Books in the Studies in Postwar American Political Development series

This book argues that political-economic features of the U.S. commercial media system have generated news coverage that favors neoliberal viewpoints during pivotal domestic policy debates since the early 1980s. It also demonstrates that this coverage can shape public opinion to support policies that exacerbate economic and political inequality.

In The Cities on the Hill, Thomas Ogorzalek argues that the answer lies not in the sectional divide, but in the urban-rural divide. To that end, he focuses on how the latter divide shaped the trajectory and geography of partisan politics in America, and locates its roots in the New Deal.

What explains the progress that American women have made since the 1960s? While many point to the feminist movement, this book argues that higher education policies paved the way for women to surpass men as the recipients of bachelor's degrees and helped them move toward full, first-class citizenship.

Today, politics is big business. Most of the $6 billion spent during the 2012 campaign went to highly paid political consultants. In Building a Business of Politics, a lively history of political consulting, Adam Sheingate examines the origins of the industry and its consequences for American democracy.

The Business of America is Lobbying provides a fascinating and detailed picture of what corporations do in Washington, why they do it, and why it matters. Lively and engaging, rigorous and nuanced, The Business of America is Lobbying will change how we think about lobbying - and how we might reform it.

Good government reforms instituted in the 1970s to thwart economically unsound legislation now cause chaos in America's policymaking process by incentivizing the development of flawed, even blatantly unworkable, policies. The CLASS Act and its role in passing President Obama's landmark health reform law illustrate the pathologies of the current system.

In the 1970s, a group of lawyers from California and the Rockies declared war on a regulatory state they considered too big, too complicated, and a threat to both property rights and capitalism.

The amount, issue content, and ideological direction of policy depend on the joint actions of policy entrepreneurs, especially presidents, legislators, and interest groups. This makes policymaking in each issue area and time period distinct and undermines unchanging models of policymaking.

In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles.

In The Delegated Welfare State, the first book in the Oxford Studies in Postwar American Political Development series, Andrea Campbell and Kimberly Morgan use the exampke of Medicare to tackle the federal government's increasing propensity in recent times to outsource governmental functions to the private sector.

Revision of author's disseration (doctoral - Brandeis University, 2010), issued under title: The politics of judicial retrenchment.

In The Allure of Order, Mehta recounts a century of attempts at revitalizing public education, and puts forward a truly new agenda to reach this elusive goal. Over and over again, outsiders have been fascinated by the promise of scientific management and have attempted to apply principles of rational administration from above.

The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike. But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's conservatives who are "e;Republicans in Name Only."e;Writing with passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation, Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney--father of Mitt Romney--conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to "e;listen to the voices from the ghetto."e; Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched history that reorients our understanding of our political past and present. Today, following the Republicans' loss of the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, moderates remain marginalized in the GOP and progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire consequences for all Americans. He has added a new afterword that considers the fallout from the 2012 elections.

On tax day, April 15, 2010, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets with signs demanding lower taxes on the richest one percent. But why? Rich people have plenty of political influence. Why would they need to publicly demonstrate for lower taxes-and why would anyone who wasn't rich join the protest on their behalf?Isaac William Martin shows that such protests long predate the Tea Party of our own time. Ever since the Sixteenth Amendment introduced a Federal income tax in 1913, rich Americans have protested new public policies that they thought would threaten their wealth. But while historians have taught us much about the conservative social movements that reshaped the Republican Party in the late 20th century, the story of protest movements explicitly designed to benefit the wealthy is still little known. Rich People's Movements is the first book to tell that story, tracking a series of protest movements that arose to challenge an expanding welfare state and progressive taxation. Drawing from a mix of anti-progressive ideas, the leaders of these movements organized scattered local constituencies into effective campaigns in the 1920s, 1950s, 1980s, and our own era. Martin shows how protesters on behalf of the rich appropriated the tactics used by the Left-from the Populists and Progressives of the early twentieth century to the feminists and anti-war activists of the 1950s and 1960s. He explores why the wealthy sometimes cut secret back-room deals and at other times protest in the public square. He also explains why people who are not rich have so often rallied to their cause. For anyone wanting to understand the anti-tax activists of today, including notable defenders of wealth inequality like the Koch brothers, the historical account in Rich People's Movements is an essential guide.

Now in paperback and updated with a new preface, Ideas with Consequences shows how the Federalist Society serves as the hub of a complex circulatory system and how the ideas it generates have become the lifeblood of the conservative movement.

Politics at Work documents how and why U.S. employers are increasingly recruiting their workers into politics-and what such recruitment means for American democracy and public policy.

Creating a truly national school system has, over the past fifty years, reconfigured local expectations and practices in American public education. Through a 50-year examination of Alexandria, Virginia, this book reveals how the 'education state' is nonetheless shaped by the commitments of local political regimes and their leaders and constituents.

Engines of Change, which is in the Oxford Studies in Postwar American Political Development series, provides the first full account of the role of national intra-party "factions" in American politics. Drawing from the last 150 years of American political history, DiSalvo explains how factions have shaped the parties' ideologies, impacted presidential nominations, structured patterns of presidential governance, and impacted the development of the Americanstate.

Comparing judicialized and bureaucratized injury compensation policies, Jeb Barnes and Thomas F. Burke conclude that litigation divides interests between victims and villains and winners and losers, and so creates a comparatively fractious, chaotic politics.

Our collective impressions of civil rights struggles are largely based on salient court decisions that have become mired in hostile opposition efforts. This book explores two important civil rights struggles-same-sex parenting and group home advocacy-where advocates reduced the incidence and influence of backlash by crafting low-visibility advocacy strategies.