Arkansas Politics and Government (Politics and Governments of the American States)

ISBN: 0803261985

Author: Diane D. Blair

Condition: New

Published a decade and a half after the late Diane D. Blairs influential book Arkansas Politics and Government, this freshly revised edition builds on her work, which highlighted both the decades of failure by Arkansas's government to live up to the states motto of Regnat Populus (The People Rule) and the positive trends of democracy. Since the first edition, Arkansas has seen the two-term U.S. presidency of a native son, the retirement of players who defined the states politics in the modern era, the further realignment of the states electorate, the passage of the nations most extreme legislative term limits, the complete overhaul of the states court system, and the declaration that the states public education system was unconstitutionally inadequate and inequitable.While maintaining the basic structure of Blairs original work with its focus on important historical patterns and the ways in which the past continues to shape the present, the second edition details the causes and consequences of recent changes in Arkansas and asks whether they are profound and permanent or merely transitory variations in symbol and style. Jay Barth argues that although Arkansas currently expresses a healthier representative democracy than throughout most of its history, its political and governmental entities are still sharply limited as effective instruments of the people.