Examining the development of the process of presidential selection from the founding of the republic to the present day, James Ceaser contends that many of the major purposes of the selection system as it was formerly understood have been ignored by current reformers and modern scholars. In an attempt to reverse this trend, Professor Ceaser discusses the theories of selection offered by leading American statesmen from the Founders and Thomas Jefferson to Martin Van Buren and Woodrow Wilson...

Noted campaign scholars James W. Ceaser, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney Jr. take readers along on the longest, most expensive, and in many ways most dramatic presidential campaign in American history. Drawing on their extensive knowledge of political history and deep resources of current political science, the authors capture the astonishing twists of fate, uncanny detours, and remarkable surprises that made the 2008 election truly historic.With President George W. Bush's appr...

In Designing a Polity, James W. Ceaser, one of our leading scholars of American political development, argues for the continuing central role of the Founding within the study of American government. Drawing on essays published over the past 10 years, extensively updated and revised to reflect current politics, Ceaser engages the Founding Fathers, particularly James Madison, emphasizes Alexis de Tocqueville as a model of political inquiry, critiques current and recent theorists suc...

Now updated to include the 2014 midterms and preview the coming 2016 election cycle, After Hope and Change provides the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the national election, including the presidential nomination process and election and congressional elections. As they have for every national election since 1992, James W. Ceaser and Andrew E. Busch, now joined by John J. Pitney, Jr., combine a concise account of the elections as well as the broader context for American pol...

Now updated to include the 2018 midterms and previewing the coming 2020 election cycle, Defying the Odds provides the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the national election, including the presidential nomination process and election and congressional elections. With its keen insights into the issues and events that drove the 2016 election, Defying the Odds will be an invaluable resource for students and all political observers seeking to understand an election that was decad...

Jack Miller’s Born to Be Free examines the beauty and power of the American principles that our founding fathers gave us and the lack of knowledge about them in today’s society. With a preface by distinguished professor and author James Ceaser (University of Virginia), Miller goes on to advocate for communicating these values by introducing them back into higher education. Miller examines the overarching benefits of teaching our country’s founding principles and how that could impact Ameri...

American Exceptionalism provokes intense debates culturally, economically, politically, and socially. This collection, edited by Charles W. Dunn of Regent University's Robertson School of Government, brings together analysis of the idea's origins, history and future.Contributors include:Hadley Arkes, Michael Barone, James W. Ceasar, Charles W. Dunn, Daniel L. Dreisbach, T. David Gordon, Steven F. Hayward, Hugh Heclo, Marvin J. Folkertsma, William Kristol, and George H. Nash....

In The Perfect Tie: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election, James W. Ceaser and Andrew E. Busch continue their study of national elections and their broader implications for American politics and society. With groundbreaking research of electoral politics and penetrating discussions of divided government, independent candidates, party platforms, realignment theory, the electoral college, and campaign strategies, Ceaser and Busch attempt to make sense of the 2000 presiden...

This collective work examines the different conservatisms displayed in the UK and US, particularly in the areas of the meaning of rights, their foreign policy mission, the role of religious activism within their respective party politics, and the impact of the current economic crisis on free-market economic orthodoxy. Drawn from both political scientists and civilizationists, each of these four areas is explored in this work from both the US and the UK perspective. During the 1980’s, Unite...

The essays in this book reflect on the paradoxical relationship of liberal education and liberal democracy. Liberal education emphasizes knowledge for its own sake, detached from all instrumental purposes. It also aims at liberation from the manifold sources of unfreedom, including political sources. In this sense, liberal education is negative, questioning any and all constraints on the activity of mind. Liberal democracy, devoted to securing individual natural rights, purports to be the ...

Democracy Reconsidered provides an enlightening study of democracy in America's post-modern context. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and Peter Augustine Lawler explore some of the foundational principles of democracy as they have been borne out in American society. The essays included in this volume examine the lessons that novelists, philosophers, and political theorists have for democratic societies as they progress towards postmodern skepticism or even disbelief in the absolute principl...

This is the third and final volume in the series on American political thought edited by Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West. The book addresses how the major themes in American political thought-identified in the first two books of the series-have played out in the world of modern American politics. The first volume focused on the founding era, and examined the prevalence of social-compact theory among the founders and implications of that theory for the design of American institutions...