Democracy Under Pressure: Introduction to the American Political System

DEMOCRACY UNDER PRESSURE has provided over a million students with a comprehensive look at the fundamentals of American government. Cummings and Wise pair lively narrative with exemplary scholarship to convey a balanced, realistic sense of political history and to describe the institutions of American government. Throughout, the authors examine the theme of democracy under pressure, discussing the way democracy responds to the needs and demands of various groups over time. The text is developed around a systems approach-a framework of analysis that discusses various elements of the political process in terms of inputs and outputs-and focuses on the gap that exists between theory and reality in government today. This new edition has been updated to include the results of the 2002 congressional elections and other recent events of importance to the American political scene. At 15 chapters rather than 19, the brief edition is exactly the same as the full-length update except for the removal of the last 4 chapters covering public policy and state and local government.

MILTON C. CUMMINGS, JR. (Ph.D. Harvard University) is an award-winning educator who received his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. After two years of graduate study in England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he earned a Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University. Professor Cummings worked for six years at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he did research and writing on American government and politics. He then joined the political science faculty at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is currently professor emeritus. At Johns Hopkins he has been honored with numerous awards. These include the George Owen Teaching Award, the Edward H. Griffin Award, and several other citations for outstanding teaching. He has also received fellowships and grants for research from the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

David Wise is a political writer based in Washington. He is the author or coauthor of ten books on government and politics and is a leading writer on intelligence, espionage, and government secrecy. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, and many other major publications. He is former chief of the Washington bureau of the New York Herald Tribune, a former Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and was a regular weekly commentator on CNN for 6 years. For two years he lectured in political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His most recent book, SPY: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE FBI'S ROBERT HANSSEN BETRAYED AMERICA (Random House, 2002), received high praise from reviewers. He is also the author of NIGHTMOVER: HOW ALDRICH AMES SOLD THE CIA TO THE KGB FOR $4.6 MILLION (HarperCollins, 1995), which was excerpted in TIME magazine. He is also co-author of THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT, a number-one best-seller about the Central Intelligence Agency that has been widely credited with bringing about a reappraisal of the role of the CIA in a democratic society.