[PDF] The Idea Of Presidential Representation eBook

Author : Jeremy D. Bailey
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 34,24 MB
Release : 2019-07-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0700628150

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Does the president represent the entire nation? Or does he speak for core partisans and narrow constituencies? The Federalist Papers, the electoral college, history and circumstance from the founders’ time to our own: all factor in theories of presidential representation, again and again lending themselves to different interpretations. This back-and-forth, Jeremy D. Bailey contends, is a critical feature, not a flaw, in American politics. Arriving at a moment of great debate over the nature and exercise of executive power, Bailey’s history offers an invaluable, remarkably relevant analysis of the intellectual underpinnings, political usefulness, and practical merits of contending ideas of presidential representation over time. Among scholars, a common reading of political history holds that the founders, aware of the dangers of demagogy, created a singularly powerful presidency that would serve as a check on the people’s representatives in Congress; then, this theory goes, the Progressives, impatient with such a counter-majoritarian approach, reformed the presidency to better reflect the people’s will—and, they reasoned, advance the public good. The Idea of Presidential Representation challenges this consensus, offering a more nuanced view of the shifting relationship between the president and the American people. Implicit in this pattern, Bailey tells us, is another equivocal relationship—that between law and public opinion as the basis for executive power in republican constitutionalism. Tracing these contending ideas from the framers time to our own, his book provides both a history and a much-needed context for our understanding of presidential representation in light of the modern presidency. In The Idea of Presidential Representation Bailey gives us a new and useful sense of an enduring and necessary feature of our politics.

Author : B. Dan Wood
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 26,33 MB
Release : 2009-06-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1139477323

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The Myth of Presidential Representation evaluates the nature of American presidential representation, examining the strongly embedded belief – held by the country's founders, as well as current American political culture and social science theory – that presidents should represent the community at large. Citizens expect presidents to reflect prevailing public sentiment and compromise in the national interest. Social scientists express these same ideas through theoretical models depicting presidential behavior as driven by centrism and issue stances adhering to the median voter. Yet partisanship seems to be a dominant theme of modern American politics. Do American presidents adhere to a centrist model of representation as envisioned by the founders? Or, do presidents typically attempt to lead the public toward their own more partisan positions? If so, how successful are they? What are the consequences of centrist versus partisan presidential representation? The Myth of Presidential Representation addresses these questions both theoretically and empirically.

Author : John A. Dearborn
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 33,83 MB
Release : 2021-09-10
Category : History
ISBN : 022679783X

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"The extraordinary nature of the Trump presidency has spawned a resurgence in the study of the presidency and a rising concern about the power of the office. In Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation, John Dearborn explores the development of the idea of the representative presidency, that the president alone is elected by a national constituency, and thus the only part of government who can represent the nation against the parochial concerns of members of Congress, and its relationship to the growth of presidential power in the 20th century. Dearborn asks why Congress conceded so much power to the Chief Executive, with the support of particularly conservative members of the Supreme Court. He discusses the debates between Congress and the Executive and the arguments offered by politicians, scholars, and members of the judiciary about the role of the president in the American state. He asks why so many bought into the idea of the representative, and hence, strong presidency despite unpopular wars, failed foreign policies, and parochial actions that favor only the president's supporters. This is a book about the power of ideas in the development of the American state"--

Author : Gary L. Gregg
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 22,85 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780847683772

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For two centuries, American presidents have considered themselves to be representatives of the American people. In this detailed study of presidential representation, Gary Gregg explores the theory, history, and consequences of presidents acting as representatives in the American political system. Gregg explores questions such as what it means to be a representative, how the Founding Fathers understood the place of the presidency in the Republic established by the Constitution, and the effects a representational presidency has on deliberative democracy. This important examination of the presidency's place in our political system is essential reading for those interested in American political theory, constitutional studies, and American history.

Author : Gregg, II, Gary L.
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 19,10 MB
Release : 1996-11-21
Category : Law
ISBN : 1461645298

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For two centuries, American presidents have considered themselves to be representatives of the American people. In this detailed study of presidential representation, Gary Gregg explores the theory, history, and consequences of presidents acting as representatives in the American political system. Gregg explores questions such as what it means to be a representative, how the Founding Fathers understood the place of the presidency in the Republic established by the Constitution, and the effects a representational presidency has on deliberative democracy. This important examination of the presidency's place in our political system is essential reading for those interested in American political theory, constitutional studies, and American history.

Author : Brian F. Crisp
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 20,12 MB
Release : 2020-03-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1108478018

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A comparative analysis of why democratic institutions often produce dissonance between citizens' preferences and public policy in separation-of-powers regimes.

Author : Edmund S. Morgan
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 36,96 MB
Release : 1989-09-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0393347494

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"The best explanation that I have seen for our distinctive combination of faith, hope and naiveté concerning the governmental process." —Michael Kamman, Washington Post This book makes the provocative case here that America has remained politically stable because the Founding Fathers invented the idea of the American people and used it to impose a government on the new nation. His landmark analysis shows how the notion of popular sovereignty—the unexpected offspring of an older, equally fictional notion, the "divine right of kings"—has worked in our history and remains a political force today.

Author : Alexander S. Belenky
Publisher : Springer
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 17,22 MB
Release : 2016-11-15
Category : Law
ISBN : 3319446967

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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book addresses the peculiarities of the current presidential election system not yet addressed in other publications. It argues that any rules for electing a President that may have a chance to replace the current ones should provide an equal representation of states as equal members of the Union, and of the nation as a whole. This book analyzes the National Popular Vote plan and shows that this plan may violate the Supreme Court decisions on the equality of votes cast in statewide popular elections held to choose state electors. That is, the National Popular Vote plan may violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The book proposes a new election system in which the will of the states and the will of the nation as a whole are determined by direct popular elections for President and Vice President in the 50 states and in D.C. This system a) would elect President a candidate who is the choice of both the nation as a whole and of the states as equal members of the Union, b) would let the current system elect a President only if the nation as a whole and the states as equal members of the Union fail to agree on a common candidate, and c) would encourage the candidates to campaign nationwide. The second edition has been updated to include a proposal on how to make established non-major party presidential candidates and independent candidates welcome participants in national televised presidential debates with the major-party candidates.

Author : Robert M. Alexander
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 36,12 MB
Release : 2019-04-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190939443

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Nearly 800 proposals have been made to amend or abolish the Electoral College, and its divisiveness raises many questions. What role do electors play in American democracy? How should they vote? Should the Electoral College exist at all? Much confusion surrounds this institution, in large part because of how the original Electoral College varies from its contemporary counterpart, the evolved Electoral College. This book helps readers to understand the distinction and how we got where we are today. Focusing on the controversial 2016 election, in which Trump received nearly three million fewer popular votes than Clinton, Representation and the Electoral College shows how the Electoral College acts on behalf of the American public and alters election outcomes. In exploring the origin, development, and practice of the Electoral College, this study also presents the most extensive analysis of presidential electors to date.

Author : Alexander Keyssar
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 545 pages
File Size : 43,70 MB
Release : 2020-07-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 067497414X

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A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement