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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes > Constitution, government & the state
The 1960 West Virginia presidential primary is arguably the most storied contest in modern American politics. And yet John F. Kennedy traveled the path so quickly from dynamic presidential candidate to martyred national icon that many forget his debt to West Virginia in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. In The Primary That Made a President, author Robert O. Rupp returns to 1960 West Virginia, reviewing the momentous contest for signs of the political changes to come. Besides propelling Kennedy to the Democratic nomination, the West Virginia primary changed the face of politics by advancing religious tolerance, foreshadowing future political campaigns, influencing public policy, and drawing national attention to a misunderstood region. It meant the end of a taboo that kept the Catholic faith out of American politics; the rise of the primary as a political tool for garnering delegate support; the beginning of a nationwide confrontation with Appalachian stereotypes; and the seeds for what would become Kennedy's War on Poverty. Rupp explores these themes and more to discuss how a small Appalachian state, overwhelmingly poor and Protestant, became a key player in the political future of John F. Kennedy. The first of its kind among Kennedy biographies or histories of the 1960 election, this book offers a sustained scholarly analysis of the 1960 West Virginia presidential primary and its far-reaching significance for the political climate in the US.
Three of John Locke's finest works, which expound political and religious ideas revolutionary in their time, are presented together in this printing. When Dutch monarch William of Orange ascended to the English throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, burning questions over the best form of governance for England were prominent among the intelligentsia of the era. It was a time when England grappled with incremental transition from monarchy to early forms of democracy and voting. In the first treatise of government Locke proceeds to attack and dissect his prominent contemporary Robert Filmer, who was broadly in favour of absolute monarchy under the principle of divine right. The allusions to the Biblical Adam, wherein the monarch can be intimated as a continuation of the first man ever created, are debunked by Locke who asserts that God never asserted that one man had province to rule over all other human beings.
Dynastic politics, usually presumed to be the antithesis of democracy, is a routine aspect of politics in many modern democracies. This book introduces a new theoretical perspective on dynasticism in democracies, using original data on twenty-first-century Indian parliaments. It argues that the roots of dynastic politics lie at least in part in modern democratic institutions - states and parties - which give political families a leg-up in the electoral process. It also proposes a rethinking of the view that dynastic politics is a violation of democracy, showing that it can also reinforce some aspects of democracy while violating others. Finally, this book suggests that both reinforcement and violation are the products, not of some property intrinsic to political dynasties, but of the institutional environment from which those dynasties emerge.
How did England, once a minor regional power, become a global hegemon between 1689 and 1815? Why, over the same period, did she become the world's first industrial nation? Gary W. Cox addresses these questions in Marketing Sovereign Promises. The book examines two central issues: the origins of the great taxing power of the modern state and how that power is made compatible with economic growth. Part I considers England's rise after the revolution of 1689, highlighting the establishment of annual budgets with shutdown reversions. This core reform effected a great increase in per capita tax extraction. Part II investigates the regional and global spread of British budgeting ideas. Cox argues that states grew only if they addressed a central credibility problem afflicting the Ancien Regime - that rulers were legally entitled to spend public revenue however they deemed fit.
For many Americans, hearing the words, "United States of America" brings stirring emotions. It is the concept of e pluribus unum-"out of many, one"-that summarizes the sense of national unity that Americans feel, and one that author Martin Street seeks to convey in "Taking the Pulse of America." This compendium of 110 essays offers a snapshot of American life today. Street offers opinions and suggestions for many of the most contentious issues of our time. From hot button issues like abortion, illegal immigration, and waterboarding to the justice system, education reform, and government affairs, Street doesn't mince words. Often, Street's commentary is just as contentious as his subjects. Even so, he provides an honest, authentic voice to these conversations that have become part of our national lexicon. Whether he discusses unions, our throwaway society, or professional athletes, Street gives his straightforward, often politically incorrect opinions. A call to action for Americans to restore the United States of America to her former glory, "Taking the Pulse of America" is essential reading for every citizen.
Packed with current examples and practical insight, Wilson/Dilulio/Bose/Levendusky's AMERICAN GOVERNMENT: INSTITUTIONS AND POLICIES, ENHANCED 17th edition, gives you a clear understanding of the U.S. government -- and your role in it. It explains the significance of governmental institutions, the historical development of procedures as well as who governs in U.S. politics and to what ends. Up-to-date coverage includes changes in the Trump and Biden administrations, results of the 2022 elections, government response to the COVID-19 crisis, protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, the media's role in politics, political polarization, climate change, income inequality, recent Supreme Court decisions, affirmative action and more. Numerous features throughout help maximize your study time, while Infuse and MindTap provide you with a wealth of anywhere, anytime digital learning tools.
Charting the turbulent history of US-North Korean affairs from the 1960s through to 2010, Rival Reputations explores how past incidents and crises can be relied upon to help determine threat credibility and the willingness of an adversary to resort to violence. Using reputation as the framework, this book answers some of the most vexing questions regarding both US and North Korean foreign policy. These include how they have managed to evade war, why North Korea - a much weaker power - has not been deterred by superior American military power from repeated violent provocations against the United States and South Korea, and why US officials in every administration have rarely taken North Korean threats seriously. Van Jackson urges us to jettison the conventional view of North Korean threats and violence as part of a 'cycle' of provocation and instead to recognize them as part of a pattern of rivalry inherent in North Korea's foreign relations.
This book explains why people acquire implicit attitudes, how they affect political thinking, and where in the mass public they have their strongest - and weakest - influences. A theoretically ambitious book, Unspoken Politics establishes that implicit attitudes exist outside the tightly controlled confines of the laboratory, showing that they emerge in a public opinion survey setting, which underlines their real-world impact. It also lays bare, in painstaking detail, the mechanics of a leading measure of implicit attitudes, the implicit association test (IAT). Accordingly, it outlines the strengths and limitations of this measure, while providing an illustration of how to develop an IAT for one's own purposes. By explaining how to analyze and interpret the data produced by the IAT, this book leads to a better understanding of people's unspoken cognitions and the impacts these have on the politics that individuals openly profess.
This volume examines the political ideas behind the construction of the presidency in the U.S. Constitution, as well as how these ideas were implemented by the nation's early presidents. The framers of the Constitution disagreed about the scope of the new executive role they were creating, and this volume reveals the ways the duties and power of the office developed contrary to many expectations.Here, leading scholars of the Early Republic examine principles from European thought and culture that were key to establishing the conceptual language and institutional parameters for the American executive office. Unpacking the debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, these essays describe how the Constitution left room for the first presidents to set patterns of behavior and establish a range of duties to make the office functional within a governmental system of checks and balances. Contributors explore how these presidents understood their positions and fleshed out their full responsibilities according to the everyday operations required to succeed. As disputes continue to surround the limits of executive power today, this volume helps identify and explain the circumstances in which limits can be imposed on presidents who seem to dangerously exceed the constitutional parameters of their office. Political Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency demonstrates that this distinctive, time-tested role developed from a fraught, historically contingent, and contested process.
This book investigates the new representation unfolding in Chinese local congresses. Drawing qualitative fieldwork and data analysis from original surveys of 5,130 township, county, and municipal congressmen and women and constituents, Melanie Manion shows the priorities and problems of ordinary Chinese significantly influence both who gets elected to local congresses and what the congresses do once elected. Candidates nominated by ordinary voters are 'good types', with qualities that signal they will reliably represent the community. By contrast, candidates nominated by the communist party are 'governing types', with qualities that reflect officially valued competence and loyalty. However, congressmen and women of both types now largely reject the Maoist-era role of state agent. Instead, they view themselves as 'delegates', responsible for advocating with local government to supply local public goods. Manion argues that representation in Chinese local congresses taps local knowledge for local governance, thereby bolstering the rule of autocrats in Beijing.
Religious freedom is a foundational value of the United States, but not all religious minorities have been shielded from religious persecution in America. This book examines why the state has acted to protect some religious minorities while allowing others to be persecuted or actively persecuting them. It details the persecution experiences of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Jews, the Nation of Islam, and orthodox Muslims in America, developing a theory for why the state intervened to protect some but not others. The book argues that the state will persecute religious minorities if state actors consider them a threat to political order, but they will protect religious minorities if they believe persecution is a greater threat to political order. From the beginning of the republic to after 9/11, religious freedom in America has depended on the state's perception of political threats.
Virginians dominate the early history of the United States, with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Patrick Henry, George Mason, George Wythe, and John Marshall figuring prominently in that narrative. Fellow Virginian Spencer Roane (1762-1822), an influential jurist and political thinker, was in many ways their equal. Roane is nonetheless mostly absent in accounts of early America. The lack of interest in Roane is remarkable since he was the philosophical leader of the Jeffersonians, architect of states' rights doctrine, a legislator, essayist, and, for twenty-seven years, justice of the Virginia Supreme Court. He was the son-in-law of Henry, a confidant of Jefferson, founder of the influential Richmond Enquirer, and head of the ""Richmond Junto."" Roane's opinions established judicial review of legislative acts ten years before Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall did the same in Marbury v. Madison. Roane also brought down Virginia's state-sponsored church. His descent into historical twilight is even more curious given his fierce criticism-both from the bench and in the Richmond Enquirer-of Marshall's nationalistic decisions. Indeed, the debate between these two judges is perhaps the most comprehensive discussion of federalism outside of the arguments that raged over the ratification of the United States Constitution. In Irreconcilable Founders, David Johnson uses Roane's long-lasting conflict with Marshall as ballast for the first-ever biography of this highly influential but largely forgotten justice and political theorist. Because Roane's legal opinions gave way to those of Marshall, historians have tended to either dismiss him or cast him as little more than an annoying gadfly. Equally to blame for his obscurity is the comparative inaccessibility of Roane's life: no single archive houses his papers, no scholars have systematically reviewed his legal opinions, and no one has methodically examined his essays. Bringing these and other disparate sources together for the first time, Johnson precisely limns Roane's career, personality, and philosophy. He also synthesizes the judge's wide-ranging jurisprudence and analyzes his predictions about the dangers of unchecked federal power and an activist Supreme Court. Although contemporary jurists and politicians disregarded Roane's opinions, many in today's political and legal arenas are unknowingly echoing his views with increasing frequency, making this reappraisal of his life and reassessment of his opinions timely and relevant.
Latin American Constitutions provides a comprehensive historical study of constitutionalism in Latin America from the independence period to the present, focusing on the Constitution of Cadiz, a foundational document in Latin American constitutionalism. Although drafted in Spain, it was applied in many regions of Latin America, and deputies from America formed a significant part of the drafting body. The politicization of constitutionalism reflected in Latin America's first moments proved to be a lasting legacy evident in the legal and constitutional world of the region today: many of Latin America's present challenges to establishing effective constitutionalism can be traced to the debates, ideas, structures, and assumptions of this text. This book explores the region's attempts to create effective constitutional texts and regimes in light of an established practice of linking constitutions to political goals and places important constitutional thinkers and regional constitutions, such as the Mexican Constitution of 1917, into their legal and historical context.
Based on extensive, empirical research, The Political Development of Modern Thailand analyses the country's political history from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Long known for political instability, Thailand was thrust into a deep state of crisis by a royalist military coup staged in 2006. Since then, conservative royalists have overthrown more elected governments after violent street protests, while equally disruptive demonstrations staged by supporters of electoral democracy were crushed by military force. Federico Ferrara traces the roots of the crisis to unresolved struggles regarding the content of Thailand's national identity, dating back to the abolition of absolute monarchy in 1932. He explains the conflict's re-intensification with reference to a growing chasm between the hierarchical worldview of Thailand's hegemonic 'royal nationalism' and the aspirations that millions of ordinary people have come to harbour as a result of modernisation.
How did the British Government and Civil Service shape the Northern Ireland peace process? What kind of tensions and debates were being played out between the two governments and the various parties in Northern Ireland? Addressing texts, negotiations, dialogues, space, leverage, strategy, ambiguity, interpersonal relations and convergence, this is the first volume to examine how senior British officials and civil servants worked to bring about power-sharing in Northern Ireland. With a unique format featuring self-authored inside accounts and interview testimonies, it considers a spectrum of areas and issues that came into play during the dialogues and negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and political accommodation in Northern Ireland. This book provides a compelling insight into what actually happened inside the negotiating room and how the British tried to shape the course of negotiations.
Israel is a modern state whose institutions were clearly shaped by
an ideological movement. The declaration of independence in 1948
was an immediate expression of the fundamental Zionist idea: it
gave effect to a plan advocated by organized Zionists since the
1880s for solving the Jewish Problem. Thus, major Israeli political
institutions, such as the party structure, embody principles and
practices that were followed in the World Zionist Organization.
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson opened the nation's door to an era of reform. To help him, he brought to Washington men imbued with a progressive spirit-and in some, grudges as well! Before work on reforms got underway, two high ranking officials of the Treasury Department attacked a local bank over its banking practices. The bank officers had close ties to Wall Street; the Treasury officials were no friends of Wall Street (with scars to prove it). Aggressive bank examinations, hostile interviews, and accusatory letters ensued, eventually resulting in the bank filing an injunction against the government. But after an acrimonious court hearing, the injunction appeared to have failed. Indeed, a grand jury indicted the bank officers of perjury. In 1916, a three-week criminal trial of the bankers took place in which former Presidents Taft and Roosevelt appeared on behalf of the bankers. It was a cause celebre in the nation's capital and much of the country. When the verdict was reached it was clear "bad blood" had been spilled everywhere-and this nasty, little war had been more than just about reform.
Constitutional scholar Elliot Bulmer considers what Britain might learn from Westminster-derived constitutions around the world. Exploring the principles of Westminster Model constitutions and their impact on democracy, human rights and good government, this book builds to a bold re-imagining of the United Kingdom's future written framework.
This book is an insider's account of the way legislative proposals in the Cayman Islands are conceived and processed, as well as the operational context in which the resultant laws are drafted. It is based on the author's well-received earlier publication The Legislative Process: A Handbook for Public Officials (2009). That book was featured significantly in The Parliamentarian: Journal of Commonwealth Parliaments, 2010, Issue 1 XCI. In a review contained in The Loophole: Journal of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel (August, 2010), the reviewer wrote, "In these times of recession I commend this book to anyone in Government wishing to improve processes to enable the production of legislation with improved efficiency and cost effectiveness." And in the Statute Law Review (April, 2010), 31(2), with reference to its suggestions for improved efficiency, it was said that ." . . there is little that can be described as other than good advice here."
This book examines how the constitutional requirements of the lawmaking process, combined with the factional divisions within parties, affect US representatives' decisions about how to distribute power among themselves. The incorporation of the presidential, senatorial, and House factions in the analysis of House rule making marks an important departure from previous theories, which analyze the House as an institution that makes laws in isolation. This book argues that, by constitutional design, the success of the House in passing legislation is highly contingent on the actions of the Senate and the president; and therefore, also by constitutional design, House members must anticipate such actions when they design their rules. An examination of major rule changes from 1879 to 2013 finds that changes in the preferences of constitutional actors outside the House, as well as the political alignment of these political actors vis-a-vis House factions, are crucial for predicting the timing and directionality of rule changes.
This book considers the status of constitutional literacy in the United States along with ways to assess and improve it. The author argues that pervasive constitutional illiteracy is a problem for both law enforcement agencies and for ordinary citizens. Based on the author's decades of teaching in law enforcement agencies around the country, this book argues for the moral and pragmatic value of constitutional literacy and its application in twenty-first century society.
Constitutional Law and Federations provides a concise overview of the British occupation of Cyprus(1878-1959), the efforts of the Greek Cypriots for independence, and the structure and peculiarities of the current Cyprus Constitution. Federal states and the concept of federalism worldwide and, in every era, have come into being because of important political and security reasons dictating or necessitating the creation of such governmental organizations. The bi-zonal federation envisaged for Cyprus, in the Accords of 1977 and 1979 is not in compliance with these prerequisites. According to objective legal norms, bi-communal and bi-zonal federation flagrantly violates international law and is incompatible with the notion of human rights with regard to Cyprus. A federation modelled on the United States of America federal Constitution could, indeed, provide an ideal framework for settling the Cyprus problem and safeguarding the protection of basic human rights and constitutional freedoms for all sections of the population on the island. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of constitutional law, international law and international relations as well as diplomats, who deal not only with the Cyprus issue but also with related regional and international issues.
We live in a world which no longer questions itself, which lives
from one day to another managing successive crises and struggling
to brace itself for new ones, without knowing where it is going and
without trying to plan the itinerary. And everything important in
our lives - livelihood, human bonds, partnerships, neighbourhood,
goals worth pursuing and dangers to avoid - feels transient,
precarious, vulnerable, insecure, uncertain, risky. Is there a
connection between the shape of the world we inhabit and the way we
live our lives? Exploring that connection, and finding out just how
close it is, is the main concern of this book. What is at stake in this inquiry is the possibility of
re-building the"'private/public" space, where private troubles and
public issues meet and where citizens engage in dialogue in order
to govern themselves. "Individual" liberty can only be a product of
"collective" work, it can only be collectively secured and
guaranteed. And yet today we are moving towards a "privatization"
of the means to secure individual liberty. If seen as a therapy for
the present ills, this is bound to produce effects of a most
sinister kind. The act of translating private troubles into public
issues is in danger of falling into disuse and being forgotten. The
argument of this book is that making the translation possible again
is an urgent and vital imperative for the renewal of politics
today. This new book by Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most original and creative thinkers of our time - will be of particular interest to students of sociology, politics and social and political theory. |
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