Arkansas Politics and Government

Published a decade and a half after late Diane D. Blair's influential book Arkansas Politics and Government, this freshly revised edition builds on her work, which highlighted both decades of failure by Arkansas's government to live up to state's motto of Regnat Populus (The People Rule) and positive trends of democracy. Since first edition, Arkansas has seen two-term U.S. presidency of a native son, retirement of players who defined state's politics in modern era, further realignment of state's electorate, passage of nation's most extreme legislative term limits, complete overhaul of state's court system, and declaration that state's public education system was unconstitutionally inadequate and inequitable. While maintaining basic structure of Blair's original work with its focus on important historical patterns and ways in which past continues to shape present, second edition details causes and consequences of recent changes in Arkansas and asks whether they are profound and permanent or merely transitory variations in symbol and style. Jay Barth argues that although Arkansas currently expresses a healthier representative democracy than throughout most of its history, its political and governmental entities are still sharply limited as effective instruments of the people.