Author: Glen Krutz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781738998470
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Black & white print. American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes more examples and details regarding the lived experiences of diverse groups and communities within the United States. The authors and reviewers sought to strike a balance between confronting the negative and harmful elements of American government, history, and current events, while demonstrating progress in overcoming them. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.
Author: Michel L. Balinski
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780815716341
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
The issue of fair representation will take center stage as U.S. congressional districts are reapportioned based on the 2000 Census. Using U.S. history as a guide, the authors develop a theory of fair representation that establishes various principles for translating state populations—or vote totals of parties—into a fair allocation of congressional seats. They conclude that the current apportionment formula cheats the larger states in favor of the smaller, contrary to the intentions of the founding fathers and compromising the Supreme Court's "one man, one vote" rulings. Balinski and Young interweave the theoretical development with a rich historical account of controversies over representation, and show how many of these principles grew out of political contests in the course of United States history. The result is a work that is at once history, politics, and popular science. The book—updated with data from the 1980 and 1990 Census counts—vividly demonstrates that apportionment deals with the very substance of political power.
Author: Michael P. McDonald
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501738569
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Book Description
The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal is an initiative of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Pennsylvania State University. It annually recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce exceptional innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. Micah Altman and Michael P. McDonald unveil the Public Mapping Project, which developed DistrictBuilder, an open-source software redistricting application designed to give the public transparent, accessible, and easy-to-use online mapping tools. As they show, the goal is for all citizens to have access to the same information that legislators use when drawing congressional maps—and use that data to create maps of their own. Thanks to generous funding from The Pennsylvania State University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.
Author: Orlando J. Rodriguez
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976717
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Every ten years political representation in the U.S.House of Representatives is redistributed (reapportioned) among the fifty states.The process began anew with the 2010 census, which is counting the nation's population as the basis for reapportionment.The decennial census has a history wrought with failures and inaccurate counts. In Vote Thieves, geographer Orlando J. Rodriguez shows how our current method of apportionment creates an incentive for illegal immigration and polarizes our political system. Historically it caused the end of the Federalist Party, bolstered slavery, disenfranchised African Americans after Reconstruction, fostered segregation in the South, denied voting rights to women, and disenfranchised voters in the presidential election of 2000. Since 1989, six congressional bills have attempted to change the population basis for apportionment; none passed. Currently under review in Congress, House Joint Resolution 53 would amend the Constitution to include only citizens in the apportionment base.The 2008 presidential platform of the Republican Party included a similar call to change the apportionment basis. This issue affects all U.S. residents—legal and illegal alike.Recent history has triggered a growing suspicion among Americans that their political system is flawed. Vote Thieves explains a singular flaw that voters suspect but cannot put in plain words, and gives them the information they need to petition for a more responsive political system.
Author: Donald C. Bacon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 606
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Book Description
Author: Jay K. Dow
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700624104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
In the United States we elect members of the House of Representative from single-member districts: the candidate who receives the most votes from each geographically defined district wins a seat in the House. This system—so long in place that it seems perfectly natural—is, however, unusual. Most countries use proportional representation to elect their legislatures. Electing the House is the first book-length study to explore how the US came to adopt the single-member district system, how it solidified into a seemingly permanent fixture of American government and whether it performs well by the standards it was intended to achieve. The US Constitution grants the states the authority to elect representatives in a manner of their own choosing, subject to restrictions that Congress might impose. Electing the House reminds us that in the nation's early years the states exercised this privilege and elected their representatives using a variety of methods. Dow traces the general adoption of the present system to the Jacksonian Era—specifically to the major franchise expansion and voter mobilization of the time. The single-member district plurality-rule system was the Federalists' solution to tyranny of the majority under the expectation of universal franchise, and the Jacksonian-Whigs–Era response to the political uncertainty caused by large-scale voter mobilization. The system was solidified concurrently with the enfranchisement of women in the early twentieth century and African Americans in the Civil Rights Era. Dow persuasively argues that the single-member district system became the way that we elect our representatives because it fits especially well within the corpus of political thought that informs our collective understanding of good governance and it performs well by the standards it was meant to achieve, and these standards are still relevant today. Locating the development of single-member district system within the context of American political thought, Dow's study clarifies the workings and the significance of a critical electoral process in our time. In the process, the book informs and enhances our understanding of the evolution of the American political system.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Parliamentary practice
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Author: Charles A. Kromkowski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139435787
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 487
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Book Description
Political historians recognize the colonial years and the American Revolution, the early national era and the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the nineteenth century and the American Civil War as the three most important eras in American history. Recreating the American Republic offers the first comparative historical analysis and synthesis of these.
Author: Erik S. Herron
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190258675
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1017
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Book Description
No subject is more central to the study of politics than elections. All across the globe, elections are a focal point for citizens, the media, and politicians long before--and sometimes long after--they occur. Electoral systems, the rules about how voters' preferences are translated into election results, profoundly shape the results not only of individual elections but also of many other important political outcomes, including party systems, candidate selection, and policy choices. Electoral systems have been a hot topic in established democracies from the UK and Italy to New Zealand and Japan. Even in the United States, events like the 2016 presidential election and court decisions such as Citizens United have sparked advocates to promote change in the Electoral College, redistricting, and campaign-finance rules. Elections and electoral systems have also intensified as a field of academic study, with groundbreaking work over the past decade sharpening our understanding of how electoral systems fundamentally shape the connections among citizens, government, and policy. This volume provides an in-depth exploration of the origins and effects of electoral systems.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic government information
Languages : en
Pages : 138
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Book Description
The Committee on House Administration is pleased to present this revised book on our United States Government. This publication continues to be a popular introductory guide for American citizens and those of other countries who seek a greater understanding of our heritage of democracy. The question-and-answer format covers a broad range of topics dealing with the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our Government as well as the electoral process and the role of political parties.--Foreword.
