Parties, Politics, And Public Policy In America

Comprehensively revised and updated, the ninth edition of Parties, Politics, and Public Policy in America takes an original look at the health of U.S. political parties. William J. Keefe and new coauthor Marc Hetherington grapple with the central question of why so many Americans today profess anti-party attitudes but behave in party-centered ways. The new edition not only examines continuity and change in both regional and social power bases from which parties operate, but discusses the recent resurgence of parties--organizationally, legislatively, and in the mass public, Keefe and Hetherington find that while American political parties remain highly decentralized, they are in fact no longer in decline. Firm landmarks on the political scene, they continue to form the principal institutional for popular control of government.