Nebraska is famous as the only state with a unicameral legislature, but the government of Nebraska is unique in other ways as well. This first comprehensive handbook is meant to help Nebraskans understand the government of their state; at the same time, it is addressed to political scientists with an interest in state and local government and to people in other states who are considering the adoption of Nebraska's practices. The book sets out not only to describe but also to assess the government of Nebraska in operation and to explain the anomaly of an innovative government in an apparently conservative political setting. The topics discussed include the state constitution, the governor and other elected officials, the legislature, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the citizens' political attitudes and behavior, trends in state expenditures and revenue, local government, and intergovernmental relations.

Published a decade and a half after the late Diane D. Blair s influential book Arkansas Politics and Government, this freshly revised edition builds on her work, which highlighted both the decades of failure by Arkansas's government to live up to the state s motto of Regnat Populus ( The People Rule ) and the positive trends of democracy. Since the first edition, Arkansas has seen the two-term U.S. presidency of a native son, the retirement of players who defined the state s politics in the modern era, the further realignment of the state s electorate, the passage of the nation s most extreme legislative term limits, the complete overhaul of the state s court system, and the declaration that the state s public education system was unconstitutionally inadequate and inequitable. While maintaining the basic structure of Blair s original work with its focus on important historical patterns and the ways in which the past continues to shape the present, the second edition details the causes and consequences of recent changes in Arkansas and asks whether they are profound and permanent or merely transitory variations in symbol and style. Jay Barth argues that although Arkansas currently expresses a healthier representative democracy than throughout most of its history, its political and governmental entities are still sharply limited as effective instruments of the people.