Syllabus
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
Annotation
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.