Tensions of American Federal Democracy

Tensions of American Federal Democracy PDF Author: Jared Sonnicksen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000533190
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Tensions of American Federal Democracy uses an original analytical framework combined with comparative perspectives – including those of other modern federal democracies – to explore the jigsaw puzzle that is the state of American federal democracy. The USA has a complex political system prone to "divided government", which has become highly polarized in recent years. The reasons for this extend further and deeper than party diversification or rising populism. This book provides an original contribution encompassing the US polity and its overall development. The author explores how the US constitution has predisposed branches and levels of government to multiple forms of separation of power and constituency; and how developments in democratic and federal government over time have fostered more competition, diffusion, and decoupling, despite earlier trends to more cross-branch and cross-level cooperation. The book thus addresses a multifaceted inquiry, interrogating and conceptualizing the connections between institutions, ideas, and political development, while exploring the interlinkage between the institutional parameters of multidimensional division of powers, constitutional political ideas and their contestation, and the limitation of the state in the US federal democratic system. This book will appeal to students and scholars of political science, American government and constitutional politics, federalism, comparative politics, and political theory.

Tensions of American Federal Democracy

Tensions of American Federal Democracy PDF Author: Jared Sonnicksen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000533190
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tensions of American Federal Democracy uses an original analytical framework combined with comparative perspectives – including those of other modern federal democracies – to explore the jigsaw puzzle that is the state of American federal democracy. The USA has a complex political system prone to "divided government", which has become highly polarized in recent years. The reasons for this extend further and deeper than party diversification or rising populism. This book provides an original contribution encompassing the US polity and its overall development. The author explores how the US constitution has predisposed branches and levels of government to multiple forms of separation of power and constituency; and how developments in democratic and federal government over time have fostered more competition, diffusion, and decoupling, despite earlier trends to more cross-branch and cross-level cooperation. The book thus addresses a multifaceted inquiry, interrogating and conceptualizing the connections between institutions, ideas, and political development, while exploring the interlinkage between the institutional parameters of multidimensional division of powers, constitutional political ideas and their contestation, and the limitation of the state in the US federal democratic system. This book will appeal to students and scholars of political science, American government and constitutional politics, federalism, comparative politics, and political theory.

Crucible of American Democracy

Crucible of American Democracy PDF Author: Andrew Shankman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Arguments over what democracy actually meant in practice and how it should be implemented raged throughout the early American republic. This exploration of the Pennsylvania experience reveals how democracy arose in America and how it came to accommodate capitalism.

Freedom in the World 2018

Freedom in the World 2018 PDF Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538112035
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1265

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Book Description
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

Securing the Vote

Securing the Vote PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030947647X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.

Psychology of Democracy

Psychology of Democracy PDF Author: Ashley Weinberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108477755
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
This book is about all our futures and demonstrates how essential insights from political psychology can nurture and safeguard democracy.

Four Threats

Four Threats PDF Author: Suzanne Mettler
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9781250244420
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them. While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that to the contrary, the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present. In The Four Threats, Robert C. Lieberman and Suzanne Mettler explore five historical episodes when democracy in the United States was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound, even fatal, damage to the American democratic experiment, and on occasion antidemocratic forces have prevailed. From this history, four distinct characteristics of democratic disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power – alone or in combination – have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived, so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment is that all four conditions are present in American politics today. This formidable convergence marks the contemporary era as an especially grave moment for democracy in the United States. But history provides a valuable repository from which contemporary Americans can draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened — or in some cases weakened — in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to the present and chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.

The Blessings of Liberty

The Blessings of Liberty PDF Author: Michael Les Benedict
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442259930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
This concise, accessible text provides students with a history of American constitutional development in the context of political, economic, and social change. Constitutional historian Michael Benedict stresses the role that the American people have played over time in defining the powers of government and the rights of individuals and minorities. He covers important trends and events in U.S. constitutional history, encompassing key Supreme Court and lower-court cases. The volume begins by discussing the English and colonial origins of American constitutionalism. Following an analysis of the American Revolution's meaning to constitutional history, the text traces the Constitution's evolution from the Early Republic to the present day. This third edition is updated to include the election of 2000, the Tea Party and the rise of popular constitutionalism, and the rise of judicial supremacy as seen in cases such as Citizens United, the Affordable Care Act, and gay marriage.

Democracy

Democracy PDF Author: David A. Moss
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674971450
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year “This absolutely splendid book is a triumph on every level. A first-rate history of the United States, it is beautifully written, deeply researched, and filled with entertaining stories. For anyone who wants to see our democracy flourish, this is the book to read.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin To all who say our democracy is broken—riven by partisanship, undermined by extremism, corrupted by wealth—history offers hope. Democracy’s nineteen cases, honed in David Moss’s popular course at Harvard and taught at the Library of Congress, in state capitols, and at hundreds of high schools across the country, take us from Alexander Hamilton’s debates in the run up to the Constitutional Convention to Citizens United. Each one presents a pivotal moment in U.S. history and raises questions facing key decision makers at the time: Should the delegates support Madison’s proposal for a congressional veto over state laws? Should Lincoln resupply Fort Sumter? Should Florida lawmakers approve or reject the Equal Rights Amendment? Should corporations have a right to free speech? Moss invites us to engage in the passionate debates that are crucial to a healthy society. “Engagingly written, well researched, rich in content and context...Moss believes that fierce political conflicts can be constructive if they are mediated by shared ideals.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post “Gives us the facts of key controversies in our history—from the adoption of the constitution to Citizens United—and invites readers to decide for themselves...A valuable resource for civic education.” —Michael Sandel, author of Justice

American Government

American Government PDF Author: Cal Jillson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781003029304
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
"American Government: Constitutional Democracy Under Pressure highlights the necessary tension between our constitutional principles and institutions and the populist heat that sometimes roils our national politics, especially at the current political moment. Our constitutional democracy has been under pressure for some time, but few would deny that fears for its fate have deepened in just the past few years. We assume that our political institutions will limit and contain contemporary populism, just as the Founders intended and as they have in the past, but will they? An increasingly polarized electorate, urging their representatives to fight and never to compromise, may be stressing Constitutional limits. This new edition offers to help American government teachers lead their students to a nuanced theoretical and practical understanding of what is happening in the politics of their Constitutional democracy today"--

Schoolhouse Burning

Schoolhouse Burning PDF Author: Derek W. Black
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541774388
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history. Schoolhouse Burningis grounded in pathbreaking, original research into how the nation, in its infancy, built itself around public education and, following the Civil War, enshrined education as a constitutional right that forever changed the trajectory of our democracy. Public education, alongside the right to vote, was the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. Today's current schooling trends -- the declining commitment to properly fund public education and the well-financed political agenda to expand vouchers and charter schools -- present a major assault on the democratic norms that public education represents and risk undermining one of the unique accomplishments of American society.