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Black & white print. American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes more examples and details regarding the lived experiences of diverse groups and communities within the United States. The authors and reviewers sought to strike a balance between confronting the negative and harmful elements of American government, history, and current events, while demonstrating progress in overcoming them. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.
"51 Imperfect Solutions told stories about specific state and federal individual constitutional rights, and explained two benefits of American federalism: how two sources of constitutional protection for liberty and property rights could be valuable to individual freedom and how the state courts could be useful laboratories of innovation when it comes to the development of national constitutional rights. This book tells the other half of the story. Instead of focusing on state constitutional individual rights, this book takes on state constitutional structure. Everything in law and politics, including individual rights, comes back to divisions of power and the evergreen question: Who decides? The goal of this book is to tell the structure side of the story and to identify the shifting balances of power revealed when one accounts for American constitutional law as opposed to just federal constitutional law. The book contains three main parts-on the judicial, executive, and legislative branches-as well as stand-alone chapters on home-rule issues raised by local governments and the benefits and burdens raised by the ease of amending state constitutions. A theme in the book is the increasingly stark divide between the ever-more democratic nature of state governments and the ever-less democratic nature of the federal government over time"--
In this book, the author traces the history of American federal thought from its colonial beginnings in scattered provincial responses to British assertions of authority, to its emergence in the late eighteenth century as a normative theory of multilayered government. The core of this new federal ideology was a belief that multiple independent levels of government could legitimately exist within a single polity, and that such an arrangement was not a defect but a virtue.
"As James Madison led America's effort to write its Constitution, he made two great inventions-the separation of powers and federalism. The first is more famous, but the second was most essential because, without federalism, there could have been no United States of America. Federalism has always been about setting the balance of power between the federal government and the states-and that's revolved around deciding just how much inequality the country was prepared to accept in exchange for making piece among often-warring states. Through the course of its history, the country has moved through a series of phases, some of which put more power into the hands of the federal government, and some rested more power in the states. Sometimes this rebalancing led to armed conflict. The Civil War, of course, almost split the nation permanently apart. And sometimes it led to political battles. By the end of the 1960s, however, the country seemed to have settled into a quiet agreement that inequality was a prime national concern, that the federal government had the responsibility for addressing it through its own policies, and that the states would serve as administrative agents of that policy. But as that agreement seemed set, federalism drifted from national debate, just as the states began using their administrative role to push in very different directions. The result has been a rising tide of inequality, with the great invention that helped create the nation increasingly driving it apart"--
The Committee on House Administration is pleased to present this revised book on our United States Government. This publication continues to be a popular introductory guide for American citizens and those of other countries who seek a greater understanding of our heritage of democracy. The question-and-answer format covers a broad range of topics dealing with the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our Government as well as the electoral process and the role of political parties.--Foreword.
Challenging the myth that the federal government exercises exclusive control over U.S. foreign-policymaking, Michael J. Glennon and Robert D. Sloane propose that we recognize the prominent role that states and cities now play in that realm. Foreign Affairs Federalism provides the first comprehensive study of the constitutional law and practice of federalism in the conduct of U.S. foreign relations. It could hardly be timelier. States and cities recently have limited greenhouse gas emissions, declared nuclear free zones and sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, established thousands of sister-city relationships, set up informal diplomatic offices abroad, and sanctioned oppressive foreign governments. Exploring the implications of these and other initiatives, this book argues that the national interest cannot be advanced internationally by Washington alone. Glennon and Sloane examine in detail the considerable foreign affairs powers retained by the states under the Constitution and question the need for Congress or the president to step in to provide "one voice" in foreign affairs. They present concrete, realistic ways that the courts can update antiquated federalism precepts and untangle interwoven strands of international law, federal law, and state law. The result is a lucid, incisive, and up-to-date analysis of the rules that empower-and limit-states and cities abroad.
Historians have emphasized the founding fathers' statesmanship and vision in the development of a more powerful union under the federal constitution. In The Origins of the Federal Republic, Peter S. Onuf clarifies the founders' achievement by demonstrating with case studies of New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia that territorial confrontations among the former colonies played a crucial role in shaping early concepts of statehood and union and provided the true basis of the American federalist system.
Considers the social requirements for a thriving democracy
Defines the most important concepts and describes the models, institutions, court cases, policies, epochs, and personalities that shaped, or have been shaped by, American federalism.
Over the course of the nation’s history, the Constitution has been turned upside-down, Michael Greve argues in this provocative book. The Constitution’s vision of a federalism in which local, state, and federal government compete to satisfy the preferences of individuals has given way to a cooperative, cartelized federalism that enables interest groups to leverage power at every level for their own benefit. Greve traces this inversion from the Constitution’s founding through today, dispelling much received wisdom along the way. The Upside-Down Constitution shows how federalism’s transformation was a response to states’ demands, not an imposition on them. From the nineteenth-century judicial elaboration of a competitive federal order, to the New Deal transformation, to the contemporary Supreme Court’s impoverished understanding of constitutional structure, and the “devolution” in vogue today, Greve describes a trend that will lead to more government and fiscal profligacy, not less. Taking aim at both the progressive heirs of the New Deal and the vocal originalists of our own time, The Upside-Down Constitution explains why the current fiscal crisis will soon compel a fundamental renegotiation of a new federalism grounded in constitutional principles.