Updated in a new 4th edition, America's Democratic Republic is a brief, affordable book in an accessible trade-like format that explores the clash between the democratic aspirations of the American people and the republican foundations of our Constitution.

Written with a lively, narrative style, this text traces the storyline of American government and focuses on the long standing and inescapable tension between the country’s 18th Century republican Constitutional foundations and the democratic aspirations of the American people.

Updated throughout!

-Includes results of the historic 2008 presidential and congressional elections, as well as important 2008 Supreme Court decisions.

-New scholarship woven throughout the book offers illuminating insight into modern policies, practices, and institutions. In Chapter 9 (Political Parties), for example, the authors identify a seventh party era, which they call “the parties at war” to describe the extreme partisanship that has defined American politics since the mid-1990s. Elsewhere, the authors point to new data and trends indicating increased inequality in recent years.

-Updated figures throughout provide current data