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Political Parties and Primaries in Kentucky
This is a study of Kentucky political parties: how they are organized and how they nominate and elect candidates. Because state politics in Kentucky is dominated by the Democratic Party, a major portion of the study is devoted to the Democratic primary candidates, campaign techniques, funding, of elections, and voting patterns.
As in other states, campaign techniques in Kentucky are changing. During the 1950s and 1960s the Democratic Party had two dominant factions, and candidates for statewide office sought factional allies among local party organizations. Now factional alignments have disappeared, and candidates for statewide office build campaign organizations from thousands ...Read More
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One United People: The Federalist Papers and the National Idea
The Federalist and the Constitution, whose cause it defended, were created amid the turmoil of political controversy. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, authors of The Federalist, were not theorists but fervent partisans in a campaign to gain acceptance—by no means a sure thing at that time—for the new plan of national government which they themselves had largely shaped. Their essays were immediately popular, were quickly collected and reissued in book form, and soon came to be recognized in America and Europe as a landmark in political theory—the basic blueprint for the American system of government.
In this new, ...Read More
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The Kentucky Legislature: Two Decades of Change
Twenty years ago the Kentucky General Assembly was one of the least powerful and least effective legislatures in the country, almost entirely dominated by the governor. Over the past two decades the legislature has changed—gradually and with little public attention—into a far more powerful, professional, and independent body.
This book is a study of that process of change: its causes, the obstacles encountered, and the political and policy consequences. It is a study of changing relationships between governor and legislature, caused in part by less aggressive gubernatorial leadership and in part by the growing assertion of legislative independence. It is ...Read More
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Without Consent: Mass-Elite Linkages in Presidential Politics
The transmission of policy preferences from the mass electorate to the political elite is the subject of Warren Miller's illuminating new book. The elites of whom he writes are the delegates to recent nominating conventions analyzed in their subsequent roles as activists involved in presidential election campaigns. Miller's analysis delineates circumstances and conditions that affect the degree to which the issue preferences of these elite activists are more or less representative of those held by rank-and-file members of the nation's electorate.
Miller argues that, although consent and accountability are basic principles in the theory of democratic representation, the ways in ...Read More
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Origins of American Political Parties: 1789–1803
The first appearance of parties on the American political scene has been a subject of debate in both history and political science; most scholars have argued that parties did not develop until the nineteenth century. John F. Hoadley challenges that conclusion, arguing convincingly that substantial parties emerged within the first decade after creation of the new government. Examining patterns of roll-call voting in the early congresses, he finds that discernible coalitions existed between 1789 and 1803. These coalitions began to assume the form of parties as early as the Second Congress, and the evidence for their functioning as parties becomes ...Read More
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The Life of the Parties: Activists in Presidential Politics
Commentators, especially since the Democratic party reforms following 1968, have expressed serious concerns about the role of party activists in the American political system. Have they become so concerned with ideological purity that they are unable to nominate strong candidates? Are activists loyal only to particular interest groups, with little concern for the parties as institutions? Are the reformed nominating procedures open to takeover by new activists, who exit the party immediately after the presidential nominations fight? With such an unrepresentative set of activists, can parties adjust to changing environments?
Based on a survey of more than 17,000 delegates to ...Read More
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A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation
The civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, Watergate—rumors and revelations stemming from these and other events provoked in the 1970s a rising clamor against the scope and conduct of American intelligence operations. Finally, in 1975, Congress launched investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal agencies in the intelligence community. This is the story of one of those investigations—that by the Senate committee chaired by Frank Church of Idaho.
The hearings of the Church committee, together with investigations by the House of Representatives and a presidential commission, rocked the intelligence bureaucracy like ...Read More
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Henry Kissinger: Perceptions of International Politics
Henry Kissinger conducted American foreign policy with a distinctive assurance and panache that gave dramatic force to his tenure as secretary of state. His was the shaping hand in decisions that led to detente with the Soviet Union, to opening relations with the People’s Republic of China, and to “shuttle” diplomacy in the Middle East and the disengagement of Egypt and Israel during the 1973 war.
Taking a fresh look at the statecraft of Henry Kissinger, Harvey Starr brings to bear a variety of analytical methods on data drawn from different stages in Kissinger’s career to define and explain the ...Read More
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The Republican Right since 1945
In 1981, a Right Wing Republican at long last resided in the White House, presiding over what may prove to be the most fundamental restructuring of American political life since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fortunately, The Republican Right since 1945 now provides us with the necessary historical understanding of conservative Republicans. David Reinhard's dispassionate yet lively book recounts the Republican Right's political struggles from the death of FDR in 1945 to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan.
Younger readers will discover that Right Wing Republicans are older than Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater and that some conservative Republicans once ...Read More
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Representation in State Legislatures
Every two years American voters turn out to elect several thousand representatives to state legislatures. Only now in Representation in State Legislatures do we have a detailed examination of how these officials perceive their jobs and how they attempt to do them. To provide answers to these questions, Malcolm E. Jewell conducted intensive interviews with 220 members of houses of representatives in nine selected states. He asked each legislator how he kept in touch with his constituents, how he resolved matters of policy, how he sought government resources for his district, and what services he provided for individual constituents.
State ...Read More
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