What meaning can be found in calamity and suffering? This question is in some sense perennial, reverberating through the canons of theology, philosophy, and literature. Today, The Politics of Consolation reveals, it is also a significant part of American political leadership. Faced with uncertainty, shock, or despair, Americans frequently look to political leaders for symbolic and existential guidance, for narratives that bring meaning to the confrontation with suffering, loss, and finitude. Politicians, in turn, increasingly recognize consolation as a cultural expectation, and they often work hard to fulfill it. The events of September 11, 2001 raised these questions of meaning powerfully. How were Americans to make sense of the violence that unfolded on that sunny Tuesday morning? This book examines how political leaders drew upon a long tradition of consolation discourse in their effort to interpret September 11, arguing that the day's events were mediated through memories of past suffering in decisive ways. It then traces how the struggle to define the meaning of September 11 has continued in foreign policy discourse, commemorative ceremonies, and the contentious redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.

This book provides a pragmatic analysis of presidential language. Pragmatics is concerned with "meaning in context," or the relationship between what we say and what we mean. John Wilson explores the various ways in which U.S. Presidents have used language within specific social contexts to achieve specific objectives. This includes obfuscation, misdirection, the use of metaphor or ambiguity, or in some cases simply lying. He focuses on six presidents: John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald W. Reagan, William F. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack H. Obama. These presidents cover most of the last half of the twentieth century, and the first decade of the twenty first century, and each has been associated with a specific linguistic quality. John F. Kennedy was famed for his quality of oratory, Nixon for his manipulative use of language, Reagan for his gift of telling stories, Clinton for his ability to engage the public and to linguistically turn arguments and descriptions in particular directions. Bush, on the other hand, was famed for his inability to use language appropriately, and Obama returns us to the rhetorical flourishes of early Kennedy. In the case of each president, a range of specific examples are explored in order to highlight the ways in which a pragmatic analysis may provide an insight into presidential language. In many cases, what the president says is not necessarily what the president means.

This book presents a new view of American policymaking, focusing on networks of actors responsible for policymaking. Policy change is not easily predictable from election results or public opinion because compromise and coalitions among individual actors make a difference in all three branches of government. The amount of government action, the issue content of policy changes, and the ideological direction of policy all depend on the joint actions of executive officials, legislators, and interest group leaders. The patterns of cooperation among policymakers and activists make each issue area and time period different from the others and undermine attempts to build an unchanging unified model of American policymaking. In Artists of the Possible, Matt Grossman undertakes a rigorous content analysis of 268 books and articles on the history of 14 different major policy areas over 60 years, compiling and integrates these findings to assess the factors that drive policymaking. His findings-which collectively uncover the 790 most significant policy enactments of the federal government and credit 1,306 specific actors for their role in policy change, along with more than 60 circumstantial factors-overturn established theories of policymaking. First, significant policy change does not follow from the issue agenda of the electorate or policymakers. Second, neither changes in public opinion nor the ideology or partisanship of government officials reliably influence the amount or content of policy change. Instead, the patterns of cooperation and compromise among political elites drive the productivity and ideological direction of policymaking. Third, the policymaking roles of public opinion, media coverage, research, and international factors are all limited. Fourth, no typology can explain differences in policymaking across issue areas because the policy process is broadly similar except for a few idiosyncratic differences associated with each issue area.

The Oxford Handbook of the U.S. Constitution offers a comprehensive overview and introduction to the U.S. Constitution from the perspectives of history, political science, law, rights, and constitutional themes, while focusing on its development, structures, rights, and role in the U.S. political system and culture. This Handbook enables readers within and beyond the U.S. to develop a critical comprehension of the literature on the Constitution, along with accessible and up-to-date analysis. The historical essays included in this Handbook cover the Constitution from 1620 right through the Reagan Revolution to the present. Essays on political science detail how contemporary citizens in the United States rely extensively on political parties, interest groups, and bureaucrats to operate a constitution designed to prevent the rise of parties, interest-group politics and an entrenched bureaucracy. The essays on law explore how contemporary citizens appear to expect and accept the exertions of power by a Supreme Court, whose members are increasingly disconnected from the world of practical politics. Essays on rights discuss how contemporary citizens living in a diverse multi-racial society seek guidance on the meaning of liberty and equality, from a Constitution designed for a society in which all politically relevant persons shared the same race, gender, religion and ethnicity. Lastly, the essays on themes explain how in a "globalized" world, people living in the United States can continue to be governed by a constitution originally meant for a society geographically separated from the rest of the "civilized world." Whether a return to the pristine constitutional institutions of the founding or a translation of these constitutional norms in the present is possible remains the central challenge of U.S. constitutionalism today.

The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy provides a comprehensive examination of both the concept and the practice of intra-party democracy (IPD). Acknowledging that IPD is now widely viewed, among both democratic practitioners and scholars, as a normative good, this volume suggests that there is no single, or uniformly preferred, form of IPD. Rather, each party's version of IPD results from a series of choices they make relating to the organization and division of power internally. These decisions reflect many variables including a party's democratic ethos, its electoral context, state regulation and whether or not it is in government. Individual chapters examine the relationship between party models and IPD, the decline in party membership and activism, the role of the state in regulating party democracy, issues relating to gender and party organization, norms of candidate and leadership recruitment and selection, party policy development and party finance. The analysis considers the principal issues that parties (and the state) must consider relating to IPD in each area of party activity, the range of options open to them, current trends in terms of paths chosen, what these choices tell us about parties and, most importantly, what the implications of these choices are. In doing so, we offer a common language and set of questions relating to IPD that enhance the ability for consistent evaluation of the state of internal party democracy. Through thorough analysis of associated costs and benefits, we also provide a framework to assist with considerations of IPD reforms -- particularly in terms of their scope, the range of options available and their implications.
Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, and Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia.

Since Illinois became a state in 1818, it has been a microcosm of the country at every stage of its development, from its status as a "free" state in antebellum America to a state rich in agriculture and industry whose goods and services now travel the world. Illinois' four state constitutions have reflected its changing values. Illinois is currently one of the few states that have adopted a new constitution since World War II. This 1970 constitution has become a model for countries in Central and Eastern Europe seeking examples of modern American constitutions.
The Illinois State Constitution traces the history of the state's constitution from its statehood in 1818 to the adoption of the state's fourth constitution in 1970. Ann M. Lousin, who has been involved in Illinois constitutional development and government for over four decades, provides provision-by-provision commentary and analysis of the state's current constitution, covering the Preamble, the Bill of Rights, and the various articles and amendments, including a survey of case law under each provision. Previously published by Greenwood, this title has been brought back in to circulation by Oxford University Press with new verve. Re-printed with standardization of content organization in order to facilitate research across the series, this title, as with all titles in the series, is set to join the dynamic revision cycle of The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States.

The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research.
Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.

The number of women elected to Latin American legislatures has grown significantly over the past thirty years. This increase in the number of women elected to national office is due, in large part, to gender-friendly electoral rules such as gender quotas and proportional electoral systems, and it has, in turn, fostered constituent support for representative democracy. Still, this book argues that women are gaining political voice and bringing women's issues to state agendas, but they are not gaining political power. Women are marginalized by the male majority in office and relegated to the least powerful committees and leadership posts, hindering progress toward real political equality.
In Political Power and Women's Representation in Latin America, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer examines the causes and consequences of women's representation in Latin America. She does so by asking a series of politically relevant and theoretically challenging questions, including why the numbers of women in office have increased in some countries but vary across others; what the presence of women in office means for the way representatives legislate; and what consequences the election of women bears for representative democracy more generally.
Schwindt-Bayer articulates a comprehensive theory of women's representation that analyzes and connects trends in relation to four facets of political representation: formal, descriptive, substantive and symbolic. She then tests this theory empirically using aggregate data from all eighteen Latin American democracies and original fieldwork in Argentina, Colombia and Costa Rica. Ultimately, this book communicates the complex and often incomplete nature of women's political representation in Latin America.

At a moment when the term "Democracy " is evoked to express inchoate aspirations for peace and social change or particular governmental systems that may or may not benefit more than a select minority of the population, this book examines attempts from ancient Mesopotemia to the democratic movements of the early twenty-first century to sustain and improve their own lives and those of outsiders who have migrated into territory they regard as their own. Democratic activists have formed organizations to regulate the distribution of water, to restore the environment, and to assure that they and their children will have a future. They have organized their relations with deities and those who held secular power, and they have created particular institutions that they hoped would help them shape a good, free, and creative life for themselves and those who follow. They have also created laws and representative bodies to serve their needs on a regular basis and have written about the difficulties those they have elected to office have maintaining their ties to those who brought them to power in the first place. Since early times, proponents of direct or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders of representative institutions that claim singular power over democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim the initiative to define what democracy should mean and who should manage it. Frequently people in small communities, trade unions, repressed, exploited, or denigrated racial, religious, political, or sexual groups have marched forward using the language of democracy to find space for themselves and their ideas at the center of political life. Sometimes they have re-interpreted the old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the major issues of their time. Whatever conclusions they come to, they are only temporary since changing times require new solutions, assuring that democracy can only survive as a continuous process. As such and as a system of beliefs, democracy has many flaws. But looking cross-culturally and trans-historically, it still seems like democracy still holds promise for improving the lives of all the world's people.

The white nationalist movement in the United States is nothing new. Yet, prior to the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, many Americans assumed that it existed only on the fringes of our political system, a dark cultural relic pushed out of the mainstream by the victories of the Civil Rights Movement. The events in Charlottesville made clear that we had underestimated the scale of the white nationalist movement; Donald Trump's reaction to it brought home the reality that the movement had gained political clout in the White House. Yet, as this book argues, the mainstreaming of white nationalism did not begin with Trump, but began during the Obama era. Hard White explains how the mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major shifts in the movement. First, Barack Obama's presidential tenure, along with increases in minority representation, fostered white anxiety about Muslims, Latinx immigrants, and black Americans. While anti-Semitic sentiments remained somewhat on the fringes, hostility toward Muslims, Latinos, and African Americans bubbled up into mainstream conservative views. At the same time, white nationalist leaders shifted their focus and resources from protest to electoral politics, and the book traces the evolution of the movement's political forays from David Duke to the American Freedom Party, the Tea Party, and, finally, the emergence of the Alt-Right. Interestingly it also shows that white hostility peaked in 2012-not 2016. Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram also show that the key to Trump's win was not persuading economically anxious voters to become racially conservative. Rather, Trump mobilized racially hostile voters in the key swing states that flipped from blue to red in 2016. In fact, the authors show that voter turnout among white racial conservatives in the six states that Trump flipped was significantly higher in 2016 compared to 2012. They also show that white racial conservatives were far more likely to participate in the election beyond voting in 2016. However, the rise of white nationalism has also mobilized racial progressives. While the book argues that white extremism will have enduring effects on American electoral politics for some time to come, it suggests that the way forward is to refocus the conversation on social solidarity, concluding with ideas for how to build this solidarity.

The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico is a broad analysis of Mexico's changing leadership over the past eight decades, stretching from its pre-democratic era (1935-1988), to its democratic transition (1988-2000) to its democratic period (2000-the present). In it, Roderic Camp, one of the most distinguished scholars of Mexican politics, seeks to answer two questions: 1) how has Mexican political leadership evolved since the 1930s and in what ways, beyond ideology, has the shift from a semi-authoritarian, one-party system to a democratic, electoral system altered the country's leadership? and 2) which aspects of Mexican leadership have been most affected by this shift in political models and when and why did the changes in leadership occur? Rather than viewing Mexico's current government as a true democracy, Camp sees it as undergoing a process of consolidation, under which the competitive electoral process has resulted in a system of governing institutions supported by the majority of citizens and significant strides toward plurality. Accordingly, he looks at the relationship between the decentralization of political power and the changing characteristics, experiences and paths to power of national leaders.
The book, which represents four decades of Camp's work, is based upon a detailed study of 3000 politicians from the 1930s through the present, incorporating regional media accounts and Camp's own interviews with Mexican presidents, cabinet members, assistant secretaries, senators, governors, and party presidents.

From the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, classical forms and ideas have been central to an American nationalist aesthetic. Beginning with an understanding of this centrality of the classical tradition to the construction of American national identity and the projection of American power, Empire of Ruin describes a mode of black classicism that has been integral to the larger critique of American politics, aesthetics, and historiography that African American cultural production has more generally advanced. While the classical tradition has provided a repository of ideas and images that have allowed white American elites to conceive of the nation as an ideal Republic and the vanguard of the idea of civilization, African American writers, artists, and activists have characterized this dominant mode of classical appropriation as emblematic of a national commitment to an economy of enslavement and a geopolitical project of empire. If the dominant forms of American classicism and monumental culture have asserted the ascendancy of what Thomas Jefferson called an "empire for liberty," for African American writers and artists it has suggested that the nation is nothing exceptional, but rather another iteration of what the radical abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet identified as an "empire of slavery," inexorably devolving into an "empire of ruin."

The Strain of Representation assesses and explains the extent to which political parties across Europe as a whole have succeeded in representing diverse voters. The authors note two important features of the European political landscape that complicate the task of assessing party representation and that require its reassessment: First, the emergence of new democracies in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe point to the possibility that representation is not only differentially achieved in West and East but may also be attained by different mechanisms. Second, parties in both West and East must now seek to represent voters that are increasingly diverse, specifically between partisan and independent supporters. The book refers to the challenges of representation of diverse voters as 'the strain of representation'. The evidential basis for the empirical analysis are expert surveys conducted in 24 European countries on party positions that have been merged with other available data on voters, party characteristics, and country conditions. The results point to both the representational capacities of parties in West and East and to the strain that parties face in representing diverse voters.

Uprisings such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street signal a resurgence of populist politics in America, pitting the people against the establishment in a struggle over control of democracy. In the wake of its conservative capture during the Nixon and Reagan eras, and given its increasing ubiquity as a mainstream buzzword of politicians and pundits, democratic theorists and activists have been eager to abandon populism to right-wing demagogues and mega-media spin-doctors. Decades of liberal scholarship have reinforced this shift, turning the term "populism" into a pejorative in academic and public discourse. At best, they conclude that populism encourages an "empty" wish to express a unified popular will beyond the mediating institutions of government; at worst, it has been described as an antidemocratic temperament prone to fomenting backlash against elites and marginalized groups. Populism's Power argues that such routine dismissals of populism reinforce liberalism as the end of democracy. Yet, as long as democracy remains true to its meaning, that is, "rule by the people," democratic theorists and activists must be able to give an account of the people as collective actors. Without such an account of the people's power, democracy's future seems fixed by the institutions of today's neoliberal, managerial states, and not by the always changing demographics of those who live within and across their borders. Laura Grattan looks at how populism cultivates the aspirations of ordinary people to exercise power over their everyday lives and their collective fate. In evaluating competing theories of populism she looks at a range of populist moments, from cultural phenomena such as the Chevrolet ad campaign for "Our Country, Our Truck," to the music of Leonard Cohen, and historical and contemporary populist movements, including nineteenth-century Populism, the Tea Party, broad-based community organizing, and Occupy Wall Street. While she ultimately expresses ambivalence about both populism and democracy, she reopens the idea that grassroots movements-like the insurgent farmers and laborers, New Deal agitators, and Civil Rights and New Left actors of US history-can play a key role in democratizing power and politics in America.

The Republican Party is best understood as the vehicle of an ideological movement whose leaders prize commitment to conservative doctrine; Republican candidates primarily appeal to voters by emphasizing broad principles and values. In contrast, the Democratic Party is better characterized as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action from their allies in office, with group identities and interests playing a larger role than abstract ideology in connecting Democratic elected officials with organizational leaders and electoral supporters. Building on this core distinction, Asymmetric Politics investigates the most consequential differences in the organization and style of the two major parties. Whether examining voters, activists, candidates, or officeholders, Grossman and Hopkins find that Democrats and Republicans think differently about politics, producing distinct practices and structures. The analysis offers a new understanding of the rise in polarization and governing dysfunction and a new explanation for the stable and exceptional character of American political culture and public policy.

In The Ohio State Constitution, Steven Steinglass and Gino Scarselli provide a comprehensive and accessible resource on the history of constitutional development and law in Ohio. This essential volume begins with an introductory essay outlining the history of the Ohio State Constitution and includes a detailed section-by-section commentary, providing insight and analysis on the case law, politics and cultural changes that have shaped Ohio's governing document. A complete list of all proposed amendments to the Constitution from 1851 to the present and relevant cases are included in easy-to-reference tables along with a bibliographical essay that aids further research. Previously published by Greenwood, this title has been brought back in to circulation by Oxford University Press with new verve. Re-printed with standardization of content organization in order to facilitate research across the series, this title, as with all titles in the series, is set to join the dynamic revision cycle of The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States.
The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research.
Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.

Making Institutions Work places institutions, the processes and structures of institutionalisation at the centre of constitutional democracy, state and society. By doing so, it recognises that (a) institutions are the pillows of a constitutional democracy, (b) institutions evolve through the action of persons (agency); (c) institutions as organisations form structures of dynamic shared social patterns of behaviour through the implementation of a system of rule of law. The book offers an interdisciplinary critical commentary by scholars, analysts and experts regarding strategic thinking, form, structural and functional impediments and facilitators to institutions and institutionalisation.