American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens.

In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes more examples and details regarding the lived experiences of diverse groups and communities within the United States. The authors and reviewers sought to strike a balance between confronting the negative and harmful elements of American government, history, and current events, while demonstrating progress in overcoming them. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.
Changes made in American Government 3e are described in the preface to help instructors transition to the third edition.

These Video Lectures (all of which are accompanied by Supplemental Notes that appear in PDF files) draw upon select aspects of every chapter of the third edition of OpenStax's American Government text. The lectures and notes elaborate upon certain points raised in each chapter of American Government by providing additional historical context and relating the textual material to contemporary political events. At various points during the video lectures, quiz questions are asked in an attempt to enhance student engagement. (Quiz questions also appear at the end of the Supplemental Notes to each lecture.) For those who wish to use the quizzes, answer keys are included for each one.

These PowerPoint slides can be paired with the American Government 3e textbook by Openstax for in-class sections of the course. They provide material from the textbook, as well as data from the most recent elections, public opinion polls, and pew research center publications from within the last few years. This material provides both the political history of our country, as well as some pertinent information from current events affecting our political landscape.

Welcome to American Government 2e, an OpenStax resource. This textbook was written to increase student access to high-quality learning materials, maintaining highest standards of academic rigor at little to no cost.

About OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and our library has since scaled to over 30 books for college and AP® courses used by hundreds of thousands of students. OpenStax Tutor, our low-cost personalized learning tool, is being used in college courses throughout the country. Through our partnerships with philanthropic foundations and our alliance with other educational resource organizations, OpenStax is breaking down the most common barriers to learning and empowering students and instructors to succeed.

About OpenStax's resources
Customization
American Government 2e is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license, which means that you can distribute, remix, and build upon the content, as long as you provide attribution to OpenStax and its content contributors.

Because our books are openly licensed, you are free to use the entire book or pick and choose the sections that are most relevant to the needs of your course. Feel free to remix the content by assigning your students certain chapters and sections in your syllabus, in the order that you prefer. You can even provide a direct link in your syllabus to the sections in the web view of your book.

Instructors also have the option of creating a customized version of their OpenStax book. The custom version can be made available to students in low-cost print or digital form through their campus bookstore. Visit the Instructor Resources section of your book page on openstax.org for more information.

This is a set of core political science questions to help students have a baseline approach or framework for understanding political science course content, processes, and outputs. 

Exploring American Government is a workbook aimed at improving student and faculty experiences with open educational resources (OER) designed for undergraduate American government courses. The first pages of Exploring American Government begin by motivating and orienting students to learn about politics. Instructors will recognize the familiar layout of the following chapters. We begin by encouraging students to assess their existing knowledge of the subject and evaluate contemporary problems of civic engagement and challenges for the digital age. The following chapters seek to prepare students for informed participation, exploring topics such as constitutional development, federalism, civil liberties and civil rights, participation, public opinion, media, and institutions. Topic by topic, the assignments in the workbook help students discover new sources of information, retain knowledge about how the government works, and practice their critical thinking skills.

Originally published as American Government and Politics in the Information Age in 2011 as CC BY-NC-SA.
Updated by James J. Tuite. This is a textbook for the first part of an introductory course on the American political process. Teaches the structure, operation, and process of national, state, and local governments.

United States Government: The Basics of Government Function, Structure, and Process

Deborah Smith Hoag, Remix Lead Author

Richard Fonte, Remix Author

Glen Krutz, Content Lead - OpenStax Version

Sylvie Waskiewicz, Lead Editor/Openstax

Cover Photo Attribution: Carol M. Highsmith (2007) Library of Congress