Author: Eric M. Uslaner
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472084210
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
What is the nature of representation? Why do some legislators pursue their own policy agendas while others only vote according to the wishes of a majority in their district? In The Movers and the Shirkers, Eric M. Uslaner sheds new light on these intriguing questions. Uslaner demonstrates that current notions of representation are too narrow and that members of Congress pursue their own policy agendas as well as represent their constituents' interests. Uslaner explains that most senators do not choose between their ideal policies or their constituency preferences because voters usually elect public officials who are in tune with their beliefs. Moreover, because the constituency is a complex group, some of whom are more critical to a legislator than others, the legislator is able to form alliances with those who support his or her policy preferences. In short, the author argues that politics is both local and ideological. This work illuminates one of the central issues of representative democracy and will appeal to those who study or follow legislative politics as well as those interested in democratic theory.
Author: Joseph Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429969961
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
Since the late 1960s, trust in government has fallen precipitously. The nine essays composing this volume detail the present character of distrust, analyze its causes, assess the dangers it poses, and suggest remedies. The focus is on trust in the Congress. The contributors also examine patterns of trust in societal institutions and the presidency, especially in light of the Clinton impeachment controversy. Among the themes the book highlights are the impacts of present patterns of politics, the consequences of public misunderstanding of democratic politics, the significance of poll data, and the need for reform in campaign finance, media practices, and civic education.
Author: Patrick Fisher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498545335
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Not Enough Representation: The Disconnect between Congress and Its Citizens examines how representative the United States Congress is among different demographic groups and how representational issues affect Americans’ perception of Congress, potentially threatening its legitimacy. The opening chapter analyzes political representation from the perspective of the nature of the relationship between voters and legislators, addressing why Congress is so demographically unrepresentative. The book will then focuses on outcome—the representativeness of the legislature in terms of its members’ demographic backgrounds. Congress, simply put, is not demographically representative of the American public. There are significant gaps between Congress and the American public on the basis of race, gender, religion, wealth and generation. Since members of Congress do not adequately represent the diversity in their electorate, this suggests that Congress in turn does not make polices that advocate for the citizenry as a whole. The book first examines the nature of the relationship between citizens and legislators before analyzing demographic groups in the general population and comparing their preferences to how Congressional members of that demographic group legislate. In the process, the book ties representation to many of the hot-button issues that polarize both the American public and Congress. Congress is not descriptively representative of the U.S. population. Many groups of Americans have historically been, and continue to be, underrepresented in Congress. More than ever before, this underrepresentation is troublesome to a substantial number of Americans—and problematic for American democracy.
Author: Colin Gordon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812291506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. "Not a typical city," as one observer noted in the late 1970s, "but, like a Eugene O'Neill play, it shows a general condition in a stark and dramatic form." Mapping Decline examines the causes and consequences of St. Louis's urban crisis. It traces the complicity of private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, and federal housing policies in the "white flight" of people and wealth from the central city. And it traces the inadequacy—and often sheer folly—of a generation of urban renewal, in which even programs and resources aimed at eradicating blight in the city ended up encouraging flight to the suburbs. The urban crisis, as this study of St. Louis makes clear, is not just a consequence of economic and demographic change; it is also the most profound political failure of our recent history. Mapping Decline is the first history of a modern American city to combine extensive local archival research with the latest geographic information system (GIS) digital mapping techniques. More than 75 full-color maps—rendered from census data, archival sources, case law, and local planning and property records—illustrate, in often stark and dramatic ways, the still-unfolding political history of our neglected cities.
Author: Sunil Ahuja
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780814209400
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Congress occupies a central place in the U.S. political system. Its reach into American society is vast and deep. Overtime, the issues it has confronted have increased in both quantity and complexity. At the beginning, Congress dealt with a handful of matters, whereas today it has its hands in every imaginable aspect of life. It has attempted to meet these challenges and has changed throughout the course of its history, prodded by factors both external and internal to the institution. The essays in this volume argue therefore that as society changed throughout the twentieth century, Congress responded to those changes.
Author: Brian Alexander
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793601283
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
What is the role that norms play in the U.S. Congress? At a time of unprecedented partisanship and high-profile breaches of legislative norms in the modern Congress, the relationship between norms and the functioning of the institution is a growing and pressing concern. Despite the importance of the topic, recent scholarship has not focused on congressional norms. Meanwhile, previous research leaves open many relevant questions about the role of norms in the Congress of the twenty-first century. A Social Theory of Congress brings norms back in to the study of Congress by defining what are legislative norms, identifying which norms currently exist in the U.S. Congress, and examining the effects that congressional norms have. This book provides a new research approach to study congressional norms through a comprehensive review of previous scholarship and a combination of interviews, survey research, and analysis of member behavior. What’s more, an innovative theoretical framework — a social theory of Congress — provides new perspectives in the study of legislatures and political behavior. The findings are striking. Norms of cooperation are surprisingly alive and well in an otherwise partisan Congress. But norms of conflict are on the rise. In addition, norms of a changing culture are affecting how members understand their role as lawmakers and in their interactions among one another. Together, these findings suggest that norms play an important role in the functioning of the legislature and as norms evolve so too does the performance of Congress in American democracy.
Author: Ralph G. Carter
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538151243
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Leading scholars in the study of congress and US foreign policy address congress’s vital role in determining how and why the US chooses it's international policy agendas. They address key aspects of congressional activism, assertiveness, and acquiescence in an era of divided government and polarized politics.
Author: William B. Glidden
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739185748
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
The discrepancy between the fourteenth amendment’s true meaning as originally understood, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of its meaning over time, has been dramatic and unfortunate. The amendment was intended to be a constitutional rule for the promotion and protection of people’s rights, administered by the states as front-line regulators of life, liberty, and property, to be overseen by Congress and supported by federal legislation as necessary. In this book, William B. Glidden makes the case that instead, the amendment has operated as a judge-dominated, negative rights-against-government regime, supervised by the Supreme Court. Whenever Congress has enacted legislation to protect life, liberty, or property rights of people in the states, the laws were often overturned, narrowly construed, or forced to rely on the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, under the Supreme Court’s constraining interpretations. Glidden proposes that Congress must recover for itself or be restored to its proper role as the designated federal enforcement agency for the fourteenth amendment.
Author: Lawrence C. Dodd
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1506328806
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 614
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Book Description
For almost four decades, the editors of Congress Reconsidered, Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer have delivered the best contemporary work from leading congressional scholars in a form that is both analytical and accessible. The tradition continues in this Eleventh Edition as contributing authors focus on the many ways Congress has changed over time and examine the conditions that foster these developments. Some of the most noted names in congressional studies address topics from broad dynamics affecting the institution, elections and constituencies, parties and internal organization, inter-branch relations, and policymaking. This new edition also ends with a capstone chapter on the milestone 2016 elections. Simply put, this bestselling volume remains on the cutting edge of scholarship, identifying patterns of change in Congress and placing those patterns in context.
Author: Lawrence C. Dodd
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1452227829
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 561
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Book Description
Always a classic, Dodd and Oppenheimer's Congress Reconsidered is the recognized source for in-depth, cutting-edge scholarship on Congress geared to undergraduates. Thoroughly updated for the 112th Congress.
