This volume brings together a broad range of research on governors in the American states, examining governors as potentially powerful leaders who are subject to a range of constraints, as well as considering how individual governors may choose leadership paths that either enhance or detract from that power.

A passion for politics and for political power is at the core of this biography of "Big Jim" Folsom, the legendary two-term Alabama governor who revolutionized state government by going directly to the "branchheads," the grassroots, to exhort the powerless to fight for their rights against the "Big Mules," the elite cotton planters and urban industrialists. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Folsom, his family and friends, and his allies and rivals, Carl Grafton and Anne Permaloff reveal in Big Mules and Branchheads the complex reality behind the stories and myths that have arisen around the Alabama governor. Often dismissed as a naïve yet somehow appealing yokel whose rise to power was largely attributable to luck, Folsom is seen here as a highly knowledgeable and creative political strategist who calculated his most important victories even while his behavior often seemed influenced by innocence and a tendency toward buffoonery. His two terms as governor were marked by scandal, yet Folsom energetically sought to raise the moral level of Alabama politics by bluntly advocating, in the face of great opposition, the expansion of civil rights for blacks, poor whites, and women. Folsom, the authors suggest, is as widely misunderstood in Alabama as Alabama is misunderstood throughout the nation. Illuminating the intricacies of Alabama's politics as it traces Folsom's rise to power, this book gives readers the unique opportunity to know the legendary Folsom as a flawed, yet often inspiring human being who energetically practiced his own colorful brand of politics.

The modern, centralized American state was supposedly born in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Kimberley S. Johnson argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Cooperative federalism was not born in a Big Bang, but instead emerged out of power struggles within the nation's major political institutions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Examining the fifty-two years from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Great Depression, Johnson shows that the "first New Federalism" was created during this era from dozens of policy initiatives enacted by a modernizing Congress. The expansion of national power took the shape of policy instruments that reflected the constraints imposed by the national courts and the Constitution, but that also satisfied emergent policy coalitions of interest groups, local actors, bureaucrats, and members of Congress. Thus, argues Johnson, the New Deal was not a decisive break with the past, but rather a superstructure built on a foundation that emerged during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Her evidence draws on an analysis of 131 national programs enacted between 1877 and 1930, a statistical analysis of these programs, and detailed case studies of three of them: the Federal Highway Act of 1916, the Food and Drug Act of 1906, and the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921. As this book shows, federalism has played a vital but often underappreciated role in shaping the modern American state.

This book examines the changing role of the governor in our federal system, giving particular attention to recent developments. The expansion of gubernatorial responsibilities into managerial, executive, and intergovernmental positions has taken place at the same time that the governor's role as leader of his political party has declined. In discussing the contemporary role of governors, the editors provide a view of how the office functions on a day-to-day basis. The editors base their data on personal experience; interviews with governors, former governors, and staff; on -site visits; and responses to a series of nineteen surveys of governors and their staff conducted between 1976 and 1981. The research was undertaken by the Center for Policy Research of the National Governors' Association.

This third and final volume in a series devoted to state constitutions analyzes how these documents address major constitutional issues such as the protection of rights; voting and elections; constitutional change; the legislature; the executive; the judiciary; taxing, spending, and borrowing; local government; education; and the environment. Contributors identify the strengths and weaknesses of current state constitutions, highlight the major issues confronting the states, and assess various approaches for reform.