Americans consistently name Republicans as the party better at handling issues like national security and crime, while they trust Democrats on issues like education and the environment - a phenomenon called 'issue ownership'. Partisan Priorities investigates the origins of issue ownership, showing that in fact the parties deliver neither superior performance nor popular policies on the issues they 'own'. Rather, Patrick J. Egan finds that Republicans and Democrats simply prioritize their owned issues with lawmaking and government spending when they are in power. Since the parties tend to be particularly ideologically rigid on the issues they own, politicians actually tend to ignore citizens' preferences when crafting policy on these issues. Thus, issue ownership distorts the relationship between citizens' preferences and public policies.
Partisan Priorities investigates issue ownership, showing that American political parties deliver neither superior performance nor popular policies on the issues they 'own'.
The public’s leading long-range foreign policy goals for the United States are focused on security, including economic security. About seven-in-ten (72%) say that taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks should be a top priority for the country, while about as many (71%) say the same about protecting the jobs of American workers. Two-thirds (66%) say preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should be a top long-range priority for the United States. With only a handful of exceptions, including stopping the spread of WMD, there are sizable differences between Republicans and Democrats on the 26 foreign policy goals in the survey by Pew Research Center
In the United States, politics has become tribal and personalized. The influence of partisan divisions has extended beyond the political realm into everyday life, affecting relationships and workplaces as well as the ballot box. To help explain this trend, we examine the stereotypes Americans have of ordinary Democrats and Republicans. Using data from surveys, experiments, and Americans' own words, we explore the content of partisan stereotypes and find that they come in three main flavors—parties as their own tribes, coalitions of other tribes, or vehicles for political issues. These different stereotypes influence partisan conflict: people who hold trait-based stereotypes tend to display the highest levels of polarization, while holding issue-based stereotypes decreases polarization. This finding suggests that reducing partisan conflict does not require downplaying partisan divisions but shifting the focus to political priorities rather than identity—a turn to what we call responsible partisanship.
Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.
Since the end of WWII, the United States has maintained a sizable military presence around the world. As one of the main mechanisms that the US uses to exercise its military power abroad, it is a defining characteristic of the international order. This issue has gotten much less attention in the field of International Relations than is warranted by its importance, and the attention that it has gotten has been largely focused on strategic issues and the demand for US military forces. To this, I add the domestic politics within the United States that determine the supply of American military forces that are available for use abroad. Because of the economic importance of US forces to congressional districts, for Members of Congress to agree to send forces overseas, they must be compensated in a way that fits their distributional preferences. Agreement on the means of compensation is easier to find when a Member’s copartisans control both branches of the US government, and when politicians on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue agree on the strategic priority that demands the deployment of US military personnel overseas. Using time-series cross-sectional models, I show that, in addition to strategic considerations, the President’s party strength in Congress and the proportion of moderates in the Senate, are key determinants of US deployment outcomes. Higher proportions of the President’s copartisans and moderates in Congress are correlated with more forces being sent overseas. In addition, I examine case evidence from Kosovo, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe that demonstrates the causal mechanisms. In the end, this is an important contribution, because it adds an important determinant of deployment patterns to the literature on the nature of the US military presence around the world. It provides a statistical model for predicting troop levels around the world, and it solves existing puzzles in deployment patterns that arose through a sole focus on strategic considerations.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Taking the Initiative shows that majority party leaders in Congress have set and successfully pushed their own policy agendas for decades--revealing the 'Contract With America' as only the most recent, and certainly not the most successful, example of independent policy making. Cutting deeply into the politics and personalities of three decades of party leadership, John B. Bader probes the strategies and evaluates the effectiveness of House and Senate leaders operating in a divided government, when Congress and the presidency are controlled by different political parties. He provides a historical context for analyzing the"Contract" and shows that aggressive agenda-setting has long been a regular feature of majority party leadership. Bader interviewed more than seventy congressional leaders, staff members, party officials, and political consultants, including speakers Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and Jim Wright, for this book. He supplemented these interviews with research in largely unexplored archival materials such as press conference transcripts, notes from White House leadership meetings, and staff memoranda on strategy.
An accessible and impartial survey of the positions of the Republican and Democratic parties on the most pressing environmental issues of our time, from climate change and wilderness preservation to air and water pollution. Today's Environmental Issues: Democrats and Republicans presents a unique perspective on party politics—one that impartially identifies similarities and differences regarding an array of topics ranging from fracking, sustainability, and pesticides to logging and noise pollution. Essays provide both historical information and up-to-date coverage of partisan opinions on today's environmental concerns. Written for upper level high school students, undergraduates, and general audiences interested in environmental issues and partisan viewpoints, this book enables readers to better understand the origins, details, differences, and commonalities of partisan opinions surrounding today's environmental concerns. Each environmental issue is unique with its own set of concerns and impacts, particularly when viewed from a party perspective. By examining a breadth of issues from the party viewpoint, readers can understand how the parties could work together or in opposition, depending on the environmental issue—and that the parties may not always be polar opposites on every issue, a characterization that is often portrayed in the media. Each essay includes a sidebar that presents a quick look at the party line, individuals who have shaped opinion or policy, or key court decisions.
To many observers, Congress has become a deeply partisan institution where ideologically-distinct political parties do little more than engage in legislative trench warfare. A zero-sum, winner-take-all approach to congressional politics has replaced the bipartisan comity of past eras. If the parties cannot get everything they want in national policymaking, then they prefer gridlock and stalemate to compromise. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom. In The Limits of Party, James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee challenge this conventional wisdom. By constructing legislative histories of congressional majority parties’ attempts to enact their policy agendas in every congress since the 1980s and by drawing on interviews with Washington insiders, the authors analyze the successes and failures of congressional parties to enact their legislative agendas. ? Their conclusions will surprise many congressional observers: Even in our time of intense party polarization, bipartisanship remains the key to legislative success on Capitol Hill. Congressional majority parties today are neither more nor less successful at enacting their partisan agendas. They are not more likely to ram though partisan laws or become mired in stalemate. Rather, the parties continue to build bipartisan coalitions for their legislative priorities and typically compromise on their original visions for legislation in order to achieve legislative success.
