Mandates and Policy Outputs: U.S. Party Platforms and Federal Expenditures

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Budge ◽  
Richard I. Hofferbert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
Subject Categories ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Federal Expenditure ◽  
The U.S

Political parties in the United States are usually regarded as too weak and decentralized, too much the prey of office-seeking politicians and special interests, to function effectively as programmatic., policy-effecting agents within the separation of powers. This has been taken as a serious flaw in the U.S. version of representative democracy, prompting cycles of proposed reform; criticisms of the existing set-up as a capitalistic sham; or alternative justifications of the system as pluralist rather than strictly party democracy. Our research challenges these assumptions by demonstrating the existence of strong links between postwar (1948–1985) election platforms and governmental outputs. Platforms' sentences, coded into one of 54 subject categories, are used as indicators of programmatic emphases and are related to corresponding federal expenditure shares. Resulting regression models demonstrate the full applicability of party mandate theory to the United States, and they operationalize its U.S. variants concretely.

scholarly journals International Law in the US Legal System

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
The U.S

International Law in the U.S. Legal System provides a wide-ranging overview of how international law intersects with the domestic legal system of the United States, and points out various unresolved issues and areas of controversy. Curtis Bradley explains the structure of the U.S. legal system and the various separation of powers and federalism considerations implicated by this structure, especially as these considerations relate to the conduct of foreign affairs. Against this backdrop, he covers all of the principal forms of international law: treaties, executive agreements, decisions and orders of international institutions, customary international law, and jus cogens norms. He also explores a number of issues that are implicated by the intersection of U.S. law and international law, such as treaty withdrawal, foreign sovereign immunity, international human rights litigation, war powers, extradition, and extraterritoriality. This book highlights recent decisions and events relating to the topic, including various actions taken during the Trump administration, while also taking into account relevant historical materials, including materials relating to the U.S. Constitutional Founding. Written by one of the most cited international law scholars in the United States, the book is a resource for lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and judges from around the world.

The United States of In-between

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Congressional Districts ◽  
The U.S

The author concludes her exploration of the U.S. borderlands with a meditation on the concept of borderlines. They don’t just delineate countries. Political parties are highly adept at redrawing the lines of congressional districts with a legal magic that—at the ballot box—brings about “miracles” on par with La Virgen de Guadalupe (only nowhere near as hopeful). For a borderline is an injustice. It is a time-held method of partitioning the planet for the benefit of the elite. Fortunately, there are legions of activists, artists, and faith keepers out there, petitioning on humanity’s behalf, but they need serious reinforcement. For the greatest lesson in nepantla is that many borderlines needn’t exist at all.

1. The context of American elections and political parties

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Sandy Maisel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Federal System ◽  
College System ◽  
American Elections ◽  
Democracy In America

‘The context of American elections and political parties’ explains the framework under which elections are run in the United States. This is laid out in the Constitution, which outlines the basic tenets of democracy in America. The most important aspects of that framework are the separation of powers, with a single executive separate from and elected separately from the legislature, and the federal system with residual powers left to the states. The electoral college system, unique to the United States, is a result of the initial decisions made at the time of the framing of the Constitution.

The Dynamics of Structural Realignment

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 775-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Elaine Macdonald ◽  
George Rabinowitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Congressional Behavior ◽  
The U.S

Governments render decisions on how resources and values are allocated in a society. In the United States, Congress is the institution in which most of the key allocating decisions are made. To the extent the U.S. political system is integrated, the coalitions that form around the issues debated in Congress should be reflected in the coalitions that support presidential candidates and those that support the major political parties. We formulate a spatial theory of political change in which new ideological cleavages appear in congressional behavior and presidential elections and gradually reorganize the mass party base. The theory leads us explicitly to consider the question of dealignment and to specify conditions under which the parties will lose support from voters.

scholarly journals Women's Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-55
Author(s):  
Kira Sanbonmatsu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women And Politics ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Elective Office ◽  
Period Data ◽  
The U.S

Women's elective office-holding stands at an all-time high in the United States. Yet women are far from parity. This underrepresentation is surprising given that more women than men vote. Gender–as a feature of both society and politics–has always worked alongside race to determine which groups possess the formal and informal resources and opportunities critical for winning elective office. But how gender connects to office-holding is not fixed; instead, women's access to office has been shaped by changes in law, policy, and social roles, as well as the activities and strategies of social movement actors, political parties, and organizations. In the contemporary period, data from the Center for American Women and Politics reveal that while women are a growing share of Democratic officeholders, they are a declining share of Republican officeholders. Thus, in an era of heightened partisan polarization, women's situation as candidates increasingly depends on party.

WHITENESS, MISCEGENATION, AND ANTI-COLONIAL REBELLION IN RUDYARD KIPLING’S THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 733-751
Author(s):  
Sharleen Mondal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Brute Force ◽  
Military Experience ◽  
Chester County ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
The U.S

In 1827, Josiah Harlan, a Quaker from Chester County, Pennsylvania, set up camp just south of the border of the Punjab region of India. He rummaged up a ragtag army of Muslim, Hindu, Afghan, and Akali Sikh mercenaries, and with Old Glory flying above him, he and his army started their journey, along with a caravan of saddle horses, camels, carriage cattle, and a royal mace bearer to announce the coming of the would-be American king. With Alexander the Great's march through the same lands twenty-one centuries earlier very much on his mind (Macintyre 40), Harlan set out – under the auspices of restoring the exiled Afghan monarch Shah Shujah to the throne – determined to win power and fame for himself. Disguising himself as a Muslim holy man and at times using brute force, he crossed the Afghan border and ultimately became the Prince of Ghor under secret treaty (227). By 1839, loyal not to Shah Shujah but to his enemy, Dost Mohammed Khan, Harlan returned to his Kabul home to find that the British had seized his property “by right of conquest” (252). Harlan left Kabul, fully intending to return and reclaim his princely title. Once back in the United States, Harlan proposed various schemes to the U.S. government (for which he would be the emissary, of course), including an Afghanistan-U.S. camel trade and grape trade, neither of which succeeded. Harlan penned a memoir that the British lambasted – unsurprisingly, for it sharply criticized the British presence in Afghanistan. In 1862, at the age of sixty-two, with no formal rank or U.S. military experience, Harlan became the colonel of Harlan's Light Cavalry, fighting on the side of the Union in the Civil War (Macintyre 275). Too weak to perform his duties, he left the army the same year, wandered the U.S. aimlessly, and died in 1871, buried “after a funeral without mourners” (286).

Party Responsibility in Britain and the United States

1967 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Jorgen S. Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Institutional Differences ◽  
British Experience ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S

Political parties in representative democracies have, as two of their most significant functions, to facilitate popular participation in the decision-making process and to implement, through control of governmental organs, those policies which are popularly favoured. Judged by these criteria, American parties are dysfunctional—so one critical school argues. American parties, they charge, are responsible neither to their members nor voters and are so organized and operated that they fail to govern effectively. When, in the early 1950s, this case against American parties had its greatest acceptance in the discipline, a number of critics contrasted American parties unfavourably with British parties. As an earlier generation of political scientists had urged Americans to adopt British institutions of government, so the critics of American parties favoured reforms which they thought were characteristic of British parties. If American parties became more like British parties, they argued, those parties would be more responsible and effective. Defenders of American parties refuted the critics' diagnosis and prescription by emphasizing the many environmental and institutional differences between Britain and the United States. British experience simply was not applicable in the U.S., they maintained. As study of British parties progressed an even more devastating rejoinder to critics of American parties emerged. Various findings began to suggest that although British parties obviously were much more cohesive in the legislature than were American parties, they were not nearly as responsible as the critics had assumed.

scholarly journals USAPI USDM: Operational Drought Monitoring in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Richard R. Heim ◽  
Charles Guard ◽  
Mark A. Lander ◽  
Brandon Bukunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Data Processing ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drought Monitoring ◽  
Unique Challenge ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Precipitation Thresholds

The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) has been the de facto operational drought monitoring product for the United States for the last two decades. For most of this time, its coverage included the 50 States and Puerto Rico. In 2019, coverage was expanded to include the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). The geography, geomorphology, and climatology of the USAPI significantly differ from those of the mainland U.S. (CONUS) and they posed a unique challenge for the USDM authors. Following National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) priorities for development of products in collaboration with users in what is termed “use-inspired science”, NOAA agencies conducted several workshops to identify data and impacts relevant for, and develop drought monitoring criteria appropriate for, the USAPI. Once the criteria were identified and data processing systems were set up, the USAPI were included as part of the operational USDM drought monitoring beginning in March 2019. The drought monitoring criteria consist of weekly and monthly minimum precipitation thresholds for triggering drought, and they follow the USDM “convergence of evidence” methodology for determining the severity level (Dx) of the drought spell.

2 Treaties

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

This chapter considers the status of treaties within the U.S. legal system. The focus is on international agreements concluded through the senatorial advice and consent process specified in Article II of the Constitution. The chapter describes that process, including the Senate’s ability to condition its consent through reservations and other qualifications. It also discusses the role of treaties as supreme law of the land, including the situations in which treaties will be considered “self-executing” and “non–self-executing,” as well as the later-in-time relationship of treaties to federal statutes. The chapter also discusses the relationship of treaties to constitutional limitations concerning the separation of powers and federalism, including the implications of the Supreme Court’s 1920 decision in Missouri v. Holland. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how the United States terminates treaties.

2 Treaties

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

This chapter considers the status of treaties within the U.S. legal system. The focus is on international agreements concluded through the senatorial advice-and-consent process specified in Article II of the Constitution. The chapter describes that process, including the Senate’s ability to condition its consent through reservations and other qualifications. It also discusses the role of treaties as supreme law of the land, including the situations in which treaties will be considered “self-executing” and “non–self-executing,” as well as the later-in-time relationship of treaties to federal statutes. The chapter also discusses the relationship of treaties to constitutional limitations concerning the separation of powers and federalism, including the implications of the Supreme Court’s 1920 decision in Missouri v. Holland. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the president’s constitutional authority to withdraw the United States from treaties.

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