Politics by region

In Porterfield's work, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation, she addresses the impact that religion and politics had on each other from the very beginning of the United States. Throughout the work, she addresses not only politics and religion, but the impact that gender, race, and class had on the religious and political systems that were developing. Porterfield's main points all circle back to the main theme of doubt, in which political and religious changes and…

The Texas Primary Election is officially less than two weeks away. Now is a crucial time for SFA students to get informed about this year’s presidential candidates and their plans for office. “The best way to get the government to respond to your concerns is to be involved in the voting process,” said Dr. Steven Galatas, SFA professor and political scientist. “Know who the candidates are and what they stand for.” The Texas Primary Election allows Texas residents to nominate whom they wish to…

An interest group is a collection of people who try to influence politics or the policies of government, business, etc., in a way that helps their own interests. The power of an interest group varies depending on the time and specific group, but generally speaking, their power and presence remains a constant on the political scene today. Today, countless interest groups are trying to address the issue of the rising cost of education in the U.S. If I or individuals like myself, who just finished…

Planning theory developed from a range of disciplines. It borrows ideas from economics, sociology, political science, psychology and geography. From these disciplines, planning has adopted ideas which are applied to the planning process to arrive at normative prescriptions of how planning is to be done. According to Alexander, planning practice needs a theory of what planning is or should be, and theory provides scientific explanation and description of facts. Planning used to be viewed as an…

Specializing in Southern Politics, Elections and Louisiana Politics Dr. Wayne Parent’s analysis of the Louisiana carnival of politics is truly one to be taught for years to come. Parent effortlessly tells the sordid story of Louisiana and their often times corrupt political system. In a state where there has been more constitutions than any other in the union as well as having Napoleonic based law, Louisiana is clearly different. To dive into this minefield of diversity is a tough task and…

In the article “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda,” Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky propose that informal institutions form as much or more importance in politics as formal institutions. Throughout the article Helmke and Levitsky provide us with similarities and comparisons of both institutions and a definition for each institution. According to both researchers, it is not possible to explain political performance without focusing on both institutions as we…

Not only have pacific politics been shaped by our own worldviews, with the influence of those that maintain a very powerful rank in the Pacific communities, world views also shape politics. The concept of a world view is not of a simple context to understand as it has many definitions that exist behind it. DeWitt (2011) defined a world view as ‘not merely a collection of separate, independent, unrelated beliefs, but is instead an intertwined, interrelated, interconnected system of beliefs.’…

believes that the telos of all men is to achieve happiness, and they can only achieve this as citizens as men are ‘political animals’. Because men are essentially social, community life is crucially important for Aristotle, including participation in politics. Citizens must participate in civic life in order to realize their true natures and their freedom and they must own private property in order to learn values that are necessary for community life and to achieve happiness which will motivate…

through history as well as its construction, which explains the difficulty of defining it in a fully satisfactory manner. Consequently there are a variety of definitions the concept of State. In his essay Politics as a Vocation (1919), Weber starts by explaining the larger concept of politics and then focuses on the definition of the state. His opinion about how a state should rule reflects the contractarian view of the state of nature and the idea of the social contract. Basically, Weber…

Political parties are not useful to have at a local government level. Local government exist to provide services and protect property, they are not designed to decide major social policies. If Nanaimo were to be given the task of deciding if our central bank were to go back to using the gold standard to attempt to reduce inflation for the betterment of the poor or other decisions along those lines then it would be useful to elect a party has defined political leanings. Since no city would, and…