According to Harold Lasswell (1936), politics is the decision-making process of who gets what, when, and how. If the institution of religion is ultimately responsible for meaning, the political institution is ultimately responsible for managing power.
GENERAL RESOURCES
According to a July 1995 study of the Americans Talk Issues Foundation, three out of four Americans claimed that they rarely or never trust "government to do what is right"--a quarter more than in the midst of the Watergate hearings. What will be the consequences of this crisis of legitimacy?
- FirstGov--"You're First Click to the U.S. Government." Updated version is FedWorld's FirstGov--"Search 30 Million Government Web Pages"
- GovSpot--the master locator of anything governmental
- All Things Political--"a more efficient gateway to leading political and governmental online resources"
- Government Documents in the News
- Poly-Cy - Internet Resources for Political Science
- GPO Access - Searcher of Fed Reg & Congressional Records
- National Election Studies (University of Michigan)--now with a bibliography with over 4000 entries
- THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet
- Fedscope--an online analytic processing tool allowing access to a wealth of Federal employment data
- Richard Jensen's Guide to Political Research On-Line
NATIONALISM
-
Eric Zuelow's Nationalism Project (Wisconsin-Madison)
- POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGIES
JOURNALS AND MANUSCRIPTS
- Moving Ideas: The Electronic Policy Network
- Patrick Fagan's Working-Papers Site for political science scholars (well annotated and numerous links from Southern Mississippi)
- Yahoo 's Political Science Electronic Texts
VOTER EDUCATION SITES
- Project Vote Smart--"a citizen's organization, has developed a Voter's Self-Defense System to provide you with the necessary tools to self-govern effectively: abundant, accurate, unbiased and relevant information. As a national library of factual information, Project Vote Smart covers your candidates and elected officials in five basic categories: biographical information, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances and interest group ratings."
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
- FirstGov master portal to US government Websites, offering access to all 20,000 government sites with over 27 million Webpages
- Thomas
- FedWorld
- FedStats--"The gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. agencies"
- From GPO.access Federal Resources Organized by Topic
- The United States General Accounting Office
- 1998 Green Book Overview of Entitlement Programs
- Budget of the United States Government, FY 2005
- The Annotated U.S. Constitution
- United States Constitution Search
- National Political Index
- U.S. DIPLOMATIC HISTORY RESOURCES INDEX
- Capitol Watch Online Home Page
- Library of Congress World Wide Web Home Page
- The Federal Web Locator
- The National Archives
- GPO Access
- Office of Technology Assessment--closed in 1995, preserved at Princeton
- United States International Information Programs
THE PRESIDENCY & PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
- The American President from the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia
- From the Commission on Presidential Debates, Debate Transcripts from 1960-2004
- Getting the Message Out! National Campaign Materials 1840-1860
- Presidents' State of the Union Addresses 1790-2005
- The Presidents from PBS's American Experience
- For a collection of Presidential campaign commercials see The Livingroom Candidate from the American Museum of the Moving Image
- What's said behind the closed doors of the White House? Listen to the secret recordings of six U.S. Presidents at WhiteHouseTapes.org from the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia
POLITICS AND RELIGION
- Tom W. Smith and Seokho Kim's "The Vanishing Protestant Majority" from the National Opinion Research Center
"The Twelve Tribes of American Politics: The Religious Groups that Comprise the U.S. Electorate" based on John C. Green's "The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes: A Baseline for 2004"
ELECTION 2008
- Perspctv: all matters of charts, maps, timelines and blogs
- Pew Research Center's Election '08
- From Voterwatch.org, U.S.. Presidential Debates Project
- The Huffington Post's Fundrace2008 see who is giving how much to whom
ELECTION 2004
- Pew Research Center's The 2004 Political Landscape
- Presidential Candidates on the Issues View the candidates' quotations on the major issues
- Washington Post's Elections 2004
- CNN's 's Deconstruction of the Final Voting Results
- Compendium of surveys and polls from PollingReport.com's "White House 2004"
- For a most thorough listing of parties and candidates, see Ron Gunzburger's Presidency 2004
- With women casting 4-7 million more votes than men in recent elections--and given the reported "gender gap" in party support--could those 22 million single women ("women on their own") who did not vote in 2000 determine the outcome of the 2004 election?
- Women's Voices, Women Vote
- Rutger's Center for American Women and Politics
- Feminist Majority Foundation
- Vote, Run, Lead
ELECTION 2000
- GEOSTAT-produced map of election results from the University of Virginia, using information from the New York Times' "The 2000 Election"
- At GOVOTE.COM you can take a quiz and then be patched with your soulmate among contenders and even have your political personality identified
ELECTION 1996
The 1996 presidential election selected the individual who would lead Americans into the next millennium. It was decided by an electorate that was reportedly disenchanted, disconnected, cynical, and woefully uninformed about government. Since 1973, with the exception of 1974 (the midst of the Watergate crisis), public confidence in the leadership of Congress and the Executive Branch has never been lower. Paradoxically, as voters are decreasingly engaged in political life, the American political and social environment has become remarkably more open and democratic. Owing to emerging microchip technology and the growing availability of electronic communication, twelve percent of U.S. households are now connected to the Internet, exposing millions to a universe of unprecedented information and knowledge. In the future, 1996 may be recognized as the nation's first cybernetic election.The impact of this information and knowledge revolution on traditional political processes and institutions is already immense. The power and influence once commanded by political bosses and political parties now flows to professionals in mass marketing and mass communications; the personal computer may already be more vital to winning an election than any precinct captain or party machine. Public opinion has become the single greatest force in the electoral process. Click here to see the New York Time's analysis of 1996 Presidential election results broken down by gender, race, income, etc.
ELECTIONS PAST
- The Presidential Elections from 1860-1912 from HarpWeek featuring images from such periodicals as Harper's Weekly, Vanity Fair, and Puck, as well as from the Library of Congress political print collection.
- Alan Miller's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections 1932-96 (Klipsan Press, pdf format 122 pp.)
- New York Times Looks Back: Presidential Elections 1896-1996
- History of Presidential Elections from HistoryCentral.com
- Grolier Online's The American Presidency
- Encyclopedia Britannica's Presidential Elections
- Electoral College Boxscores 1789-2000 from the National Archives & Records Administration
- The American Presidency - Selected Resources: An Informal Reference Guide
- Transcripts of Past Presidential Debates
- LIFE at the Conventions--photographic reflections
- Biographies of U.S. Presidents
- Virtualology.com's Presidents of the United States
- White House Information
- White House Press Release Summaries Archive Page (EXPERIMENTAL)
- PBS's The 30 Second Candidate website
- Miller Center of Public Affairs (University of Virginia), mandated to “gather new knowledge about the American presidency and our government”
DEPARTMENTS
- United States Department of State
- U.S. Department Of Commerce Information Services via World Wide Web
- Welcome to the Bureau of Labor Statistics!
- Department of Health And Human Services
- U.S. Department of Education
- 1996 Digest of Educational Statistics
PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES
- Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States. 1989.
- Clinton Foundation
- George Bush Presidential Library
- Ronald Reagan Library
- Jimmy Carter Library
- Ford Library
- Richard M. Nixon Library & Birthplace
- Webcorp -- Nixon Audio Archives
- LBJ Library
- John F. Kennedy Library
- Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
- Harry Truman Presidential Library and Museum
- FDR Presidential Library
- Herbert Hoover Presidential Library
- Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library
- The Thomas Jefferson Papers
CONGRESS
- FedNet -- HomePage
- The United States Senate
- U.S. House Of Representatives - Home Page
- Congressional Quarterly
- Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, 1774- Present
- Catalog of Congressional Bills 103rd-107th Congresses
- House - U.S. Federal laws (by source)
- The Zipper: Find Congressmen by Zip Code
- CQ's On the Job
- The Washington Post's Congressional Quarterly's VoteWatch
- U.S. Congress Votes Database--the results of every vote cast since 1991
- Find Out How Congress Voted
- National Performance Review Home Page
CONTACTING YOUR LEGISLATORS
- Email Addresses of the US Government
- Contact your Senator
- Contact your Representative
TRACKING CONTRIBUTIONS OF PACS AND OTHERS
In October of 1998, political
watchdog Charles Lewis, author of The Buying of the
Congress: How Special Interests Have Stolen Your Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness and Chairman/Executive Director of The Center for Public Integrity, spoke on
the Trinity campus. Given the erosion of their political stake in Washington to big money
interests, when, Lewis asked, will people finally say "enough"--that "the time to be a bystander
is over?" He observed how, for instance, the Fortune 500 corporations had given a quarter of a
billion dollars to Congress over the past few years. The result: while in 1956 corporate income
taxes accounted for 28% of all federal revenue, forty years later they were down to 10%. And
where's the media, one of the traditional guardians of citizens' interests? They, too, are
controlled by these very same special interests. In May of 2002 the Center
reported how lobbyists spent $570 million in 34 states--$180 million in
California alone-- in Capitol Offenders: How Private Interests Govern Our
States. Other groups keeping track of those
buying the candidates:
- Center For Responsive Politics In 1996, top-spending candidates won 92% of the House and 88% of the Senate contests. Check out who gave and who received here.
- The Environmental Working Group's Dirty Money: Tracking the PACs
- FECInfo: "The non-partisan Federal candidate campaign money page."
- Opensecrets.org Breakdowns on candidates' funders by geography, profession, and industry. In April 2009 the Center for Responsive Politics made their huge dataset available to the public through this website.
- Maplight.org "brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, providing an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics." Click on "Video Tour" to learn about how to use this most powerful site.
- PoliticalMoneyLine, featuring money in politics databases
-
Follow the Money The National Institute on Money in State Politics
- "Under the influence of party machines, lobbyists and special interests"--reports from the Center For Public Integrity
LEGAL BRANCH
- The Federal Judiciary
- The Supreme Court of the United States
- Gail Partin's Web Guide to U.S. Supreme Court Research
- The Supreme Court Law Collection from Cornell
- 2001 Term Opinions of the Court in their entirety
- FindLaw Constitutional Law Center
- Federal Courts
-
United
States Department of Justice Home Page
SECURITY
- The Patriot Act (HR 3162)
- The National Security Archive from George Washington University
- Homeland Security
LET'S HAVE SOME REFORM!
-
The
Center for Voting and Democracy--for proportionate
representation
-
Citizens Against Government Waste
-
The Public Debt to the Penny
- MovingIdeas: The Electronic Policy Network--"Our goal is to improve collaboration and dialogue between policy and grassroots organizations, and to promote their work to journalists and legislators."
- Congressional & State Term Limits
-
Center
for Media and Public Affairs
PERSPECTIVES FROM THINKTANKS
- Yahoo! - Social Science:Political Science:Public Policy
- The Heritage Foundation:ultra- conservative economic policy institute
- Welcome to the Progress and Freedom Foundation WWW Homepage--Newt's favorite
- Hoover Institution--conservative policy think group
- RAND Home Page--global policy thinktank
- Brookings Governmental Studies--more middle-of-the-road
- The Concord Coalition--bi-partisan group that focuses on entitlement spending and the budget
- National Issues Forums--non-partisan policy study group
- National Center for Policy Analysis's "Idea House"--nonprofit, seeking innovative private sector solutions
- The Heartland Institute
- Institute for the Study of Civic Values
- Rockefeller Foundation--global policy, research, and charitable organization
- Hubert Humphrey Listserv Archives
- The Electronic Policy Network
- Citizens for Tax Justice-- liberal economic tax policy
- John F. Kennedy School of Government News Office
- Open Society Institute Home page (Level 1)
- Center for Public Policy Priorities (Austin, TX)
- Cato Institute (Libertarian think tank)
- Center For National Policy Home Page
- Predicting the future using internet Delphi methodology
POLITICAL GAMES & SIMULATIONS
- National Budget Simulation
-
Reinventing
America -- Introduction
IDEOLOGY GROUPS
So where do you place yourself on the ideological spectrum? Don't really know anymore? Take Victor Kamber and Bradley S. O'Leary's The Political Quiz Show and find out.
- The World's Smallest Political Quiz
- Party Politics
- United States Institute of Peace - Conflict Resolution Resources
- Political Action Committees
- The Spectacular State--Fascism
SOCIALISTS
- International Workers Bulletin
- Workers Party, U.S.A. Home Page
- Workers World
- Ron Smith Oldies Calendar
LIBERTARIANS
- www.libertarian.com
- Liberals and Libertarians
LIBERALS
- Yahoo! - Government:Politics:Political Opinion:Liberal
- Opposing the Contract with America
- The Reactionary Right
- Left-Wing Lingo, Ideologies and History
- democrat 's Home Page
CONSERVATIVES
- Yahoo! - Government:Politics:Political Opinion:Conservative
- Welcome to The Conservative Link!
- Republicans' Contract with America
- Newt Gingrich's Renewing American Civilization
- American Renaissance
- The Right's Agenda - Suzanne Pharr
- The 'John Birch Society' Home Page
- The John Birch Society
- National Review
- The New American Magazine
PATRIOT/MILITIA GROUPS
- Patriot's WWW Page
- The Conspiracy Pages
- Oklahoma Bomb Conspiracy Page
- Information on Militias
STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
- State and Local Government on the Net-- "Only pages that are controlled and managed by state and local government agencies are included."
- Window on the Texas State Government from the Comptroller of Public Accounts--a gold mine of info
- Prairienet Community Network Homepage: state statutes, constitutions, legislative reviews
- National Conference of State Legislatures "Our Mission: Improving the quality and effectiveness of state legislatures; fostering interstate communication and cooperation; ensuring legislatures a strong, cohesive voice in the federal system"
- The World Wide Web Virtual Library: Law: State Government
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
- Main European Governmental sites on-line
- Voter turnout from 1945 to 1998: A global report on political participation from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
- Freedom House's Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties. Click here to see its map of freedom 1999.
- Rulers--"contains lists of heads of state and heads of government (and, in certain cases, de facto leaders not occupying either of those formal positions) of all countries and territories, going back to about 1700 in most cases"
- Government and Politics
- Latin American Political Database
CANADIAN PERSPECTIVES
- ITP Nelson Political Science
- Political Science: A Net Station (U British Columbia Library)
- Online Resource Guide to Political Inquiry (York University, Toronto)
- Canadian Institute of International Affairs
- Peace and Security Server of the Canadian Forces College
HUMAN RIGHTS
- University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
- Human Rights Page
- The Internet Advocacy Center
- Macrocosm USA Home Page
PARODIES & HUMOR
- Yahoo - Political Parodies
- Political Babble Generator
Return to A Sociological Tour Through
Cyberspace