Kansas Politics and Government

Kansas Politics and Government PDF Author: H. Edward Flentje
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803220286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The rich history of Kansas politics continues to generate an abundant literature. The state?s beginning as ?Bleeding Kansas? followed by Prohibition, populism, the Progressive Era, and the Dust Bowl, through to the present day, have given local and national writers and scholars an intriguing topic for exploration. While historians and biographers shed light on pieces of this history, journalists focus on current political affairs in the state. Rarely, however, are past and present connected to fully illuminate an understanding of Kansas politics and government. ø This volume uses the prism of political cultures to interpret Kansas politics and disclose the intimate connections between the state?s past and its current politics. The framework of political cultures evolves from underlying political preferences for liberty, order, and equality, and these preferences form the basis for the active political cultures of individualism, hierarchy, and egalitarianism. This comprehensive examination of Kansas political institutions argues that Kansas politics, historically and presently, may best be understood as a clash of political cultures.

Kansas Politics and Government

Kansas Politics and Government PDF Author: H. Edward Flentje
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803220286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rich history of Kansas politics continues to generate an abundant literature. The state?s beginning as ?Bleeding Kansas? followed by Prohibition, populism, the Progressive Era, and the Dust Bowl, through to the present day, have given local and national writers and scholars an intriguing topic for exploration. While historians and biographers shed light on pieces of this history, journalists focus on current political affairs in the state. Rarely, however, are past and present connected to fully illuminate an understanding of Kansas politics and government. ø This volume uses the prism of political cultures to interpret Kansas politics and disclose the intimate connections between the state?s past and its current politics. The framework of political cultures evolves from underlying political preferences for liberty, order, and equality, and these preferences form the basis for the active political cultures of individualism, hierarchy, and egalitarianism. This comprehensive examination of Kansas political institutions argues that Kansas politics, historically and presently, may best be understood as a clash of political cultures.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

What's the Matter with Kansas? PDF Author: Thomas Frank
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1429900326
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
One of "our most insightful social observers"* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party's success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers. In asking "what 's the matter with Kansas?"—how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union—Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where's the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism—the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders' "values" and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy. A brilliant analysis—and funny to boot—What's the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People. *Los Angeles Times

See Government Grow

See Government Grow PDF Author: Gareth Davies
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
An award-winning historian's pathbreaking book uses federal education policy from the Great Society to Reagan's New Morning to demonstrate how innovative policies become entrenched irrespective of who occupies the White House.

Red State Religion

Red State Religion PDF Author: Robert Wuthnow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691160899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
No state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly challenged the teaching of evolution, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state is a hotbed of antiabortion protest - and churches have been involved in all of these efforts. Yet in 1867 suffragist Lucy Stone could plausibly proclaim that, in the cause of universal suffrage, "Kansas leads the world!" How did Kansas go from being a progressive state to one of the most conservative?

Utah Politics and Government

Utah Politics and Government PDF Author: Adam R. Brown
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496201809
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"Utah Politics and Government covers Utah's religious heritage and territorial history, its central political institutions, and its political culture, while situating Utah within the broader American political setting"--

Low Taxes and Small Government

Low Taxes and Small Government PDF Author: Michael A. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793604835
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Sam Brownback was the first modern-day conservative to be elected governor of Kansas, the culmination of a rightward shift in the state's often-dominant Republican Party. This book is a detailed case study of the policies implemented over his two terms as governor, paying particular attention to the impact on state government and services, the economy, public education, and the business environment. The authors provide extensive background, historical evidence, and detailed references. The book's real-world relevance is grounded in a discussion of similar policies in other states as well as the US federal government.

Attack Politics

Attack Politics PDF Author: Emmett H. Buell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Ask most Americans, and they'll tell you that presidential campaigns get dirtier and more negative with every election. This text suggests that this may not be as true as we think, and shows that over the last dozen elections, negativity may have been well publicised but hasn't increased.

Maine Politics & Government

Maine Politics & Government PDF Author: Kenneth T. Palmer
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803287181
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Remote and thinly populated, Maine has been insulated from many of the demo-graphic and economic trends of states to the south. But Maine Politics and Government shows how rapidly this situation is changing. In the 1970s and 1980s, Maine?once dependent on agriculture, manufacturing, and maritime trades?underwent extensive commercial development. High-tech businesses and fashionable suburbs, concentrated in the southern counties, began to assert a new political force. The authors of this book view these changes in the context of the state's long history. Although Maine's population and economy have become more diversified, its public policies more complex, and its government more professionalized and centralized, there remains a remarkable degree of stability in political attitudes. And Maine still operates under its original 1819 constitution; the amendments added over time have largely maintained its original structure while allowing for changing conditions. This book illumi-nates the workings of Maine's executive, legislative, and judicial branches and its relations with the federal government, as well as local concerns, without losing sight of the Pine Tree State's uniqueness.

Montesquieu's Comparative Politics and the Spirit of American Constitutionalism

Montesquieu's Comparative Politics and the Spirit of American Constitutionalism PDF Author: Anne M. Cohler
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700631445
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
“American republicans,” notes Forrest McDonald, “regarded selected doctrines of Montesquieu’s as being virtually on par with Holy Writ.” But exactly how the French jurist’s labyrinthian work, The Spirit of the Laws, with was published in 1748, influenced the eighteenth-century conception of the republic is not well understood by historians or theorists. Anne M. Cohler undertakes to show the importance of Montequieu’s teaching for modern legislation and for modern political prudence generally, with specific reference to his impact on the Federalist and Tocqueville. In so doing, she delineates Montequieu’s contribution to political philosophy and suggests new ways to think about the formation of the American Constitution. To analyze the comparative politics found in the Spirit of the Laws, Cohler focuses on four fundamental principles underlying Montesquieu’s view of government: spirit, moderation, liberty, and legislation. In this endeavor she is guided by the conviction that the philosopher hews to the spirit of the laws rather than to the laws themselves—that is, to internal rather than external principles. Montesquieu, in Cohler’s argument, addresses the problem posed by the tendency to see human beings in light o universal abstractions at the expense of particular relationships, distinctions, and forms. To counter this tendency, which can be fostered by religion, Montesquieu develops a theory of prudence designed to support the world of politics an dpolitical life, necessarily an intermediate world occupying a space between universal abstractions and individual particularities. Cohler suggest that the Federalists and Tocqueville were most influenced by this preoccupation with spirit and moderation. James Madison and other Federalists, for example, were not drawn to limited government as a principled notion but rather as a consequence of understanding the context within which a moderate government must act not to become despotic. Similarly, Tocqueville extols democracy as self-government as an antidote to the dangers of democracy as a rule; the character of the governed shapes the nature of the governors. These and other conclusions will prove valuable to intellectual historians, political theorists, and students of religion.

Maryland Politics and Government

Maryland Politics and Government PDF Author: John T. Willis
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803238436
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Tucked between the larger commonwealths of Pennsylvania and Virginia and overshadowed by the political maneuverings of its neighbor, Washington, D.C., Maryland has often been overlooked and neglected in studies of state governmental systems. With the publication of Maryland Politics and Government, the challenging demographic diversity, geographic variety, and dynamic Democratic pragmatism of Maryland finally get their due. Two longtime political analysts, Herbert C. Smith and John T. Willis, conduct a sustained inquiry into topics including the Maryland identity, political history, and interest groups; the three branches of state government; and policy areas such as taxation, spending, transportation, and the environment. Smith and Willis also establish a “Two Marylands” model that explains the dominance of the Maryland Democratic Party, established in the post–Civil War era, that persists to this day even in a time of political polarization. Unique in its scope, detail, and coverage, Maryland Politics and Government sets the standard for understanding the politics of the Free State (or, alternately, the Old Line State) for years to come.