General

This Element analyzes the features of current feminist movements in Latin America and their responses to conservative reactions. For this, it focuses on the pro-choice movement vis-a-vis the anti-abortion countermovement in Mexico and Brazil. It offers a...

Why do governance reforms in developing democracies so often fail, and when might they succeed? When Democracies Deliver offers a dynamic framework for assessing the effectiveness and durability of policy change. Drawing on detailed analyses of public...

The 2019 General election in India was the world's largest democratic exercise in history. Often, elections have been referred to as the dance of democracy or festival of democracy in India. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the broad...

We Are Better Than This fundamentally reframes budget debates in the United States. Author Edward D. Kleinbard explains how the public's preoccupation with tax policy alone has obscured any understanding of government's ability to complement the private...

"The book is well versed in the scholarly literature as well as pop-culture references found in contemporary television shows and movies. But what stands out in the volume's research is its utilization of interviews conducted by the author that provide a...

Every year, over 1,000 public schools are permanently closed across the United States. And yet, little is known about their impacts on American democracy. Closed for Democracy is the first book to systematically study the political causes and democratic...

Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? Looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa, this book advances a novel answer: communities are better able to...

The right to vote is the foundation of democratic government; all other policies are derived from it. The history of voting rights in America has been characterized by a gradual expansion of the franchise. American Indians are an important part of that...

State legislatures are tasked with drawing state and federal districts and administering election law, among many other responsibilities. Yet state legislatures are themselves gerrymandered. This book examines how, why, and with what consequences,...

Few of America's founders influenced its political system more than Alexander Hamilton. He played a leading role in writing and ratifying the Constitution, was de facto leader of one of America's first two political parties, and was influential in...

Switching parties is arguably the most important decision a politician will ever make. This book is the first-ever systematic study of the causes and consequences of legislative party switching in the United States. The author argues that re-election...

Examining the political foundations of American intelligence policy, this book develops a new theory of intelligence adaptation to explain the success or failure of major reform efforts since World War II. Durbin draws on careful case histories of the...

The spectre of Boko Haram and its activities in Nigeria dominates both media and academic analysis of Islam in the region. But, as Alexander Thurston argues here, beyond the sensational headlines this group generates, the dynamics of Muslim life in...

Proposes a new theory of Senate agenda setting that reconciles a divide in literature between the conventional wisdom - in which party power is thought to be mostly undermined by Senate procedures and norms - and the apparent partisan bias in Senate...

The symbolic importance of Barack Obama's election is without question. But beyond symbolism, does the election of African-American politicians matter? Grose argues that it does and presents a unified theory of representation. Electing African-American...

Since 1981, when Joseph M. Bessette and Jeffrey K. Tulis first published The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, the study of the constitutional powers of the presidency has advanced considerably. Bessette and Tulis continue the conversation almost...

The first systematic examination of the federal civil service in nearly forty years, The Foundation of Merit analyzes the historical development of the civil service in the context of the political and democratic environment that is central to its...

In the wake of 9/11 and hurricane Katrina, executives and policymakers are increasingly motivated to reduce the vulnerability of social and economic systems to disasters. Most prior work on 'critical infrastructure protection' has focused on the...

By revisiting Thomas Jefferson's understanding of executive power this book offers a new understanding of the origins of presidential power. Before Jefferson was elected president, he arrived at a way to resolve the tension between constitutionalism and...

This provocative book shows how the United States Supreme Court has used constitutional history in church-state cases. Donald L. Drakeman describes the ways in which the justices have portrayed the framers' actions in a light favoring their own views...

The first available textbook on the rapidly growing and increasingly important field of government analytics This first textbook on the increasingly important field of government analytics provides invaluable knowledge and training for students of...

The gap between the rich and the poor has grown dramatically in the United States and is now at its widest since at least the early 1900s. While by most measures the economy has been improving, soaring cost of living and stagnant wages have done little...

This text demonstrates how businesses and institutions continue to operate outside the ecological carrying capacity of the environment, and highlights the need for participation and social innovation on their part. It asserts that senior executives and...

The 2016 US election was ugly, divisive, maddening, and influential. In this provocative new book, Paul Booth, Amber Davisson, Aaron Hess, and Ashley Hinck explore the effect that everyday people had on the political process. From viewing candidates as...

The intentional spread of falsehoods - and attendant attacks on minorities, press freedoms, and the rule of law - challenge the basic norms and values upon which institutional legitimacy and political stability depend. How did we get here? The...

The Volatility Curse examines the conditions under which economic voting can (and cannot) function as a mechanism of democratic accountability, challenging existing theories that are largely based on experiences in developed democracies. Drawing on...

The United States is entering a new era of progressive state citizenship, with California leading the way. A growing number of states are providing expanded rights to undocumented immigrants that challenge conventional understandings of citizenship as...

Conventional wisdom suggests that partisanship has little impact on voter behavior in Brazil; what matters most is pork-barreling, incumbent performance, and candidates' charisma. This book shows that soon after redemocratization in the 1980s, over half...

As the holders of the only office elected by the entire nation, presidents have long claimed to be sole stewards of the interests of all Americans. Scholars have largely agreed, positing the president as an important counterbalance to the parochial...

Latin America was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of what has come to be known as the judicialization of politics - the use of law and legal institutions as tools of social contestation to curb the abuse of power in government, resolve...

In State-Sponsored Activism, Rich explores AIDS policy in Brazil as a lens to offer new insight into state-society relations in democratic and post-neoliberal Latin America. In contrast to the dominant view that these dual transitions produced an...

The Constitution grants Congress the power 'to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises'. From the First Congress until today, conflicts over the size, role and taxing power of government have been at the heart of national politics. This book...

Smith argues that citizenship creation and expansion is a pivotal part of political contestation in Africa today. Citizenship is a powerful analytical tool to approach political life in contemporary Africa because the institutional and structural reforms...

This Companion provides a broad, historically informed introduction to the study of the US constitutional system. In place of the usual laundry lists of cases, doctrines, and theories, it presents a picture of the constitutional system in action, with...

Plurality-led congresses are among the most pervasive and least studied phenomena in presidential systems around the world. Often conflated with divided government, where an organized opposition controls a majority of seats in congress, plurality-led...

Nationalism has generated violence, bloodshed, and genocide, as well as patriotic sentiments that encourage people to help fellow citizens and place public responsibilities above personal interests. This study explores the contradictory character of...

This book offers an analytical explanation for the origins of and change in property institutions on the American frontier during the nineteenth century. Its scope is interdisciplinary, integrating insights from political science, economics, law and...

The book provides a clear assessment of the New Labour public policies and their outcomes in Britain under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997-2009. Authors Florence Faucher-King and Patrick Le Gales argue that New Labour, in contrast...

Despite talk of a "naked public square," religion has never really lost its place in American public life. As the twenty-first century opened, it was re-emerging in unexpected and paradoxical ways. Religious institutions were considered for...

This book develops the concept of the corporatist catch-all party to explain how the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has responded to changing demands from women over the past forty years. Otto Kirchheimer's classic study argues that when...