This book investigates the role of executive scandals in the contemporary American political landscape.

This book investigates the role of executive scandals in the contemporary American political landscape.

The partisan and ideological polarization associated with federal government plagues states and localities too, bringing with it significant implications for public policy and intergovernmental relations. The trusted and proven Governing States and Localities guides students through these issues and continues its focus on the role economic and budget pressures play. With their engaging journalistic writing and crisp storytelling, Kevin B. Smith and Alan Greenblatt employ a comparative approach to explain how and why states and localities are both similar and different in institutional structure, culture, history, economy, geography, and demographics. A great blend of high-quality academic analysis and the latest scholarship, the Sixth Edition is thoroughly updated to account for such major developments as state vs. federal conflicts over immigration reform, gun control, and voter rights; health and education reforms aimed at improving the effectiveness of state and local government service delivery; and the lingering effects of the Great Recession.

What drives government popularity? For decades, scholars, journalists, and political pundits alike have converged on a single answer: the economy. A rising economy lifts the popularity of the government, and if the economy's fortunes turn south, so too does that of the government. This conventional wisdom informs politicians' decisions as well as the scholarly commentary on parties and elections. Yet the conditions that underlie this model have changed in manycountries as globalization has shifted control away from national policymakers, as non-economic cultural issues have risen in importance, and as our politics have become more polarized. At the same time, since the Great Recession in 2008 persistent economic volatility has kept the economy on the agenda.What, then, fuels government popularity in our current volatile environment? Are political fortunes tied to economic stability, as in the past? Or has the economy-popularity link-the popularity function-been severed by a host of new and less predictable factors in post-industrial societies?To answer these questions, Economics and Politics Revisited uses data from the Executive Approval Project (EAP), a cross-nationally comparable data on leader popularity, to model the fundamental dynamics of government support in advanced industrial democracies. Eleven country-specific chapters, each written by experts in the politics of the country, examine the role of economic performance in generating leader support in each country. In all cases, chapter authors show that theeconomy matters for popularity. However, the economy-popularity link is stronger in some countries than others. Further, chapters leverage EAP series to highlight change over time. Pooled analyses extend these findings, highlighting how the public's responses to the economy are reduced when political campaignsshift to non-economic issues and when parties are polarization on non-economic issues. Collectively, the volume highlights how evolving issue agendas are changing the nature of political accountability in advanced industrialized democracies. While the economy remains important, the book calls on students of political accountability to give greater attention to the role of non-economic issues.Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu .The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

Delving into the phenomenology of corruption and its impacts on the governance of societies, this cutting edge Encyclopedia considers what makes corruption such a resilient, complex, and global priority for study. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

The Handbook of African Economic Development explores the diverse nature of economic advancement in Africa, spanning from pre-colonial times to the present day. Expansive in scope, it offers both orthodox and heterodox perspectives on the subject, and what it means for the continent.

A president’s work is defined by two challenges: knowing what to do and finding the time to do it. While the first of these has commanded extensive attention, the second has received little to none—until now. The President’s Day is a groundbreaking study of the history, theory, and practice of modern presidential time management. Matthew N. Beckmann argues that the seemingly innocuous task of scheduling turns out to be anything but. In choosing what and who will fill their time, presidents determine their value, define their role, and drive their agenda. Combining extensive archival research with interviews spanning administrations from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, Beckmann exposes each president’s signature pattern in terms of when to work, how long to work, how much to pack in, what to prioritize, and whom to see along the way. In these ways, The President’s Day demystifies what John F. Kennedy called “the secret of the presidential enterprise.”