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Despite all the arguing from politicians, special interests, and political parties, Americans basically agree on the most important political issues. If only our legislators would stop fighting over obtuse policy details and really listen to what ordinary Americans want, representatives on Capitol Hill and in the statehouses would actually get something done, right? Wrong. Americans perceive consensus when in reality there is none. The fact of the matter is Americans not only disagree on the most significant challenges facing the country, but also conflict on what to do about them. On issue after issue-crime, Social Security, homosexual rights, military intervention, abortion-the American public is deeply divided over the proper course of action. Yet our system is not flawed by this division; democracy is necessarily complex and contentious. In truth, without these messy and chaotic features of governance, our system would not be working as the Founders envisioned. In lucid and lively prose, the authors lay out criteria with which to assess our representative system. By showing students what democracy entails in practice-the in's and out's of legislators actually doing their jobs-they will come to see that uncertainty, competing interests, confusion, bargaining, compromise, and conflict are central to the proper functioning of our democracy.
Legislative term limits adopted in the 1990s are in effect in fifteen states today. This reform is arguably the most significant institutional change in American government of recent decades. Most of the legislatures in these fifteen states have experienced a complete turnover of their membership; hundreds of experienced lawmakers have become ineligible for reelection, and their replacements must learn and perform their jobs in as few as six years. Now that term limits have been in effect long enough for both their electoral and institutional effects to become apparent, their consequences can be gauged fully and with the benefit of hindsight. In the most comprehensive study of the subject, editors Kurtz, Cain, and Niemi and a team of experts offer their broad evaluation of the effects term limits have had on the national political landscape. "The contributors to this excellent and comprehensive volume on
legislative term limits come neither to praise the idea nor to bury
it, but rather to speak dispassionately about its observed
consequences. What they find is neither the horror story of inept
legislators completely captive to strong governors and interest
groups anticipated by the harshest critics, nor the idyll of
renewed citizen democracy hypothesized by its more extreme
advocates. Rather, effects have varied across states, mattering
most in the states that were already most professionalized, but
with countervailing factors mitigating against extreme
consequences, such as a flight of former lower chamber members to
the upper chamber that enhances legislative continuity. This book
is must reading for anyone who wants to understand what happens to
major institutional reformsafter the dust has settled." "A decade has passed since the first state legislators were term
limited. The contributors to this volume, all well-regarded
scholars, take full advantage of the distance afforded by this
passage of time to explore new survey data on the institutional
effects of term limits. Their book is the first major volume to
exploit this superb opportunity." Karl T. Kurtz is Director of the Trust for Representative Democracy at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Bruce Cain is Heller Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Director of the University of California Washington Center. Richard G. Niemi is Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester.
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