Sylabus
Week 1: Introduction to the course. We will discuss the requirements, the readings, etc.
Week 2: The right to vote:
Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, Introduction and Chapter 1: Voting, p. 1-62.
Week 3: Setting up the system…
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, Penguin Classics, Papers LII-LXIII, p. 322-375.
Week 4: … and the first challenge to it?
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Age of Jackson, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945, Chapter 4: Background for Revolution, p. 30-44.
M.J. Heale, The Presidential Quest: Candidates and Images in American Political Culture, 1787-1852, London: Longman, 1982, Chapters 5-7, p. 83-156.
Week 5: Excluded or carefully counted in?
Gary Wills, “The Negro President,” The New York Review of Books, November 6, 2003, p. 45-51.
Albert F. Simpson, “The Political Significance of Slave Representation, 1787-1821,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 71, 1941, p. 315-342.
Week 6: Red and blue America?
David von Drehle and David Finkel, “America in Red and Blue: A Nation Divided,” Washington Post, April 25-27, 2004 (26 MS Word pages).
Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967, Chapter 14: Sectional Reactions to Events, p. 332-360.
Week 7: Robber barons, political machines and “fake” elections
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, New York: Vintage Books, 1955, The Citizen and the Machine, p. 257-271.
Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920, New York: Hill and Wang, 1967, Chapter 8: The Illusion of Fulfillment, p. 196-223.
Week 8: Opening up the system or doing away with it?
James Miller, “Democracy Is in the Streets:” From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, Introduction: Port Huron and the Lost History of the New Left,” p. 13-18; Chapter 8: Participatory Democracy, p. 141-154.
James Miller, “Democracy Is in the Streets:” From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, Chapter 12: A Moralist in Search of Power, p. 260-313..
Week 9: Inclusion completed?
Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, Chapter 2: Earning, p. 63-101.
Week 10: Neo-conservative revolution
“Contract with America,” GOP, 1994, 2p.
Louis Fisher, “The 'Contract with America': What It Really Means,” The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995, p. 20-24.
Week 11: Growing Polarization and Disenchantment with Politics?
Jeffrey M. Stonecash and Mack D. Mariani, “Republican Gains in the House in the 1994 Elections: Class Polarization in American Politics,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 115, Issue 1, 2000, p. 93-113.
Margaret Weir and Marshall Ganz, “Reconnecting People and Politics,” in Stanley B Greenberg and Theda Skocpol (eds.) The New Majority: Toward a Popular Progressive Politics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 149-171.
Week 12: The system in crisis?
Alan Brinkley, “The Taming of the Political Convention,” in Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 249-265.
Report of the Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association, “American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality,” 2004, 24p.
Week 13: On the role of outside observers
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, selected chapters
James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, selected chapters
Anotace
Besides the crucial function of distributing political power, elections are important societal rituals. They provide a dynamic factor in developments in a given society as well as a regular assessment of both external and internal boundaries of a society.
As such, elections present an invaluable source to the study of a society. First, elections force actors in a public realm to express their positions on a host of issues in a way that is more or less binding.
Second, as an institution fostering a public debate, elections allow new issues to emerge. Third, formal and informal rules that make elections possible signal how a given society functions.
In this way, elections and society are in a mutually constitutive relationship where society shapes elections and elections shape society.