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We created this site to help you
learn about American politics and the problems posed when
ordinary citizens--who often disagree over the relative
value of freedom, order, and equality--rely on democratic
government to make public policy. As its title implies,
The Challenge of Democracy argues that good government
often involves difficult choices.
Our publisher (Cengage Learning)
ofers a computer tool, MindTap, that is tied to
The Challenge of Democracy. Kenneth Janda, one of the
original authors, created this website many years earliar.
He maintains it today on behalf of his co-authors with the
thought that enterprising students may find it useful in
some ways.
- Useful
Internet Links Organized by Chapters
- Janda created over 200 Internet
links tied to all 18 individual chapters of The
Challenge of Democracy. Click to go to the Table of
Contents and then click on individual
chapters.
- IDEAlog,org
- This is an interactive quiz
based on the tradeoff of the values of
freedom/order/equality underlying The Challenge of
Democracy. Perhaps your instructor may incorporate
the quiz in your course. If not, you may gain a better
understanding of the book's conceptual framework by
taking the quiz outside of class to determine whether you
have a Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, or
Communitarian orientation to politics and
government.
- NYTimes
Tool to Cut the Deficit
- On November 13, 2010, the
Times published this interactive tool to cut the
deficit, saying: Today, you're in charge of the
nation's finances. Some of your options have more
short-term savings and some have more long-term savings.
When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and
2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it
online. You might think you can dance, but can you
cut the deficit? Try doing it. It's not easy.
- $2.99
iBook: The Social Bases of Political
Parties
- Janda published this 110 page
iBook in the spring of 2013 and priced it for student
usage. Based on 16 national surveys from 1952 to 2012, my
book (1) describes--in colored charts--how the United
States society has changed from 1952 to 2012 in terms of
occupation, education, regional growth, urbanization,
religion, ethnicity, and ideology; (2) summarizes how the
patterns of social support for the Democratic and
Republican parties have shifted with these changes; (3)
indicates how the parties have articulated the political
interests of their social bases in congressional voting
in Congress; and (4) invites readers to speculate about
the future of our two-party system in 2032 by offering
their views in a national survey. (Note that it is
only available as an iBook. If someone wants to convert
it to a generic eBook, contact me.) Students may find the
decades of data useful in trying to analyze the results
of the 2016 presidential election and the current tate of
the parties.
- Do-It-Yourself
Examination Pretest
- Students in one of Janda's
large lecture classes devised and submitted their own
multiple-choice items for possible use on the final
examination. (If Janda used a submitted question, the
student-author might stand a good chance of getting it
right.) The items were then posted on the class web site
without answers as a pretest to stimulate studying. You
might find the questions similarly useful.
- Party
Platforms
- The American Presidency Project
has made available all major party platforms from 1840 to
2016.. You might find this collection useful for class
projects. For example, create a list of words concerning
a given concept (e.g., the environment, religion,
taxation) and then search each party's platforms for how
often the words occur and what the platform said. One
student wrote about the Republican and Democratic
platform references to the issues of "equal pay" or
"imigration."Guess which partiesreferred to these terms
most often.
- State
of the Union Addresses
- The American Presidency Project
also provides all presidential State of the Union
Addresses since 1913. Similar research might be done with
these addresses. One undergraduate at Northwestern wrote
her thesis on which president was most likely to make
religious references in his State of the Union addresses.
For the period she covered, it was Ronald Reagan by
far.
- Global
Terrorism, Domestic Order, and the United
States
- Shortly after 9/11, a Russian
colleague asked Janda to write something about the event
and the U.S. response for a Russian yearbook. It focuses
on events leading to the successful routing of the
Taliban in 2001. It might be useful for students who know
little about this successful phase of the "war on
terror."
Please watch this space. In the
future, I'll add more information that I hope will be useful
to your study of American politics. Please write me at
k-janda@northwestern.edu
with comments and
suggestions.
Happy Surfing--
Kenneth Janda, Jeffrey Berry, Jerry Goldman, Deborah
Schildkraut, and Paul Manna
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