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Polarization In Politics

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Polarization in American politics is caused by differences in priorities, and it determines which party and individual is affiliated with politically. Lieske gives an example whereby some politicians may prioritize environmental issues while others may prioritize civil rights issues. On a lower sub-level, political views held in different states are determined by the prevalent cultures in the respective states. Lieske establishes that the major factors of influence are social class, race, religion, ethnicity, and historical settlement patterns. Taking religion for example Frendreis and Tatalovich tried to explain the reason why certain counties within the US continues to restrict the sale of alcohol even in the 21st century. Frendreis and …show more content…

They present the idea that concentration of party supporters in different regions determines the party’s political dominance over that region. It also influences the kind of campaign method used in certain areas. As such, policies that might work for some states might be a failure to other states; this causes a sharp contrast in policy preferences. If follows that a party that will represent these interests will be the dominant party in the region as concluded by Lieske in his study. He also reveals that culture influences state politics. Gimpel and Schuknecht went further to illustrate that moralistic state subcultures influence lower levels of crime, poverty, female-headed households, and racial inequality in income distribution. On the other hand, pluralistic state subcultures will enhance the prevalence of these factors. These two kinds of subcultures determine the social and economic ways of the state people, hence, they influence the kinds of policies needed for governance. For instance, some states have legalized marijuana for recreational or medicinal purposes or both. Other states allow sale of alcohol while others only allow it partially. Marijuana and alcohol are known to increase crime levels. Therefore, a moralistic society is likely to reject any laws promoting marijuana for recreational purposes. It could also restrict the sale of alcohol. They could then …show more content…

However, federalism scholars have approached conflict with an underlying assumption that each level of government will work towards eventual uniformity, placing conflict into context as being a momentary disruption in federalism’s longer trajectory towards cohesion. As a result of this view, scholarly questions tend to focus on which level of governance has more leveraging power at particular moments to influence long-term policy change. For example, in analyzing conflicts emerging in federalism, Rose and Cynthia argue that today’s polarized Congress and unified state governments have rerouted policymaking onto states for the policy areas of immigration, health, education, marijuana and same-sex marriage. Moreover, adding fuel to this devolution in policymaking, Rose and Cynthia argue that the executive and judicial governments have opened new pathways for states to pass policy in areas previously closed to them, resulting in a fragmented policy landscape that is outside the norm of a cohesive set of laws. This heightened role of subnational legislation is not viewed as a long-term condition, and the focus is on how conflict gets resolved between each level of

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Throughout history federalism has gone through several substantial changes, such as the boundaries and balances between the state and national government. Due to this we have experienced several different era’s of federalism from the original “dual-federalism” to the “new federalism” and just about everything else in between. Dual-federalism also known as divided sovereignty was a optimistic belief that federal and state government could exist if their was a clear division between authority. The problem with this is that there was a clever mechanism in the constitution that reserved a powers clause in favor of the national government. Such cases held in Marshall court favored the national government “McCulloch v. Maryland(1819)”, “Gibbons

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This chapter focuses on other possible explanations for increased political polarization and then explain how they don’t account for increased polarizations. The authors give plenty of possible counterarguments for their audience to consider and then show why they are right by shutting those counterarguments down with an overwhelming amount of evidence. They introduce counterarguments like intraparty competition during primaries, partisan congressional reforms, redistricting, and Southern Realignment. Intraparty competition during primaries does not show significant differences in legislators for there to be a solid argument. There are statistics that show that polarization would have been unaltered even without changes in partisan congressional reforms.

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When one thinks of Kansas, the thought of diversity hardly comes to mind; however, in their book Kansas Politics and Government: The Clash of Political Cultures Dr. H. Edward Flentje of Wichita State University and Dr. Joseph A. Aistrup of Kansas State University make the argument that cultural and political diversity have led to the numerous accounts of conflict throughout Kansas history and created the political factions that evident in the state today. Kansas Politics and Government: The Clash of Political Cultures is a great in depth summary of all things political in the state of Kansas. It not only covers the Constitution of Kansas as well as the structure and institutions of the government, but also takes a deep dive into the history

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Alternative Assignment Option Nomocracy in Politics In Natural Liberty in the Bible Belt: An Explanation of Conservative Voting Patterns in Southern Appalachia, Barry A. Vann discusses how the voting patterns of people in Appalachia may have explanations as far back as their ancestors in Ireland. The people of southern Appalachia have had a history of voting for the politician who promises to not enact policies that pit ethnic groups against each other. Many people credit this voting trend to the Appalachians’ need to cling to God and guns. Barry A. Vann makes the argument that “the ethnic roots of the people who call these two sub-regions home have played roles in creating distinctive voting patterns between them.” Many Appalachians have a strong resistance to a big, centralized government and tend to want to give more power to individual states rather than giving power to a strong federal government.

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As has been thoroughly established, the problem in America doesn’t appear to be related to the recent increase in partisanship. If the partisan argument were sufficient, it would suggest gridlock would occur in countries that also possess this same principle. What has been proven though is that this is not the case in other parts of the world, and instead quite the contrary often occurs. A new answer must be formulated to answer the question as to what is causing the consistency in America’s dissent and inefficiency. What appears to be the case is that rather than the actual, tangible partisanship being the problem, it is instead a lower tolerance for partisanship that America possesses.

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“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. ”—John F. Kennedy.

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Political Differences in Policy between the Two Parties Within the Political world, there are many differences in opinion that split the nation into two major parties. These political parties, the republicans and democrats, find different solutions to the problems that the United States faces in today’s world. Two of the these policies that split the parties are climate change and fiscal policy. Both issues are very important to the country, but their are stark contrasts in policy when it comes to the two parties.

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Olivia Aydelotte McLennan Community College Federal Government 2305, Fall 2017 Professor Gladden Research Paper 02 Political Parties “In 1796, President George Washington warned the countrymen to shun partisan politics.” Since then, we have had two dominate political parties in the American party system. The two-party system is a political system in which only two parties have a realistic opportunity to compete effectively for control of the government. The same two-party system has been around for ages, just with different forces and alignments. Throughout all of American history five different party systems have impacted our government, to now where we have the two party system of Republicans and Democrats.

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These dimensions include: personal attributes of both party’s candidates, domestic policy, foreign policy, the comparative record of the two parties managing the government, and the groups involved as well as the group interest affecting them (“he represents the working man”). This dimension predicts voting decisions with 87% accuracy. Each of these feelings are shaped by our party identification, and our party supplies us with the cues to “properly” evaluate elements of politics through the lens of

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875 Words | 4 Pages

Steven Pink points out that the American electoral map always revolves around the southern, northern and western blocks. Pinker notes that the souther and western states’ voting pattern favors candidates that promote military aggression, public religion, and laissez-fair economic ideologies. They tend to vote for private ownership of guns, valorization of traditional families and less tax. On the contrary the northern states tend to vote for candidates that support international relations. They vote for gun control policies, secularism and individual freedom in culture and sexuality.

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Finally, it will be argued that the modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. These two parties have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and have controlled the United States Congress since 1856. The Democratic Party generally positions itself as centre-left in American politics and supports a modern American liberal platform, while the Republican Party generally positions itself as centre-right and supports a modern American conservative platform. (Nichols, 1967)

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Partisan Polarization in the United States of America: The Connection Between Partisan Polarization and Racial Attitudes Taylor L. Kreuscher University of Minnesota- Twin Cities POL 3323- Political Tolerance in the United States Spring 2018 Final Research Proposal May 8, 2018 Partisan Polarization in the United States of America: The Connection Between Partisan Polarization and Racial Attitudes Partisan polarization is deeply engrained into American politics as it has a substantial effect not only in politics but also in American culture and society. Partisan polarization in the United States of America is generally split between the two major political parties, The Republican Party and The Democratic Party, and two corresponding

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Wolak, Jennifer and McAtee in this paper showed to what extent people differentiate the partisan divisions of national politics from the partisan battles within their state. They also explored the reason why people hold various views of the political parties in their state, by investigating the degree to which such evaluations are simply an artifact of national considerations, or responsive to the political performance and ideological leanings of the state political parties. Recent research by Wolak et al. reveals that people assess their state political parties both on the premise of national political issues, as well as the parties’ performance in state government. So, citizens often use their views on the national parties as perspectives to determine their views on the

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1152 Words | 5 Pages

When it comes to addiction and abuse, people want to be ensured of public safety because of the idea that marijuana causes injuries and crimes. These crimes develop due to the arrests of people that are in possession of marijuana, not directly because of the use of marijuana. People are arrested because marijuana is illegal in most places, especially because they fight for it or rebel against the law. When marijuana is legal policemen can focus on much more serious crimes and acts of violence. To ensure public safety, the law should just regulate the selling and use of marijuana.

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1261 Words | 6 Pages

Political socialization is the process by which people formed their ideas about politics. It's the lifelong development of a person's political values. There are two types of political socialization primary and secondary. Though most political socialization occurs during childhood, people continue to shape their political values throughout their lives (Dugger n.d). This basically means that political socialization is the process by which political culture is developed and maintained.

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