Arkansas Politics and Government, Second Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [-11], (5) Lines: 122 to ——— 1.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [-11], (5) Preface to the Second Edition Generations of students and scholars of the politics of the South have looked to V. O. Key’s Southern Politics in State and Nation as the jumping-off point for their investigations since that seminal work was published in the middle of the last century. So too since its 1988 publication has Diane D. Blair’s Arkansas Politics and Government served as the beginning of the journey for those seeking a better understanding of the politics and government of Arkansas. Diane’s analyses of the state’s electoral and interest-group dynamics, the governmental structure as framed by the state’s constitution, the internal processes of the institutions of state government, Arkansas’s place within the federal system, the workings of local government, and the most important areas of state public policy have been the starting point for scholarly analysis or well-informed conversations about any of those topics. Thus, though I felt immensely complimented both personally and professionally by Diane’s invitation to co-author the second edition after she became ill in 2000, an element of palpable intimidation also accompanied the opportunity. I was able to partly overcome that anxiety by the experience I had gained in my previous collaborations with Diane, which taught us that there was a general synchrony between our understanding of the most productive ways to analyze Arkansas politics and our writing styles. I hope that the confidence I have consequently brought to this revision is not ill placed and that this edition of Diane’s book is one that would have pleased her. Although the first edition of Arkansas Politics and Government remains so fundamentally insightful about the dynamics and structures of the state’s governmental system, too much has happened over the past decade and a half for it to remain completely useful for students and scholars attempting xii Preface to the Second Edition 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [-12], (6) Lines: 138 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TE [-12], (6) to understand Arkansas politics and government of the early twenty-first century. The departure of the potent Democratic vote-getters who had controlled the state’s politics while the remainder of the South veered Republican , the election of one of those Democrats as a two-term U.S. president, fundamental structural changes in two of the three branches of government through constitutional amendment that have had dramatic effects on public policymaking in the state, and numerous consequential demographic and economic changes—all have compelled readers of the first edition to ask at any number of spots, “Well, is that still true?”This edition attempts to address the questions raised by these, and many other, shifts inArkansas politics and government and bring into the analysis the significant amount of excellent research that scholars have completed on Arkansas politics and American state and local government more generally since the publication of the first edition. However, though all of these consequential issues are dealt with in the pages of this text, as the subtitle of this edition of the book indicates, it grapples with the same, still equally pertinent overarching “enigma” laid out in Diane’s preface to the first edition. For most of Arkansas’s history, most of its citizens were hardworking and hard-pressed farmers, struggling for subsistence against formidable odds. For all of its history as a state, Arkansas has had democratic institutions through which this majority should have been able to elect sympathetic officials, demand attention and assistance, and hold the government accountable .Yet this kind of demand and response has been a rare event rather than a routine occurrence.Anyone with even the most superficial acquaintance with Arkansas knows that its people have always been fierce in the protection of what is theirs, quick to take offense against slight or injury. And yet, despite the state’s proud motto of “Regnat Populus” (the people rule), little evidence could be found in the...