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The Regime Question - Foundations Of Democratic Governance In Europe And The United States

by Amel Ahmed

~~28,76€~~ 25,88€ 10% OFF

 Ongoing struggles over core principles of democratic governance The regime question—often boiled down to “democracy or autocracy?”—has been central to democratic politics from the start. This has entailed not only fights over the extent of the franchise but also, crucially, ongoing struggles over core principles of democracy, the “rules of the game.” In this timely study, Amel Ahmed examines the origins and development of the regime question in Western democracies and considers the implications for regime contention today. She argues that battles over the regime question were so foundational and so enduring that they constitute a dimension of politics that polarized political opponents across the regime divide. Ahmed investigates four historical cases in the study of democratic development: the United Kingdom between the Reform Act of 1832 and World War II (1832–1939), Imperial and Weimar–era Germany (1876–1933), the French Third Republic (1870–1939), and the United States before World War II (1789–1939). Focusing on legislative politics as an essential site of democratic governance and key to understanding long-term democratic endurance, she shows that when the regime question became salient, it hindered the formation of viable legislative coalitions along the left-right policy spectrum. This failure opened the door to executive encroachment, destabilizing the regime. Ahmed shows that the resurgence of the regime question today is not, as is often assumed, a break with prior trajectories of political development but a new instantiation of battles fought in previous eras.
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Taxation And Resentment - Race, Party, And Class In American Tax Attitudes

by Andrea Louise Campbell

~~33,13€~~ 29,82€ 10% OFF

 Why Americans favor progressive taxation in principle but not in practice Most Americans support progressive taxation in principle, and want the rich to pay more. But the specific tax policies that most favor are more regressive than progressive. What is behind such a disconnect? In this book, Andrea Louise Campbell examines public opinion on taxation, exploring why what Americans favor in principle differs from what they accept in practice. Campbell shows that since the federal income tax began a century ago, the rich have fought for lower taxes through reduced rates and a complicated system of tax breaks. The resulting complexity leaves the public confused about who benefits from the convoluted tax code, and leads to tax preferences that are driven by factors other than principles or interests. Campbell argues that tax attitudes vary little by income, or by party, as some Democrats, more Republicans, and even more independents want most taxes decreased. Instead, white opinion on nearly every tax is racialized. Many do not realize the rich benefit the most from tax breaks, attitudes toward which are racialized, too. And among Black and Hispanic Americans, long subject to government coercion, greater support for government spending is not matched by greater support for taxation. Everyone has a reason to dislike taxes, which helps antitax Republicans win votes—and helps the rich in their long campaign to get their own taxes reduced and undermine progressivity.
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Attention, Shoppers! - American Retail Capitalism And The Origins Of The Amazon Economy

by Kathleen Thelen

~~33,13€~~ 29,82€ 10% OFF

 How large American retailers outgrew the capacity of government to regulate them The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticing customers with cheap goods and speedy delivery. Attention, Shoppers! traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet. Offering a comparative perspective on the history of American political economy, Kathleen Thelen shows how large-scale retailers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden faced a far less hospitable regulatory environment than companies in the United States, which enjoyed judicial forbearance and often active government support. As American companies grew in scale and scope, they assembled an ever-expanding political coalition that could be weaponized to head off regulatory efforts, leveraging their market strength to squeeze suppliers and workers and even engaging in outright rule breaking when they encountered resistance. Placing the rise of the Amazon economy in a broader comparative-historical context, Attention, Shoppers! reveals how large discount retailers have successfully exploited a uniquely permissive regulatory landscape to create a shopper’s paradise built on cheap labor and mass consumption.
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Divergent Democracy - How Policy Positions Came To Dominate Party Competition

by Katherine Krimmel

~~33,13€~~ 29,82€ 10% OFF

 An innovative examination of the shift by American political parties toward issue-based differentiation Recent Democratic and Republican party platforms display clear differences on such issues as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, gun control, and the environment. These distinctions reflect a programmatic party system—that is, one in which policy positions serve as a key basis of electoral competition. Yet party politics were not always so issue-oriented; the rise of policy positions as the dominant marker of party appeal occurred largely over the last fifty years. In Divergent Democracy, Katherine Krimmel examines this transformation of the American party system, using innovative machine learning techniques to develop and present the first measure of party differentiation on issues since Democrats and Republicans began competing with each other in 1856. Why did the shift to issue-based party competition take more than a century to materialize? Krimmel offers a groundbreaking theory, focusing on what aids and constrains parties’ abilities to do the difficult, conflict-ridden work of developing issue positions. She argues that clientelistic subnational party organizations, promising material support or jobs in return for votes, long impeded programmatic partisanship while the growth of national party organizations facilitated it. Moreover, institutions and agents of racial oppression extended the life of nonprogrammatic practices, as they attempted to shield discriminatory laws and institutions from interparty competition. Following the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, space opened for programmatic competition to grow. Using both quantitative and qualitative tools, Krimmel offers a vital view of the foundations of today’s issue-based party competition and its alternatives.
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How The Heartland Went Red - Why Local Forces Matter In An Age Of Nationalized Politics

by Stephanie Ternullo

~~33,13€~~ 29,82€ 10% OFF

 How local contexts help us understand why White voters in America’s heartland are shifting to the right Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing center have flipped from blue to red. Cities that were once part of the traditional Democratic New Deal coalition began to vote Republican, providing crucial support for the electoral victories of Republican presidents from Reagan to Trump. In How the Heartland Went Red, Stephanie Ternullo argues for the importance of place in understanding this rightward shift, showing how voters in these small Midwestern cities view national politics—whether Republican appeals to racial and religious identities or Democrat’s appeals to class—through the lens of local conditions. Offering a comparative study of three White blue-collar Midwestern cities in the run-up to the 2020 election, Ternullo shows the ways that local contexts have sped up or slowed down White voters’ shift to the right. One of these cities has voted overwhelmingly Republican for decades; one swung to the right in 2016 but remains closely divided between Republicans and Democrats; and one, defying current trends, remains reliably Democratic. Through extensive interviews, Ternullo traces the structural and organizational dimensions of place that frame residents’ perceptions of political and economic developments. These place-based conditions—including the ways that local leaders define their cities’ challenges—help prioritize residents’ social identities, connecting them to one party over another. Despite elite polarization, fragmented media, and the nationalization of American politics, Ternullo argues, the importance of place persists—as one of many factors informing partisanship, but as a particularly important one among cross-pressured voters whose loyalties are contested.
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Firepower - How The Nra Turned Gun Owners Into A Political Force

by Matthew J. Lacombe

27,04€ + 10% CARD

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 How the NRA became a political juggernaut by influencing the behaviors and beliefs of everyday AmericansThe National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations-even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of ma
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Laboratories Against Democracy - How National Parties Transformed State Politics

by Jacob M. Grumbach

23,84€ + 10% CARD

 As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the price Over the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics—with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy. Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments into the engines of American policymaking. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. The consequences don’t stop there, however. Drawing on a wealth of new data on state policy, public opinion, money in politics, and democratic performance, Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself. Required reading for this precarious moment in our politics, Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today’s state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time—or accelerating them.
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Rough Draft Of History - A Century Of Us Social Movements In The News

by Edwin Amenta e Neal Caren

37,10€ + 10% CARD

 A comprehensive account of the media''s coverage of social movements in the United States A new view of twentieth-century US social movements, Rough Draft of History examines how national newspapers covered social movements and the organizations driving them. Edwin Amenta and Neal Caren identify hundreds of movement organizations, from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to Occupy Wall Street, and document their treatment in the news. In doing so, Amenta and Caren provide an alternative account of US history from below, as it was refracted through journalistic lenses. Iconic organizations in the women’s rights, African American civil rights, and environmental movements gained substantial media attention. But so too did now-forgotten groups, such as the German-American Alliance, Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Peace and Freedom Party. Amenta and Caren show why some organizations made big news while others did not, why some were treated well while others were handled roughly. They recover forgotten stories, including that of the Townsend Plan, a Depression-era organization that helped establish Social Security. They also reveal that the media handled the civil rights movement far more harshly than popular histories recount. And they detail the difficulties movements face in today’s brave new media world. Drawing from digitized newspapers across a century and through to the present, Rough Draft of History offers insights for those seeking social and political change and those trying to make sense of it.
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Checks In The Balance - Legislative Capacity And The Dynamics Of Executive Power

by Alexander Bolton e Sharece Thrower

42,40€ + 10% CARD

 How access to resources and policymaking powers determines the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches The specter of unbridled executive power looms large in the American political imagination. Are checks and balances enough to constrain ambitious executives? Checks in the Balance presents a new theory of separation of powers that brings legislative capacity to the fore, explaining why Congress and state legislatures must possess both the opportunities and the means to constrain presidents and governors—and why, without these tools, executive power will prevail. Alexander Bolton and Sharece Thrower reveal how legislative capacity—which they conceive of as the combination of a legislature’s resources and policymaking powers—is the key to preventing the accumulation of power in the hands of an encroaching executive. They show how low-capacity legislatures face difficulties checking the executive through mechanisms such as discretion and oversight, and how presidents and governors unilaterally bypass such legislative adversaries to impose their will. When legislative capacity is high, however, the legislative branch can effectively stifle executives. Bolton and Thrower draw on a wealth of historical evidence on congressional capacity, oversight, discretion, and presidential unilateralism. They also examine thousands of gubernatorial executive orders, demonstrating how varying capacity in the states affects governors’ power. Checks in the Balance affirms the centrality of legislatures in tempering executive power—and sheds vital new light on how and why they fail.
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Forged Consensus - Science, Technology, And Economic Policy In The United States, 1921-1953

by David M. Hart

53,00€ + 10% CARD

 According to the creation myth of post-World War II federal science and technology policy, the postwar policy sprang full-blown from the mind of Vannevar Bush in the form of Science, the Endless Frontier (1945). Challenging this myth, this title puts Bush's efforts in a larger historical and political context.
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Rise Of The Agricultural Welfare State - Institutions And Interest Group Power In The United States, France, And Japan

by Adam D. Sheingate

68,90€ + 10% CARD

 A long-dominant reading of American politics holds that public policy in the United States is easily captured by special interest groups. Countering this view, this title traces the development of government intervention in agriculture from its nineteenth-century origins to contemporary struggles over farm subsidies.
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Bold Relief - Institutional Politics And The Origins Of Modern American Social Policy

by Edwin Amenta

63,60€ + 10% CARD

 According to conventional wisdom, American social policy has always been exceptional - exceptionally stingy and backwards. This title explains why the country's leading role was short-lived. It shows that the New Deal was in fact a bold program of relief, committed to providing jobs and income support for the unemployed.
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Political Organizations - Updated Edition

by James Q. Wilson

103,35€ + 10% CARD

 Aims to counter two ideas: that popular interests will automatically generate political organizations and that such organizations will faithfully mirror the opinions and interests of their members. This book also demonstrates that the way in which political organizations are created and maintained has an impact on the opinions they represent.
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Faithful And Fearless - Moving Feminist Protest Inside The Church And Military

by Mary Fainsod Katzenstein

59,63€ + 10% CARD

 Riots and demonstrations, the lifeblood of American social and political protest in the 1960s, are now largely a historical memory. But Mary Fainsod Katzenstein argues that protest has not disappeared--it has simply moved off the streets into the country''s core institutions. As a result, conflicts over sexual harassment, affirmative action, and the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and people of color now touch us more than ever in our daily lives, whether we are among those seeking change or those threatened by its prospects. No one is more aware of this than women demanding change from within the United States military and the American Catholic church. Women in uniform are deeply patriotic and women active in the church are devoted to their callings. Yet Katzenstein shows that these women often feel isolated and demeaned, confronted by challenges as subtle as condescension and as blatant as career obstruction. Although faithful to their institutions, many have proved fearless in their attempts to reshape them. Drawing on interviews with over a hundred women in the military and the church--including senior officers, combat pilots, lay activists, and nuns--this book gives voice to the struggles and vision of these women as they have moved protest into the mainstream. Katzenstein shows why the military and the church, similarly hierarchical and insistent on obedience, have come to harbor deeply different forms of protest. She demonstrates that women in the military have turned to the courts and Congress, whereas feminists in the church have used "discursive" protests--writing, organizing workshops and conferences--to rethink in radical ways the meanings of faith and justice. These different strategies, she argues, reflect how the law regulates the military but leaves the church alone. Faithful and Fearless calls our attention to protest within institutions as a new stage in the history both of feminism and of social movements in America. The book is an inspiring account of strength in the face of adversity and a groundbreaking contribution to the study of American feminism, social protest, and the historical development of institutions in American society.
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Experts And Politicians - Reform Challenges To Machine Politics In New York, Cleveland, And Chicago

by Kenneth Finegold

177,55€ + 10% CARD

 Demonstrates the significance of expertise as a potential source of change in American politics and policy, and of each city's electoral and administrative organizations as mediating institutions within a national system of urban political economies. This book draws on original research and quantitative analysis of electoral data.
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Parting At The Crossroads - The Emergence Of Health Insurance In The United States And Canada

by Antonia Maioni

125,88€ + 10% CARD

 Explores the development of health insurance in the United States and Canada. This book shows that Canada's federal structure and its parliamentary institutions encouraged a social-democratic third party that became pivotal in demonstrating the feasibility of universal, public health insurance.
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When Movements Matter - The Townsend Plan And The Rise Of Social Security

by Edwin Amenta

42,40€ + 10% CARD

 Accounts for the origins of Social Security as we know it. This book tells the story of the Townsend Plan - a political organization that sought to alleviate poverty and end the Great Depression through a government-provided retirement stipend of $200 a month for every American over the age of sixty.
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Road To Nowhere - The Genesis Of President Clinton''S Plan For Health Security

by Jacob S. Hacker

63,60€ + 10% CARD

 During the 1992 presidential campaign, health care reform became a hot issue, paving the way for one of the most important yet ill-fated social policy initiatives in American history: Bill Clinton''s 1993 proposal for comprehensive coverage under "managed competition." Here Jacob Hacker not only investigates for the first time how managed competition became the president''s reform framework, but also illuminates how issues and policies emerge. He follows Clinton''s policy ideas from their initial formulation by policy experts through their endorsement by medical industry leaders and politicians to their inclusion--in a new and unexpected form--in the proposal itself. Throughout he explores key questions: Why did health reform become a national issue in the 1990s? Why did Clinton choose managed competition over more familiar options during the 1992 presidential campaign? What effect did this have on the fate of his proposal? Drawing on records of the President''s task force, interviews with a wide range of key policy players, and many other sources, Hacker locates his analysis within the context of current political theories on agenda setting. He concludes that Clinton chose managed competition partly because advocates inside and outside the campaign convinced him that it represented a unique middle road to health care reform. This conviction, Hacker maintains, blinded the president and his allies to the political risks of the approach and hindered the development of an effective strategy for enacting it.
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Firepower - How The Nra Turned Gun Owners Into A Political Force

by Matthew J. Lacombe

26,50€ + 10% CARD

 How the NRA became a political juggernaut by influencing the behaviors and beliefs of everyday AmericansThe National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations-even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of ma
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Firepower - How The Nra Turned Gun Owners Into A Political Force

by Matthew J. Lacombe

37,85€ + 10% CARD

free shipping

 How the NRA became a political juggernaut by influencing the behaviors and beliefs of everyday AmericansThe National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations-even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of ma
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Power Of Separation - American Constitutionalism And The Myth Of The Legislative Veto

by Jessica Korn

59,63€ + 10% CARD

 Challenges the notion that the eighteenth-century principles underlying the American separation of powers system are incompatible with the demands of twentieth-century governance. This book demostrates the continuing relevance of these principles by questioning the dominant scholarship on the legislative veto.
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Forging Of Bureaucratic Autonomy - Reputations, Networks, And Policy Innovation In Executive Agencies, 1862-1928

by Daniel Carpenter

68,90€ + 10% CARD

 Politicians have traditionally devoted little attention to the origins of American bureaucracy and its relationship between bureaucratic and interest group activities. This work presents a study of bureaucratic autonomy in democratic regimes.
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Social Policy In The United States - Future Possibilities In Historical Perspective

by Theda Skocpol

76,85€ + 10% CARD

 Health care, welfare, Social Security, employment programs--all are part of ongoing national debates about the future of social policy in the United States. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Theda Skocpol shows how historical understanding, centered on governmental institutions and political alliances, can illuminate the limits and possibilities of American social policymaking both past and present. Skocpol dispels the myth that Americans are inherently hostile to social spending and suggests why President Clinton''s health care agenda was so quickly attacked despite the support of most Americans for his goals.
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American Bonds - How Credit Markets Shaped A Nation

by Sarah L. Quinn

29,15€ + 10% CARD

 How the American government has long used financial credit programs to create economic opportunitiesFederal housing finance policy and mortgage-backed securities have gained widespread attention in recent years because of the 2008 financial crisis, but issues of government credit have been part of American life since the nation's founding. From
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