The Imprint of Congress

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Policy History ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Legislative Body ◽  
Governing System ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Constitutional System ◽  
The U.S

What kind of job has America's routinely disparaged legislative body actually done? This book provides an insightful historical analysis of the U.S. Congress's performance from the late eighteenth century to today, exploring what its lasting imprint has been on American politics and society. The book offers a unique perspective on the evaluation of the American constitutional system. It suggests that Congress has balanced the presidency in a surprising variety of ways, and in doing so, it has contributed to the legitimacy of a governing system faced by an often fractious public. The book will be of interest for anyone interested in American political and policy history.

The Center Holds

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-123
Author(s):  
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The U.S

Over the course of the mid-nineteenth-century wars, the dominant powers (Britain, the U.S., Russia, and Qing China) came to espouse a surprisingly similar orientation toward legitimate statehood. While the liberation wars of the late-eighteenth century witnessed the creation of many new republics, by midcentury those republics and the empires that had survived pursued greater central authority. Although sometimes at odds with liberal rhetoric of the age (especially among reforming Republicans in the U.S.), these actors recognized the importance of coercion of violence to maintaining their states. The victory of centralized authority, whether it took the form of empires or republics, reinforced the power of established states and of organized, aggressive defense of that order.

Congress as a Handler of Challenges: The Historical Record

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
American System ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
New Nation ◽  
The U.S

Can the U.S. Congress address major challenges? Can Congress govern? Questions like these keep getting asked. This article addresses them by consulting the record since 1789. Given the separation-of-powers structure of the American system, such questions cannot be addressed directly. They need to be deconstructed. The presidency needs to enter the discussion, too. Also, what is a major challenge? To identify such challenges, and to supply a way of seeing how and in what respects Congress, as well as in a background frame the U.S. system more broadly, has performed, I draw on comparative analysis. How has the United States participated in thirteen major “impulses” that have invested a comparable set of nations at various times since the late eighteenth century? These challenges range from launching a new nation through building a welfare state through dealing with climate change and debt/deficit problems today.

Western Ukraine in the Interwar period

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
John-Paul Himka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Carpathian Mountains ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

The concept of “Western Ukraine” is not entirely a static one. As a valid unit of historical analysis it first appears in the late eighteenth century, when the Habsburg monarchy added Galicia (1772) and Bukovina (occupied 1774, annexed 1787) to its collection of territories; already part of the collection was the Ukrainian-inhabited region of Transcarpathia (depending on how one counts, it had been Habsburg since as early as 1526 or as late as the early eighteenth century). Of course, one can also read back certain features unifying Western Ukraine prior to the 1770s, such as the culturally formative influence on all three regions of the medieval Rus’ principality, later kingdom, of Galicia and Volhynia, as well as the presence of the Carpathian mountains, which was much more than a matter of mere geology (hence the Russophiles’ preferred name for Western Ukraine—Carpathian Rus'). Still, in the centuries prior to their incorporation into the Habsburg monarchy, the three regions had experienced such disparate political histories—Galicia as part of Poland, Bukovina of Moldavia, and Transcarpathia of Hungary—that there is little validity in treating them then as a historical unit.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Stow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The U.S

This introductory chapter explores the transformation in Jewish life that failed to occur in late eighteenth-century Rome. The French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution had established that Jews were citizens with full and equal legal rights. But in Rome, the capital of the then Papal State, no such proclamation occurred. Although Rome's Jews possessed rights in civil law, the discrimination determined by canon law was great. Roman Jews were forced to live in the ghetto decreed by Pope Paul IV in 1555, as part of a vigorous conversionary drive. People were taken to an institution known as the House of Converts, where they were held for periods of time, and most eventually converted. However, some did not, most notably Anna del Monte, who not only remained a Jew but also left a diary recounting her thirteen days in the Catecumeni, as Rome's Jews called the place.

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