Congress does most of its work in committee, and no understanding of that body can be complete without an analysis of its committees and those who shape them. Andrée Reeves now offers a rare glimpse into the workings of committee chairmanship over a span of thirty-three years-how three chairmen operated and how they influenced their committee and its impact.As Reeves demonstrates, the chair is the most important player in a congressional committee-the one who holds more cards than his colleagues and can deal a winning hand or call a bluff. His use of institutional and personal resources affects the committee, the chamber, and public policy.As a case study, Reeves compares the leadership of three disparate and strong House Education and Labor Committee chairmen who served from 1950 to 1984: Graham A. Barden (D-NC), Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY), and Carl D. Perkins (D-KY). She delves into each chairman's background, orientation, and use of resources. Each had his own brand of leadership, she finds, and a pronounced but different impact on Education and Labor. The committee blocked "progressive" legislation under Barden, facilitated Johnson's Great Society under Powell, and fought tooth and nail to maintain its accomplishments under Perkins.Reeves emphasizes also committee development, including the effects of reforms, the relationship between committee composition and policy output, and committee voting patterns. Rather than advancing smoothly and incrementally, Education and Labor developed in stages that coincided with each chairmanship. And over the years covered, it evolved into a more complex, decentralized, and democratic organization.This is an illuminating study of three men who made a difference in our nation's governance. They left a legacy for succeeding chairmen and indeed for the House, and their chairmanships have had a lasting impact on our society.

Southern-style politics was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This system -- long referred to as the Solid South -- embodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and in national politics it was the means through which the South's politicians defended their region's special interests and political autonomy. The history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate decline of the Democratic Party dominance in the land below the Potomac and the Ohio.This is the story that Dewey W. Grantham tells in his fresh and authoritative account of the South's modern political experience. The distillation of many years of research and reflection, is both a synthesis of the extensive literature on politics in the recent South and a challenging reinterpretation of the region's political history.

On June 1,1792, Kentucky became the fifteenth state in the new nation and the first west of the Alleghenies. Lowell Harrison reviews the tangled and protracted process by which Virginia's westernmost territory achieved statehood.By the early 1780s, survival of the Kentucky settlements, so uncertain only a few years earlier, was assured. The end of the American Revolution curtailed British support for Indian raids, and thousands of settlers sought a better life in the "Eden of the West." They swarmed through Cumberland Gap and down the Ohio River, cleared the land for crops, and established towns. The division of sprawling Kentucky County into three counties in 1780 indicated its rapid growth, and that growth accelerated during the following decade.With population increase came sentiment for separation from Virginia. Such demands had been voiced earlier, but a definite separation movement began in 1784 when a convention -- the first of ten such -- met in Danville. Not until April 1792 was a constitution finally drafted under which the Commonwealth of Kentucky could enter the Union. While most Kentuckians favored separation, they differed over how and when and on what terms it should occur. Three factions struggled to control the movement, but their goals and methods shifted with changing circumstances. This confusing situation was made more complex by the presence of the exotic James Wilkinson and the "Spanish Conspiracy" he fomented.Harrison addresses many questions about the convoluted process of statehood: why separation was desired, why it was so difficult to achieve, what type of government the 1792 constitution established, and how Governor Isaac Shelby and the first General Assembly implemented it. His engaging account, which includes the text of the first constitution, will be treasured by all Kentuckians.

Super Tuesday 1988 was the first successful attempt to get several states in one region to hold their presidential primaries on the same day. Its success -- or lack thereof -- will affect the way presidents are elected for many years to come.Reaching beyond Super Tuesday and the nominations of George Bush and Michael Dukakis, Barbara Norrander's book presents the nation's first regional primary as the latest chapter in the ever-changing system through which U. S. political parties choose their presidential candidates. Norrander's research details how changes in technology, candidate and media strategies, and historical circumstances have influenced recent presidential nominations and how they set the stage for the South's primary in 1988.Super Tuesday: Regional Politics and Presidential Primaries emerges as an authoritative source not only on Super Tuesday but on many other aspects of presidential nominations. This book demonstrates that much of current conventional wisdom about presidential nominations is wrong.Norrander traces candidate strategies from 1976 to 1988 and calculates turnout rates from 1960 to 1988. She also examines the composition of the Super Tuesday electorate with respect both to preconceived notions of who participates in presidential primaries and to deliberate attempts by the Democratic and Republican parties to manipulate voter turnout in the South's regional primary. Her analysis of the timing and process of nomination victories from 1976 to 1988 emphasizes the importance of the overlooked role of candidate attrition over candidate momentum.Of special interest to political scientists -- and to political observers -- concerned with parties, elections, and voting behavior, Norrander's book will reshape the examination of presidential contests in 1992 and beyond.

Few men have been more important to the life of Kentucky than three of those who governed it between 1930 and 1963 -- Albert B. Chandler, Earle C. Clements, and Bert T. Combs. While reams of newspaper copy have been written about them, the historical record offers little to mark their roles in the drama of Kentucky and the nation. In this authoritative and sometimes intimate view of Bluegrass State politics and government at ground level, John Ed Pearce -- one of Kentucky's favorite writers -- helps fill this gap.In half a century as a close observer of Kentucky politics -- as reporter, editorial writer, and columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal -- Pearce has seen the full spectacle. He watched "Happy" Chandler vault into national prominence with his flamboyant campaign style. He was shaken by Earle Clements for asking an awkward question. He joined in the laughter when a striptease artist was commissioned a Kentucky Colonel during the Combs administration. And he watched as the successive governors struggled to move the state forward, each in his own way.Yet this is more than a newsman's account of events. Pearce probes for the roots of the troubles that have slowed Kentucky's progress. He traces the divisions that have plagued the state for almost two centuries, divisions springing from the nature of Kentucky's beginnings. He studies the lack of leadership that has hampered the always dominant Democratic party and the bitter factionalism that has kept the party from developing a cohesive philosophy. When the candidate of one faction has taken office, he shows, the losing faction has usually made political hay by bolting to the opposition party or torpedoing the governor's efforts in the legislature instead of uniting behind a progressive party program. The outcome of such long-term factionalism is a state that must now run fast to catch up.

The Bluegrass region of Kentucky was the only part of the slaveholding South Abraham Lincoln knew intimately. How the cultural environment of Lexington, the home of Lincoln's wife, with its pleasure-loving aristocracy, its distinguished political leaders, and its slave auctions shaped his opinions on slavery and secession is traced in these pages.In this city, early known as the "Athens of the West," Lincoln's alliance with the Todd family widened his circle of acquaintances to include such diverse personalities as the fiery Cassius M. Clay, who urged immediate emancipation; Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, courageous Presbyterian minister, and the doctor's nephew, John C. Breckinridge, who took up arms against Lincoln after his election to the presidency.

During the 1950s two Senate investigations, both highly publicized through the new medium of television, revealed the spread of racketeers and corruption among labor unions. Taking advantage of these sensational revelations, business interests, who for years had chafed against the federal government's pro-labor policies, mounted a campaign to curb labor's power. With the support of the business-oriented administration of Dwight Eisenhower, they pushed through Congress a new "reform" law -- the Landrum-Griffin Act. In this book, R. Alton Lee, author of an earlier study of the Taft-Hartley law, offers the first detailed legislative history of this important act and with it an examination of the Eisenhower presidency.Lee traces the development of the public's distrust of labor leaders and the rising sentiment for reform and then follows the progress of the legislation through both houses of Congress in the midst of moves and countermoves by labor and management. He shows how some of the leading actors in the struggle -- notably John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Barry Goldwater -- used the occasion to further their political ambitions. In the final vote the swing of public opinion against labor and the potent combination of conservative southern Democrats and northern Republicans secured for the law an overwhelming majority in Congress.The enactment of the Landrum-Griffin law, Lee concludes, is yet another example of Eisenhower's astuteness as a politician, one who marshaled the force of his popular appeal and adroitly deployed his administrative aides to achieve his goal. It also provides a revealing example of the interplay among public, president, and Congress in the American system.Eisenhower and Landrum-Griffin makes a valuable contribution to political and labor history and to a deeper understanding of the Eisenhower presidency.

Perspectives on Irish Nationalism examines the cultural, political, religious, economic, linguistic, folklore, and historical dimensions of the phenomenon of Irish nationalism. Its essayists are among the most distinguished Irish studies scholars. Their essays include a comprehensive analysis of the tapestry of Irish nationalism and focused studies that often challenge myths, pieties, and the scholarly consensus. Thomas E. Hachey is Professor of Irish, Irish-American, and British history and Chair of the department at Marquette University. He wrote Britain and Irish Separatism: From the Fenians to the Free State 1807-1922 (1977), coauthored and edited The Problem of Partition: Peril to World Peace (1972); coedited Voices of Revolution: Rebels and Rhetoric (1972), and edited Anglo-Vatican Relations, 1919-1937: Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See and Confidential Dispatches: Analyses of American by the British Ambassador, 1939-45 (1974). Lawrence J. McCaffrey is Professor of Irish and Irish-American History at Loyola University of Chicago. He has published a number of articles and books, including Daniel O'Connell and the Repeal Year (1966), The Irish Question, 1800-1922 (1968), The Irish Diaspora in America (1976) and coauthored The Irish in Chicago (1987). "

Twenty years ago the Kentucky General Assembly was one of the least powerful and least effective legislatures in the country, almost entirely dominated by the governor. Over the past two decades the legislature has changed -- gradually and with little public attention -- into a far more powerful, professional, and independent body.This book is a study of that process of change: its causes, the obstacles encountered, and the political and policy consequences. It is a study of changing relationships between governor and legislature, caused in part by less aggressive gubernatorial leadership and in part by the growing assertion of legislative independence. It is also a study of the men and women who initiated change and who play major roles in the legislature today.One important area of change has been in the kinds of persons elected to the legislature. Today's Kentucky legislators are more professional in their approach to legislative service, serve longer tenures, and are likely to be committed to long-term political careers. They work harder to become known in their districts, and they devote more time to constituency service.In preparing this study, Malcolm E. Jewell and Penny M. Miller interviewed and sent questionnaires to many past and present members of the Kentucky legislature, as well as examining election returns, roll call votes, and committee records. They also traced developments since the 1960s to provide historical perspective.The Kentucky General Assembly is not a "typical" legislature. It is less professional and meets less frequently than those in most states. But trends in the Kentucky legislature are typical of those in other states, and this book puts the changes in Kentucky into national perspective.

The transmission of policy preferences from the mass electorate to the political elite is the subject of Warren Miller's illuminating new book. The elites of whom he writes are the delegates to recent nominating conventions analyzed in their subsequent roles as activists involved in presidential election campaigns. Miller's analysis delineates circumstances and conditions that affect the degree to which the issue preferences of these elite activists are more or less representative of those held by rank-and-file members of the nation's electorate. Miller argues that, although consent and accountability are basic principles in the theory of democratic representation, the ways in which convention delegates are selected are not designed to implement these principles. Nevertheless, empirical analysis demonstrates that they often do so to varying degrees. Delegates selected in primary elections, Miller finds, are more representative of the ordinary voters than are delegates selected by any other means -- except for Democratic super delegates, who are the most representative of all.Miller's analysis explains why elites who campaign on behalf of particular candidates are less representative of mass policy opinions than are those who campaign on behalf of their parties, and why, ironically, the elites who campaign on behalf of specific policies are even less representative of the issue positions of their parties' rank-and-file partisans. Without Consent, a sequel to Parties in Transition, makes an important contribution to the literature on theories of representation by its novel analysis of linkages connecting public opinion and public policy through the presidential campaign elites.

Scholars may have widely differing views of the Progressive Era, but all see business as holding the key to the reforms of that period. In this new book Judith Sealander amplifies our understanding of the relationship between business leaders and reform through a detailed examination of Dayton and the Miami Valley of Ohio. She focuses specifically on four progressive projects that made this nine-county region nationally known as a center for reform activism. The four "projects" include an extensive program of employee benefits instituted at the National Cash Register Company; the creation, in the Miami Conservancy District, of a massive flood prevention system; the institution of a new businesslike city-manager government in Dayton; and a new experimental approach to education in the region's public and private schools.Well grounded in the scholarly literature on progressivism and drawing from a rich trove of local manuscript sources, Judith Sealander has provided an integrated analysis of the role of business leadership in these four reform areas that corrects the exaggerated treatment business has often received. She shows how this one group of businessmen functioned as reformers, the "grand plans" they had for changing society, their merger of scientific engineering, business management, and moral fervor, and the benefits and costs of their kind of progressivism.Grand Plans contributes new insights into the Progressive Era and will interest scholars of that period as well as historians of American business, urban affairs, and reform.

The Papers of Henry Clay span the crucial first half of the nineteenth century in American history. Few men in his time were so intimately concerned with the formation of national policy, and few influenced so profoundly the growth of American political institutions.Volume 7, the fourth and final of those dealing with Clay's role as secretary of state, carries the story of his career from January 1, 1828, to March 3, 1829. During these fourteen months, Clay and President John Quincy Adams strive unsuccessfully to solve a number of nagging diplomatic problems before leaving office. Among these are the northeast boundary controversy with Great Britain, the exclusion of American trade from the British West Indies, and the settlement of U.S. spoliation claims with France. Equally frustrating to Clay is the fact that the enormous amount of time and effort he has expended in Adams's reelection campaign has produced so little in return. To his genuine amazement and dismay, Andrew Jackson defeats Adams decisively.The volume ends in March 1829 with Clay facing an uncertain future. Unsure whether he wants again to practice law, he contemplates instead the prospect of managing "Ashland," his Lexington estate. At the same time, convinced that the Jackson administration can only end in disaster, Clay's thoughts turn to running again for the White House in 1832. With this possibility in mind, the nation's ninth secretary of state leaves Washington for home.Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Keen Johnson was governor of Kentucky from 1939 to 1943 -- years that spanned the end of the Depression and the initial involvement of this country in the Second World War. The account of Johnson's administration is chronicled here through a collection of his public papers. The material, organized by subject and arranged chronologically within each area, presents a rather clear picture of Governor Johnson's plans and concerns for Kentucky and of the actions he took as chief executive on behalf of the state. In contrast to contemporary procedures concerning the preservation of governors' papers in university and state archives, many of the Johnson papers were difficult to locate and, apart from a few complete speech manuscripts, were reconstructed in large part from cards containing outlines and notes for speeches, along with many state and local newspaper accounts of speeches he made and of events in which he participated. Many speeches have been extensively footnoted by the editor to provide the reader with supplementary information.Also included in this volume is a perceptive evaluation of the Johnson administration by H. Clyde Reeves, who served in it as a commissioner of revenue. The appendix offers as complete a listing as was possible to reconstruct of the speeches delivered by Governor Johnson during his term of office.

A model of policy analysis, Arms Transfers under Nixon provides a lucid and lively demonstration of how the Nixon administration combined skillful diplomacy and the adroit use of arms transfers to bring about a remarkable series of American foreign policy achievements. The Middle East provides the most dramatic example. Here, the Arab-Israeli military balance was stabilized, Egypt was persuaded and enabled to forsake its heavy dependence upon the Soviet Union, conditions favorable to peace negotiations were arranged, and important interim agreements were brokered by the United States. In the Persian Gulf, the promotion of Iran and Saudi Arabia as effective guarantors of regional stability in the wake of British withdrawal, and maintaining the pro-Western orientation of these governments, are shown to have been essential to crucial United States and Western interests. The dramatic reversal with the collapse of the Shah's government is assessed, as are the causes of that post-Nixon debacle.The battles that accompanied the administration's initiatives -- battles with hostile nations, with allies, with the Congress, and even within the administration -- and the diplomatic and political moves by which opposition was overcome provide the stuff of an exciting and instructive narrative.

Since its creation by the National Security Act of 1947 the office of secretary of defense has grown rapidly in power and influence, surpassing at times that of the secretary of state to become second only to the presidency in the government of the United States. The pivotal secretaries, according to Kinnard, are James Forrestal, Charles Wilson, Robert McNamara, Melvin Laird, and James Schlesinger.Kinnard analyzes the administration of each of these secretaries not only within the domestic and international contexts of his time but also within the bureaucratic world in which the secretary functions along with the president and secretary of state.

In 1979 Robert Penn Warren returned to his native Todd Country, Kentucky, to attend ceremonies in honor of another native son, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, whose United States citizenship had just been restored, ninety years after his death, by a special act of Congress. From that nostalgic journey grew this reflective essay on the tragic career of Jefferson Davis -- "not a modern man in any sense of the word but a conservative called to manage what was, in one sense, a revolution." Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back is also a meditation by one of our most respected men of letters on the ironies of American history and the paradoxes of the modern South.