We the People: An Introduction to American Politics

Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or coauthor of 25 books, including Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced; Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public; Politics by Other Means; The Consequences of Consent; The Worth of War; and The Captive Public. Ginsberg received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1973. Before joining the Hopkins faculty in 1992, Ginsberg was Professor of Government at Cornell. His most recent books are The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters; What the Government Thinks of the People; and Analytics, Policy and Governance. Margaret Weir is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She has written widely on social policy in Europe and the United States. She is the author of Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States and coauthor (with Ira Katznelson) of Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal. Weir has also edited (with Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol) The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Caroline Tolbert is Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, where she regularly teaches the introductory American government course and was awarded the Collegiate Scholar Award for excellence in teaching and research. Her research explores political behavior, elections, American state politics, and the Internet and politics. Tolbert is coauthor of Digital Citizenship: The Internet Society and Participation; Why Iowa? How Caucuses and Sequential Elections Improve the Presidential Nominating Process; and Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Digital Citizenship was ranked one of 20 best-selling titles in the social sciences by the American Library Association in 2007. Her latest coauthored scholarly book is Digital Cities: The Internet and the Geography of Opportunity. She is President of the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association.