This study examines how the Electoral College actually works, how it is supposed to work, and how it might be reformed. Robert Hardaway first looks at the Constitutional Convention, the Twelfth Amendment, and historical elections where the Electoral College has come into play, providing the historical background to the present-day College. Next he examines the electors themselves--how they are chosen in the states and the laws relating to the obligations of electors in casting their votes. The election of the president and vice president by the House of Representatives is also examined. Finally, Hardaway discusses and analyzes the proposed reforms to the Electoral College, including those before the Congress at present. Professor Hardaway's book makes a strong case for the preservation of the federalist principles incorporated into the constitutional framers' plan for election of the president of the United States. The book richly documents its case with examples from past elections, while at the same time providing the reader with all information needed to make an independent judgment.

After five centuries of Eurocentrism, many people have little idea that Native American tribes still exist, or which traditions belong to what tribes. However over the past decade there has been a rising movement to accurately describe Native cultures and histories. In particular, people have begun to explore the experience of urban Indians--individuals who live in two worlds struggling to preserve traditional Native values within the context of an ever-changing modern society. In Genocide of the Mind, the experience and determination of these people is recorded in a revealing and compelling collection of essays that brings the Native American experience into the twenty-first century. Contributors include: Paula Gunn Allen, Simon Ortiz, Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Maurice Kenny, as well as emerging writers from different Indian nations.

This book explores how the liberal conception of justice with all its ideological underpinnings is reflected in the framing and working of the Constitution of India, in the adoption of broader socio-economic objectives, in the functioning of judicial and state institutions, and in the formulation and implementation of development strategy. It analyses the dynamics of the relationship between justice, democracy and the state.

The book studies the liberal conception of social justice and its sufficiency, and interrogates its performance and adequacy within the structural parameters and cultural conditions of postcolonial India. It provides an analytical exposition of how the borrowed and inadequate conception of liberal justice and democracy inherited from colonial past, and the espousal of the derivative developmental pattern based on modernist and constructivist paradigm, have together failed to achieve the modest target of justice enshrined in the Constitution.

Interlinking justice, democracy and state, the book examines their operational dynamics in an integrated framework which has relevance for other Third World countries also because of socio-economic and cultural commonalites.

A short 'warning from history' book that uses America's past to explain and reconfigure the present crisis facing the US, in the vein of Tim Snyder's On Tyranny & Anne Applebaum's Twilight of Democracy. 'The transformation of the US into an autocracy has advanced. By 2024, it might be irreversible and will change almost everything in the world. Nobody has outlined this danger more compellingly than Robert Kagan.' - Martin Wolf, Financial Times In Everything is at Stake, US Conservative Robert Kagan diagnoses the present crisis by explaining how America got here, and will paint a crystal-clear, albeit terrifying, picture of what could happen next. Rich in parallels between the past and the present, combining palpable outrage at what America has become with an impassioned defence of what is at stake. This book explains the current political climate in the US better than anything else you'll read, from a lifelong conservative who has formally disowned the party, thanks to its support of Trump. From race and populism to fascism and the future of conservatism, to the real prospects of a second term for Donald Trump, Robert Kagan tells us just how scared we should be as the United States journeys through its biggest political crisis in over a hundred years.

In Empire Versus Democracy, Carl Boggs traces the authoritarian trajectory of American politics since World War II, with emphasis on the growing concentration of corporate and military power that has accompanied the United States assumption of leading superpower on the world scene. The rise of the U.S. as unchallenged imperial nation has meant the steady expansion of a permanent war economy and security state that, working in tandem with large business interests, has led to proliferation of American armed-forces bases around the world, recurrent military interventions, swollen government bureaucracy, massive public expenditures, heavy reliance on surveillance and secrecy, and diminished resources for social infrastructure and social programs. Boggs shows that, as in the case of the Roman and other previous empires, enlargement of U.S. imperial power has resulted in a decline of civic engagement and local participation along with skewed priorities favoring the war economy and security state. Inevitably, this has meant a weakening of electoral and legislative politics, overwhelmed by the centers of enormous wealth and power. The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today's social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http: //routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

This book sheds light on the changing nature of contemporary Japan by decoding a range of political, economic and social boundaries. With a focus on the period following the inauguration of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, the book grows out of a recognition that, with the Koizumi administration playing a more proactive role internationally and moving ahead with deregulation and the 'structural reform' of the economy domestically, a range of boundaries have been challenged and reinscribed. Here 'boundaries' refers to the ways in which contemporary Japan is shaped as a separate entity by the inscription and reinscription of political, economic and social space creating insiders and outsiders, both internationally and domestically. The central argument of the book is that, in order to achieve the twin goals of greater international proactivity and domestic reform, the government and other actors supporting Koizumi's new direction for Japan needed to take action in order to destabilize and reformulate a range of extant boundaries. While boundaries often remain invisible, the aim of this book is to promote an understanding of their significance by uncovering their pivotal role. Decoding Boundaries in Contemporary Japan brings together contributions from leading and emerging scholars from the UK, Japan and the United States. It will appeal to scholars and students of Japan as well as social scientists with an interest in borders and boundaries, political scientists interested in Asia.

Coverage of the Western European experience is wide-ranging in this survey of perceptions of the state, its history, and prospects in the contemporary world. The greatest post-colonial democratic state, India, is also discussed as an important comparative example. Contributions by a distinguished pan-European team of authors ensure this study's value to students and teachers of the history of ideas, political theory and European studies.

With international attention focused on Hong Kong, many forget that Macau also exists in a delicate "one country, two systems" (OCTS) balance with mainland China. This book provides insights into the circumstances surrounding the less-understood half of China's OCTS policy, including the stagnation of representational government, and the location of any Macau characteristics in the Macau Basic Law. Despite being Hong Kong's sister "Special Administrative Region" (SAR) within the People's Republic of China, Macau's unique constitutional development under Portuguese and Chinese administration remains under-appreciated despite its potential contributions to local, national, and international constitutional discourse. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach, including doctrinal, historical, and comparative methodologies, this work fills that gap. The research blends Portuguese, Chinese, and foreign-language sources in order to reconstruct a balanced constitutional narrative. The book focuses on a consequential effect of globalization - that is, the assimilation of a long-standing and unique constitutional order by a new hegemonic sovereign - including processes for internationalization as China opened up, legal harmonization of two distinct legal and socioeconomic orders, juridification of local affairs with the establishment of a new local court system in preparation for handover to the Chinese regime, and democratization (or the lack thereof) among the various communities comprising the Macanese polity before and since. Focusing on Macau's unique development at the crux of European and Chinese empires, and the role it plays as a mirror for Chinese intentions vis-a-vis Hong Kong today, the book will be of interest to those working in constitutional law, politics, and history.

At a time of rising populism and debate about immigration, leading legal academic Jo Shaw sets out to review interactions between constitutions and constructs of citizenship. This incisive appraisal is the first sustained treatment of the relationship between citizenship and constitutional law in a comparative and transnational perspective. Drawing on examples from around the world, it assesses how countries' legal, political and cultural processes help to determine the boundaries of citizenship. For students and academics across political, social and international disciplines, Shaw offers an accessible response to some of the most pressing international questions of our age.

This book examines the Chinese government's policies and practices for relations with the Inner Periphery areas of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, and the Outer Periphery areas of Hong Kong and Taiwan focusing on themes of political authority, socio-cultural relations, and economic development. China's history may be seen as one of managing the geographic periphery surrounding China proper. Successive imperial, republican, and communist governments have struggled to maintain sovereignty over the regions surrounding the great river valleys of China.

The importance of the periphery is no less real today, concerns over national security, access to natural resources, and long-held concerns about relations between Han and other ethnic groups continue to dominate Chinese law, policy and practice regarding governance in the Inner Periphery regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. In the Outer Periphery, Beijing sees engagement with the outside world (particularly the West) as inextricably tied to Chinese sovereignty over former foreign colonies of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Using the case study of national integration to indicate how policies are articulated and implemented through law and political-legal institutions, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of the peripheral regions. It will also appeal to academic and policy communities interested in legal reform in China

'Walter Berns's latest book is must reading for every judge, law student, or member of the general public who wants to know more about our Federal Constitution. Berns concisely and clearly relates the history of the document but brings it down into modern, everyday life with an excellent discussion of the difference between 'rights' and 'interests' which keep getting confused by the United States Supreme Court.'

This volume on penitentiary systems in the Americas offers a long-overdue look at the prisons that exist at the forefront of the ongoing struggle against drugs and violence throughout North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. From Haiti to Bolivia, the authors examine the conditions in these systems, and allow several common themes to emerge, including the alarming prevalence of lengthy pre-trial detention and the often abysmal living conditions in these institutions. Taken together, this comprises the first comparative overview of the use and abuse of prisons in the Americas.

Filled with practical tools and guidelines, this book addresses an essential competence for public managers - incorporating governance and law in public administration. It links democratic constitutional values to administrative decision making and practices by stressing how public law authorizes, informs, and democratically constrains public servants in fulfilling public policies. The author addresses important aspects of governance in chapters that discuss democratic values of the rule of law, constitutional law, legislation and policy, administrative law, judicial practice, contract law, and tort law. The book also considers the practical aspects of public management (such as tax collection, benefits administration, personnel administration, and more), with application guidelines and techniques based on thorough legal grounding.

Through the essays in this volume, we see how the failure of the state becomes a moment to ruminate on the artificiality of this most modern construct, the failure of nationalism, an opportunity to dream of alternative modes of association, and the failure of sovereignty to consider the threats and possibilities of the realm of foreignness within the nation-state as within the self.

The ambition of this volume is not only to complicate standing representations of Pakistan. It is take Pakistan out of the status of exceptionalism that its multiple crises have endowed upon it. By now, many scholars have written of how exile, migrancy, refugeedom, and other modes of displacement constitute modern subjectivities. The arguments made in the book say that Pakistan is no stranger to this condition of human immigrancy and therefore, can be pressed into service in helping us to understand our present condition.

It's often said, confirmed by survey data, that the American people are losing confidence in their government. But the problem may be the reverse--the government has lost confidence in the people. Increasingly the power to make decisions in our democracy has been shifted from Congress to the court system, forcing non-elected officials to make decisions which affect the lives of Americans. In a society which is based on the democratic elections of its officials, this is clearly backwards. Quirk maintains that what he calls "The Happy Convention," an informal and unwritten rearrangement of "passing the buck" of government powers, is done to avoid blame and approval ratings becoming lower for a particular person or party. For example, The Happy Convention assigns the power to declare and make war to the President. Congress and the Court play a supporting role--Congress, when requested, gives the President a blank check to use force--the Court throws out any challenges to the legality of the war. Everyone wins if the war avoids disaster. If it turns out badly, the President is held accountable. His ratings fall, reelection is out of the question, congressmen say he lied to them; his Party is likely to lose the next election. In this way, Quirk reminds us that The Happy Convention is not what the Founders intended for us. For democracy to work properly, the American people have to know what options they have. Courts and Congress argues the case for reestablishing the balance of powers between the courts, the Congress, and the Presidency.

The Supreme Court Compendium is the only reference that presents historical and statistical information on every important aspect of the U.S. Supreme Court, including its history, development as an institution, the justices backgrounds, nominations, and confirmations, and the Court's relationship with the public and other governmental and judicial bodies. The newest edition of this comprehensive reference includes important new perspective on the legacy of the Rehnquist court. Readers will also find: An institutional overview of the Court's history including a chronology of important events from 1787-2006, important Congressional legislation relating to the Supreme Court, internet sites relating to law and courts, and much more Background information on all the justices such as family backgrounds, childhood environments, marital status, educational and employment histories, political experiences and trends in voting agreement The political and legal environment of the Court is presented including the success rate of the United States as a party before the Supreme Court, the rates of success of various administrative agencies, and state participation in court litigation with success rates This new edition includes more than 180 tables and charts and is updated to cover Supreme Court events through the 2005-2006 term. This reference is an invaluable resource to judicial scholars, students, and those interested in the history of the Supreme Court.

The years 1990-93 were a critical moment in Russia's political development. This book provides a systematic explanation of outcomes of constitutional bargaining processes in Russia, which radically reshaped the institutions of the Russian state: removing Russia from constitutional subordination to the Soviet Union in 1990; creating a presidency and a constitutional court in 1991; and restructuring the relationship between the central state and its component federal units with the passage of three Federal Treaties in 1992. The book explores the reasons for these outcomes and identifies why there were consistent delays to the passage of a new Russian constitution as well as why negotiations eventually broke down.

The book assesses the plausibility of different theoretical approaches to constitutional choice and argues that the role of uncertainty (and politician's strategic responses to uncertainty) in shaping constitutional outcomes has been under-explored by rational choices approaches to constitutional bargaining. Using a rich set of source materials - including roll call votes, parliamentary records, unpublished parliamentary and constitution commission documents, Russian newspapers - the book provides a detailed study of Russian politician's decision making about constitutional choices. It is a valuable resource to those interested in Russia and post-communist politics, the origins of political institutions, comparative government, democratisation and development studies.

First published in 1965, this work studies the House of Lords and the various proposals for its reform, abolition or limitation of its powers which have been made in the light o f prevailing theories of the nature and characteristics of the English government.

The work also contains a history of the theory of mixed government that arose in Tudor England and lasted until well after the Reform Act of 1832. This history both illuminates the position of the House of Lords and also provides perspective for the study of Democracy in the movement for parliamentary reform. One of the book's most original features is an extensive account of Charles I's Answer to the Nineteen Propostions, out of which came the startling new theory of the constitution, known as "mixed monarchy."

Federalism has experienced a remarkable renaissance in recent decades - as an alternative way to accommodate ethnic differences; as a tool to combat remote, undemocratic and ineffective central governments; and lastly, as a means to promote economic performance in the developing world through decentralisation.

This book seeks to bring different aspects and perspectives of federalism studies closer together, by providing an analytical framework which transcends the sub-fields and encourages contributors to look beyond the comfort zones of their own disciplinary approaches to the topic. The authors seek to achieve this aim by structuring the contributions around four dimensions federalism studies:

the development and design of federal institutions;

federalism and democratic participation, representation and accountability;

federalism and the accommodation of territorially-based ethnic, cultural and linguistic differences;

federalism and public policy.

With a strong comparative framework, New Directions in Federalism Studies will be of interest to students and scholars of Federalism, Government, Regionalism, and Multi-level Governance. It will also offer insights of relevance to Comparative Politics, Public Policy, Public Administration, Nationalism, and West European Politics.

This book describes, explains, and reflects upon the 1996 presidential and congressional elections, devoting equal coverage to three phases of the political process: the major party nominations, the general election, and the subsequent government organization. In doing so, this study links elections and governance.

Ireland's international reputation changed rapidly from global success story to European problem-case. How did this happen? What are the implications for our view of good governance? This book argues that there is a crisis in the way the Irish state is structured and in the manner in which it relates to the main organised interests in the society. Through a set of linked policy studies, it shows how sectional benefits can be prioritised where public interest considerations are weakly articulated and debated. Policy choices may entail unintended perverse consequences that, once embedded, can be difficult to alter. The book traces these weaknesses to the dominance of parties, the permeability of the political system to sectional interests, and the weakness of democratic accountability. A powerful concluding chapter sets out an agenda for future research on institutional design and political reform. This book sets out a compelling argument that institutional design matters, especially in an increasingly globalised and interdependent world. -- .

The U.S. House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members for almost a century, and in that time the nationa (TM)s population has grown by more than 200 percent. With the number of citizens represented by each House member now dramatically larger, is a major consequence of this historical disparity a diminished quality of representation?

Brian Frederick uses empirical data to scrutinize whether representation has been undermined by keeping a ceiling on the number of seats available in the House. He examines the influence of constituency size on several metrics of representationa "including estimating the effects on electoral competition, policy responsiveness, and citizen contact with and approval of their representativesa "and argues that now is the time for the House to be increased in order to better represent a rapidly growing country.

The U.S. House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members for almost a century, and in that time the nation 's population has grown by more than 200 percent. With the number of citizens represented by each House member now dramatically larger, is a major consequence of this historical disparity a diminished quality of representation?

Brian Frederick uses empirical data to scrutinize whether representation has been undermined by keeping a ceiling on the number of seats available in the House. He examines the influence of constituency size on several metrics of representation including estimating the effects on electoral competition, policy responsiveness, and citizen contact with and approval of their representatives and argues that now is the time for the House to be increased in order to better represent a rapidly growing country.

After two terms as president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin handed over to his hand-picked successor Dmitri Medvedev on 7 May 2008, and became prime minister. As president, Putin moved swiftly and effectively to overcome the chaotic legacy of his predecessor, post-Soviet Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin. Focusing on rebuilding the authority of the Russian state, and taking advantage of the rise in world prices of the country's main asset ? oil and natural gas ? Putin won unassailable popularity at home and caused apprehension around the world, particularly in Russia's immediate neighbourhood. His methods of rule caused anxiety among liberals and democrats inside Russia and abroad. The legacy of Putin's presidency poses challenges that demand interpretation. He has not departed from the Russian or the world political scene, and the need to understand and come to terms with Putin's Russia has not diminished.

These essays by an international team of authors are based on presentations to a working conference held in Naples, Italy, in May 2008, supplemented by contributions from authors who were not present at the conference, in order to present a wider selection of views and interpretations of the Putin phenomenon.

This book was published as a special issue of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.