The Initiative, The Referendum, and The Recall: Recent Legislation in the United States

1907 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Schaffner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Remarkable Progress

To make representative government more representative is the problem of today. The gradual process of social evolution has changed the industrial basis upon which our political institutions rest, and the increased complexity of our social organization has made the expression of the popular will more difficult. As readjustment to changing conditions is the requisite for any advancing type of life, so political progress becomes impossible unless new agencies are developed to be retained or discarded as experience may warrant.Among the agencies for political expression, few have made more remarkable progress in the history of recent legislation than the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. State wide referendums for the adoption of State constitutional, and local referendums for local affairs, are familiar institutions in the United States, but it is only within recent years that our States have begun to adopt the initiative and the referendum for State legislation.

A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
National Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines how protagonists of the Italian revolutions of 1848, including Giuseppe Montanelli and Carlo Cattaneo, engaged with American political institutions by looking at the cases of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Sicily. Before discussing the role played by the United States of America in Italian political thought of 1848, the chapter considers Italian experience of the revolutions of 1820–1821 and 1830–1831, both of which marked a watershed for the peninsula's national movement. It shows that Italian revolutionaries addressed the United States with very different emphasis, illustrating how references to the United States could serve very different ideological purposes. With respect to Tuscany's long history of engagement with the United States, there were far fewer references to American political institutions than for instance in Sicily, where the revolutionaries adopted a monarchical constitution. The chapter also analyzes Cattaneo's involvement in the Revolution in Lombardy and his understanding of American democracy.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 134-150
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Modernization ◽  
Us Constitution

Interpreting the US Constitution as an instrument of federal union has important implications in terms of understanding of the American founding. The Constitution mattered much more to the international than to the domestic history of the United States. Its importance to the latter was dwarfed by the role of state constitutions and state legislation. The Constitution provided the institutional basis on which the nation would grow in territory, population, and riches in the nineteenth century. But if the federal government was active in foreign policy, so-called Indian diplomacy, and the management of the national domain, it played only a limited role in domestic developments. To understand the processes of economic and political modernization that characterized the United States in the nineteenth century, that is, the transition to a market economy and to liberal democracy, it is necessary to study the actions and inactions of the American state governments.

The Wisconsin Idea and Business Progressivism

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60
Author(s):  
Stuart Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social History ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Pressures

‘The curriculum’, write Richard Hofstadter and C. de Witt Hardy, ‘is a barometer by which we may measure the cultural pressures that operate upon the school.’ These pressures are of many kinds, economic and intellectual, and they make schools and universities social, and even political institutions sensitive to external needs and demands. In the United States, where education has become one of the main secular goals of society, the history of schools and universities deserves to be an integral part of the social history of the country. Lawrence A. Cremin has shown how such an integration can be achieved. And now that ‘B schools’ in the vanguard of Le Défi American are spreading outwards from Manila to Manchester the time is ripe to study a phenomenon which most historians and sociologists, if they have not despised, have preferred to ignore.

Americanism and Frontier Catholicism

1943 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas T. McAvoy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Virtues

One of the most confusing incidents in the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States is the condemnation of Americanism by Pope Leo XIII. In his apostolic letter, Testem Benevolentiae, of January 22, 1899, Pope Leo condemned those methods of apologetics which stressed natural virtues to the neglect of dogmatic teachings and those notions of spiritual direction which insisted on individual inspiration and the active virtues in preference to external guidance and the passive virtues. These doctrines had acquired the name of Americanism in European theological circles, partly as a result of the French adaptation of the biography of Father Isaac Hecker written in English by Father Walter Elliott, and partly as a result of a controversy waged in several European Catholic periodicals. The subsequent denials of most of the American prelates that the heretical Americanism ever existed in the United States, together with the counter-charges of certain conservative prelates and foreign-language groups, only add to the confusion of the historical account. The astute silence of most Catholic historians on the controversy for fear of reawakening the sharp animosities of the time has given rise to many misconceptions about the affair, even causing some suspicion that Pope Leo in some way condemned American national traits or even the loyalty of American Catholics to American political institutions.

Silence of the Land: On the Historical Irrelevance of Territory to Congressional Districting and Political Representation in the United States

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 53-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Congressional District ◽  
Congressional Districts ◽  
Communities Of Interest

Every ten years, the United States “constructs” itself politically. On a decennial basis, U.S. Congressional districts are quite literally drawn, physically constructing political representation in the House of Representatives on the basis of where one lives. Why does the United States do it this way? What justifies domicile as the sole criteria of constituency construction? These are the questions raised in this article. Contrary to many contemporary understandings of representation at the founding, I argue that there were no principled reasons for using domicile as the method of organizing for political representation. Even in 1787, the Congressional district was expected to be far too large to map onto existing communities of interest. Instead, territory should be understood as forming a habit of mind for the founders, even while it was necessary to achieve other democratic aims of representative government.

Review of A brief history of the United States.

1919 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 414-414
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of

An American Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Language Recognition ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.

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