The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics

The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics PDF 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.

The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics

The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics PDF Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

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.

Free Trade in the Americas

Free Trade in the Americas PDF Author: Sidney Weintraub
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1845420667
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This book examines the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an ambitious venture in regional market integration which builds on the principles of the North American Free Trade Agreement. It assesses the long-term corporate and public policy measures to cope with the increased monetary, fiscal and structural interdependence that will be required if the benefits of the FTAA are to be realized. The contributors suggest that with enlightened US leadership and the cooperation of Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, the FTAA could eventually match the EU in the world economy and as a multilateral leader. Initiatives to promote a culture of relational cooperation in a system of liberalized global commerce are stressed. In Latin America, there is an urgent need for such cooperation in order to enhance the region s lackluster growth rate and reduce the occurrences and severity of financial crises. The United States, Canada and Mexico will also benefit from the development of dynamic structural links with their regional neighbours. The authors highlight the importance for US policy initiatives to be complemented by constructive and harmonious corporate collaborations. This spirit of alliance capitalism will help ensure the FTAA promotes social justice as well as economic efficiency. This fully integrated volume, written by leading specialists in the field, will become an indispensable source for analysis of the prospects and role of the FTAA in the global economy. It will be warmly welcomed by informed readers such as international business experts, bankers, corporate executives, economists dealing with fiscal and monetary integration, and those interested in Latin American business.

The American Way

The American Way PDF Author: Carville Earle
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742599213
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
The geography of contemporary U.S. political economy—the relocation of firms toward the sunbelt and abroad; the decline of manufacturing in the rust belt; and the rise of footloose producer services, NAFTA-inspired trade flows—has roots that run deep into our past. This innovative history by one of our most distinguished historical geographers traces their growth back to the seventeenth-century origins of liberalism, republicanism, and the regular financial crises by then endemic in capitalist societies. The problem the English and then the Americans faced was overcoming these crises while avoiding the political extremes of royal absolutism and later of socialism, communism, and fascism. The English way alternated between the doctrinaire ideologies and geographies of republicanism and liberalism. In 1776, by mixing elements of both, Americans created entirely new ideological alloys. Henceforth, policy regimes alternated between Democrats and Republicans and their distinctive fusions of liberal and republican ideology. Democrats combined publicanism's tenets of equality, diversified and volatile regions, and consumer revolution with liberalism's tenets of free trade, geographical consolidation, and dispersion (New Deal 'liberalism'). Republicans mixed liberalism's biases toward elites, regional specialization and stability, and producer revolution with republicanism's tilt toward nationalism, expansionism, and demographic concentration (Reagan's America). Muddying liberal and republican ideologies and geographies in ways that tempered their extremes, Americans would add one more twist. Thrice, upon the birth of the first, second, and third republics, they enlarged the geographical jurisdictions of the federal government, extended the domains of U.S. power, and redefined the nature of the state. Carville Earle defines these enlargements as the distributive and partisan 'sectional state' of the 1790s, the regulatory and redistributive 'national state' of the 1880s, and the neoliberal 'transnational state' of the 1980s. In tandem with the American dynamic of crisis-and-recovery, the author argues that these three 'states' have fashioned a dynamic and dialectical series of geographies that, as tools of ideology, have done much more to ensure the growth and viability of the U.S. economy, polity, and society.

Party Systems and Foreign Policy Change in Liberal Democracies

Party Systems and Foreign Policy Change in Liberal Democracies PDF Author: Angelos Chryssogelos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100028736X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
How do political parties affect foreign policy? This book answers this question by exploring the role of party politics as source of foreign policy change in liberal democracies. The book shifts the focus from individual political parties to party systems as the context in which parties’ ideologies receive precise content and their preferences are formed. The central claim is that foreign policy change arises from within transformed discursive contexts of party competition, when a new language of politics that constitutes anew parties’ self-understanding of what they stand for and compete over emerges in a party system. By comparing cases of contested foreign policy change, the book shows how such transformations in party competition determine whether and when international pressures on a state will translate into decisions to institute foreign policy change and what degree of change will be ultimately implemented. With a novel framework which bridges concepts of international relations and comparative politics, the book will be of interest to researchers and students in the areas of international relations theory, foreign policy analysis and comparative politics, and generally to anyone wanting to understand how and when parties, elections and voters contribute to international change.

Radical Cataloging

Radical Cataloging PDF Author: K.R. Roberto
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786435437
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
This collection of critical and scholarly essays addresses the state of cataloging in the world of librarianship. The contributors, including Sanford Berman, Thomas Mann, and numerous front-line library workers, address topics ranging from criticisms of the state of the profession and traditional Library of Congress cataloging to methods of making cataloging more inclusive and helpful to library users. Other essay topics include historical overviews of cataloging practices and the literature they generate, first-person discussions of library workers' experiences with cataloging or metadata work, and the implications behind what materials get cataloged, who catalogs them, and how. Several essays provide a critical overview of innovative cataloging practices and the ways that such practices have been successfully integrated in many of the nation's leading libraries. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Countermobilization

Countermobilization PDF Author: Eric M. Patashnik
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226829898
Category : Opposition (Political science)
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
"While government policies can build supportive coalitions, they can also mobilize powerful opposition forces. What causes backlashes in the American political system? Why do some policies generate resistance among political elites and mass publics? Drawing on case studies of key issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control, Eric Patashnik explores how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. He argues that backlash politics is fueled by polarization, changes in American culture and society, and the negative feedback from activist government itself. Countermobilization shows that backlashes arise when policy motives, constituency means, and political opportunities converge, and debunks the claim that backlash politics is exclusively a right-wing phenomenon. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wishes to identify backlash risks-and design against them"--

Trading Blows

Trading Blows PDF Author: James Shoch
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807875317
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
For the past two decades, trade policy has been high on the American political agenda, thanks to the growing integration of the United States into the global economy and the wealth of debate this development has sparked. Although scholars have explored many aspects of U.S. trade policy, there has been little study of the role played by party politics. With Trading Blows, James Shoch fills that gap. Shoch offers detailed case studies of almost all of the major trade issues of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras, including administrative and legislative efforts to curb auto, steel, and other imports and to open up markets in Japan and elsewhere, as well as free-trade initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treaty that concluded the Uruguay Round of international trade talks, the extension of presidential fast-track trade negotiating authority, and the approval of permanent normal trade relations with China. In so doing, he explains the complex patterns of party competition over U.S. trade policy since 1980 and demonstrates the significant impact that party politics has had on the nation's recent trade policy decisions.

Handbook Of Research On The International Relations Of Latin America And The Caribbean

Handbook Of Research On The International Relations Of Latin America And The Caribbean PDF Author: G. Pope Atkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429979703
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The study of Latin American and Caribbean international relations has a long evolution both within the development of international relations as a general academic undertaking and in terms of the particular characteristics that distinguish the approaches taken by scholars in the field. This handbook provides a thorough multidisciplinary reference guide to the literature on the various elements of the international relations of Latin America and the Caribbean. Citing over 1600 sources that date from the nineteenth century to the present, with emphasis on recent decades, the volume's analytic essays trace the evolution of research in terms of concepts, issues, and themes. The Handbook is a companion volume to Atkins' Latin America and the Caribbean in the International System, Fourth Edition, but also serves as an invaluable stand-alone reference volume for students, scholars, researchers, journalists, and practitioners, both official and private.

Puzzles of Economic Growth

Puzzles of Economic Growth PDF Author: Leszek Balcerowicz
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464803269
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
By comparing countries like Venezuela and Chile, China and India, Dominican Republic and Haiti, and others, the book tries to answer the questions of which institutions and policies are crucial for stable long term economic growth.

Trade Battles

Trade Battles PDF Author: Tamara Kay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190847468
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Winner of ASA's 2019 Charles Tilly Distinguished Book Award Trade was once an esoteric economic issue with little domestic policy resonance. Activists did not prioritize it, and grassroots political mobilization seemed unlikely to free trade advocates. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s was therefore expected to be a fait accompli. Yet, as Trade Battles shows, activists pushed back: they increased the public consciousness on trade, mobilized new constituencies against it, and demanded that the rules of the global economy protect the collective rights and common good of citizens. Activists also forged a sustained challenge to U.S. trade policies after NAFTA, setting the stage for future trade battles. Using data from extensive archival materials and over 215 interviews with Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. trade negotiators; labor and environmental activists; and government officials, Tamara Kay and R.L. Evans assess how activists politicized trade policy by leveraging broad divisions across state and non-state arenas. Further, they demonstrate how activists were not only able to politicize trade policy, but also to pressure negotiators to include labor and environmental protections in NAFTA's side agreements. A timely contribution, Trade Battles seeks to understand the role of civil society in shaping state policy.