American Government: Enduring Principles, Critical Choices - Softcover

Landy, Marc; Milkis, Sidney M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 110765002X ISBN 13: 9781107650022

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014

Synopsis

This book brings the study of American politics and government alive by presenting American politics as a dramatic narrative of conflict and change. It adopts an American political development approach in order to show how the past, present, and visions of the future interact to shape governing institutions and political forces. There is a strong emphasis on the role of ideas. Two key political development principles - path dependency and critical choice - are central to explaining how and why the past affects the present and future. Each chapter begins with an opening vignette that epitomizes the key themes of the chapter. The book's developmental approach does not diminish the attention it gives to current matters but it does provide a richer context for the appreciation and understanding of the whole gamut of attitudes, behaviors, organizational activities, and institutional relationships that comprise American political and governmental life.

About this title

Book Description:

This book takes an American political development approach to explicate the fundamentals of American politics and government. It prompts students to consider and understand how the past shapes the present and future of American politics and government. It goes beyond simply describing the essentials of American government and politics to show how those essentials came to be, why they persist, and why they change.

About the Author:

Marc Landy is Professor of Political Science at Boston College and the winner of the 2009 Boston College Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, Phi Beta Kappa Omicron of Massachusetts. He graduated with a BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Oberlin College and has a PhD in Government from Harvard University. He teaches courses on American political development, the American presidency and American federalism, and he is the former chair of the Political Science Department at Boston College. He also serves as Faculty Chair of the Boston College Irish Institute, coordinating the academic component of its executive programs on various topics in American government, most of which are sponsored by the US State Department. He and Sidney M. Milkis co-wrote Presidential Greatness (2000 ). He is also the author of The Environmental Protection Agency from Nixon to Clinton: Asking the Wrong Questions (1994) and the editor of Creating Competitive Markets: The Politics of Regulatory Reform (2007) and Seeking the Center: Politics and Policymaking at the New Century (2001).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 110765002X
• ISBN 13: 9781107650022
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 444