Textbook focusing on American Government and the specificities of the American political system. In covering American government and politics, this text:
• introduces the intricacies of the Constitution, the complexities of federalism, the meanings of civil liberties, and the conflicts over civil rights;
• explains how people are socialized to politics, acquire and express opinions, and participate in political life;
• describes interest groups, political parties, and elections—the intermediaries that link people to government and politics;
• details the branches of government and how they operate; and
• shows how policies are made and affect people’s lives.

American Government is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American government course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected Module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them. American Government includes updated information on the 2016 presidential election.

From Florida Atlantic university Department of Political Science comes an exciting new book that explores the role of government, politics, and policy ion American lives. Full of real life applications and scenarios, Lenz and Holmans provide a text intended to encourage and enable political thinking. (From textbook)

 American Government is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American government course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected Module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them. American Government includes updated information on the 2016 presidential election.Senior Contributing AuthorsGlen Krutz (Content Lead), University of OklahomaSylvie Waskiewicz, PhD (Lead Editor)

This course covers American Government: the Constitution, the branches of government (Presidency, Congress, Judiciary) and how politics works: elections, voting, parties, campaigning, policy making. In addition weęll look at how the media, interest groups, public opinion polls and political self-identification (are you liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican or something else?) impact politics and political choices. Weęll also cover the basics in economic, social and foreign policy and bring in current issues and show how they illustrate the process.

This text is a comprehensive introduction to the vital subject of American government and politics. Governments decide who gets what, when, how (See Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936]); they make policies and pass laws that are binding on all a society’s members; they decide about taxation and spending, benefits and costs, even life and death.Governments possess power—the ability to gain compliance and to get people under their jurisdiction to obey them—and they may exercise their power by using the police and military to enforce their decisions. However, power need not involve the exercise of force or compulsion; people often obey because they think it is in their interest to do so, they have no reason to disobey, or they fear punishment. Above all, people obey their government because it has authority; its power is seen by people as rightfully held, as legitimate. People can grant their government legitimacy because they have been socialized to do so; because there are processes, such as elections, that enable them to choose and change their rulers; and because they believe that their governing institutions operate justly.Politics is the process by which leaders are selected and policy decisions are made and executed. It involves people and groups, both inside and outside of government, engaged in deliberation and debate, disagreement and conflict, cooperation and consensus, and power struggles.In covering American government and politics, this text introduces the intricacies of the Constitution, the complexities of federalism, the meanings of civil liberties, and the conflicts over civil rights;explains how people are socialized to politics, acquire and express opinions, and participate in political life; describes interest groups, political parties, and elections—the intermediaries that link people to government and politics; details the branches of government and how they operate; and shows how policies are made and affect people’s lives.

The U.S. political system suffers from endemic design flaws and is notable for the way that a small subset of Americans—whose interests often don’t align with those of the vast majority of the population—wields disproportionate power. Absent organized and persistent action on the part of ordinary Americans, the system tends to serve the already powerful. That’s why this text is called Attenuated Democracy. To attenuate something is to make it weak or thin. Democracy in America has been thin from the beginning and continues to be so despite some notable progress in voting rights. As political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens wrote, “The essence of democracy is not just having reasonably satisfactory policies; the essence of democracy is popular control of government, with each citizen having an equal voice.” (1) Since this is likely to be your only college-level course on the American political system, it is important to point out the structural weaknesses of our system and the thin nature of our democracy. Whenever you get the chance—in the voting booth, in your job, perhaps if you hold elected office—I encourage you to do something about America’s attenuated democracy.

The first completely customisable, open access textbook on Australian politics, Australian Politics and Policy provides a unique, holistic coverage of politics and public topics for use in junior and senior university courses. With an online database of 40 chapters, the book innovatively enables instructors to compile a bespoke edition to suit their teaching needs, or to include individual chapters in course readers.

With contributions from Australia’s leading politics and public-policy scholars, the textbook includes material on Australian political history and philosophy, key political institutions, Australian political sociology, public policy-making in Australia, and specialised chapters on a range of key policy domains.

Each chapter was subject to anonymous and rigorous peer-review to ensure the highest standards. The textbook comes with additional teaching resources including review questions and lecture slides.

NOTE: Click on the link in the top menu of the iframe to access the OER.

The junior edition is aimed at first-year and second-year undergraduate students.

Existing textbooks on international relations treat history in a cursory fashion and perpetuate a Euro-centric perspective. This textbook pioneers a new approach by historicizing the material traditionally taught in International Relations courses, and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates and issues.

The volume is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the international systems that traditionally existed in Europe, East Asia, pre-Columbian Central and South America, Africa and Polynesia. The second part discusses the ways in which these international systems were brought into contact with each other through the agency of Mongols in Central Asia, Arabs in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, Indic and Sinic societies in South East Asia, and the Europeans through their travels and colonial expansion. The concluding section concerns contemporary issues: the processes of decolonization, neo-colonialism and globalization – and their consequences on contemporary society.

History of International Relations provides a unique textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations, and anybody interested in international relations theory, history, and contemporary politics.

This book is designed to be a ‘Day 0' introduction to International Relations. As a beginner's guide, it has been structured to condense the most important information into the smallest space and present that information in the most accessible way. The chapters offer a broad sweep of the basic components of International Relations and the key contemporaryissues that concern the discipline. The narrative arc forms a complete circle, taking readers from no knowledge to competency. The journey starts by examining how the international system was formed and ends by reflecting that International Relations is always adapting to events and is therefore a never-ending journey of discovery. Unlike typical textbooks, there are no boxes, charts, pictures or exercises. The philosophy underpinning this book is that these things can be a distraction. This book, like others in the E-IR Foundations series, is designed to capture attention with an engaging narrative. The chapters are short, with simple paragraphs and clear sentences placing the reader inside crucial issues and debates so they can understand how things work, and where they fit in the world around them.

This book is designed as a foundational entry point to International Relations theory – structured to condense the most important information into the smallest space and present that information in an accessible manner. The first half of the book covers the theories that are most commonly taught in undergraduate programmes. The book then expands to present emerging approaches and offer wider perspectives. Each chapter sets out the basics of a theory whilst also applying it to a real-world event or issue, creating a lively, readable and relevant guide that will help students to see not only what theories are – but why they matter.

Comparative politics is the systematic study and comparison of the world's political systems. The course begins by discussing the factors and categories of analysis that political scientists and important international institutions like the World Bank, NATO, and the United Nations use regularly; it ends by comparing and contrasting governments from five different regions of the world: the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Define the chief characteristics of a nation state; Identify and explain various comparative methodologies used to compare various political systems; Distinguish between unitary, federal, and confederal governmental models; Compare and contrast political cultures in selected countries; Compare and contrast political socialization in selected countries; Describe and explain patterns of representation and participation in selected countries; Compare and contrast the roles and functions of political parties in selected countries; Compare and contrast the role of interest groups in selected countries; Identify and explain governance and policy-making in selected countries; Compare and contrast the role of the executive in selected countries; Compare and contrast the role of the judicial branch in selected countries; Compare and contrast the role of the bureaucracy and the policy process in selected countries; Describe and explain the political economy and development in selected countries; Identify and explain political challenges and changing agendas in selected countries. (Political Science 221)

This textbook introduces key feminist concepts and analytical frameworks used in the interdisciplinary Women, Gender, Sexualities field. It unpacks the social construction of knowledge and categories of difference, processes and structures of power and inequality, with a focus on gendered labor in the global economy, and the historical development of feminist social movements. The book emphasizes feminist sociological approaches to analyzing structures of power, drawing heavily from empirical feminist research.

Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governes the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal.

In past decade or so, local governments across the United States have become more innovative in their approaches to civic engagement, with many of them investing in civic education programs often called citizens academies. These programs educate residents on virtually all aspects of local government to improve participants’ ability to effectively engage with their local government. Further, many community leadership programs include content on local government, and civic groups often look for informal learning opportunities for their members. This fifth edition of Local Government in North Carolina remains a great resource for K-12 education, particularly civics classes that often have very little information on local government. But this edition is also appropriate and useful as a resource for adult education programs of various kinds and has been designed to be adaptable to a variety of different uses.