar convention as a changing institution--a changing institution that still confirms the single most important decision in American politics. With the 1988 elections clearly in mind, Byron Shafer examines the status of the national party convention, which is created and dispersed within a handful of days but nevertheless becomes a self-contained world for participants, reporters, and observers alike. He analyzes such dramatic developments as the disappearance of the contest over the presidential nomination and its replacement by struggles over the publicizing of various campaigns, the decline of party officials and the rise of the organized interests, and the large and growing disjunction between what is happening at the convention hall and what the public sees--between the convention on site and the convention on screen. He argues that, despite its declining status, the postwar convention has attracted--and mirrored--most of the major developments in postwar politics: the nationalization of that politics and the spread of procedural reform, a changing connection between the general public and political institutions, even the coming of a new and different sort of American politics. Bifurcated Politics tells the story of most of the postwar conventions, along with the nominating campaigns that preceded them. But it also develops a picture of the changing American politics around those stories. It will become the definitive study of the national party convention.
Author: Mark D. Brewer
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0872892980
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Talk of politics in the United States today is abuzz with warring red and blue factions. The message is that Americans are split due to deeply-held beliefs—over abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research, prayer in public schools. Is this cultural divide a myth, the product of elite partisans? Or is the split real? Yes, argue authors Mark Brewer and Jeffrey Stonecash—the cultural divisions are real. Yet they tell only half the story. Differences in income and economic opportunity also fuel division—a split along class lines. Cultural issues have not displaced class issues, as many believe. Split shows that both divisions coexist meaning that levels of taxation and the quality of healthcare matter just as much as the debate over the right to life versus the right to choose. The authors offer balanced, objective analysis, complete with a wealth of data-rich figures and tables, to explain the social trends underlying these class and cultural divides and then explore the response of the parties and voters. Offering solid empirical evidence, the authors show that how politicians, the media, and interest groups perceive citizen preferences—be they cultural or class based—determines whether or not the public gets what it wants. Simply put, each set of issues creates political conflict and debate that produce very different policies and laws. With a lively and highly readable narrative, students at every level will appreciate the brevity and punch of Split and come away with a more nuanced understanding of the divisions that drive the current American polity.
Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801850189
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Why do Democratic political candidates avoid the one issue on which the general public is most in agreement with them? Why do Republicans consistently raise the one issue their advisors urge them to avoid? Why do voters so often exhibit patterns of policy preference vastly different from what analysts and strategists predict? And why do these same voters consistently cast ballots that ensure the continuation of "divided government?" In The Two Majorities Byron Shafer and William Claggett offer groundbreaking political analysis that resolves many of the seeming contradictions in the contemporary American political scene. Drawing on an unusually large sample of all Americans, taken by the Gallup organization, Shafer and Claggett argue that the recent turbulence in American politics is in some ways superficial. Below the surface, they contend, the political preferences of the American people remain remarkably stable. Shafer and Claggett find that American public opinion is organized around two clusters of issues—both of which are favored by a majority if voters: social welfare, social insurance, and civil rights, which constitute an economic/welfare factor (associated with Democrats), and cultural values, civil liberties, and foreign relations, a cultural/national factor (associated with Republicans). Provocatively, the authors argue that each party's best strategy for success is not to try to take popular positions on the whole range of issues, but to focus attention on the party's most successful cluster of issues.
Author: Barry C. Burden
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472023063
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Why do some voters split their ballots, selecting a Republican for one office and a Democrat for another? Why do voters often choose one party to control the White House while the other controls the Congress? Barry Burden and David Kimball address these fundamental puzzles of American elections by explaining the causes of divided government and debunking the myth that voters prefer the division of power over one-party control. Why Americans Split Their Tickets links recent declines in ticket-splitting to sharpening policy differences between parties and demonstrates why candidates' ideological positions still matter in American elections. "Burden and Kimball have given us the most careful and thorough analysis of split-ticket voting yet. It won't settle all of the arguments about the origins of ticket splitting and divided government, but these arguments will now be much better informed. Why Americans Split Their Tickets is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the major trends in U.S. electoral politics of the past several decades." -Gary Jacobson, University of California, San Diego "When voters split their tickets or produce divided government, it is common to attribute the outcome as a strategic verdict or a demand for partisan balance. Burden and Kimball strongly challenge such claims. With a thorough and deft use of statistics, they portray ticket-splitting as a by-product of the separate circumstances that drive the outcomes of the different electoral contests. This will be the book to be reckoned with on the matter of ticket splitting." -Robert Erikson, Columbia University "[Burden and Kimball] offset the expansive statistical analysis by delving into the historical circumstances and results of recent campaigns and elections. ... [They] make a scholarly and informative contribution to the understanding of the voting habits of the American electorate-and the resulting composition of American government." -Shant Mesrobian, NationalJournal.com
Author: Morris P. Fiorina
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
The 1994 Mid-Term elections, the Republican Revolution that returned control of both Houses of Congress to the Republicans for the first time in over 40 years, returned us to the state of divided government that has been the political norm since the 1950s. In this timely new revision of his instant classic, Morris Fiorina outlines the causes and consequences of ticket-splitting and divided government.
Author: Rodney E. Hero
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198027729
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
The distinctive thesis of Faces of Inequality is that a state's racial and ethnic composition, as much as any other factor, shapes its political processes and policies. To understand state politics, therefore, we must consider them from the perspective of social diversity. Scholars have broadly acknowledged that racial and ethnic diversity are central to American political history, but Rodney E. Hero is the first to posit and systematically examine this diversity as essential to our understanding of contemporary American politics. In these pages, Hero regards race/ethnicity as an American "dilemma" whose importance transcends state boundaries, yet whose impact upon U.S. politics varies widely. He classifies states' social diversity patterns as homogenous, heterogeneous, or bifurcated, and demonstrates how these patterns influence political tendencies. Social diversity, he finds, is strongly related not only to political processes, but also to specific policies and outcomes, such as educational policies, incarceration rates, and infant mortality. Hero's interpretation provides a new way of looking at state politics, one that causes us to broadly rethink U.S. politics from the standpoint of social diversity. A bold interpretation of the American political experience (especially at the state level) that is as challenging as it is timely, Faces of Inequality will be of interest to all students of race and politics in contemporary America.
Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Where did the Era of Divided Government come from? What sustains split partisan control of the institutions of American national government year after year? Why can it shift so easily from Democratic or Republican presidencies, coupled with Republican or Democratic Congresses? How can the vast array of issues and personalities that have surfaced in American politics over the last forty years fit so neatly within-indeed, reinforce-the sustaining political pattern of our time? These big questions constitute the puzzle of modern American politics. The old answer—a majority and a minority party, plus dominant and recessive public issues—will not work in the Era of Divided Government. Byron Shafer, a political scientist who is regarded as one of the most comprehensive and original thinkers on American politics, provides a convincing new answer that has three major elements. These elements in combination, not "divided government" as a catch phrase, are the real story of politics in our time. The first element is comprised of two great sets of public preferences that manifest themselves at the ballot box as two majorities. The old cluster of economic and welfare issues has not so much been displaced as simply joined by a second cluster of cultural and national concerns. The second element can be seen in the behavior of political parties and party activists, whose own preferences don't match those of the general public. That public remains reliably left of the active Republican Party on economic and welfare issues and reliably right of the active Democratic Party on cultural and national concerns. The third crucial element is found in an institutional arrangement—the distinctively American matrix of governmental institutions, which converts those first two elements into a framework for policymaking, year in and year out. In the first half of the book, Shafer examines how dominant features of the Reagan, first Bush, Clinton, and second Bush administrations reflect the interplay of these three elements. Recent policy conflicts and institutional combatants, in Shafer's analysis, illuminate this new pattern of American politics. In the second half, he ranges across time and nations to put these modern elements and their composite pattern into a much larger historical and institutional framework. In this light, modern American politics appears not so much as new and different, but as a distinctive recombination of familiar elements of a political style, a political process, and a political conflict that has been running for a much, much longer time.
Author: Mark D. Brewer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139480960
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Dynamics of American Political Parties examines the process of gradual change that inexorably shapes and reshapes American politics. Parties and the politicians that comprise them seek control of government in order to implement their visions of proper public policy. To gain control parties need to win elections, and winning elections requires assembling an electoral coalition that is larger than that crafted by the opposition. Uncertainty rules and intra-party conflict rages as different factions and groups within the parties debate the proper course(s) of action and battle it out for control of the party. Parties can never be sure how their strategic maneuvers will play out, and, even when it appears that a certain strategy has been successful, party leaders are unclear about how long apparent success will last. Change unfolds slowly, in fits and starts.
Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299151041
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
Seven analysts and professors of political science provide an examination of each of the countries comprising the "Group of Seven," with a focus on the period from the end of WWII to the end of the Cold War. Introductory and concluding essays provide some synthesis. No bibliography. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Costas Panagopoulos
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807148997
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
A century ago, national political parties' nominating conventions for U.S. presidential candidates often resembled wide-open brawls, filled with front-stage conflicts and back-room deals. Today, leagues of advisors precisely plan and carefully script these events even though their outcomes are largely preordained. Rewiring Politics offers the first in-depth exploration of the profound changes in the nominating process to focus on the role of the media. Fourteen luminaries from the worlds of media and politics examine how the technology of "coverage" has transformed conventions over time. As the contributors demonstrate, the story of the evolution of the nominating process cannot be told without the concomitant story of the revolution in mass media. The impact of the media on political conventions has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Yet few aspects of the American political process have faced such radical alterations in such a short period of time. From the first live television broadcast from a national convention on June 21, 1948, during the Republican convention in Philadelphia, through the advent of cable networks and the Internet, both the presentation and the content of the nominating process has been transformed. Today, because the party's nominee is selected before the event, candidates use their conventions-and convention coverage-as a form of advertising. They design mega-media events to electrify the party faithful and to woo undecided voters by dazzling them. Without a doubt, the contributors conclude, conventions still matter, though their role has changed over the past decades. Rewiring Politics helps readers assess the evolution of conventions in contemporary politics and addresses the implications of these changes on our parties, politics, and society.
