American politics (or American government) is an area of study within the academic discipline of political science. It is primarily, but not exclusively, studied by researchers in the United States. Along with comparative politics, international relations, and political theory, it is one of the four major fields of political science that are studied in American academic institutions. Political scientists studying American politics (referred to as "Americanists") focus on two main research sub-fields: political behavior and political institutions; a third major sub-field, American political development (APD), also called Democratic theory, has emerged over the last couple of decades. Research interests within the political behavior sub-field include voting behavior, public opinion, race, gender, ethnicity and politics, and partisanship. Among the research focuses of political scientists studying political institutions are the United States Congress (and legislative behavior more generally), the presidency, courts and the legal process, the public service, public law, and state and local politics. Researchers working within the APD sub-field focus on determining how American politics has changed over time and what factors (institutional and behavioral) led to these changes. Public policy (foreign and domestic) is also widely studied by Americanists. In universities outside of the United States, American Politics generally refers to a course in comparative politics or a survey course in American domestics politics for International Relations within political science.
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or politics:
“... many American Jews have a morbid tendency to exaggerate their handicaps and difficulties. ... There is no doubt that the Jew ... has to be twice as good as the average non- Jew to succeed in many a field of endeavor. But to dwell upon these injustices to the point of self-pity is to weaken the personality unnecessarily. Every human being has handicaps of one sort or another. The brave individual accepts them and by accepting conquers them.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)