American Government & Politics - Introduction
Introduction | Field Requirements | Faculty
The United States is the world's oldest continuous constitutional democracy. How is it that such a democracy can be created and sustained for over two hundred years? Will it survive and flourish in the 21st century? What role do public opinion and elections, political parties and social movements, legislatures, the presidency and executive institutions, federalism or the Constitution play in the maintenance and functioning of our democracy? How can it respond successfully to new societal conditions, such as growing cultural diversity, and to new international conditions, such as a globalized economy? Should the nation change its dominant policy agendas in response to new governing problems, or reform its electoral and institutional arrangements to insure more effective democratic governance?
These are some of the central questions addressed by the field of American government at the University of Florida. In the effort to examine these questions in an in depth and systematic manner, the field is divided into five areas of specialty:
- National Political Institutions (including the study of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, bureaucracy)
- Public Opinion and Political Behavior
- Public Policy
- Intergovernmental, State, and Local Politics
- Public Law
- Mass Politics (including parties, interest groups and social movements, and electoral processes)
Students begin their doctoral study in American government by taking two broad-ranging core seminars in American Politics and Political Behavior that cover the broad outlines of these special topics. They then choose from courses and seminars that highlight faculty expertise in the different specialties outlined above, including regularly offered course work in legislative politics, the American presidency, parties and interest groups, intergovernmental politics, state politics, and the electoral process. In addition to such standard courses, a variety of seminars on specialized topics are offered by faculty on an occasional basis. Seminars in appropriate cognate departments, such as History and Sociology, also may be open to American Government students. Finally, students will take research seminars in American politics that provide them with guidance and experience in conducting systematic empirical and theoretical work on questions of special concern to them. The research seminars are particularly oriented towards helping students prepare research designs and initial empirical work that can serve as the foundations for Masters Thesis, Doctoral Dissertations and journal articles.
The faculty in the field of American politics are characterized by intellectual and methodological pluralism, and by a tolerant appreciation for the contributions of different approaches to political inquiry. This open and supportive environment is especially geared to help students discover their own scholarly interests and talents, the theoretical perspectives that they find most useful and compelling, and methodological approaches most appropriate to their interests and talents. Specific research interests of the faculty include the role of education and socialization processes in shaping democratic citizenship in America, the role of women and ethnic/racial minorities in politics, the effect of divided government on the success of president's legislative proposals in Congress, reform and institutional change in Congress, the role of governors in state politics, and the effect of term limits and electoral reform on state legislatures.
Theoretical perspectives range from sociological analysis of ethnic, gender and racial politics to rational choice analysis of elite behavior to social learning perspectives on institutional change to social psychological studies of mass politics. Finally, faculty engage in a variety of methodological approaches to inquiry, including quantitative roll call vote analysis, public opinion survey analysis, elite interviewing and participant observation, focus group analysis, quantitative demographic and aggregate data analysis.
