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.

This second edition of the authoritative Readings in Arkansas Politics and Government brings together in one volume some of the best available scholarly research on a wide range of issues of interest to students of Arkansas politics and government. The twenty-one chapters are arranged in three sections covering both historical and contemporary issues—ranging from the state’s socioeconomic and political context to the workings of its policymaking institutions and key policy concerns in the modern political landscape. Topics covered include racial tension and integration, social values, political corruption, public education, obstacles facing the state’s effort to reform welfare, and others. Ideal for use in introductory and advanced undergraduate courses, the book will also appeal to lawmakers, public administrators, journalists, and others interested in how politics and government work in Arkansas.

Traces how the Republican Party in the South after Reconstruction transformed from a biracial organization to a mostly all-white one.

Beginning with the defeat of Governor Francis Cherry by Orval Faubus, the son of a hillbilly socialist, at the end of the Joseph McCarthy era, Dumas traces the development of a modern political cast that eventually produced Arkansas's first president of the United States--also exploring what brought about the second-ever impeachment of an American president. Journalist Ernest Dumas has written about politics for more than sixty years, since 1954, the year that the stolid Cherry fell to Faubus. The book is also a political memoir that describes not only Dumas's education in the ways of politicians but also the politicians' own education and miseducation in how to win voters and then how to get things done. Through the eyes of a journalist, this book collects the mostly untold stories, often deeply personal, that reveal the inner struggles and sometimes the tribulations of the state's leaders--Cherry, Faubus, Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, John McClellan, J. William Fulbright, Bill Clinton, Jim Guy Tucker, and others.

Political Magic is the story of how Bill Clinton's lifelong friends--the Arkansas Travelers--helped the governor of a small state become president of the United States. This engaging and amusing story tells how the Travelers personalized politics and made a difference in Bill Clinton's election and also went to work for Hillary Clinton in her 2008 bid for president.

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.