This thesis briefly reviews the content of Article II, section 1 of the Constitution which established the Electoral College (modified by Amendment XII), and the principel reform plans that have developed over the years. The reform efforts are examined, together with their possible effects on the entire political system.

The problem under consideration was a study of student achievement and attitude by utilising two methods of teaching the American government course in a metropolitan junior college.

Several books have been written about Sam Rayburn, but thus far there has been no attempt to analyze Rayburn's rise to power. No one has delved sufficiently into his political philosophy, his motivations, and his personal convictions regarding the pivotal events of the turbulent 1930s. This dissertation endeavors to fill that void by tracing the course of events which led Sam Rayburn to the speakership of the United States House of Representatives. It records his triumphs, his shortcomings, the concessions he made, and the people he served in order to achieve his life's ambition. The scope of this study ranges from Rayburn's first expression of interest in the speakership to his elevation to that position in 1940. Brief coverage is given to his three terms in the Texas Legislature, beginning in 1906, and his election to Congress in 1912. A more extensive analysis is made of his early congressional association with John Nance Garner and its pivotal influence on his career. A brief analysis is offered of Rayburn's political and legislative activities prior to the election of 1932. The primary emphasis of this study, however, revolves around Rayburn's activities during the years 1932-1940-- the first two terms of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the period in which Sam Rayburn completed his methodical odyssey to the speakership.

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An intellectual history of the field of public administration is reviewed. It is argued that since the nation's Constitutional origins, public administration has been suffering an identity crisis. The Anti-Federalist - Federalist debate pitted government by dialogue--the need for a community of meaning, on the one hand, against government by distant centralized authority--the objective control of administration, on the other. In the 20th century this same contradiction is manifested in the ethos of the progressive era which emphasized both rationalism (the objective control of administration) and embodied the ideal of public interest (administration as dialogue and the need for a community of meaning). It is argued that Herbert Simon's Administrative Behavior appropriates the discourse of rationalism manifested in the progressive movement but that Simon's model of administration lacked the original symbol that legitimized the field--the communitarian ideal of public interest. The result was the loss of a key tension in the American governance process: the Anti-Federalist - Federalist debate of community versus centralized control. An analytical strategy called deconstruction is used to examine Simon's most seminal work, Administrative Behavior. It operates in a different fashion than traditional discourse and traditional academic research and critique. Two aspects of that uniqueness include: (1) the point of reference of the reader is not defined by the author, and (2) the subject matter under scrutiny is seen as a form of narrative rather than an objective representation of reality. The effect of using this strategy is to render uncertain many of the central assumptions and taken for granted aspects of Administrative Behavior. As a consequence, new intellectual space becomes available to other narratives in the field of public administration. / Ph. D.

No abstract available / History / M.A.

This study has attempted to explain the dramatic challenges to the existing party system that occurred in Canada and the United States in the early 1990s. The emergence of new political movements with substantial power at the ballot box has transformed both party systems. The rise of United We Stand America in the United States, and the Reform Party in Canada prompts scholars to ask what forces engender such movements. This study demonstrates that models of economic voting and key models of party system change are both instrumental for understanding the rise of new political movements.

Much discussed and little understood, Richard Nixon's southern strategy demands scrutiny. A brief survey of the literature suggests that study on this controversial topic has reached an impasse. Southern historians keen to emphasise the importance of class in the region's partisan development over the last fifty years insist that any southern strategy predicated on racialised appeals to disaffected white conservatives was doomed to failure. Conversely, conventional accounts of the Nixon era remain wedded to the view that the southern strategy represented a successful devil's bargain whereby an avaricious Californian exchanged the promise of racial justice for black southerners in return for white Dixie's electoral votes. Most sobering of all are political scientists concerned with executive power, who evidence the limited discretion enjoyed by presidents to implement any agenda inimical to the corporate will of the federal bureaucracy. Since Nixon's executive departments were brimming with Democratic holdovers from the Kennedy and Johnson years, the question of whether or not the President demanded concessions to southern racists apparently becomes more or less irrelevant: the 'fourth branch' of the federal government inevitably ensured that a southern strategy was simply impossible to execute. In reality, much of this stalemate is the product of academic territorial warfare on the battleground of a subject wide open to multiple interpretations. A southern historian keen to showcase the importance of his local research is likely to show little interest in evidence that a President based in Washington D.C. could initiate social change in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Similarly, political scientists fighting an unrewarding battle to emphasise the autonomy of federal departments are naturally disinclined to highlight examples of presidential willpower altering bureaucratic culture. Nevertheless, an intriguing paradox remains in evidence. Despite leaning more towards the political philosophy of antediluvian white southerners than the demands of black Americans, Richard Nixon presided over a period of such fundamental social reconstruction below the Mason-Dixie line that he could legitimately claim to have desegregated more southern schools than any other President in history. Whilst a raft of excellent monologues demonstrating the impact of local movements down South on national politics have been published over the last decade, few have even attempted to explain this peculiar phenomenon. As Matthew Lassiter observed in a Journal of American History roundtable on American conservatism in December 2011, 'the recent pendulum swing has overstated the case for a rightward shift in American politics by focusing too narrowly on partisan narratives and specific election cycles rather than on the more complex dynamics of political culture, political economy, and public policy.' The purpose of this thesis is to explain how a President notorious for pursuing the votes of white segregationists rested at the head of a federal government that ruthlessly dismantled Jim Crow. By incorporating the range of methodologies elucidated above, it will identify exactly how much influence President Nixon and his executive officers exerted over civil rights policy. Was Nixon's reactionary agenda thwarted by over-mighty bureaucrats? Or did the President act more responsibly than the majority of commentators have admitted?