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"Clark, Cal, 1945- author"
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Public opinion in Alabama
The attitudes of individual citizens play a central role in a democracy. In the United States today, the two major parties are each associated with a broad set of policy positions representing the conservative and liberal political ideologies. The two major parties are becoming increasingly polarized on these ideologies between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. This book provides an in-depth examination of public opinion in a single American state, Alabama, to see whether the public opinion of general citizens follows this stereotype of ideological and partisan polarization. Alabama public opinion is analyzed on a fairly wide range of issues, including the quality of public officials, constitutional reform, the role of government in terms of taxes and overall spending, education, health care, religion in public life, crime, and immigration. Alabama is generally perceived as staunchly conservative politically and as a reliably 'red' Republican state in national elections. Yet, public opinion in Alabama is considerably more nuanced and complex than this stereotype in two distinct aspects. First, Alabamians are certainly conservative on many issues, but they are also liberal on a significant number of others. Second, the issue positions of the state's citizens are shaped by three different dynamics in terms of what factors influence specific attitudes. Furthermore a brief analysis of public opinion in the entire United States finds similar patterns. Thus, the current polarization in party politics does not necessarily reflect public opinion in its entirety, suggesting a need to transcend the competing conservative and liberal orthodoxies.
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Flexibility, foresight, and fortuna in Taiwan's development - navigating between Scylla and Charybdis
Combines quantitative and qualitative analysis and examines policy performance in various contexts; since the 1960s, chiefly.
eBook
Advancing excellence and public trust in government
Over the last four decades the public trust in government in the United States has fallen dramatically due to a \"perfect storm\" of contributing factors, such as a seemingly never ending string of political scandals, partisan polarization and toxic attack politics, and miserable failures to respond to natural disasters or the devastation of the Great Recession. This book contains the academic presentations that were made at the Symposium on Advancing Excellence and Public Trust in Government that was held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on September 17, 2007. In particular, the Symposium focused upon how improving transparency in governmental operations could be used to assuage some of the popular doubts about and hostility toward America's governments. There was certainly a very broad consensus at the Symposium that transparency in government is extremely desirable, needs to be improved, will bring reform and improvement to the public sector, and should make a major contribution to the restoration of the public trust in the United States. Indeed, support for improved transparency can be found across the political spectrum, as both conservatives and liberals believe that more openness in government will promote parts of their very different policy agendas. Truly, transparency appears to be an all-American issue. The discussion at the Symposium revolved around three broad themes. The first concerned transparency about government operations per se, such as how decisions were made and what detailed budgets are. A second and somewhat broader theme concerned greater transparency of \"performance measures\" which tell us what the effects of specific policies are and how effective or efficient government agencies are. Third and even more broadly, some of the participants argued that general questions of governance provide the key for a renewal of public trust among our citizenry. This book of presentations at the Symposium is organized into four parts based on this distinction. Part I contains
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