Representative Democracy : Public Policy and Midwestern Legislatures in the Late Nineteenth Century / Ballard C. Campbell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, Ballard C., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political science.

Politik.

HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI).

Legislative bodies--Middle West--Voting--History.

Middle West--Politics and government.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / Legislative Branch.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / General.

Local Subjects:

HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI).

Legislative bodies--Middle West--Voting--History.

Middle West--Politics and government.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / Legislative Branch.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / General.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (271 p.)

Edition:

Reprint 2013

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The rise of an immensely powerful federal government in the twentieth century has tended to obscure the importance of state and local government in American history. Yet government at these lesser levels had the most direct and continuous effect on the lives of ordinary citizens. Through an analysis of late-nineteenth-century state legislatures in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, Ballard Campbell has written what one expert has called "the best book on legislative politics, past or present." The period he examines was one of rapid change and great challenge. Urbanization, industrialization, and increasing national integration forced innumerable difficult and important decisions on state legislators. Campbell is sensitive to these stresses on law-making, and skillfully analyzes the interplay between personal and constituent factors that affected lawmakers. The author differentiates clearly between local and general aspects of state policymaking, giving full consideration to its more subjective and idiosyncratic elements. His comparison of partisan, economic, urban, ethnocultural, and regional influences on legislative behavior will serve as a model for all future studies. By closely examining the substantive dimension of the governmental process and its relation to mass politics, Representative Democracy advances "the new political history." Campbell's discussion of legislative composition and procedure, the content and context of contested issues, and responses to these issues challenges numerous stereotypes about American state legislatures.

Contents:

Frontmatter

PREFACE

CONTENTS

TABLES

1. INTRODUCTION

2. Electing Representatives

3. The Lawmakers and Lawmaking

4. The Contested Issues

5. Party Voting

6. Legislating Community Mores

7. Ethnicity and Dimensions of Legislative Voting

8. Economic Policy

9. The Issues of Government and the Roots of Partisanship

10. Legislative Democracy in the Late Nineteenth Century

Appendix on Sources and Methods

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-674-73204-9

OCLC:

1013936323