Kollman Reading

Question 1

Federalist Number 10

Answer 1

A Large republic would be better then a small republic, because a small republic would have just a few small interest groups that would dominate

Question 2

The Anti-Federalist Number 1

Answer 2

There should not be too much power given to the central, National government. Reason is that it would be impossible for a large government to control an empire of states under Republican ideologies. In result, more power should be given to state and local government as they can respond better to their people.

Question 3

Riker’s View on Federalism

Answer 3

Negative view on federalism. While the benefits of federalism can be identified in theory, the cost have been steep an actual practice: through the 1960s the protection of privileged, wealthy minorities by state governments resulted in the oppression of poor, previously enslaved minorities.

Question 4

Arizona v. United States

Answer 4

Arizona law increased state powers to police illegal immigrants
Supreme Court overturns three major provisions
Kennedy: Supremacy clause says states can’t enter policy area reserved for federal government

Question 5

Federalist Number 51

Answer 5

James Madison explains and defends the checks and balances system in the Constitution. Each branch of government is framed so that its power checks the power of the other two branches; additionally, each branch of government is dependent on the people, who are the source of legitimate authority.

Question 6

David Mayhew and the view of Congress: The Electoral Connection

Answer 6

Reelection as the exclusive goal. Others, such as Fenno, detail more than one goal, but reelection must be achieved if any of the other goals are to be achieved.
Studies of the US Congress must focus on individuals rather than groups of individuals, such as parties.
Members believe that they are constantly in danger of losing (either in the primary or in the general election) and that they are in a position to improve their chances.
Members engage in three activities: advertising, credit-claiming, and position-taking.

Question 7

Fenno and Home Style: House Members in Their District

Answer 7

The view on what Congress members are considered part of his or her constituency. All the people in the district. Those who tend to vote for the representative in general elections. Those who ardently support and vote for the representative in primary elections. Those who contribute money and time to the representative’s reelection.

Question 8

Cameron, Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the politics of Negative Power

Answer 8

Cameron has two major points: (1) The veto enables presidents to influence legislative outcomes; and (2) Divided government does not make governing impossible, it simply encourages more inter-branch bargaining.

Question 9

Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

Answer 9

“Presidential power is the power to persuade.” Presidents are expected to do much more than their authority allows them to do. Persuasion and bargaining are the means that presidents use to influence policy. Not only do presidents need to bargain to influence other branches of government (particularly Congress), but presidents also must bargain to influence the executive branch itself; cabinet secretaries, agency heads, and individual bureaucrats all have leverage that they can use against the president, requiring presidents to persuade even the executive branch, not merely command it.

Question 10

Brandice Canes-Wrone, Who leads Whom? Presidents, Policy, and the Public

Answer 10

Do presidents follow public opinion even when they believe it is wrong? Or do presidents do what they think is right even when doing so is unpopular? Describes three important cases when presidents pandered; that is, they followed public opinion rather then do what they thought was right. She argues that this happens often. Carter and Foreign Aid. Bush and Unemployment benefits. Reagan and the Contingency Tax Proposal.

Question 11

Howell, Power without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action

Answer 11

Presidents have increasingly used unilateral actions, such as executive orders, to make policy independent of Congress. Over the course of the 20th century, both Congress and the Supreme Court permitted presidents more latitude because the problems they face became more complicated.

Question 12

Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership

Answer 12

Is that American presidents increasingly spoke directly to the people rather than two news reporters or through press releases. Today, Pres. spend a lot of their time giving public speeches, but this behavior was 100 years ago. He argues that this increase as given presidents more leverage when bargaining with Congress and make sense and age with a more educated population and improve means of travel and communication.

Question 13

Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinions

Answer 13

Proposes a “RAS” model for how voter acquire information.
Reception Axiom - The greater the person’s level of cognitive engagement with an issue the more likely he or she is to be exposed to and comprehend — in a word, to receive — political messages concerning that issue.
Resistance Axiom - People tend to resist arguments that are inconsistent with their political predispositions, but they do so only to the extent that they possess the contextual information necessary to perceive a relationship between the message and their predispositions.
Accessibility Axiom - The more recently a consideration has been called to mind or thought about, the less time it takes to retrive that consideration or related considerations from memory and bring them to the top of the head for use.
Response Axiom - Individuals answer survey questions by averaging across the considerations that are immediately salient or accessible to them.

Question 14

Every Vote Equal: A state-based plan for electing the President by National Popular Vote

Answer 14

Proposal that does not require a constitutional amendment. It would require states that altogether have more than 270 electoral votes to agree through a compact to elect the national popular vote winner as president. Each state in the group making the compact would agree to nominate for the electoral college ply those electors pledged to cote for the candidate with the most popular votes nationwide.

Question 15

Mobilization, participation, and democracy in america

Answer 15

People participate in politics for a variety reasons. Those people are easily mobilized and who tend to have similar preferences to the organizations that routinely mobilize are the ones most likely to participate.

Question 16

The American Voter: An Abridgement

Answer 16

The authors depict partisanship as a deep psychological attachment to one of the two major parties, and attachment that why largely determines individual voting decisions and shapes the way individuals evaluate policies of politicians. The authors demonstrate a way to measure partisanship in the population using surveys. Even though the original book was published in 1960, this conceptualization of partisanship in the method of measuring it are still widely used by scholars all over the world

Question 17

The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

Answer 17

American political parties are primarily driven by activists within the party seeking Certain policy goals. These activist determine which candidates will run under the party label in the shape the policy direction of the party. Ambitious politicians seek the approval of these activists, and they need that approval before they can seek the approval of the voters

Question 18

Mancur Olson. The Logic of Collective Action

Answer 18

Collective action problem arises when individuals have incentives to free ride off the contributions of others, reaping the benefits of some action without paying any of the costs. In describing the collective action problem and how groups or organizations can overcome it, Olson struggling challenges the widely held notion that having common interests is a sufficient condition for a political group to form

Question 19

Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and political power in america

Answer 19

Do interest groups represent only wealthy interests in Washington DC? Does lobbying by organized interests undermine or bolster the interests of the poor and marginalized? Gilens presents evidence that the poorest Americans receive some representation of their policy preferences from certain interest groups, especially unions. The political power of those interest groups has been waning, however, mostly because social bases of those groups are shrinking relative to population size

Question 20

Kollman, Outside Lobbying: Public Opinion and Interest group Strategies

Answer 20

Kollman contrasts two types of lobbying, inside and outside. The inside game is more private it is played among people in Washington. The outside game is played by interest group leaders to bring people from outside Washington into the business of persuading members of Congress. Outside lobbying both signals existing public opinion to lawmakers in tries to shape the public opinion to an interest groups advantage

Question 21

Baum, Soft News Goes to War: Public opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age

Answer 21

Soft news refers to mass with your programming that is primarily intended to entertain rather than provide news, but that also includes, as a byproduct of the entertainment, information about politics and international events. Baum analyzes the degree to which people who are relatively interested in politics receive information about politics from soft news sources. He finds that international crisis especially find their way into water cooler conversations and thus the publics broader consciousness because people learn about these events from soft news

Question 22

Abrajano, Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Advertising to Latino Voters

Answer 22

It has become increasingly important for candidates for feeder office, congress or the presidency, to make explicit appeals to the interests of Latino voters to win elections. Campaign advertisements in Spanish and appeals made in media tailored towards Latinos become common even in locations with relatively few Latinos. These behaviors of direct appeal to immigrant groups with new citizenship status follow a long tradition American politics

Question 23

James Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies do and why they do it

Answer 23

Wilson writes convincingly that bureaucracies can vary greatly in there effectiveness. He pokes holes instead of complaints about bureaucracies by indicating how some of the inefficiencies that people complain about either unavoidable or by design

Question 24

Police Patrols vs Fire Alarms

Answer 24

Under police patrol model, Congress provides resources for constant monitoring of your credit behavior. Under the fire alarm while, Congress wait for complaints from constituents in groups in society about bureaucracies and then holds accountable. The fire alarm model is often the more efficient method of oversight

Question 25

The hollow hope: can courts bring about social change. Rosenberg

Answer 25

Rosenberg argues that courts in the United States are highly constrained in bringing about social change. Though many people think of the courts as dynamic as drivers of social change, in Rosenburgs view, courts instead follow the other branches of government. They do not drive change but rather respond the way to social changes and end up trying to catch up with trends in society

Question 26

Keynes, The general theory of employment, interest, and money

Answer 26

Emphasizes the role that governments play to stabilize the economy and reduce unemployment. Contrary to the standard view of the classical economists that governments get in the way of efficient markets, Keynes’s View is that markets, if left on their own, will be to debilitating fluctuations in employment. Government fiscal spending should be used during difficult economic times to promote employment

Question 27

Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

Answer 27

Contrast to Keynes, his famous argument suggest that government spending to stimulate the economy is almost always a mistake. Instead, according to his view, government spending juries the private economy of resources that would be more efficiently allocated through unfettered markets. Private companies and individuals will, through their buying, selling, and investing decisions, allocate money in the society much more efficiently than government, and smaller government will benefit society overall

Question 28

Mettler, the submerge state: how invisible government policies undermine American democracy

Answer 28

Talks about unawareness of government in the lives of middle class americans. Talking about how they don’t know about how their money goes to subsidies and payouts.

Question 29

Bartles, unequal democracy: the political economy of the new Gilded Age

Answer 29

Bartels argues that the policies of the national government have had a major impact on income inequality in the United States. Income equality has increased over the last three to half decades, with most of the increase is occurring during Republican presidential administrations. He argues that this reflects the different economic Philosophies of the two major parties in the different political interests of partisan voters

Question 30

Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and how it changed the world

Answer 30

Or four strands of American foreign-policy, Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian. Contemporary American leaders invoke specific memories of American history related to one or more of the strains to justify their foreign-policy decisions, he argues that foreign-policy has had an enormous influence on domestic politics throughout American history, much more then is ordinarily supposed

Question 31

Kagan, Dangerous Nation

Answer 31

Americans tend to believe that American foreign-policy has been generally benign and peaceful. Kagan argues that this is a gross distortion of historical reality. The American government has a wad history of expanding its territory and meddling in the wars of other countries and regions around the world. There is a large gap, Kagan argues, not only between this historical reality and American self perception, but also between how Americans be there for policy and how others around the world view the intentions and policies of the United States