This book is organized to examine the major subjects taught in American politics through the lens of twenty-five hot button issues affecting American politics and policy today. These key issues reflect the ideas, principles, concerns, fears, morals, and hopes of the American people. The authors argue that these issues are the heart and soul of the American political system, serving as the basis for the disagreements that drive citizens, public servants, and elected officials into action. Features of this Innovative Text Examines 25 issues in light of the 2016 presidential election and beyond. Up-to-date chapters reflect important developments in the arenas of immigration, health care, race relations and civil rights, gun control, gay rights, and money and politics, in particular. Includes international coverage with recent and ongoing events surrounding Iran, Syria, Israel and Palestine, and China. A chapter on Russia puts recent developments in Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, and the "near abroad" in context with US foreign policy.
Contemporary American Politics provides a comprehensive introduction to the most salient topics of debate in contemporary American politics and society today. The text introduces and explains the history, nature and underlying issues to the key areas of political division and conflict in America′s on-going `culture war′, including, abortion, gun control, capital punishment, pornography, gay rights and drugs. All students will gain a deeper and critical understanding of how this powerful set of concerns continue to underpin and shape the fundamental divisions informing American domestic politics at local, state and federal levels. Completely up-to-date and featuring chapter summaries, exhibit boxes, discussion questions, weblinks and further reading guides, Contemporary American Politics offers a lively and accessible text that will be essential reading for all students of American politics and society. Robert Singh is a lecturer in politics at Birkbeck College, London. Contemporary American Politics: Issues and Controversies is a companion text to the foundation textbook American Government and Politics: A Concise Introduction also published by SAGE. `In this volume the political scientist Robert Singh has selected and analyzed closely a set of topical issues and controversies in American politics - including gun control, capital punishment and cultural wars - as a way better to understand the United States. The result is an excellent text which conveys both the diversity of contemporary America and the complexity of issues often treated superficially in media accounts. I recommend the book highly′ - Desmond King, Mellon Professor of American Government, University of Oxford `Rob Singh is a master of style, and his book is the perfect companion for those who are interested in America′s "culture wars" but hitherto have been put off by the execrable jargon they have spawned′ - Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Professor of American History, University of Edinburgh `For those who still believe that politics is normally, naturally, about economics, Rob Singh has gathered the evidence and dialed the wake-up call: seven major instances of an ongoing culture war meet a common analytic framework here in a lively and informative fashion′ - Byron E Shafer, University of Wisconsin `For the student this is the perfect complement to a textbook. American politics is not just about institutions and processes, but also about current political issues and debates. Robert Singh′s interesting book illuminates a range of social and cultural issues that divide Americans in the 21st century. All undergraduate courses on American politics should include it on reading lists for seminars, tutorials and classes′ - Alan Ware, Worcester College, Oxford
Debuting it its first edition, this book is organized around the approach that American politics can best be understood by examining the issues that reflect the ideas, principles, concerns, fears, morals and hopes of the American people. Debates, Differences and Divisions looks at twenty-five hot button issues affecting American politics and policy today. The author argues that these issues are the heart and soul of the American political system, serving as the basis for the disagreements that drive our political system into action.
Tracking trends in American public opinion, this study examines moods of public policy over time. It argues that public opinion is decisive in American politics and identifies the citizens who produce influential change as a relatively small subset of the American electorate.
Race has been present at every critical moment in American political development, shaping political institutions, political discourse, public policy, and its denizens’ political identities. But because of the nature of race—its evolving and dynamic status as a structure of inequality, a political organizing principle, an ideology, and a system of power—we must study the politics of race historically, institutionally, and discursively. Covering more than three hundred years of American political history from the founding to the contemporary moment, the contributors in this volume make this extended argument. Together, they provide an understanding of American politics that challenges our conventional disciplinary tools of studying politics and our conservative political moment’s dominant narrative of racial progress. This volume, the first to collect essays on the role of race in American political history and development, resituates race in American politics as an issue for sustained and broadened critical attention.
Divided America tells the biggest story in American politics today. It's the story behind the emergence of a ferocious power struggle between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats that is tearing the country's politics apart. Drawing on extensive polling data and close analyses of presidential, senatorial, and congressional elections over the past fifty years, two eminent political scientists show, for the first time, how partisan warfare has reduced both major parties to minority status and locked them into fierce power struggles in each election cycle, thereby making America less stable and more difficult to govern. Because the two major parties are now evenly balanced in the national electorate, control of the White House and Congress can shift dramatically with each election. Neither Republicans nor Democrats operate with any "lock" on the presidency, House of Representatives, or Senate, as demonstrated by the 2006 congressional elections. Earl Black and Merle Black examine the party battles as they've played themselves out in the nation's five principal geographic areas. Each party has developed two important regional strongholds, as exemplified in the 2004 elections, when Republicans won all the electoral votes and sizable majorities of House and Senate seats in the South and Mountain/Plains states while the Democrats won almost all the electoral votes and large majorities in the Northeast and the Pacific Rim states. The Midwest is the perennial swing region. The authors describe the enormous changes that have occurred in the electorates of each region over the past fifty years -- with emphasis on how the size and partisan affiliations of key groups have changed -- and show how these transformations have generated today's unstable two-party battles. Although the relentlessly competitive nature of modern American politics is generally appreciated, the regional causes underlying this new state of affairs are not well understood. Because neither Democrats nor Republicans can produce national majorities simply by sweeping their regional strongholds, they are locked in a fierce power struggle in each election. Divided America tells the story of these remarkable developments in clear, vigorous prose and provides a pragmatic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each party. For the foreseeable future, each party will be within striking distance of winning -- or losing -- political power in every national institution. Understanding the party battles in America's regions is vital to understanding how today's losers can become tomorrow's winners
The essential roadmap to the events of the past two years and the years to come, "The Almanac of American Politics 1998" features a wealth of information about national, state, and local governments, including profiles of all 535 members of Congress and all 50 governors, voting records on major legislation, updated maps of congressional districts, and more.
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.
When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.
Gender and Elections offers a systematic, lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2004 elections. This timely, yet enduring, volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2004 elections and providing a more long-term, in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding and interpreting presidential elections, voter participation and turnout, voting choices, congressional elections, the participation of African American women, the support of political parties and women's organizations, candidate communications with voters, and state elections. Without question, this book is the most comprehensive, reliable, and trustworthy resource on the role of gender in electoral politics.
