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100 _aMiller, Lisa L.
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245 _aChecks and balances, veto exceptionalism, and constitutional folk wisdom: Cass and race power in American politics
260 _aPolitical Research Quarterly
300 _a76(4), Dec, 2023: p. 1604-1618
520 _aConventional accounts of the U.S. constitution laud its checks and balances for diffusing power across many venues, limiting the potential for government oppression, and protecting political minorities. I refer to this as constitutional folk wisdom and contrast it with an American political economy approach of veto exceptionalism to better understand how the U.S. constitution shapes, and is shaped, by power relations. This analysis illustrates the volume and scope of veto exceptionalism and its implication for democratic participation and accountability, contrasts it with the virtues championed by the folk wisdom, and suggests how veto exceptionalism can help explain political outcomes and processes in American politics. I argue that the folk wisdom is not only inaccurate as a description of how power functions in the American “checks and balances” system; it is cultivated and utilized most frequently by powerful economic and racial actors that benefit from the anti-democratic and elitist features of the U.S. constitutional system.- Reproduced https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129231166040
773 _aPolitical Research Quarterly
906 _aPOLITICS AND GOVERNMENT – UNITED STATES
942 _cAR