Stephen K. Medvic – författare

Stephen K. Medvic’s Campaigns and Elections is a comprehensive yet compact core text that addresses two distinct but related aspects of American electoral democracy: the processes that constitute campaigns and elections, and the players who are involved. In addition to balanced coverage of process and actors, it gives equal billing to both campaigns and elections and covers contests for legislative and executive positions at the national, state, and local levels, including issue-oriented campaigns of note.

The book opens by providing students with the conceptual distinctions between what happens in an election and the campaigning that precedes it. Significant attention is devoted to setting up the context for these campaigns and elections by covering the rules of the game in the American electoral system as well as aspects of election administration and the funding of elections. Then the book systematically covers the actors at every level—candidates and their organizations, parties, interest groups, the media, and voters—and the macro-level aspects of campaigns such as campaign strategy and determinants of election outcomes. The book concludes with a big-picture assessment of campaign ethics and implications of the "permanent campaign."

New to the Fourth Edition:

• Fully updated through the 2020 elections, looking ahead to the 2022 midterms

• Covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 election as well as the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol

• Adds new sections in Chapter 3 on election integrity and the assessment of election administration

• Reviews recent Supreme Court cases on gerrymandering and faithless electors

• Expands coverage of social media as a source of news, of the increasingly partisan nature of the media, and of the role of media fact-checking in campaigns and elections

• Reorganizes the chapters on the various actors so that the chapter on candidates leads directly to the chapter on campaigns

• Fully updates the resources listed at the end of each chapter

Stephen K. Medvic’s Campaigns and Elections is a comprehensive yet compact core text that addresses two distinct but related aspects of American electoral democracy: the processes that constitute campaigns and elections, and the players who are involved. In addition to balanced coverage of process and actors, it gives equal billing to both campaigns and elections and covers contests for legislative and executive positions at the national, state, and local levels, including issue-oriented campaigns of note.

The book opens by providing students with the conceptual distinctions between what happens in an election and the campaigning that precedes it. Significant attention is devoted to setting up the context for these campaigns and elections by covering the rules of the game in the American electoral system as well as aspects of election administration and the funding of elections. Then the book systematically covers the actors at every level—candidates and their organizations, parties, interest groups, the media, and voters—and the macro-level aspects of campaigns such as campaign strategy and determinants of election outcomes. The book concludes with a big-picture assessment of campaign ethics and implications of the "permanent campaign."

New to the Fourth Edition:

• Fully updated through the 2020 elections, looking ahead to the 2022 midterms

• Covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 election as well as the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol

• Adds new sections in Chapter 3 on election integrity and the assessment of election administration

• Reviews recent Supreme Court cases on gerrymandering and faithless electors

• Expands coverage of social media as a source of news, of the increasingly partisan nature of the media, and of the role of media fact-checking in campaigns and elections

• Reorganizes the chapters on the various actors so that the chapter on candidates leads directly to the chapter on campaigns

• Fully updates the resources listed at the end of each chapter

Politicians are reviled. From jokes on late-night TV talk shows to radio show rants and from public opinion polls to ubiquitous conventional wisdom—politicians are among the most despised professional class in modern society. Drawing on seminal work in political science, Stephen K. Medvic convincingly argues to the masses that this blanket condemnation of politicians is both unfair and unwarranted. While some individual politicians certainly deserve scorn for misjudgments, moral failings, or even criminal acts, the assumption that all of them should be cast in a similar light is unjustified. More importantly, that deeply cynical assumption is dangerous to the legitimacy of a democratic system of government. Politicians, as a class, deserve respect, not out of blind obedience to authority but because democratic deliberation requires it.

Medvic explains how cognitive biases in the way people reason often lead us to draw unjustified conclusions of politicians in general based on the malfeasance of some. Scandals involving politicians are likely to be remembered and to serve as "evidence" of the belief that "they all do it." Most politicians, in fact, care deeply about their cities, states, and nation. But they face a trap of unrealistic and contradictory expectations from the public about how politicians should behave. Medvic, in turn, demonstrates the necessity of ambition, the utility of politics for resolving conflicts peacefully, and the value of ideology in framing political choices. In the end, citizens must learn to tolerate the inherent messiness of politics as the only viable alternative to violent conflict. In the process, we must embrace our role in the political system as well.

Politicians are reviled. From jokes on late-night TV talk shows to radio show rants and from public opinion polls to ubiquitous conventional wisdom—politicians are among the most despised professional class in modern society. Drawing on seminal work in political science, Stephen K. Medvic convincingly argues to the masses that this blanket condemnation of politicians is both unfair and unwarranted. While some individual politicians certainly deserve scorn for misjudgments, moral failings, or even criminal acts, the assumption that all of them should be cast in a similar light is unjustified. More importantly, that deeply cynical assumption is dangerous to the legitimacy of a democratic system of government. Politicians, as a class, deserve respect, not out of blind obedience to authority but because democratic deliberation requires it.

Medvic explains how cognitive biases in the way people reason often lead us to draw unjustified conclusions of politicians in general based on the malfeasance of some. Scandals involving politicians are likely to be remembered and to serve as "evidence" of the belief that "they all do it." Most politicians, in fact, care deeply about their cities, states, and nation. But they face a trap of unrealistic and contradictory expectations from the public about how politicians should behave. Medvic, in turn, demonstrates the necessity of ambition, the utility of politics for resolving conflicts peacefully, and the value of ideology in framing political choices. In the end, citizens must learn to tolerate the inherent messiness of politics as the only viable alternative to violent conflict. In the process, we must embrace our role in the political system as well.

The ground upon which campaigns and elections are contested has been shifting rapidly in the last decade. Radical and ongoing changes to the way elections are administered and campaigns are financed; new approaches to polling, campaign management and advertising, and voter mobilization; and recent developments in the organization of political parties and interest groups, the operation of the media, and the behavior of voters require close examination. New Directions in Campaigns and Elections guides students through the tangle of recent developments in real-world politics drawing on the insights of innovative scholarship on these topics.

More than any other aspects of American politics, campaigns and elections have been affected—in many cases transformed—by new communication technologies, a recurring theme throughout the volume. This tightly organized collection of original contributions raises important normative questions, grounds students’ thinking in cutting edge empirical research, and balances applied politics with scholarly insights. Like other volumes in the New Directions in American Politics series, the focused exploration of the latest developments across a comprehensive range of topics makes this an ideal companion for students eager to understand the rapidly changing political environment of the U.S. electoral process.

The ground upon which campaigns and elections are contested has been shifting rapidly in the last decade. Radical and ongoing changes to the way elections are administered and campaigns are financed; new approaches to polling, campaign management and advertising, and voter mobilization; and recent developments in the organization of political parties and interest groups, the operation of the media, and the behavior of voters require close examination. New Directions in Campaigns and Elections guides students through the tangle of recent developments in real-world politics drawing on the insights of innovative scholarship on these topics.

More than any other aspects of American politics, campaigns and elections have been affected—in many cases transformed—by new communication technologies, a recurring theme throughout the volume. This tightly organized collection of original contributions raises important normative questions, grounds students’ thinking in cutting edge empirical research, and balances applied politics with scholarly insights. Like other volumes in the New Directions in American Politics series, the focused exploration of the latest developments across a comprehensive range of topics makes this an ideal companion for students eager to understand the rapidly changing political environment of the U.S. electoral process.

For nearly as long as there have been electoral districts in America, politicians have gerrymandered those districts. Though the practice has changed over time, the public reaction to it has remained the same: gerrymandering is reviled. There is, of course, good reason for that sentiment. Gerrymandering is intended to maximize the number of legislative seats for one party. As such, it is an attempt to gain what appears to be an unfair advantage in elections. Nevertheless, gerrymandering is not well understood by most people and this lack of understanding leads to a false sense that there are easy solutions to this complex problem.

Gerrymandering: The Politics of Redistricting in the United States unpacks the complicated process of gerrymandering, reflecting upon the normative issues to which it gives rise. Tracing the history of partisan gerrymandering from its nineteenth-century roots to the present day, the book explains its legal status and implementation, its consequences, and possible options for reform. The result is a balanced analysis of gerrymandering that acknowledges its troubling aspects while recognizing that, as long as district boundaries have to be drawn, there is no perfect way to do so.