|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
More than two millennia ago, Aristotle is said to have compiled a
collection of ancient constitutions that informed his studies of
politics. For Aristotle, constitutions largely distilled and
described the varied and distinctive patterns of political life
established over time. What constitutionalism has come to mean in
the modern era, on the other hand, originates chiefly in the late
eighteenth century and primarily with the U.S. Constitution-written
in 1787 and made effective in 1789-and the various French
constitutions that first appeared in 1791. In the last half
century, more than 130 nations have adopted new constitutions, half
of those within the last twenty years. These new constitutions are
devoted to many of the same goals found in the U.S. Constitution:
the rule of law, representative self-government, and protection of
rights. But by canvassing constitutional developments at the
national and state level in the United States alongside modern
constitutions in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and Asia, the
contributors to Modern Constitutions-all leading scholars of
constitutionalism-show that modern constitutions often seek to
protect social rights and to establish representative institutions,
forms of federalism, and courts charged with constitutional review
that depart from or go far beyond the seminal U.S. example. Partly
because of their innovations, however, many modern constitutional
systems now confront mounting authoritarian pressures that put
fundamental commitments to the rule of law in jeopardy. The
contributions in this volume collectively provide a measure of
guidance for the challenges and prospects of modern constitutions
in the rapidly changing political world of the twenty-first
century. Contributors: Richard R. Beeman, Valerie Bunce, Tom
Ginsburg, Heinz Klug, David S. Law, Sanford Levinson, Jaime Lluch,
Christopher McCrudden, Kim Lane Scheppele, Rogers M. Smith, Mila
Versteeg, Emily Zackin.
On the eve of the American Revolution there existed throughout the
British-American colonial world a variety of contradictory
expectations about the political process. Not only was there
disagreement over the responsibilities of voters and candidates,
confusion extended beyond elections to the relationship between
elected officials and the populations they served. So varied were
people's expectations that it is impossible to talk about a single
American political culture in this period. In The Varieties of
Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America, Richard R.
Beeman offers an ambitious overview of political life in
pre-Revolutionary America. Ranging from Virginia, Massachusetts,
New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania to the backcountry
regions of the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and northern New England,
Beeman uncovers an extraordinary diversity of political belief and
practice. In so doing, he closes the gap between eighteenth-century
political rhetoric and reality. Political life in
eighteenth-century America, Beeman demonstrates, was diffuse and
fragmented, with America's British subjects and their leaders often
speaking different political dialects altogether. Although the
majority of people living in America before the Revolution would
not have used the term "democracy," important changes were underway
that made it increasingly difficult for political leaders to ignore
"popular pressures." As the author shows in a final chapter on the
Revolution, those popular pressures, once unleashed, were difficult
to contain and drove the colonies slowly and unevenly toward a
democratic form of government. Synthesizing a wide range of primary
and secondary sources, Beeman offers a coherent account of the way
politics actually worked in this formative time for American
political culture.
"What makes Beeman's study of early Lunenburg especially noteworthy
is the way he analyzes the failure of the rich man's culture to
flourish in the poor man's country once it had been transplanted
there. . . . Beeman offers a valuable insight into the nature--and
the limits--of cultural authority in colonial Virginia."--"Reviews
in American History" "Beeman's fascinating study . . . is unusually
comprehensive, skillfully weaving complex economic, political, and
religious matters with a broad concern for social and community
change, and it is contextual, employing the case study to address
the wider issue of the formation of a southern regional identity.
Beeman's success at combining chronicle and process will make his
work a model for future studies of this kind."--"Journal of
Southern History" "This book is the product of an impressive amount
of primary sources and composes an excellent microcosm study of a
southern country progressing through metamorphic stages from
frontier to conservative agrarian community. . . . A substantial
contribution to an understanding of the role of the grassroots
community in the making of the social and cultural profile of the
greater South."--"Southern Quarterly" "The first serious
book-length study of a local community in the Southern Colonies. .
. . One of the best local studies on any place in
eighteenth-century American, it is a work of unusual
importance."--Jack P. Greene, Johns Hopkins University "With
sensitivity to the complexities of the process, the author has
traced an important cultural transformation in Virginia and in the
South generally."--Thad W. Tate, Institute of Early American
History and Culture "The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry" is
the story of an expanding frontier. Richard Beeman offers a lively
and well-written account of the creation of bonds of community
among the farmers who settled Lunenburg Country, far to the south
and west of Virginia's center of political and economic activity.
Beeman's view of the nature of community provides an important
dynamic model of the transmission of culture from older, more
settled regions of Virginia to the southern frontier. He describes
how the southern frontier was influenced by those staples of
American historical development: opportunity, mobility, democracy,
and ethnic pluralism; and he shows how the county evolved socially,
culturally, and economically to become distinctly southern.
This comprehensive study -- an honorable mention in the 1971
Frederick Jackson Turner Award competition -- traces the emergence
and development of the Republican and Federalist party
organizations in Virginia and shows how the old oligarchic system
based on wealth, influence, and social prestige remained strong in
that state after the formation of the new nation. The book covers
details of the Virginia Antifederalists' continuing hostility to
the federal Constitution, James Madison's switch from the
Federalist party to the emerging Republican party, Madison's and
Jefferson's attempts to coordinate Republican opposition to
Federalist foreign policy, and the Republicans' successful campaign
in 1800 to replace President John Adams with a Virginian. Richard
R. Beeman's central concern is the style of political life in
Virginia and the effect of that style on national party alignments,
and his findings demonstrate that the mode of political conduct
displayed by Virginia's leaders proved increasingly self-indulgent
and dysfunctional by 1800.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|