Search results

Social science biases and collective knowledge -- Reform and progress -- The quiet resolution of the science wars -- Me-search all the way down -- American academia: the main setting for social science -- Opportunities and constraints of the disciplines -- Multiple levels of analysis and time scales -- All history and policy -- Motivations and constraints of a practical orientation -- popularization and consilience.

'How Social Science Got Better' documents and explains recent transformations, crediting both internal and public critics for strengthening social science. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on trends in social science research and scholarly views, it demonstrates that social science has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective.

"Policy change is not predictable from election results or public opinion. The amount, issue content, and ideological direction of policy depend on the joint actions of policy entrepreneurs, especially presidents, legislators, and interest groups. This makes policymaking in each issue area and time period distinct and undermines unchanging models of policymaking"--

The project relies on a content analysis of 268 books and articles on the history of 14 different major policy areas over 60 years. The histories collectively uncover the 790 most significant policy enactments of the federal government and credit 1,306 specific actors for their role in policy change, along with more than 60 circumstantial factors. The book compiles and integrates these findings to assess the factors that drive policymaking.

Reflecting cutting edge scholarship but written for undergraduates, New Directions in Interest Group Politics will help students think critically about influence in the American political system. There is no shortage of fear about ""the special interests"" in American political debate, but reliable information about what interest groups do, who they represent, and how they influence government is often lacking. This volume, comprised of original essays by leading scholars, is designed to summarize and explain contemporary research that helps address popular questions and concerns, ma.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups that act as discrete voting blocs for candidates, constituencies for group leaders, and demanders of particular policy commitments. Since the 1960s, the evolution in the relative internal influence of Democratic Party constituencies has reduced the size of the party's conservative wing and expanded its policy agenda - but no organized liberal movement has emerged to dominate its internal organization or succeed in shifting its policies toward leftist positions. The Republican Party, in contrast, serves as the vehicle of a conservative ideological movement that has succeeded in fusing its intellectual strands, marketing its broad critiques of government, building a supportive organizational network, and moving the party toward the policy commitments of its right wing.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups that act as discrete voting blocs for candidates, constituencies for group leaders, and demanders of particular policy commitments. Since the 1960s, the evolution in the relative internal influence of Democratic Party constituencies has reduced the size of the party's conservative wing and expanded its policy agenda - but no organized liberal movement has emerged to dominate its internal organization or succeed in shifting its policies toward leftist positions. The Republican Party, in contrast, serves as the vehicle of a conservative ideological movement that has succeeded in fusing its intellectual strands, marketing its broad critiques of government, building a supportive organizational network, and moving the party toward the policy commitments of its right wing

The book explains why certain public groups, such as Jews, lawyers, and gun-owners, develop substantially more representation than others and why certain organizations, like the National Rifle Association, become the presumed spokespersons for these groups across media and all branches of government.

We argue that citizens distinguish the tone of a campaign from the quality of information that it provides and that evaluations on each dimension respond differently to positive and negative political advertising. We test these claims using survey and advertising data from the 2000 presidential campaign and two 1998 gubernatorial races. In each race, citizens separate judgments about the tone of a campaign from judgments about the quality of information they have received. Furthermore, negative campaigning affects the former, but not the latter, set of evaluations. These results have implications for the debate over the impact of negative advertising and for how citizens perceive campaigns as political processes. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

We argue that citizens distinguish the tone of a campaign from the quality of information that it provides and that evaluations on each dimension respond differently to positive and negative political advertising. We test these claims using survey and advertising data from the 2000 presidential campaign and two 1998 gubernatorial races. In each race, citizens separate judgments about the tone of a campaign from judgments about the quality of information they have received. Furthermore, negative campaigning affects the former, but not the latter, set of evaluations. These results have implications for the debate over the impact of negative advertising and for how citizens perceive campaigns as political processes.