...To what extent is it fair to say that the USA has a two party system? (45 marks) A two party system can be defined as one in which two major parties regularly win at least 80% of the popular vote in the general elections, regularly win at least 90% of the seats in the legislature and alternately control the executive branch of the government. Tradition is very important for most US citizens and because of this the once established human institutions are likely to become self-perpetuating. So it has been with the two-party system. The very fact that the nation began with a two-party system has been a leading reason for the retention of a two-party system. Over time, it has become an increasingly important, self-reinforcing reason. Many argue these criteria are used in US politics as the first-past-the-post electoral system in the USA makes life difficult for national third parties, and therefore it is always the Democrats and Republicans who are elected; all presidents since 1853 have been either a Democrat or Republican. From 1968 to 2012, the combined Democrat and Republican vote has ranged from 86% to 99%, which means that third-party support is shallow and have an unimaginable chance of winning all votes in the Electoral College. They only pick up a fraction of the vote in almost every state but under a winner-takes-all system they receive no reward at all. Much of American election law is purposely written to discourage non-major party candidates. Republicans...
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...Mr. West, in a radio interview Monday morning, said he feels used by Mr. Obama and he’s not going to think about the president anymore. “I’m not gonna mention him no more, I’m past that,” Mr. West said of the president on Philadelphia station Hot 107.9. “That’s out my thoughts. That’s lowering my priority of thinking at this point.” The rift is probably not causing the president to lose any sleep. Mr. Obama has referred to Mr. West at least twice publicly as a “jackass,” including once in 2009 after the rapper interrupted Taylor Swift on stage as she received an MTV Video Music Award. When radio hosts Shamara and Laiya asked Mr. West if he would ever “break bread” with the president, the rapper suggested that Mr. Obama had used him as a foil for political purposes. “Oh, you talking about how he use to come and visit me and my mama and tell me he’s about to run for president?” Mr. West replied. “I just think that we’re pop icons, and the president likes to use that type of thing just to be down. People was fine with me being everyone’s punching bag for about five years — ‘This is the person we love to hate, so if you want to distract people from everything that’s going on … just say you hate Kanye and there’s going be 30 other people who say they hate Kanye.’ That was kind of my position in culture and he kind of used that too — ‘Oh, he’s a jackass’ — because that’s how the world felt. “I don’t care if someone’s the president or not,” Mr. West said. “I care about thoughts...
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...The aim of this document is to assess the Obama administration’s performance on the economy, social policy, and foreign policy. To discuss the key factors that explains performance (so far) in each category. And to express my prognosis for future improvement in each category. The aim of this document is to assess the Obama administration’s performance on the economy, social policy, and foreign policy. To discuss the key factors that explains performance (so far) in each category. And to express my prognosis for future improvement in each category. The slowdown in US economy and high unemployment rate has driven the US presidential elections in 2012 by making these issues to be prime concerns for voters. Stimulating the economy and job creation became the obvious concerns for president Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney to stand out in the elections by creating strong outline policies for competing with each other. Intending to create new jobs through public investment in education and infrastructure, Obama proposed a $447 billion bill for job creation. He tried to attract the middle class by cutting the payroll taxes. But at the same time raised the taxes on the top two percent of earners, by extending the Bush-era cuts for the rest of the population—this plan was passed by senate in July 2012. Meanwhile, Romney and many other Republicans have advocated extending the Bush tax cuts for all Americans as a way to stimulate the economy and facilitate job creation. The Romney economic...
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...Federalist built the United States for America in to what the American people experience today and their main goal was to see America governed by the people and become a model for countries around the globe. American federalism is defined by the United States Constitution as a “fundamental aspect of American government, whereby the states are not merely regional representatives of the federal government, but are granted independent power and responsibilities” (USA, Constitution). However this definition is constantly changing and took a long bumpy road to get where it is today. The United States constitution was drafted on September 17th, 1787 and ratified on June 21st, 1788. The United States became a sovereign nation on July 4th, 1776 at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but they needed a Constitution. The Articles of Confederation were drafted on November 7th, 1777 and ratified on March 1st, 1781. This document was signed by the thirteen original colonies that made up the United States of America and served as its first constitution. After becoming sovereign nation it became clear to many that the Articles of Confederation would not be able to hold a nation together. Under the Article of Confederation there was a unicameral legislative that provided no separation of power. The central government appeared to be too weak because under the Articles of Confederation most of the power was retained by the states. Congress had no power to tax therefore, they were unable...
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...Bianca Capatina “Pressure groups define the political issues that dominate US politics”.Discuss. Being the most pluralist political system in the world, it comes as expected that pressure groups would have a considerable amount of influence over the American system.However, their sectional views alone are not dictating the political agenda of the US politics, but rather influencing it at different levels(local/state/national), depending on their insider/outsider status and levels of funding. Firstly, because Congress is dominated by their representative function, pressure groups have a leading role in the US elections. This is because their power and influence is heightened by Political Action Committees , which are pressure groups that collect money from their members (up to $5,000/individual)and give it to candidates and political parties which support their interests. This was done by protecting elected officials from accountability in 2000, when 98% of the House incumbents were re-elected, undermining the political efficiency and leaning towards corruption.Their influence could be further observed in 2012, when the SUPERPAC Priorities USA spent $67 mil. on advertising for Obama’s re-election. Priorities USA’s belief is that Republicans’ agenda is to reward the wealthiest few at at the expense of the middle class, so it it came naturally that after he got elected Obama cut the income tax of the middle class families and also offered them tax reliefs. Secondly, the revolving...
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...The President's Proposal Strengthen border security and infrastructure. - Strengthens and improves infrastructure at ports of entry, facilitates public-private partnerships aimed at increasing investment in foreign visitor processing, and continues supporting the use of technologies that help to secure the land and maritime borders of the United States. Combat transnational crime. - Creates new criminal penalties dedicated to combating transnational criminal organizations that traffic in drugs, weapons, and money, and that smuggle people across the borders. It also expands the scope of current law to allow for the forfeiture of these organizations’ criminal tools and proceeds. Through this approach, we will bolster our efforts to deprive criminal enterprises, including those operating along the Southwest border, of their infrastructure and profits. Improve partnerships with border communities and law enforcement. - Expands our ability to work with our cross-border law enforcement partners. Community trust and cooperation are key to effective law enforcement. To this end, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will establish border community liaisons along the Southern and Northern borders to improve communication and collaboration with border communities, boost funding to tribal government partners to reduce illegal activity on tribal lands, and strengthen training on civil rights and civil liberties for DHS immigration officers. Crack down on criminal networks...
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...Religion and Its Persuasion on U.S. Politics Rob Farmer Hodges University, Fort Myers, Florida HUM2030-OL-SU15 Dr. William Cooney August 22, 2015 Religion and Its Persuasion on U.S. Politics Religion in the United States is significant not only due to the high percentage of Americans who identify themselves with a specific religion, but the population’s large number of widely diverse beliefs. Ultimately, the United States is a nation bound on a people of immigrants, many of whom originally fled their home countries for the sake of religious freedom, and as such, laws are carefully engineered to safeguard those freedoms. Consider the formative era of our nation and to America’s culture and thinking at the time the US and the Constitution were formed. The leaders of the various colonies, states and ultimately the Founding Fathers themselves were steeped in biblical thinking. They drew examples from the Bible, and looked for confirmation of their ideas for government in scripture. Biblical absolutes enshrined into law offered a consensus that meant freedom without chaos. As stated in the Declaration of Independence, there exists “unalienable rights” of men. Rights were unalienable because they were provided by God. This was important because in most societies up until that time, and even in some countries today, rights are only conferred by whomever is in power at the time. An important aspect of our system of government is that it is based on the Rule of Law. This concept...
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...action by a political administrative leader, a community, citizen, group, societies and states. The Presidential doctrine from President Kennedy at the time of the Cold War from 1961-1963 was, “Respond flexibly to communist expansion, especially to guerrilla warfare.” In 1962, when a surveillance plane by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Soviet Union, took pictures of a nuclear missile site in Cuba, there seemed to be a great need for diplomacy. But looking at the relationship prior to that between the United States and the USSR, it was great when they were allies, as the United States gave the Soviet Union millions of dollars of weapons and additional support for their fight against Nazi Germany. The US and Russia became allies, in the liberation of Europe. As the war started to come to the end, countries that were occupied by Soviet forces, which also included “most” of Germany, people wanted to either choose democracy or communism, as the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described this territory as being behind an “Iron Curtain”. The Iron Curtain was “The Berlin Wall”. The Berlin Wall, “it was an image of both physical division between West Berlin and East Germany from 1961 to 1989 and it was the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War”. The division provided the framework for the Cold War which ran from roughly 1947 to 1991.” The doctrine was that it helped to...
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...Germany- Lufthansa is one of the leading airline companies in the world, but it suffered from the danger of bankruptcy in 1991. However, the flexible strategic change programs made it survive. Thus, the implementation and effects of those programs are obviously attractive and deserve further study. Moreover, current business environment is full of opportunities and challenges, which poses Lufthansa to identify relative challenges and adopt some reaction to respond. Therefore, this report will discuss two parts: one is strategic change programs and the other is current strategic challenges for Lufthansa. In the first part, it will evaluate the strategic change programs which Lufthansa applied and also cover the effects of leadership and politics. The second part of this report will analyse the strategic challenges for Lufthansa based on current and future business environment. I. Strategic changes for Lufthansa Strategy is argued to be a useful tool for an organization to achieve its target in the long term, and its contribution to development of the organization is evident. However, it is impossible to use one strategy to respond the changeable demand due to the dynamic external environment, so the organization should change their strategies to adapt the market. 1. Strategic change program According to Balogun and Hailey (1999), reconstruction is one of strategic changes for organizations, and it “may be rapid and could involve a good deal of upheaval in an...
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...What is politics? For centuries humans have argued constantly about everything. There is always someone who disagrees with another human’s point of view. When discussing politics there are numerous questions that require answers. What will be discussed in this essay is the question many people have longed to have an answer for. What is politics? By regurgitating Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes in this essay, we will get to define politics. Aristotle believes that man is naturally geared towards the well being of a community whereas Thomas Hobbes believes the exact opposite. Hobbes believes that humans are individually minded and only focus on themselves. By elucidating both point of views we will then be able to decide for ourselves which one of these authors seems to be more right in defining what is politics. While reading Aristotle’s book Politics Aristotle firmly asserts that the city-state exists by nature. He writes: A complete community constituted out of several villages, once it reaches the limit of total self-sufficiency, practically speaking, is a city-state. It comes to be for the sake of living, but it remains in existence for the sake of living well. That is why every city-state exists by nature since the first communities do. (Page 3 Lines 26-30). Once a community fully becomes independent and does not require any outside help in satisfying their needs that is when a community becomes a city-state. Here we see Aristotle’s assertion that a “city-state exists by...
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...Gabriel Laurencin Jr Political Science Assignment VI April 17, 2015 The last three months of college have offered me opportunity to learn and understand the science that is involved in politics. Politics can be simplified into smaller components and an easier understanding by studying how it works and the systems of which they operate. This is what we call a social science. According to Britannica Encyclopedia Political science is a social science discipline that deals with systems of government and the analysis of political activity and political behavior. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics which is commonly thought of as the determining of the distribution of power and resources. When I started the political science class my views on politics were negative. Negative in the sense that I wanted little to do with politics. My view of politics was a form of corruption were citizens were robbed. My recent studies of the political science have changed my views, interest, and expectations of politics. Growing up in the Virgin Islands my generation has heard and seen very little positive talks about politics. My definition of politics before my political science class was fairly simple. I thought politics were a group or an entity of elected officials that controlled government money. I learned that I was not one 100% right but there was way more to that one simple word. The very first thing that political science made me understand is the importance...
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...television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely.” (Dictionary). It is an extraordinary power, with the ability to create and bombard its consumers with endless images and opinions. However, attached to the media’s power is its ability to overwhelm and negatively affect its consumers. Detrimental to politics, “...a sense of cynicism, distrust, and suspicion of modern politics and politicians”, otherwise known as “media malaise” (Newton, 1999) can be created by the media. Ultimately, the type, overexposure, content, and stance of the media combined with our own misinterpretations causes “media malaise” (Newton, 1999) and turns us off politics. The type and exposure of media plays a determinant role in the cause of “media malaise” (Newton, 1999). Newton (1999) discovered that while dependent on content, television can be subtly linked to “media malaise” (Newton, 1999). However, Newton (1999) also concluded that “...after controlling for income, education, gender, age, and party politics, reading a broadsheet newspaper is strongly connected with media mobilization...” (p.596). This indicates that the media’s ability to turn us off politics takes place the strongest through television as opposed to other types of media. In 2005, on average, Canadians watched a little over 3 hours of television per day and in the United States it was over 8 hours per day (www.economist.com, 2007). This trend of excessive television watching exhibits how our time allotted to...
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...CHAPTER 1 – POLITICS AND KNOWLEDGE INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE Review Sekar Rizki Wibowo – KKI_B What is politics? Politics is a process by which a group of people, whose opinions or interests might be different from each other, reach collective decisions that are generally regarded as binding on the group and enforced as a common policy. The basis of political knowledge always came from three important sources, which are: 1. Authority : Involves the appeal of any documents, tradition, or person that is believed to be an important source of politics or some explanation regarding a particular issue. 2. Personal thought : Relies on assumption of human brains that may develop a thought that determines the definition or anything he/she knows about the political world. 3. Science : Uses expliicit methods that attempt to enable the different people to agree about what they know. The goal of using science in order to learn about politics is that it answers the facts what, why, and how questions about politics. Political science is composed from some subfields that are usually defined by their specific subject matter, rather than by their mode of analysis. The four subfields of political knowledge are: 1. Comparative politics : Focuses on similarities and difference in political processes and structures. 2. International relations : Focuses on the political relations between countries, the behavior of transnational actors, and the dynamics happenting...
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..."A GOOD HEAD AND A GOOD HEART ARE ALWAYS A FORMIDABLE COMBINATION Nelson Mandela ZAMBIA POLITICS IN GENERAL The Zambian politics especially those exhibited by the ruling Government or in certain sectors of the opposition today has become alarmingly volatile over the past few years. In the olden days when Zambians very well understood who they were, as a dignified and well cultured people of good moral standing, it was unheard of, for individuals in the same community to publicly demean one another in the way many politicians in the ruling Government and certain sectors of the opposition talk about each other today. There is no doubt that society would reprimand any citizens for not respecting each other or for publicly bringing down their dignity to disrepute. UPND believes that Politicians are supposed to be individuals of integrity and responsible leaders of our country, yet actions of some politicians in the ruling government appear like people who do not want to serve the interests of the Zambians but their own interests. It shouldn't be a mystery to anyone why things don't get done in Zambia when we see how the ruling Government and some opposition leaders talk to one another other. The question is why have our politicians that are in Government become so malicious toward those in the opposition over the years? • Is it that they do not have true leadership attributes, • Or is it that they are just power hungry, • Or is it that our culture has lost...
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...Title: What do Kaldor and Selchow mean by ‘subterranean politics’ in Europe, and what are the implications of their four findings? Do you think their study has really demonstrated the usefulness and credibility of their approach? From the title of this essay, it allows the reader to understand that this assignment will be associated with Subterranean Politics. It will also inform the reader on a research project carried out to examine a new range of Political phenomena called Subterranean Politics (Kaldor & Selchow 2013: 78). Four findings will then be discussed on what is meant by subterranean politics. This essay will also show the context, methodology and literature of Kaldor and Selchows discoveries of the ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics. It will explain the striking affects that this new type of politics on Europe. This substantive content will give information that entices one to discover the currents of opinions or new political inventiveness that have the capability to stop Europe from falling apart (Kaldor & Selchow 2012: 1). It will then look deep into the study to see whether or not it has demonstrated an image of the usefulness and credibility of their approach towards this type of politics. Europe today is seen to be going through a Financial and Socio-Economic Crisis. “At this point in subterranean politics, grassroots activism protests and multiple ‘new’ types of political phenomena with research was carried out by seven field teams from each end...
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