A comparative history of public and private sector unions from the Wagner Act of 1935 until today The 2011 battle in Wisconsin over public sector employees' collective bargaining rights occasioned the largest protests in the state since the Vietnam War. Protestors occupied the state capitol building for days and staged massive rallies in downtown Madison, receiving international news coverage. Despite an unprecedented effort to oppose Governor Scott Walker's bill, Act 10 was signed into law on March 11, 2011, stripping public sector employees of many of their collective bargaining rights and hobbling government unions in Wisconsin. By situating the events of 2011 within the larger history of public sector unionism, Alexis N. Walker demonstrates how the passage of Act 10 in Wisconsin was not an exceptional moment, but rather the culmination of events that began over eighty years ago with the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935. Although explicitly about government unions, Walker's book argues that the fates of public and private sector unions are inextricably linked. She contends that the exclusion of public sector employees from the foundation of private sector labor law, the Wagner Act, firmly situated private sector law at the national level, while relegating public sector employees' efforts to gain collective bargaining rights to the state and local levels. She shows how private sector unions benefited tremendously from the national-level protections in the law while, in contrast, public sector employees' efforts progressed slowly, were limited to union-friendly states, and the collective bargaining rights that they finally did obtain were highly unequal and vulnerable to retrenchment. As a result, public and private sector unions peaked at different times, preventing a large, unified labor movement. The legacy of the Wagner Act, according to Walker, is that labor remains geographically concentrated, divided by sector, and hobbled in its efforts to represent working Americans politically in today's era of rising economic inequality.

A Divided Union delves deep into ten pressing political challenges that former US Representatives Patrick Murphy (D) and David Jolly (R) have identified over their multiple terms in Congress and that continue to plague the American electorate today. In an introduction describing their unique paths to Congress, Murphy and Jolly focus in detail on key institutional barriers they faced in Washington in attempting to do the job voters elected them to do. They introduce us to geographic challenges, demographic change, a polarized media, gerrymandering, the role of money in politics, the structure of primary elections, and several other aspects of political life on Capitol Hill. The core of the book is original analysis by experts who tackle these topics in a manner relevant to both the seasoned political science student as well as the general reader. From the commercials we see on TV to the city council districts in which we live, these concerns shape every facet of our public lives and are distilled here in a careful synthesis of years of experience and research. Contributors include former federal elected officials, political science professors, members of the press, and scholars immersed in their fields of study. While other textbooks may examine similar issues, few have been edited by former members of the U.S. House who have walked the halls of Congress and directly experienced political dysfunction at so many levels – and are willing to address it. A Divided Union is appropriate for all political science students as well as the general public frustrated and alarmed by political gridlock.

This book explores the international leadership of the AFL-CIO, the UAW and UAW Local 600, the world's largest union local, and reveals that overall, working-class response to the Vietnam War mirrored that of the American society as a whole.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark E. Neely, Jr. vividly recounts the surprising story of political conflict in the North during the Civil War. Examining party conflict as viewed through the lens of the developing war, the excesses of party patronage, the impact of wartime elections, the highly partisan press, and the role of the loyal opposition, Neely deftly dismantles the argument long established in Civil War scholarship that the survival of the party system in the North contributed to its victory.

The US trade union movement finds itself on a global battlefield filled with landmines and littered with the bodies of various social movements and struggles. Candid, incisive, and accessible, this text is a critical examination of labour's crisis and a plan for a bold way forward into the 21st century.

Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the United States was embroiled in competitive inter-state politics. Although it did not directly involve itself in European affairs, the United States did engage regularly in dangerous struggles with other states and with colonial powers with territory on the American periphery. Aside from the War of 1812, the Oregon Crisis, and the Mexican War, other "near misses" included here—disputes of 1807 and 1809 with Britain, with Spain over East Florida in 1811–13, with Mexico in 1853, and disputes with Spain over Cuba in 1853–55 and with Mexico in 1858–1860—have been ignored in the democratic peace literature. Scott A. Silverstone finds these cases particularly useful for testing alternative explanations of constraints on armed conflict, because the United States backed down each time, allowing each crisis to pass short of its full potential for violence.Silverstone builds on a nascent theory of institutional constraints on the use of force presented in the Federalist Papers to explain American attitudes toward participation in conflicts. He argues that the federal character of American democracy that emerged from the founding and the large size of the new American republic provide the keys to understanding its decision-making processes. Divided Union shows how the institutional features of federal union and the diverse social, economic, and security interests within this geographically extended republic created political conditions that impeded the use of force by the United States before the Civil War.

Divided Together studies US and Soviet policy toward the United Nations during the first two decades of the Cold War. It sheds new light on a series of key episodes, beginning with the prehistory of the UN, an institution that aimed to keep the Cold War cold. Gaiduk employs previously secret Soviet files on UN policy, greatly expanding the evidentiary basis for studying the world organization. His analysis of Soviet and US tactics and behavior, covering a series of international controversies over security and crisis resolution, reveals how the rivals tried to use the UN to gain leverage over each other during the institution's critical early years.