Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

United States --- Race relations --- Political aspects --- African Americans --- Government policy --- Minorities --- Social policy --- Welfare state --- Manpower policy --- State, Welfare --- Economic policy --- Public welfare --- State, The --- Welfare economics --- Ethnic minorities --- Foreign population --- Minority groups --- Persons --- Assimilation (Sociology) --- Discrimination --- Ethnic relations --- Majorities --- Plebiscite --- Segregation --- Afro-Americans --- Black Americans --- Colored people (United States) --- Negroes --- Africans --- Ethnology --- Blacks --- Political aspects. --- Social policy. --- Black people

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Despite the substantial economic and political strides that African-Americans have made in this century, welfare remains an issue that sharply divides Americans by race. Shifting the Color Line explores the historical and political roots of enduring racial conflict in American welfare policy, beginning with the New Deal. Through Social Security and other social insurance programs, white workers were successfully integrated into a strong national welfare state. At the same time, African-Americans--then as now disproportionately poor--were relegated to the margins of the welfare state, through decentralized, often racist, public assistance programs. Over the next generation, these institutional differences had fateful consequences for African-Americans and their integration into American politics. Owing to its strong national structure, Social Security quickly became the closest thing we have to a universal, color-blind social program. On the other hand, public assistance--especially Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)--continued to treat African-Americans badly, while remaining politically weak and institutionally decentralized. Racial distinctions were thus built into the very structure of the American welfare state. By keeping poor blacks at arm's length while embracing white workers, national welfare policy helped to construct the contemporary political divisions--middle-class versus poor, suburb versus city, and white versus black--that define the urban underclass.

African Americans --- Public welfare --- Politics and government. --- Economic conditions.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them. While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present. In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound-even fatal-damage to the American democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics of disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power-alone or in combination-have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived-so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist. This convergence marks the contemporary era as a grave moment for democracy. But history provides a valuable repository from which we can draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened-or weakened-in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to today and chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy"--

Political systems --- United States --- Democracy --- Political culture --- Polarization (Social sciences) --- Racism --- Income distribution --- Executive power --- United States of America

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Minorities --- Minorities --- Equality --- Racism --- Post-racialism --- Social conditions --- Economic conditions --- United States --- Race relations.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Politics in the United States has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Both political elites and everyday citizens are divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps, with each camp questioning the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Does this polarization pose threats to democracy itself? What can make some democratic institutions resilient in the face of such challenges? Democratic Resilience brings together a distinguished group of specialists to examine how polarization affects the performance of institutional checks and balances as well as the political behavior of voters, civil society actors, and political elites. The volume bridges the conventional divide between institutional and behavioral approaches to the study of American politics and incorporates historical and comparative insights to explain the nature of contemporary challenges to democracy. It also breaks new ground to identify the institutional and societal sources of democratic resilience.

Democracy --- Political culture --- Polarization (Social sciences) --- History. --- United States --- Politics and government. --- Political science --- Social groups --- Social influence --- Government --- History, Political