Author Description

A core American politics textbook, complete with a range of free teaching ancillaries The American political system is extraordinary and complex. Samuel Kernell and Gary Jacobson help students develop a sophisticated appreciation of the possibilities and limits of American politics. Encouraged to think and not merely to memorise facts, students will come to understand why political institutions, the politicians who occupy them, and the citizens who monitor and respond to their actions, behave as they do. A nation as large and diverse as the United States faces enormous challenges. Kernell and Jacobson analyse political institutions and practices as (imperfect) solutions to problems facing people who need to act collectively, highlighting throughout the text such obstacles as conflicts over values and interests, the difficulty of agreeing on a course of action, and the problem of free riding. They describe how the choices made to resolve such problems at one moment affect politics in the future, long after the problems have faded. The intelligible logic of American politics is analysed further in three sets of thematic boxes that appear throughout the text: "The Logic of Politics" boxes dissect the design of various political institutions in light of the objectives they were intended to achieve "Strategy and Choice" boxes, new to the second edition, show how officeholders and those seeking to influence them employ institutions to advance their goals. "Politics to Policy" boxes show how public policies reflect the institutions that produce them and evaluate institutional capacity to solve America's problems. Public policy is treated as an integral subject and is examined throughout the book, rather than in separate chapters that are often left unassigned. "Politics into Policy" boxes, in particular, extend the authors' analysis, looking at such issues as: the tightening of the borders in the wake of terrorists attacks, how smoking evolved from a private to a public is