Professor-Politician challenges common depictions of politics as a constant struggle of good-versus-evil and heroes-versus-villains, with "dirty politics" usually winning. The truth is that good government can prevail in Montgomery and Washington. Journalist Geni Certain recounts Glen Browder's civic adventures as one of Alabama's prominent scholars and public officials over the past half-century. This is a story of practical and reform politics told by someone specially positioned to comment on the Alabama government and American democracy. Certain interviewed knowledgeable people, researched public records, and scoured the Browder Collection at Jacksonville State University for this intriguing and inspiring biography of a civic-oriented leader.

Professor-Politician challenges common depictions of politics as a constant struggle of good-versus-evil and heroes-versus-villains, with “dirty politics” usually winning. The truth is that good government can prevail in Montgomery and Washington. Journalist Geni Certain recounts Glen Browder’s civic adventures as one of Alabama’s prominent scholars and public officials over the past half-century. This is a story of practical and reform politics told by someone specially positioned to comment on Alabama government and American democracy. Certain interviewed knowledgeable people, researched public records, and scoured the Browder Collection at Jacksonville State University for this intriguing and inspiring biography of a civic-oriented leader.

How American westward expansion was governmentally engineered to promote the formation of a white settler nation Westward expansion of the United States is most conventionally remembered for rugged individualism, geographic isolationism, and a fair amount of luck. Yet the establishment of the forty-eight contiguous states was hardly a foregone conclusion, and the federal government played a critical role in its success. This book examines the politics of American expansion, showing how the government's regulation of population movements on the frontier, both settlement and removal, advanced national aspirations for empire and promoted the formation of a white settler nation. Building an American Empire details how a government that struggled to exercise plenary power used federal land policy to assert authority over the direction of expansion by engineering the pace and patterns of settlement and to control the movement of populations. At times, the government mobilized populations for compact settlement in strategically important areas of the frontier; at other times, policies were designed to actively restrain settler populations in order to prevent violence, international conflict, and breakaway states. Paul Frymer examines how these settlement patterns helped construct a dominant racial vision for America by incentivizing and directing the movement of white European settlers onto indigenous and diversely populated lands. These efforts were hardly seamless, and Frymer pays close attention to the failures as well, from the lack of further expansion into Latin America to the defeat of the black colonization movement. Building an American Empire reveals the lasting and profound significance government settlement policies had for the nation, both for establishing America as dominantly white and for restricting broader aspirations for empire in lands that could not be so racially engineered.

Throughout American history, some social movements, such as organized labor and the Christian Right, have forged influential alliances with political parties, while others, such as the antiwar movement, have not. When Movements Anchor Parties provides a bold new interpretation of American electoral history by examining five prominent movements and their relationships with political parties. Taking readers from the Civil War to today, Daniel Schlozman shows how two powerful alliances—those of organized labor and Democrats in the New Deal, and the Christian Right and Republicans since the 1970s—have defined the basic priorities of parties and shaped the available alternatives in national politics. He traces how they diverged sharply from three other major social movements that failed to establish a place inside political parties—the abolitionists following the Civil War, the Populists in the 1890s, and the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond a view of political parties simply as collections of groups vying for preeminence, Schlozman explores how would-be influencers gain influence—or do not. He reveals how movements join with parties only when the alliance is beneficial to parties, and how alliance exacts a high price from movements. Their sweeping visions give way to compromise and partial victories. Yet as Schlozman demonstrates, it is well worth paying the price as movements reorient parties' priorities. Timely and compelling, When Movements Anchor Parties demonstrates how alliances have transformed American political parties.

This publication is a collection of Ron Rubin’s published writings, amassed over his decades-long career. With articles ranging from those written for a college newspaper during his years as an undergraduate to more recent pieces published on the national level, this anthology provides an extensive look at the contemporary issues that have influenced the Jewish community. The author addresses a wide variety of topics including American Jewish political and social behavior, Israel among the nations, Soviet anti-Semitism, and political and public personalities who have had an impact on, or been affected by, the Jewish world.

Critiquing the true impact of hip-hop culture on politics.

Why is it so difficult to design and implement fundamental educational reform in large city schools in spite of broad popular support for change? How does the politics of race complicate the challenge of building and sustaining coalitions for improving urban schools? These questions have provoked a great deal of theorizing, but this is the first book to explore the issues on the basis of extensive, solid evidence. Here a group of political scientists examines education reform in Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., where local governmental authority has passed from white to black leaders. The authors show that black administrative control of big-city school systems has not translated into broad improvements in the quality of public education within black-led cities. Race can be crucial, however, in fostering the broad civic involvement perhaps most needed for school reform. In each city examined, reform efforts often arise but collapse, partly because leaders are unable to craft effective political coalitions that would commit community resources to a concrete policy agenda. What undermines the leadership, according to the authors, is the complex role of race in each city. First, public authority does not guarantee access to private resources, usually still controlled by white economic elites. Second, local authorities must interact with external actors, at the state and national levels, who remain predominantly white. Finally, issues of race divide the African American community itself and often place limits on what leaders can and cannot do. Filled with insightful explanations together with recommendations for policy change, this book is an important component of the debate now being waged among researchers, education activists, and the community as a whole.