Classic Ideas and Current Issues in American Government

Classic Ideas and Current Issues in American Government PDF Author: Meena Bose
Publisher: Cengage Learning
ISBN: 9780618456444
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This reader offers succinct overviews of classic ideas and foundations of American government framed by contemporary issues and writings. Students are introduced to the classic debates, institutions, and individuals that shape American politics through key primary documents and shown how these issues remain at the core of policy making today. The included readings highlight questions about contemporary topics such as homeland security and affirmative action without losing touch with the timeless dilemmas of liberty, equality, and power.

Classic Ideas and Current Issues in American Government

Classic Ideas and Current Issues in American Government PDF Author: Meena Bose
Publisher: Cengage Learning
ISBN: 9780618456444
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
This reader offers succinct overviews of classic ideas and foundations of American government framed by contemporary issues and writings. Students are introduced to the classic debates, institutions, and individuals that shape American politics through key primary documents and shown how these issues remain at the core of policy making today. The included readings highlight questions about contemporary topics such as homeland security and affirmative action without losing touch with the timeless dilemmas of liberty, equality, and power.

Contemporary American Politics and Society

Contemporary American Politics and Society PDF Author: Robert Singh
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1849206597
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Contemporary American Politics provides a comprehensive introduction to the most salient topics of debate in contemporary American politics and society today. The text introduces and explains the history, nature and underlying issues to the key areas of political division and conflict in America′s on-going `culture war′, including, abortion, gun control, capital punishment, pornography, gay rights and drugs. All students will gain a deeper and critical understanding of how this powerful set of concerns continue to underpin and shape the fundamental divisions informing American domestic politics at local, state and federal levels. Completely up-to-date and featuring chapter summaries, exhibit boxes, discussion questions, weblinks and further reading guides, Contemporary American Politics offers a lively and accessible text that will be essential reading for all students of American politics and society. Robert Singh is a lecturer in politics at Birkbeck College, London. Contemporary American Politics: Issues and Controversies is a companion text to the foundation textbook American Government and Politics: A Concise Introduction also published by SAGE. `In this volume the political scientist Robert Singh has selected and analyzed closely a set of topical issues and controversies in American politics - including gun control, capital punishment and cultural wars - as a way better to understand the United States. The result is an excellent text which conveys both the diversity of contemporary America and the complexity of issues often treated superficially in media accounts. I recommend the book highly′ - Desmond King, Mellon Professor of American Government, University of Oxford `Rob Singh is a master of style, and his book is the perfect companion for those who are interested in America′s "culture wars" but hitherto have been put off by the execrable jargon they have spawned′ - Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Professor of American History, University of Edinburgh `For those who still believe that politics is normally, naturally, about economics, Rob Singh has gathered the evidence and dialed the wake-up call: seven major instances of an ongoing culture war meet a common analytic framework here in a lively and informative fashion′ - Byron E Shafer, University of Wisconsin `For the student this is the perfect complement to a textbook. American politics is not just about institutions and processes, but also about current political issues and debates. Robert Singh′s interesting book illuminates a range of social and cultural issues that divide Americans in the 21st century. All undergraduate courses on American politics should include it on reading lists for seminars, tutorials and classes′ - Alan Ware, Worcester College, Oxford

The 25 Issues that Shape American Politics

The 25 Issues that Shape American Politics PDF Author: Michael Kryzanek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131722485X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
This book is organized to examine the major subjects taught in American politics through the lens of twenty-five hot button issues affecting American politics and policy today. These key issues reflect the ideas, principles, concerns, fears, morals, and hopes of the American people. The authors argue that these issues are the heart and soul of the American political system, serving as the basis for the disagreements that drive citizens, public servants, and elected officials into action. Features of this Innovative Text Examines 25 issues in light of the 2016 presidential election and beyond. Up-to-date chapters reflect important developments in the arenas of immigration, health care, race relations and civil rights, gun control, gay rights, and money and politics, in particular. Includes international coverage with recent and ongoing events surrounding Iran, Syria, Israel and Palestine, and China. A chapter on Russia puts recent developments in Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, and the "near abroad" in context with US foreign policy.

The Increasingly United States

The Increasingly United States PDF Author: Daniel J. Hopkins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022653040X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
In a campaign for state or local office these days, you’re as likely today to hear accusations that an opponent advanced Obamacare or supported Donald Trump as you are to hear about issues affecting the state or local community. This is because American political behavior has become substantially more nationalized. American voters are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about what’s happening in Washington, DC, than in similar messages whether they are in the South, the Northeast, or the Midwest. Gone are the days when all politics was local. With The Increasingly United States, Daniel J. Hopkins explores this trend and its implications for the American political system. The change is significant in part because it works against a key rationale of America’s federalist system, which was built on the assumption that citizens would be more strongly attached to their states and localities. It also has profound implications for how voters are represented. If voters are well informed about state politics, for example, the governor has an incentive to deliver what voters—or at least a pivotal segment of them—want. But if voters are likely to back the same party in gubernatorial as in presidential elections irrespective of the governor’s actions in office, governors may instead come to see their ambitions as tethered more closely to their status in the national party.

Political Issues in America

Political Issues in America PDF Author: Philip Davies
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719034206
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This is a collection of papers dealing with the role of liberalism in the United States during the 1980s and what it means for the 1990s in American politics. Other, related, political areas covered are social and economic policy (health, women's issues, urban issues), foreign policy (the Middle East, the end of the Cold War, dominance, East Asia and foreign investment), issues of representation (the electorate, the decay of American democracy, the media and the message) and issues in government institutions (American federalism, the courts, ethics and the presidency).

The Forgotten Americans

The Forgotten Americans PDF Author: Isabel Sawhill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300230362
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation's economic inequalities One of the country's leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society--economic, cultural, and political--and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. Although many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and the federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Debating the Issues

Debating the Issues PDF Author: Robert P. Watson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780757515729
Category : Political participation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Debating the Issues: American Government and Politics, by Robert Watson, is the perfect supplemental text to get students to both debate the issues and think critically about politics and governance. Designed for both introductory and advanced courses in American government or American politics, this book features a collection of 30 debates including both enduring, central questions in Political Science and current issues taken straight from the headlines.

Agendas and Instability in American Politics

Agendas and Instability in American Politics PDF Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226039536
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

Framing American Politics

Framing American Politics PDF Author: Karen Callaghan and Frauke Schnell, eds.
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822972727
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Most issues in American political life are complex and multifaceted, subject to multiple interpretations and points of view. How issues are framed matters enormously for the way they are understood and debated. For example, is affirmative action a just means toward a diverse society, or is it reverse discrimination? Is the war on terror a defense of freedom and liberty, or is it an attack on privacy and other cherished constitutional rights? Bringing together some of the leading researchers in American politics, Framing American Politics explores the roles that interest groups, political elites, and the media play in framing political issues for the mass public. The contributors address some of the most hotly debated foreign and domestic policies in contemporary American life, focusing on both the origins and process of framing and its effects on citizens. In so doing, these scholars clearly demonstrate how frames can both enhance and hinder political participation and understanding.

The Two Majorities

The Two Majorities PDF 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.