Assignment for Friday, 10/3

There are three readings for next time.

1. First, read Richard Croker's "Tammany Hall and the Democracy" in the UP Reader.

2. Then, read the following sections from Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (available here):

• Preface
• A Tribute by Murphy (one paragraph)
• Chapter 1: Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft
• Chapter 3: The Curse of Civil Service Reform

(If you end up printing this out, it's about the first 12 pages, minus chapter 2.)

3. Finally, read Bridges and Kronick, "Writing the Rules to Win the Game," in the UP reader.

Feel free to summarize any one of these, although I suggest you be wary of Croker and especially Plunkitt - as first person accounts, they are hard to summarize.

Assignment for Friday, 9/26

Next time we will watch a film, Street Fight, about the 2002 mayoral election in Newark. You should also read "Black, White and Blurred," by Rob Gurwitt, in the UP Reader. This reading will frame our discussion of the film. (Feel free to write a summary of Gurwitt. PLEASE NOTE that this is your last chance for a September summary!)

Assignment for Friday, 9/19

For next Friday, read the following articles in the UP reader:

• Clarence Stone, "Looking Back to Look Forward..."
• Browning, et al, "Can People of Color Achieve Equality..."
• Adolph Reed, "Demobilization in the New Black Political Regime"

Feel free to summarize ONE of these readings. We'll discuss them all next week.

Assignment for Friday, 9/12

Your assignment (after you familiarize yourself with this website) is to read the following articles from the Urban Politics Reader:

• Review "A Top 10 List of Things to Know about American Cities," by Wyly, et al. (We discussed this in class already.)
• Read "Who Governs," by Dahl.
• Read "The Interests of the Limited City," by Peterson.

You may, if you wish, summarize EITHER Dahl OR Peterson (but not both - remember, one summary per week).

Sample Summary

Nelson Munz                                                   PS 101 01
9/5/08                                                         Summary #2
Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America, by Paul Frymer

Frymer seeks to explain why African-Americans are consistently marginalized by the American two-party system. This marginalization is not accidental, he argues; the American electoral system that developed in the early 19th century was designed specifically to defuse and deny issues of race. Frymer begins with an example: the contemporary revitalization of the Democratic Party, culminating in the 1992 election of President Clinton. The Democratic Party leadership pursued ideologically moderate voters by downplaying or even neglecting traditional African-American interests such as welfare, affirmative action, and racial injustice. These leaders believed that commitment to Black interests alienated key white voters; playing down these commitments would enable the party to build the broad coalition necessary to elect a Democratic President. According to Frymer, this contemporary example is part of a larger pattern. Since the creation of the two-party system, party leaders have consistently followed this pattern, which was intended to minimize racial conflict.

Frymer introduces the concept of “electoral capture,” in which minority interests are rejected by the opposing party and have no choice but to remain with their current one. In this case, the current party can take the support of the minority interest for granted, focusing on voters who may swing to either party. While African-Americans are ideologically closer to Democrats than Republicans, the primary reason they are not courted by Republicans is that Republican Party leaders are afraid of the disruptive effects African-Americans would have on their party; these leaders believe that appeals to Blacks would drive racist whites from their party, destroying their national party coalition and costing them their chance at the Presidency.

Scholars of political parties tend to view parties as empowering minorities; they provide the best means for minorities to effect political change. These scholars point to the example of the Jacksonian Democrats, who brought disenfranchised white males into the political system. However, the two best examples of parties empowering Blacks (the Reconstruction Republicans and the 1960’s civil rights Democrats) actually occurred during periods in which a single party was dominant. It is only in the absence of a strong two-party system, argues Frymer, that African-American interests are represented.

Frymer argues that the traditional party model, in which competition leads parties to make appeals to all interests in order to balance against each other, does not work. Instead, parties have limited resources, and so will concentrate their efforts on those voters who require less effort to mobilize, i.e., those who already participate. Moreover, party scholars who suggest that minority interests will eventually be represented in the majority on some issue are incorrect; there is a long-term majority white interest in the US, and Black Americans will never end up on the majority side of this issue. The overall effect of the two-party system is to minimize explosive conflict, but at the expense of African-Americans.

Summary Guidelines

One of your course requirements is to write and submit a certain number of summaries of reading assignments (see syllabus for exact number and any specific deadlines). Below are some guidelines for writing these summaries.

Purpose: Summaries have at least two purposes. First, they are part of your participation grade because they help to prevent you from falling behind in your reading assignments. When students experience time pressures, reading assignments are some of the first things to be abandoned. Yet if you write regular summaries, you are more likely to contribute to class discussion and less likely to be unprepared for exams or paper assignments. (Good summaries can be helpful study aids.)

Second, summaries help you focus on the main points of an assigned reading. You cannot write an accurate summary unless you make careful choices about what is important or central in a text. This includes filtering out material that is not essential; as noted below, summaries can be too long as well as too short.

How to Write a Successful Summary:

• A summary should be approximately one, and certainly no more than two, double-spaced, typed pages with 1” margins. (Summaries that are significantly shorter than one page, or more than two, may be returned for no credit.) If your summary is two pages, please staple in the upper left.
• Summaries must be submitted at the start of the class period in which the reading will be discussed. If multiple readings are assigned for a class period, you may choose which reading to summarize; however, only one summary may be submitted per class. If you are absent, you may arrange to have someone else deliver the summary. Summaries may not be transmitted via e-mail. No late summaries will be accepted for any reason.
• All summaries should have a heading using the same, single-spaced format. In the top left, put your name and date. In the top right, put the course number and which number summary it is, e.g., Summary #5. (This assures that your count and mine are the same.) On the third line indicate the reading you are summarizing, listing title and author. (See sample summary for a heading example.)

In the body of the summary:

• Restate the author’s main points in the order they have been presented. A summary is not simply a compilation of random notes. Your task is to present the author’s argument and key evidence. It may help to use the first sentence or two to briefly summarize the overall argument.
• Identify the author’s argument, not your view on the subject. Although you are not prohibited from including your reaction to what you read, the point of the summary is to restate the author’s key points. If you devote too much space to your view and too little to the text, you can expect me return the summary without credit.o Put the author’s main points in your own words. You may NOT quote from the reading in these summaries. Be careful: any quotations, inadvertent or otherwise, that are submitted under your name without proper sourcing is a form of plagiarism, and may bring serious punitive consequences.
• Divide your summary into paragraphs, one for each of the author’s key points. (Failure to divide a summary into paragraphs is a warning sign that you have not followed the structure of the author’s argument.) When a text contains headings, you can often use these as a guide in organizing your summary, with (generally) one summary paragraph per heading.o Summarize the entire argument, and not just the first few pages. Summaries that cover only part of the assigned reading will be returned without credit. (Again, summaries should only cover ONE text, even if more than one reading is assigned for a particular class.)
• Submit only the required number of summaries for the semester. If you accidentally submit an extra summary, you will not receive credit for it.

Grading: Summaries are not graded with letter grades. Either a summary is acceptable (marked with a check mark), or it is not. As suggested above, failure to follow the above guidelines may lead me to return a summary without credit. I will likely consider a summary unacceptable if it:

• Is too short (only half a page);
• Is too long (over two pages);
• Only covers a small part of the reading;
• Devotes a considerable amount of space to your views instead of the author's;
• Presents the author's words, not yours;
• Violates these guidelines in any other way.

If a particular summary shows considerable merit—i.e., it is organized exceedingly well, it clearly and comprehensively presents the author's argument in its entirety, and it is free of grammatical and mechanical errors—I may mark it as an "exceptional" summary (with a check-plus mark). Exceptional summaries help increase your class participation grade.

We will spend some time in class going over these guidelines. I encourage you to SUBMIT YOUR SUMMARIES EARLY; do not run out of time to complete the required number.