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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.473
EAN num: 9780205572489
ISBN number: 0205572480
Label: Longman
Manufacturer: Longman
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 640
Printing Date: August 03, 2007
Publishing house: Longman
Sale Popularity Level: 442800
Studio: Longman
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Product Description:
This highly affordable text provides an engaging, analytical approach to American Government that stresses the importance of elections in our political system today. Written in a strong narrative voice and brimming with student-relevant examples, America's New Democracy provides a focused and stimulating treatment of politics in the United States. Illustrating popular influence across the political system in defense of a central theme---that elections matter more in America's political system yesterday than they have in the past or do in other democracies---the book challenges the pessimistic view that government seldom listens to ordinary people. America's New Democracy encourages readers to see that in a system where votes are the main currency, both power and responsibility rest on the shoulders of all citizens.
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I am currently using this textbook for my introductory course in American politics. It is the second time I am using this text, and I will likely use it at least once more. So while I say that this book is uneven, it is still better than most other introductory texts out there.
The most attractive features of this text are its size and price. In a typical semester you can read this text along with two other short texts and still keep your students' book bill under $80. I'm using the book with the Dover edition of Lincoln's Great Speeches and the Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, and it all comes in around $70.
Several of the chapters are, moreover, either good or at least competent. The chapters on American political culture, parties and interest groups, and elections are quite good, and those on civil liberties and civil rights are at least satisfactory. In all these cases there are accurate discussions of basic concepts and facts, illustrated with appropriate and interesting examples. The chapter on parties and interests groups, for example, manages to pack a short history of American parties, the Framers' view of parties, pros and cons of strong parties, and a basic explanation of interest groups and interest group theory into a 29-page chapter. Throughout, the chapter is quite accessible for 100-level political science students. The chapter on American political culture, likely under the knowledgeable direction of Fiorina, is also good.
There are poor chapters as well, however. In the introductory chapter "Democracy in the United States" the authors make a half-hearted endeavor to suggest that there is something new, exciting, and positive about America's democracy. At times they seem to argue that ours is an age of American democratic revival--a thesis that quickly collapses due to lack of evidence ("plentiful elections" may have once been a populist demand, but do not mean better--or even more--democracy). The authors end the chapter with a promise to combat prevailing cynicism in the following chapters (a worthy goal), but they are forced to admit that many of the alleged ailments of the 'new democracy' may indeed be real.
In other chapters, errors sometimes pop up. They range from the relatively insignificant ('almost all of Reagan's vetoes were pocket vetoes'--wrong: exactly half were); to the common but inexcusable (confusing checks and balances with separation of powers); to the egregious (e.g. the Supreme Court "rarely invokes" the Tenth Amendment in federalism cases). Overall the rate of errors is somewhere between an average Wikipedia article and a good reference book on American politics. At any rate, the text is not a reliable enough source for facts. Aren't these the kinds of errors that are supposed to be gone by the first, to say nothing of the third edition?
This last error is a part of a separate problem in the book--the authors occasionally but suddenly reveal various axes that they proceed to grind for paragraphs at a time. The federalism chapter is a prime example. The chapter is not without some good basic instruction on the key federalism issues, and an explanation of the constitutional sources of federal authority (though they omit a good discusion of the constitutional basis of state government authority). However, before the text actually finishes explaining how the federal system works, it paints an ominous and hyperbolic picture of a federal government run wild. To be sure, some intelligent people have argued against, e.g. post-New Deal Commerce Clause jurisprudence and other expansions of federal authority. But this admittedly legitimate point of view is simply imposed on a 100-level student before he or she knows much of anything about federalism at all. The rhetorical means of this imposition, moreover, seems to be beneath the authors. For example, in a caption to a photo related to the Wickard v. Filburn case, the authors ask suggestively: "Do you think the framers envisioned a national government with such power?" (despite what Fiorina et al suggest with this question, my view is that in the case of Madison or even Marshall, the answer is yes, quite possibly). The case that the federal government is dangerously imposing, even against the will of the American people, is driven home by the marginally useful statistic that Americans say they trust their local governments more than the federal government. Nowhere is it mentioned that most of the purportedly breathtaking expansions of federal power in the post-New Deal era, including minimum wage and workweek regulations, child labor laws, environmental regulations, and food and health safety regulations, not to mention Social Security, are massively popular with the American people. If the federal system is seriously out of balance in favor of the national government, then the American people are largely okay with it. ... Read More
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