The Politics of Constitutional Reform in North America
Author: Rainer-Olaf Schultze
Publisher:
Published: 2014-01-15
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9783663116295
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The Politics of Constitutional Reform in North America
Author: Rainer-Olaf Schultze
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2013-06-29
Total Pages: 367
ISBN-13: 366311628X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In October 1999, some fifteen academic experts and government practitio ners from Germany and North America gathered for two days at the Uni ver sity of Augsburg to discuss the topic of "Constitutional Reform and Consti tutional Jurisprudence in Canada and the United States." The present volume documents the results of that conference, a collaborative effort of the De partment of Political Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the Institute for Canadian Studies, University of Augsburg. In organizing this workshop, we were guided by two basic sets of ideas and assumptions: First, all "established" democracies are regularly confron ted with the need to adjust their constitutional order to changes in their envi ronment lest democratic stability be transformed into rigidity; in many wes tern nations, including Canada and the United States, developments such as the crisis of the Keynesian welfare-state or the emergence of increasingly heterogeneous, postmodern societies have ushered in an era of heightened, yet not always successful constitutional reform activity. Secondly, however, there is no unique path towards, or model of, an "optimal" constitutional order, however defined; rather, constitutional reform processes, their under Iying normative principles and their outcomes are strongly path and context dependent. Therefore, the participants of the workshop and authors of this volume were asked to examine the specific preconditions, context, nature and impact of recent constitutional reform processes in the Uni ted States and Canada.
Constitutional Reform in America
Author: Charles Meyer Hardin
Publisher: Ames : Iowa State University Press
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Hardin argues that the major threat to American constitutional government is the separation of powers doctrine, particularly the division of power between the President and Congress. To correct the imbalance wrought by the separation of powers principle, he suggests constitutional reform toward a form of parliamentary government. He advocates three major reforms: provide defeated presidential candidates with a seat in the House of Representatives to encourage a strong, organized opposition; allow for interim election-year changes in national leadership via votes of confidence; and institute the 4-8-4 proposal that would elect the House of Representatives and half of the Senate every four years (if Senate terms were extended to eight years) at the same time as the election of the President. He also provides a critical review of the literature on constitutional government and reform. ISBN 0-8138-0118-4: $27.95.
American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations
Author: Eric D. Lemont
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2009-08-17
Total Pages: 361
ISBN-13: 0292778074
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Since 1975, when the U.S. government adopted a policy of self-determination for American Indian nations, a large number of the 562 federally recognized nations have seized the opportunity to govern themselves and determine their own economic, political, and cultural futures. As a first and crucial step in this process, many nations are revising constitutions originally developed by the U.S. government to create governmental structures more attuned to native people's unique cultural and political values. These new constitutions and the governing institutions they create are fostering greater governmental stability and accountability, increasing citizen support of government, and providing a firmer foundation for economic and political development. This book brings together for the first time the writings of tribal reform leaders, academics, and legal practitioners to offer a comprehensive overview of American Indian nations' constitutional reform processes and the rebuilding of native nations. The book is organized in three sections. The first part investigates the historical, cultural, economic, and political motivations behind American Indian nations' recent reform efforts. The second part examines the most significant areas of reform, including criteria for tribal membership/citizenship and the reform of governmental institutions. The book concludes with a discussion of how American Indian nations are navigating the process of reform, including overcoming the politics of reform, maximizing citizen participation, and developing short-term and long-term programs of civic education.
Constitutional Reform and Effective Government
Author: James Sundquist
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2011-01-01
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9780815714309
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →For years the public has become increasingly disillusioned and cynical about its governmental institutions. In the face of alarming problems-most notably the $400 billion budget deficit-the government seems deadlocked, reduced to partisan posturing and bickering, with the president and Congress blaming each other for failure. And neither party can be held accountable. The public tendency is to blame individual leaders- or politicians as a class-but an insistent and growing number of experienced statesmen and political scientists believe that much of the difficulty can be traced to the governmental structure itself, designed in the eighteenth century and essentially unchanged since then. Is that inherited constitutional system adequate to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, or has the time come for fundamental change? Should we adopt an electoral system that encourages unified control of the presidency, the Senate and the House? Lengthen terms of office? Limit congressional terms? Abolish or modify the electoral college? Introduce a mechanism for calling special elections? Permit legislators to hold executive offices? Redistribute the balance of powers within the governmental system? In this revised edition of his highly acclaimed 1986 volume, James Sundquist reviews the origins and rationale of the constitutional structure and the current debate about whether reform is needed, then raises practical questions about what changes might work best if a consensus should emerge that the national government is too prone to stalemate to meet its responsibilities. Analyzing the main proposals advanced to adapt the Constitution to current conditions, he attempts to separate the workable ideas from the unworkable, the effective from the ineffective, the possibly feasible from the wholly infeasible, and finally arrives at a set of recommendations of his own.
The People’s Constitution
Author: John F. Kowal
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2021-09-21
Total Pages: 493
ISBN-13: 1620975629
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.
State Constitutions for the Twenty-first Century, Volume 3
Author: G. Alan Tarr
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2007-06-01
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9780791467121
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Nationally recognized experts analyze how states deal with major constitutional issues.
Recreating the American Republic
Author: Charles A. Kromkowski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002-09-16
Total Pages: 487
ISBN-13: 1139435787
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Political historians recognize the colonial years and the American Revolution, the early national era and the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the nineteenth century and the American Civil War as the three most important eras in American history. Recreating the American Republic offers the first comparative historical analysis and synthesis of these.
Hidden Laws
Author: Robinson Woodward-Burns
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2021-06-29
Total Pages: 368
ISBN-13: 0300248695
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →How state constitutional reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development State constitution reform guides and stabilizes American constitutional and political development. Using data sets and historical case studies, Robinson Woodward-Burns shows how the federal government has repeatedly deferred to state constitutional reform to manage or address difficult national constitutional controversies, including conflicts over the regulation of slavery, banking and taxation, women's suffrage, labor and welfare rights, voting and civil rights, and gender discrimination.
Fixing Democracy
Author: Javier Corrales
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0190868899
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The study of institutions, a core concept in comparative politics, has produced many rich and influential theories on the economic and political effects of institutions, yet it has been less successful at theorizing their origins. In Fixing Democracy, Javier Corrales develops a theory of institutional origins that concentrates on constitutions and levels of power within them. He reviews numerous Latin American constituent assemblies and constitutional amendments to explore why some democracies expand rather than restrict presidential powers and why this heightened presidentialism discourages democracy. His signal theoretical contribution is his elaboration on power asymmetries. Corrales determines that conditions of reduced power asymmetry make constituent assemblies more likely to curtail presidential powers, while weaker opposition and heightened power asymmetry is an indicator that presidential powers will expand. The bargain-based theory that he uses focuses on power distribution and provides a more accurate variable in predicting actual constitutional outcomes than other approaches based on functionalism or ideology. While the empirical focus is Latin America, Fixing Democracy contributes a broadly applicable theory to the scholarship both institutions and democracy.
