Making the MexiRican City
To commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month, this week's review analyzes the community-building and activist practices Mexican and Puerto Rican migrants employed in 20th-century Michigan.
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Posted on February 17, 2020 in Review of the Week
The president on Capitol Hill : a theory of institutional influence
Cohen, Jeffrey E. Columbia, 2019
312p bibl index, 9780231189149 $105.00, 9780231189156 $35.00, 9780231548199 $34.99
The spate of literature on presidential influence on Congress spawned by Richard Neustadt’s seminal Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (CH, Apr’91, 28-4783) has been contentious. Some scholars, Neustadt among them, have focused on the personal political skills wielded and the savvy possessed by a president. Others have maintained, as Cohen (Fordham Univ.) points out, that the context that presidents confront makes them “mere hostages or captives of the larger environment.” In this rigorous and persuasive book, Cohen argues that simply by the act of taking a position on a roll-call vote presidents exercise influence over Congress’s actions. Cohen is careful to underscore that presidents do not position-take only to lobby Congress. Nonetheless, through the use of both regression analysis and quasi-experimental “treatment-effects” analysis, he argues that presidents have the requisite “structured agency” “to influence their environment and/or the voting behavior of others, such as the voting behavior of members of Congress.” Cohen’s analysis is a superb corrective to works that fail to appreciate how presidents’ position-taking can influence what are often considered to be “Congress-centered factors,” thus allowing presidents to shape political context as well as respond to the political context they encounter.
Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
Reviewer: R. P. Seyb, Skidmore College
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Political Science – U.S. Politics
Choice Issue: Feb 2020
To commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month, this week's review analyzes the community-building and activist practices Mexican and Puerto Rican migrants employed in 20th-century Michigan.
Posted on in Review of the Week
This week's review offers a roadmap for teaching contemporary US history, providing instructors with tips to tackle recent divisive topics and engage students with primary sources.
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Researching the experiences of day laborers in Denver, Colorado, this week's review examines wage theft and nefarious labor practices that reflect broader systemic labor issues in the US.
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This week's review showcases the work of international women photographers dating back to the 19th century, disrupting stereotypes over what constitutes women's work.
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