The Inevitable Party

Seth Masket

Seth Masket's The Inevitable Party is a study of anti-party reforms and why they fail. Numerous reform movements over the past century have designated parties as the enemy of democracy, and they have found a willing ally in the American people in their efforts to rein...

Historic Firsts

Evelyn M. Simien

The 2008 presidential election made American history. Yet before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, there were other "historic firsts": Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972, and Jesse Jackson, who ran in 1984 and 1988. While unsuccessful, these campaigns were...

Polarization and the Politics of Personal Responsibility

Mark D. Brewer , Jeffrey M. Stonecash

Contemporary American politics is highly polarized, and it is increasingly clear that this polarization exists at both the elite and mass levels. What is less clear is the source of this polarization. Social issues are routinely presented by some as the driver of...

Using Technology, Building Democracy

Jessica Baldwin-Philippi

The days of "revolutionary" campaign strategies are gone.The extraordinary has become ordinary, and campaigns at all levels, from the federal to the municipal, have realized the necessity of incorporating digital media technologies into their communications strategies....

Groundbreakers

Hahrie Han , Elizabeth Mckenna

Much has been written about the historic nature of the Obama campaign. The multi-year, multi-billion dollar operation elected the nation's first black president, raised and spent more money than any other election effort in history, and built the most sophisticated...

The Simple Art of Voting

Delia Baldassarri

Storable Votes

Alessandra Casella

Image Bite Politics

Erik Page Bucy , Maria Elizabeth Grabe

Image Bite Politics is the first book to systematically assess the visual presentation of presidential candidates in network news coverage of elections and to connect these visual images with shifts in public opinion. Presenting the results of a comprehensive visual...

Unconventional Wisdom

Karen M. Kaufmann , John R. Petrocik , Daron R. Shaw

Late deciders go for the challenger; turnout helps the Democrats; the gender gap results from a surge in Democratic preference among women--these and many other myths are standard fare among average citizens, political pundits, and even some academics. But are these...

A New Engagement?

Collectif

In searching for answers as to why young people differ vastly from their parents and grandparents when it comes to turning out the vote, A New Engagement challenges the conventional wisdom that today's youth is plagued by a severe case of political apathy.In order to...

How Congress Evolves

Nelson W. Polsby

From the end of the New Deal until quite recently, the U.S. House of Representatives was dominated by a conservative coalition that thwarted the Democratic majority and prevented the enactment of measures proposed by a succession of liberal Presidents. Today Presidents...

Campaigning Online

Bruce Bimber , Richard Davis

The Internet is now a part of American democracy. A majority of Americans are online and many of them use the Internet to learn political information and to follow election campaigns. Candidates now invest heavily in Web and e-mail campaign communication tools in order...

Navigating Public Opinion

Fay Lomax Cook , Jeff Manza , Benjamin I. Page

Do politicians listen to the public? How often and when? Or are the views of the public manipulated or used strategically by political and economic elites? Navigating Public Opinion brings together leading scholars of American politics to assess and debate these...

Voting Hopes or Fears?

Keith Reeves

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, he explained that it flowed from "a clear and simple wrong." But a generation later, whites still remain resistant to the election of blacks to public office. That widespread resistance, Keith Reeves...

Spiral of Cynicism

Joseph N. Cappella , Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Why do some citizens vote while others do not?Why does less than half of the American voting public routinely show up at the polls?Why is it that the vast majority of political issues affecting our day-to-day lives fail to generate either public interest or...