Scholars examining the controversy over church-state relations in the modern era have concentrated almost exclusively on its constitutional aspects. This is to be expected since the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down epic decisions that have drawn an increasingly sharper picture of the First Amendment's guideline concerning the government's involvement in religion. The Court did, in fact, lead the way in establishing or reestablishing the doctrine called “separation of church and state.” But the Court touched off a furious debate within the states that has intermittently yet persistently influenced public policy since the early 1960s. It is time that scholars examine more closely the participants outside of the Court.

In November 1990 voters in the District of Columbia elected two “shadow” United States senators (one of whom is former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson) and one “shadow” representative to lobby for statehood. Statehood bills have been introduced in Congress regularly since 1982 and committee hearings on statehood were held in the fall of 1991 and the spring of 1992. Although only recently has there been serious discussion about District statehood, the issue of the proper relationship of the national government to the federal city has been a matter of debate since 1787. This article provides a historical analysis of statehood and alternative policy options and aruges that the relationship between the federal government and the District has always mirrored national polit.

The changing patterns of federal government policy toward the automobile industry provide fruitful material for analyzing how economic power is translated into political power. Government policy toward the auto industry involves an extensive number of decision-making points, and policy-makers are confronted with the nation's largest industry and the largest industrial corporation in the country (GM). This article examines government policy toward the auto industry from 1918 to 1988, focusing on the social constraints limiting the industry's political influence and the economic conditions that increase the vulnerability of government officials to industry lobbying.

By most assessments, Jimmy Carter's presidency was a failure. The popular image of Carter is that of a president who was politically naive, an inept manager, a well-meaning but nettlesome scold, and an unsuccessful leader. According to two recent scholarly evaluations, Carter was an ineffective leader who ranks in the bottom quintile of the thirty-nine presidents who have preceded George Bush.

The American academy is in dire straits asserts journalist Charles J. Sykes in The Hollow Men. A largely unheralded “revolution from above,” the author claims, “has robbed higher education of much of its traditional content, while distorting its values and its basic principles” (309). To understand the contemporary academic scene, he continues, is to understand the radicalization of the academy by the left, which had resulted in the intrusion of politics into both scholarship and the classroom, assaults on those who do not accept the “politically correct” line, and a fragmented, incoherent curriculum that trivializes the historic meaning of the liberal arts. While the current “crisis of values” (309) is often traced to the 1960s student movement, Mr. Sykes argues that the roots of the problem also go back to the post–World War II period and perhaps even to the late nineteenth century, when the agreement over “ends” (71) disappeared and “higher education's immune system” was “destroyed” (72).