In this comprehensive guide to the language of contemporary American politics, Binning offers clear descriptions of terms such as soft money, gerrymandering, and blanket primary. Examples are frequently offered to help clarify definitions. Particular attention is given to the ever-changing organizational structure of parties and contemporary electoral systems. In addition to defining political terms and systems, however, this encyclopedia explains campaign finance reform laws and the Voting Rights Act. The more significant Supreme Court decisions in these areas are summarized, with an eye to giving readers a greater understanding of how these laws have been interpreted and applied.

This encyclopedia also describes the modern political campaign. Highlighted are the role of the media, the significance of presidential debates, the influence of campaign consultants, and the importance, types, and timing of primaries and caucuses. Brief biographies of important political figures such as presidents, vice presidents, and congressional and party leaders are also included, along with a concise summary of every presidential election since 1789.

Americans have a love-hate relationship with negative campaigning, claiming to despise it and ranting about how it turns off the electorate, while at the same time paying an increasing amount of attention to negative ads and tactics during ever-lengthening campaign seasons. Swint gathers the most compelling of these campaigns from the two "Golden Ages" of negative campaigning--1864 to 1892 and 1988 to the present--in addition to some that fall outside those demarcations, and ranks them in descending order, from No. 25 to No. 1. Mudslingers covers presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and mayoral races and chronicles the dirtiest, most low-down campaign tactics of all time. The list includes the presidential campaign of 1800, when the disputed outcome of the race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had to be decided by the House of Representatives, and the election of 2004, in which George W. Bush beat John Kerry after one of the nastiest showdowns on record. The first round of negative campaigning in American history was driven by post-Civil War politics, the end of Reconstruction, an increasingly corrupt federal government, and a rabid partisan press. The current Golden Age of mudslinging and dirty politics is driven by huge increases in campaign spending, television advertising, decreased civility in public life, and a muckraking mass media. These fascinating stories from the annals of negative campaigning will entertain as well as educate, reminding us, the next time we are tempted to decry the current climate, that it was (almost) ever thus.

Everyday People provides a comprehensive assessment of Trump supporters including white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, the Christian right, and cult followers and offers students a discussion of how this group is a symptom of a much larger social issue and movement in the United States. McNamara examines the appeal of Trump as a president and explains why so many people voted for him in the first place. The text reviews the most recent and relevant literature on Trump supporters and their makeup including historical documents, government reports, research studies, and media sources, to unpack and understand the issues in an objective and empirical way. Students will understand the source and substance of the controversies surrounding Trump and his followers and understand how fear and complacency causes people to suspend rational thinking and to develop misguided loyalties.

The central argument of this book explores the disillusionment that Australians feel with regard to the way politics is conducted. The book explores causes of that disillusionment, and argues that because these are ultimately traceable to defects in the constitution, it is only through constitutional reform that government can be improved. This book argues that the current approach to constitutional debate suffers from the flaw of being anti-theoretical, in the sense that it is not grounded in any set of values, and is afflicted by a tendency to consider practical objections to reform before considering the moral case for it. This book argues that instead of accepting the constitution as it is, it is time we began to discuss how it ought to be, taking human dignity as the fundamental value upon which a constitution should be based. It then puts the case for change in a number of areas, including reform of the electoral system, enhanced parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, the inclusion in the constitution of a full bill of rights, the abolition of the federal system, realisation of the rights of Indigenous people, codification of constitutional conventions either in conjunction with or separately from an Australian republic, reform of the rules of standing in constitutional matters and, finally, the need to improve civics education. This book is designed to be provocative in the way that it directly challenges current academic orthodoxy. This book also outlines a proposed draft new constitution. This book will be of interest to anyone who is concerned about how Australia is governed and why it has been so difficult to achieve constitutional reform.

Wisconsin, once a progressive stronghold led by Robert La Follette and others, inaugurated far-reaching reforms that broadened public involvement in civic affairs. A wave of innovative social programs aimed at making the state more egalitarian followed. In recent decades, however, the Badger State has become a laboratory for antidemocratic maneuvers that have increased the political influence of the super-rich and corporations while decreasing the power of voters. From tightening campaign finance laws and banning gerrymandering to rooting out structural racism and moving toward economic equality, each chapter focuses on one of the dozen reforms that are required to heal democracy within the state. Rothschild provides an in-depth rationale for each, dismantling the counterarguments against them and exploring the complexities involved in implementing them. He offers concrete proposals and action items for grassroots organizers and concerned community advocates to restore constituent control of state politics. This pocket-sized handbook is essential for politically aware citizens as well as journalists and watchdogs who see Wisconsin as a crucial battleground state and political bellwether for the nation.

An original and comprehensive study of the sociological and psychological forces driving individual choices in French Presidential elections. Based on a unique comparative analysis of four French presidential contests over the last two decades, this book presents a rigorous examination of long-term and short-term voter motivations.

In developing democracies, political parties built around charismatic personalities, coupled with populist campaigns, often ascend to power. This tactic has long been effective in Latin America, and has resulted in parties that rely heavily on personalistic appeals and vote-buying. The predominant view is that ethnic parties are an exception to this rule; they behave differently from traditional populist parties by attracting voters based on the expectation that they will create policies to provide for the groups that they represent. In Candidate Matters: A Study of Ethnic Parties, Campaigns, and Elections in Latin America, Karleen Jones West shows that under certain conditions, niche parties-such as ethnic parties-are not that different from their mainstream counterparts. Through a detailed examination of the Pachakutik party in Ecuador, she shows that the characteristics of individual candidates campaigning in their districts shapes party behavior. Ethnic parties that are initially programmatic can become personalistic and clientelistic because vote-buying is an effective strategy in rural indigenous areas, and because candidates with strong reputations and access to resources can create winning campaigns that buy votes and capitalize on candidates' personal appeal. Why do niche parties in developing democracies struggle to maintain programmatic and meaningful platforms? West argues that when candidates' legislative campaigns are personalistic and clientelistic in their districts, niche parties are unable to maintain unified programmatic support. By combining in-depth fieldwork on legislative campaigns in Ecuador with the statistical analyses of electoral results and public opinion, she demonstrates the importance of candidates and their districts for how niche parties compete, win, and become influential in developing democracies.

Taking Our Country Back presents the previously untold history of the uptake of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than fifty political staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 primaries and general election, and archival research, Daniel Kreiss shows how a group of young, technically-skilled internet staffers came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in organization, tools, and practice that have changed the campaign game. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency. In revealing this history, the book provides a rich empirical look at the communication tools, practices, and infrastructure that shape contemporary online campaigning. Through a detailed history of new media and political campaigning, Taking Our Country Back contributes to an interdisciplinary body of scholarship from communication, sociology, and political science. The book theorizes processes of innovation in online electoral politics and gives readers a new understanding of how the internet and its use by the Dean campaign have fundamentally changed the field of political campaigning. Kreiss shows how these innovations, exemplified by the Dean and Obama campaigns, were the product of the movement of staffers between industries and within organizational structures. Such movement provided a space for technical development and incentives for experimentation. Taking Our Country Back is a serious and vital analysis, both on-the-ground and theoretical, of how a small group of internet staffers transformed what campaigning means today and how cultural work mobilizes and motivates supporters to participate in collective action.

This book analyzes how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organizations into the digital world. The authors present an innovative empirical exploration of the democratic consequences and technical challenges of the digitalization of party organizations from a comparative perspective. They provide an original account of how party digital platforms are regulated and used, and a crucial discussion of the main technological and democratic issues that political parties face in their digital transition. Further, the authors assess the consequences of these digitalization processes for political participation and party membership, as well as the impact on party organizational models and electoral campaign potential. The book looks into one of the less-studied aspects of digital democracy, also presenting empirical evidence and case studies. It presents different parties and their adoption of digital participation platforms, from the Pirate Parties in Northern Europe to Podemos in Spain, La France Insoumise in France, the Five Stars Movement in Italy, or the German Greens. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars of political science, policy-makers, and practitioners, interested in a better understanding of the transition of political parties into the digital world.

The use of referendums around the world has grown remarkably in the past thirty years and, in particular, referendums are today deployed more than ever in the settlement of constitutional questions, even in countries with little or no tradition of direct democracy. This is the first book by a constitutional theorist to address the implications of this development for constitutional democracy in a globalizing age, when many of the older certainties surrounding sovereignty and constitutional authority are coming under scrutiny. The book identifies four substantive constitutional processes where the referendum is regularly used today: the founding of new states; the creation or amendment of constitutions; the establishment of complex new models of sub-state autonomy, particularly in multinational states; and the transfer of sovereign powers from European states to the European Union. The book, as a study in constitutional theory, addresses the challenges this phenomenon poses not only for particular constitutional orders, which are typically structured around a representative model of democracy, but for constitutional theory more broadly. The main theoretical focus of the book is the relationship between the referendum and democracy. It addresses the standard criticisms which the referendum is subjected to by democratic theorists and deploys both civic republican theory and the recent turn in deliberative democracy to ask whether by good process-design the constitutional referendum is capable of facilitating the engagement of citizens in deliberative acts of constitution-making. With the referendum firmly established as a fixture of contemporary constitutionalism, the book addresses the key question for constitutional theorists and practitioners of how might its operation be made more democratic in age of constitutional transformation.

The 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial race between ex-Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards was the most closely watched statewide or local election ever. Years of racial and economic resentment, one-party rule in the state, and two controversial candidates turned a cakewalk into a hotly contested race, almost without anyone noticing. More importantly, it shook up national politics, led to a rise in the Radical Right, and influenced our current political moment. Perhaps most surprisingly, the story of the campaign and how one little-noticed Republican woman managed to almost singlehandedly rescue the state provides a galvanizing blueprint for anti-racist, pro-union, progressive Democrats, especially in the South. In the fall of 1991, when brilliant fall foliage lit up the Kisatchie National Forest, crisp peppers, collards, and turnip greens lined the grocery aisles, and football fever swept weekend campuses, two wizards put their lunacy on hold and let everyone around them create the fireworks. Their eventual tEte-A-tEte on November 17 would mark the end of "the New South" and the birth of a darker yet invigorated era.

In May 2019, Narendra Modi won the world's largest election. Defying expectations, he led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a resounding victory, with the highest vote share for any party in thirty years, and was re-elected as India's Prime Minister. What accounts for the scale of Modi's win? Why, despite economic hardship and social strife, did Indians vote so overwhelmingly for him and the BJP? This book explains the economic, social and cultural processes that shaped political passions in India during the spring and summer of 2019. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a stellar team of economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and geographers to explain Modi's win. Together, the contributors compel us to take seriously the 'structures of feeling' in politics. Love him or hate him, Modi secured for himself a decisive re-election as India's Prime Minister. Passionate politics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how that happened. -- .

America Afire is the powerful story of the election of 1800, arguably the most important election in America's history and certainly one of the most hotly disputed. Former allies Adams and Jefferson, president versus vice president, Federalist versus Republican, squared off in a vicious contest that resulted in broken friendships, scandals, riots, slander, and jailings in the fourth presidential election under the Constitution.

This edited volume maps the development of the use of political campaigning and marketing techniques in countries of the former Communist Bloc over the last thirty years. Focusing on the shift from propaganda to political marketing, and from manipulation to persuasion, the book consists of a series of case studies of countries in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and the Balkans that outline the history, development and current state of political marketing in each country. The authors explore political parties and their behaviour ahead of elections, and show the changes in political culture and practices that parties have undergone in order to create more or less successful campaigns.

The nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices has, in recent years, become a battleground like no other. Bruising Senate confirmation hearings for failed nominee Robert Bork and successful nominee Clarence Thomas left the reputation of all branches of government in disarray and the participants-and the nation-exhausted. The Senate's Constitutional prerogative to provide advice and consent to the President's nominations to the highest court in the land has given rise to political grandstanding and ideological battles. Less well known is how other players-interest groups, the news media, and, through their involvement, the general public-also affect the conduct and outcome of the Supreme Court nomination process. Electing Justice reveals how from the late 1960s on, the role of these other players grew in intensity to the point that the nomination process would be unrecognizable to its original devisers, the Framers of the Constitution. Over the past quarter century, live television coverage of Senate hearings, "murder boards" in preparation for those hearings, a flood of press releases, television and radio advertisements, and public opinion polls all characterize nominations. Unlike earlier, more elite-governed processes, the involvement of outside groups has become highly public and their effect on the outcome of some nominations is now widely accepted. How should we respond to this informal democratization of the selection process? The genie, Davis contends, cannot be put back into the bottle and we cannot return to a non-political, elite-driven ideal. Davis concludes with several controversial recommendations that preserve the public role while avoiding the excesses of past controversial nominations. By embracing the public's new role in the examination of nominees we can ensure a democratic process and secure an independent and accountable judicial branch.

Pay-to-Play Politics examines money and politics from different angles to understand a central paradox of American democracy: why, when the public and politicians decry money as the worst aspect of American politics, are there so few signs of change? Everyone from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz complains about the corrupting role of money and politics, but money is the lifeblood of their political survival. The public, too, deplores big money politics, despite regularly reelecting the richest candidates for office. The purpose of this book is to reconcile how—against many people's wishes—the connection between money and politics has come to define American democracy. Examining the issue from the perspective of the public, the courts, big business, Congress, and the presidency, Heath Brown argues that money can often be harmful to the political process, but not always in ways we expect or in ways we can directly observe. More money does not necessarily guarantee electoral, legislative, or executive victories, but money does greatly change political access, opportunity, and trust. Without a nuanced understanding of the nature of the problem, future reforms will be misguided and fruitless. Pay-to-Play Politics concludes by making concrete recommendations for reform, including feasible ways to reach bipartisan consensus.

New York Times bestselling author Newt Gingrich lays out the stakes of the 2020 elections and what the end results could mean for the future of American citizens. The 2020 election will be a decisive choice for America, especially as we emerge from the coronavirus crisis. Will the American people choose four more years of President Trump to lead us back to strong economic growth, a foreign and trade policy of putting American interests first, dismantling the deep state, and dramatically reforming the bureaucracies? Or will they reject Trumpism and elect the radical Democratic policies of big government, globalism, and socialist policies that Joe Biden represents? Not since the election of 1964 has the choice in an election been so stark. Trump and the American Future by Newt Gingrich will lay out the stakes of the 2020 election and provide a clarion call for all Americans on why it is vital to return President Trump to the White House for a second term. Featuring insights gleaned from the lifetime of experience and access only Newt Gingrich can bring, Trump and the American Future will be crucial reading for every citizen who wants to continue to make America great again.

This book examines the structures and processes of political decision-making and governance in Nigeria. Since Nigeria returned to elected government in 1999, it has been observed that several factors account for the differences between the design of statutory structures and processes of political decision-making and how they operate in reality. In other words, there are wide gaps between statutes and practice of political decision-making. However, the nexus between the two remains largely understudied by political scientists. Instinctively, political scientists assume that informal influences in political decision-making are aberrations, episodic or temporary. This book is designed to interrogate the nexus between the formal and non-formal dimensions of the dynamics of political decision making in Nigeria and also provide evidence about the actual functioning of governmental structures in Nigeria. The thesis of the book is that the non-formal dimension of political decision making as evidenced in rising ethno-political patronages, religious sentiments, clientelism and factionalism, are interacting with formal decision-making structures in ways that largely undermine the latter and, by extension, the democratic system. The book pursues this thesis by examining the roles of actors and institutions including, electoral choices made by voters, legislations, which perhaps is the most fundamental form of political decision-making, policies made by the executive and administration, as well as decision making within political parties, since parties are sites for articulating and aggregating issues on which decisions are to be made.

Candidates and Voters extends our understanding of voting, elections, and representation by elaborating a simple theory of voting choice based on voters' interest in policy and in the suitability of candidates to hold elective office ('leadership valence'). Voters' choices must be understood in the context of the choices between opposing candidates they are offered on these two dimensions. Drawing on extensive analysis of US House races, Stone shows that although voters lack the information that many analysts assume they need to function in a democracy, they are most often able to choose the better candidate on the policy and valence dimensions. In addition, candidates, when they decide whether and how to run, anticipate the interests that drive voters. The book shows that elections tend to produce outcomes on policy and leadership valence consistent with voters' interests, and challenges skeptical views of how well the electoral process works.

This book focuses on the U.S. presidential election spectacle, from the primaries through to the November 2020 election and the subsequent events leading up to the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president. A follow-up to Political Marketing in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,it uniquely focuses on the political marketing and branding strategies of presidential candidates, with particular attention to how those strategies have changed since the 2016 election. The 2020 election was as much about a continuous strategy of targeting and maintaining voter enthusiasm as it was about swaying undecided voters in the electorate, distinguishing it from the horserace and implications of vote targeting in 2016. Donald Trump had a base of support that was unwavering. Likewise, Joe Biden and the Democrats counted on the same proportion of the electorate to vote against Trump. The election was also a harbinger of major new branding and marketing strategies, including innovative uses of social media and direct appeals to voters. This book presents diverse scholarly perspectives and research, with practitioner-relevant content on practices and discourses that will advance our current understandings of political marketing theories.

The 2013 general elections in Zimbabwe were widely expected to mark a shift in the nation's political system, and a greater role for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. However, the results, surprisingly, were overwhelmingly in favour of long-time President Robert Mugabe, who swept the presidential, parliamentary and senatorial polls under relatively credible and peaceful conditions. In this book, a valuable and accessible read for both students and scholars working in African politics, and those with a general interest in the politics of the region, Stephen Chan and Julia Gallagher explore the domestic and international context of these landmark elections. Drawing on extensive research among political elites, grassroots activists and ordinary voters, Chan and Gallagher examine the key personalities, dramatic events, and broader social and political context of Mugabe's success, and what this means as Zimbabwe moves towards a future without Mugabe.

How do you start an electoral earthquake? Head to the Red Wall and you might just find out. Covering some sixty seats stretching from the Midlands up to the north of England and across to Wales, the wall is constructed of the old coal, steel and manufacturing constituencies that were the bedrock of Labour victories for years. Assumed to be a stuck-in-their-ways, loyal-to-a-fault foundation for Labour, the Red Wallers changed all that on 12 December 2019 when they elected Boris Johnson, turning their constituencies blue. Here, renowned pollster and commentator Deborah Mattinson takes the issue by the horns, asking why these proudly working-class voters were tempted by the 'posh party' and questioning if they will ever again make their way back to the Labour fold. With brand-new research, including expansive interviews with Red Wall constituents, Mattinson guides us through the lives of the left-behind, finally giving them the opportunity to speak for themselves. Written at one of the most turbulent periods in modern memory, this is a timely, far-reaching analysis of how we got to this point and where we can go next. One thing is certain: the Red Wallers have the power to change history.

The secrecy of the ballot, a crucial basic element of representative democracy, is under threat. Attempts to make voting more convenient in the face of declining turnout - and the rise of the "ballot selfie" - are making it harder to guarantee secrecy. Leading scholars James Johnson and Susan Orr go back to basics to analyze the fundamental issues surrounding the secret ballot, showing how secrecy works to protect voters from coercion and bribery. They argue, however, that this protection was always incomplete: faced with effective ballot secrecy, powerful actors turned to manipulating turnout - buying presence or absence at the polls - to obtain their electoral goals. The authors proceed to show how making both voting and voting in secret mandatory would foreclose both undue influence and turnout manipulation. This would enhance freedom for voters by liberating them from coercion or bribery in their choice of both whether and how to vote. This thought-provoking and insightful text will be invaluable for students and scholars of democratic theory, elections and voting, and political behavior.

Many political observers have expressed doubts as to whether America's leaders are up to the task of addressing major policy challenges. Yet much of the critical commentary lacks grounding in the systematic analysis of the core institutions of the American political system including elections, representation, and the law-making process. Governing in a Polarized Age brings together more than a dozen leading scholars to provide an in-depth examination of representation and legislative performance. Drawing upon the seminal work of David Mayhew as a point of departure, these essays explore the dynamics of incumbency advantage in today's polarized Congress, asking whether the focus on individual re-election that was the hallmark of Mayhew's ground-breaking book, Congress: The Electoral Connection, remains useful for understanding today's Congress. The essays link the study of elections with close analysis of changes in party organization and with a series of systematic assessments of the quality of legislative performance.