A classic work reproduced here for historians and students of American history and politics.
POLITICALLY SPEAKING, the Western states of America compose the least known region of the nation.
The Atlantic States, New England, the Midwest, and the South have fuller histories.
There are eleven Western states in all:
Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
All of them joined the Union after 185o, during which period only seven others were admitted,
including West Virginia, which was carved from Virginia during the Civil War.
Most of the population, even of the older Western states, is of recent origin.
About half of today's California voters have come into the state since 1932.
The Western population has been expanding at a great rate,
especially along the Pacific Coast. Industrial and commercial pursuits have involved
an ever increasing proportion of the people. Every new census proves the heightened
importance of the West to the American economy and domestic political structure.
Every new incident of political turmoil in the Orient and the Pacific Basin accents the critical role of the American West in the international picture.
Congress Against The Executive Force
by ALFRED de GRAZIA
A proposal to shield the American Democracy from dictatorship and bureaucracy
In this first part of his two-volume introduction to political science, Professor de Grazia surveys the ideas of philosophers and political scientists through the ages - beginning with Plato and Aristotle and concluding in our own day with Dewey, Lasswell, and Burnham. This volume shows how scientists study political subjects, and explains such basic concepts as leadership, political groupings, public opinion, representation and elections, pressure groups, and coercion and violence. In the final chapters, Professor de Grazia explores the main branches of democratic thought, the nature of public policy, and personal liberty.
In this second part of his two-volume introduction to political
sciencc, Professor de Grazia deals with the institutions in which man's
efforts to solve the problems of community living are expressed.
Laws, constitutions, legislatures, executives, administrative agencies,
and ,courts are part of what he surveys, demonstrating how the basic
elements of political behavior operate within these institutions. The
author then assays the effects of recent developments in political science.
Here the reader comes to understand how germane the study of politics
is to his own life, and to recognize the exciting possibilities in the
future of this study.
This book provides a fuller understanding of the practical working
of politics and, together with Volume 1: Political Behavior which deals
with political theory, offers the reader a comprehensive view of the art
and science of government in the two-volume Elements of Political Science.
My aim in this book is to introduce the citizen who has had no previous training in political science to its proper elements, in their most useful order, and with appropriate emphasis. The book is designed to be a first glimpse of a field of vast importance and universal interest, a glimpse, it is hoped, that will stimulate a general interest in the ever fresh problems of political science.
Apportionment is how people are grouped to elected legislators. When in equal groups or otherwise grouped, different behaviors follow and different laws. Conservative, egalitarian, and mixed formulas abound. The formula of "one-man-one vote" or equi-populous districts is now constitutional law (since 1962) but is far from producing its intended effects of democratization and equalization of the power of the individual voter. The applied science of apportionment, that is, is generally misunderstood and erroneously applied.
This famous history of American ideas of political representation and their predecessors was first written as a doctoral dissertation in 1947, then published by Alfred Knopf in 1950, and chosen later on as one of the few political science books in the new White House Library. It ranks as the top treatise on the subject, which, though central to all forms of government, private and public, has been in general narrowly and legalistically treated.
Most of this collection of articles was written by me in the period
between 1956 and 1965, and was published in the magazine Political Research: Organization and Design (P.R.O.D.), which was renamed later The American Behavioral Scientist, so as to recognize its broader scope. They were gathered together in 1970 and used in the teaching of his courses in social invention, political psychology, and political and cultural behavior. The articles are in some cases finished and polished, in other cases inspired notes. With the advent of computer word processing came the possibility of publishing them on a floppy disk, then on a CD-Rom. Too, they could be published on the internet, and, here now, four years after the inauguration of the site <www.grazian-archive.com> they are made available on the web. The date, May 20, 2001, marks also the 28th year from the Author's first computerized information retrieval system, possibly the first in the social sciences, an article about which is included in this collection.
Several pieces named in the Table of Contents have been held back as temporarily lost in all or part during the early confusion of computing and programming, but will be put in place upon recovery. The work as it stands contains 989,886 bytes.
A Report to the National Foundation for the Arts, systematically prodding future art and literature conferences, and congressional committees on all aesthetic, social and political issues to be considered in arriving at a rational national policy for the support of the arts. Applicable to many fields.
A uniquely realistic, sardonic run-down of the basic principles, propositions, and policy applications of political science.Carries numerous cartoons to reinforce the text, which reflects the theory of the Chicago School of John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, C.E. Merriam, Harold Lasswell, Harold Gosnell, T.V.Smith, L.D.White, V.O.Key. Nathan Leites, Sebastian de Grazia, Herbert Simon, Louis Wirth, William Ogburn, et al., and the European Pareto - Mosca - Max Weber - Michels connection.
These are lectures to the Chinese. They are built around two favorite Chinese ideas: the idea of contradictions (from yin and yang to Mao Tse-tung); and the idea of numbered slogans of things to be sought after or avoided. The contradictory scheme of the eight bads and the eight goods emerged. The Chinese classics, written before the First Empire of 221 B.C., replace the Western philosophers as sources of illumination. Many Chinese have read them, but I wonder whether the Chinese will ever hear the lectures. It doesn't matter. They were really written to be read and for Americans as well as Chinese.
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A superior writer describes her pioneering venture into the dreaded institutional world and experience of total mastectomy