Suchergebnisse

This book collects a number of Martin Shefter's most important articles on political parties. They address three questions: Under what conditions will strong party organizations emerge? What influences the character of parties--in particular, their reliance on patronage? In what circumstances will the parties that formerly dominated politics in a nation or city come under attack? Shefter's work exemplifies the "new institutionalism" in political science, arguing that the reliance of parties on patronage is a function not so much of mass political culture as of their relationship with public bu

The fight over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court was another round in a struggle between Congress and the White House for control over the government of the United States. The intensity of the battle over the Thomas nomination reflected the Republican determination to counter the attacks upon presidential appointees that Democrats in Congress staged in the course of this struggle.The conflict over the Thomas confirmation became so fierce largely because it turned into a two-way battle. The Democratic attack upon Thomas was met by a Republican counterattack upon Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Republican senators evidently decided that the time had come to fight efforts by Democratic Congresses to curtail the power of Republican presidents.Battles between Congress and the presidency have become central to American politics in recent years. As the Republicans tightened their hold on the White House and the Democrats their grip on Congress, each party came to despair of gaining control of the opposition's bastion by defeating it in the electoral arena. Instead, each party sought to strengthen the institution it normally controls while weakening the one it regarded as beyond its reach electorally (Ginsberg and Shefter 1990).In particular, Congress attempted to reduce the president's ability to gain power from his control over the national security apparatus by sponsoring a number of legislative restrictions on the foreign policy powers of the president—the War Powers Act, the Arms Export Control Act, and the Foreign Commitments Resolution.

The movement of new social forces into the political system is one of the central themes in the study of American political development on both the national and local levels. For example, Samuel P. Huntington has characterized the realignment of 1800 as marking "the ascendancy of the agrarian Republicans over the mercantile Federalists, 1860 the ascendancy of the industrializing North over the plantation South, and 1932 the ascendancy of the urban working class over the previously dominant business groups." And the process of ethnic succession—the coming to power of Irish and German immigrants, followed by the Italians and Jews, and then by blacks and Hispanics—is a major focus of most analyses of the development of American urban politics.