The most distinctive and intelligent introductory text in American government today, The Struggle for Democracy, now in its third edition, provides an even more accessible and inviting springboard for learning the enduring and conceptual heart of this course - the meaning and value of democracy. The goals of this book are to provide the tools with which to think critically about democracy and to examine and evaluate the American political system. With a definition of democracy introduced early in the book, students will learn how to measure the health and vitality of democracy in the United States. In addition to this evaluative theme, the authors employ a dramatic narrative theme of the struggle for democracy, which stresses that the advance of democracy in the United States is a product of a series of small victories won over the years by ordinary Americans, and that further progress depends on the continuing struggle for democracy.