登入選單
返回Google圖書搜尋
Representation and Inequality in Late Nineteenth-Century America
Peter H. Argersinger
其他書名
The Politics of Apportionment
出版Cambridge University Press, 2012-10-29
主題History / GeneralHistory / United States / GeneralHistory / United States / 19th CenturyHistory / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)Law / Election LawPolitical Science / GeneralPolitical Science / American Government / Legislative Branch
ISBN11070230099781107023000
URLhttp://books.google.com.hk/books?id=5GmjYU7XO8oC&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBookSAMPLE
註釋This book demonstrates that apportionment, although long overlooked by scholars, dominated state politics in late nineteenth-century America, setting the boundaries not only for legislative districts but for the nature of representative democracy. The book examines fierce struggles over apportionment in the Midwest, where a distinctive constitutional and electoral context shaped their course with momentous consequences. As the major parties alternated in effectively disfranchising their opponents through gerrymanders, growing tensions challenged established patterns of political behavior and precipitated intense and even dangerous disputes. Unprecedented judicial intervention overturned gerrymanders in stunning decisions that electrified the public but intensified rather than resolved political conflict and uncertainty. Ultimately, America's political ideal of representative democracy was frustrated by its own political institutions, including the courts, because their decisions against gerrymandering in the 1890s helped parties and legislatures entrench the practice as a basic and profoundly undemocratic feature of American politics in the twentieth century.