How should the United States be governed during times of crisis? Definitely not as we are in times of tranquility, asserts this classic study. The war on terrorism is a case in point. The horrors of terror attacks on the United States have forced Americans to accept legislative changes that might be unthinkable at other times. The "inescapable truth," Clinton Rossiter wrote in his classic study of modern democracies in crisis, is that "No form of government can survive that excludes dictatorship when the life of the nation is at stake."

How should the United States be governed during times of crisis? Definitely not as we are in times of tranquility, asserts this classic study. The war on terrorism is a case in point. The horrors of terror attacks on the United States have forced Americans to accept legislative changes that might be unthinkable at other times. The "inescapable truth," Clinton Rossiter wrote in his classic study of modern democracies in crisis, is that "No form of government can survive that excludes dictatorship when the life of the nation is at stake."