Award Date

5-2000

Degree Type

Capstone

Degree Name

Master of Public Administration (MPA)

Department

Public Administration

Number of Pages

71

Abstract

Nevada’s way of regulating gambling has been of such interest over the past years that it has been given a name, the “Nevada Model”. Interested parties usually are seeking to learn if this model of gambling regulation will work in other political units of this country. The point of this paper is to give some background to the “Nevada Model” by looking at how the acts of the legislature of the state evolved through time. Of equal importance is the understanding of the role the miners played in the formation of Nevada’s culture and lifestyle. The miners brought Nevada its rugged individualism, combined with a sense of risk taking and a desire for wealth. Most of them were single, younger men who had rejected the traditional life-style of farming, family, church and community. The only community they owed allegiance to, or laws that they obeyed, was that of the camp in which they resided, or the rules of the Mining District. It is this mining culture and the resultant lifestyle it perpetuated that did not just permit gambling but, instead, embraced it. A contextual chronological history of each Act of the Legislature from Territorial days through 1915 is contained in the section entitled Context of the Laws. Each of the statutes related to gambling from 1861 to 1915 have been reproduced and can be found in the appendix. This is followed by the Summary, which places each of the three periods of either prohibition or legalization/regulation into perspective of the larger picture of the state’s history. The chapter titled Interpretation is this author’s finding that the geography of the state, coupled with the massive influx of miners following the discovery of rich gold and/or silver lodes, on two separate occasions, is the core reason for the pro-gaming attitudes of the political culture of the state. It was this attitude toward gambling by the political culture that is evidenced by the enactment of gaming statutes by the legislature of the state.

Keywords

Gambling – Law and legislation – History; Miners – Social conditions; Nevada

Disciplines

Gaming and Casino Operations Management | Public Administration

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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