Ever since Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. used "imperial presidency" as a book title, the term has become central to the debate about the balance of power in the U.S. government. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, when advocates of executive power such as Dick Cheney gained ascendancy, the argument has blazed hotter than ever. Many argue the Constitution itself is in grave danger. What is to be done? The answer, according to legal scholars Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, is nothing. In The Executive Unbound, they provide a bracing challenge to conventional wisdom, arguing that a strong presidency is inevitable in the modern world. Most scholars, they note, object to today's level of executive power because it varies so dramatically from the vision of the framers of the Constitution. But Posner and Vermeule find fault with James Madison's premises. Like an ideal market, they write, Madison's separation of powers has no central director, but it lacks the price system which gives an economy its structure; there is nothing in checks and balances that intrinsically generates order or promotes positive arrangements. In fact, the greater complexity of the modern world produces a concentration of power, particularly in the White House. The authors chart the rise of executive authority, noting that among strong presidents only Nixon has come in for severe criticism, leading to legislation which was designed to limit the presidency, yet which failed to do so. Political, cultural and social restraints, they argue, have been more effective in preventing dictatorship than any law. The executive-centered state tends to generate political checks that substitute for the legal checks of the Madisonian constitution. Piety toward the founders and a historic fear of tyranny have been powerful forces in American political thinking. Posner and Vermeule confront them both in this startlingly original contribution.

Just as Latin American countries began to transition to democracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the region also saw gains in social, cultural and economic gender equality. In accordance with modernization theories, women in the region have also made significant inroads into elected office. However, these gains vary a great deal between countries in Latin America. They also vary significantly at different levels of government even within the same country. Inside government arenas, representation is highly gendered with rules and norms that advantage men and disadvantage women, limiting women's access to full political power. While one might expect these variations to map onto socioeconomic and cultural conditions within each country, they don't correlate. This book makes, for the first time, a comprehensive comparison of gender and representation across the region - in seven countries - and at five different levels: the presidency, cabinets, national legislatures, political parties, and subnational governments. Overall, it argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in democratic institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing the region. Institutions and political context not only influence the number of women and men elected to office, but also what they do once in office, the degree of power to which they gain access, and how their presence and actions influence democracy and society, more broadly. Drawing on the expertise of scholars of women, gender, and political institutions, this book is the most comprehensive analysis of women's representation in Latin America to date, and an important resource for research on women's representation worldwide. The causes, consequences, and challenges to women's representation in Latin America are not unique to that region, and the book uses Latin American patterns to draw broad conclusions about gendered representation in other areas of the world.

Paul Revere's midnight ride looms as an almost mythical event in American history--yet it has been largely ignored by scholars and left to patriotic writers and debunkers. Now one of the foremost American historians offers the first serious look at the events of the night of April 18, 1775--what led up to it, what really happened, and what followed--uncovering a truth far more remarkable than the myths of tradition.

In Paul Revere's Ride, David Hackett Fischer fashions an exciting narrative that offers deep insight into the outbreak of revolution and the emergence of the American republic. Beginning in the years before the eruption of war, Fischer illuminates the figure of Paul Revere, a man far more complex than the simple artisan and messenger of tradition. Revere ranged widely through the complex world of Boston's revolutionary movement--from organizing local mechanics to mingling with the likes of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When the fateful night arrived, more than sixty men and women joined him on his task of alarm--an operation Revere himself helped to organize and set in motion. Fischer recreates Revere's capture that night, showing how it had an important impact on the events that followed. He had an uncanny gift for being at the center of events, and the author follows him to Lexington Green--setting the stage for a fresh interpretation of the battle that began the war. Drawing on intensive new research, Fischer reveals a clash very different from both patriotic and iconoclastic myths. The local militia were elaborately organized and intelligently led, in a manner that had deep roots in New England. On the morning of April 19, they fought in fixed positions and close formation, twice breaking the British regulars. In the afternoon, the American officers switched tactics, forging a ring of fire around the retreating enemy which they maintained for several hours--an extraordinary feat of combat leadership. In the days that followed, Paul Revere led a new battle-- for public opinion--which proved even more decisive than the fighting itself.

When the alarm-riders of April 18 took to the streets, they did not cry, "the British are coming," for most of them still believed they were British. Within a day, many began to think differently. For George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, the news of Lexington was their revolutionary Rubicon. Paul Revere's Ride returns Paul Revere to center stage in these critical events, capturing both the drama and the underlying developments in a triumphant return to narrative history at its finest.

Although nearly every country in the world today holds multiparty elections, these contests are often blatantly unfair. For governments, electoral misconduct is a tempting but also a risky practice, because it represents a violation of Although nearly every country in the world today holds multiparty elections, these contests are often blatantly unfair. For governments, electoral misconduct is a tempting but also a risky practice, because it represents a violation of international standards for free and fair elections. In Defending Democratic Norms, Daniela Donno examines how international actors respond to these norm violations. Which governments are punished for manipulating elections? Does international norm enforcement make a difference? Donno shows that although enforcement is selective and relatively rare, when international actors do employ tools of conditionality, diplomacy, mediation and shaming in response to electoral misconduct, they can have transformative effects on both the quality and outcome of elections. Specifically, enforcement works by empowering the domestic opposition and increasing the government's incentives to reform institutions of electoral management and oversight. These effects depend, however, on the presence of a viable opposition movement, as well as on the strength and credibility of the enforcement effort itself. The book shows that regional international organizations possess unique sources of leverage and legitimacy that make them the most consistently effective norm defenders, even compared to more materially powerful actors like the United States.
Drawing on an original dataset from almost 700 elections and incorporating case studies from the Dominican Republic, Serbia, Armenia, Kenya and Cambodia, Defending Democratic Norms is a bold new theory of international norm enforcement that demonstrates the importance of active international intervention in domestic politics.

Nearly three decades after the dawn of democracy, South Africa has remained a country of ‘two agricultures’. On the one hand we have a subsistence, primarily non-commercial, black farming segment. On the other hand, however, we have a predominantly commercial and white farming sector that is well-resourced and has access to domestic and international trade networks.

These disparities can be traced back to South Africa’s painful history where, for decades, black farmers were on the margins of government support and also experienced land dispossession and livestock plunder.

A Country of Two Agricultures focuses less on history and more on the present and the future, explaining why these disparities have persisted in the democratic era, and what it will take to overcome them. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of the variety of agricultural forces, taking into account both questions of domestic political economy and external factors, as well as to bring to light new risks and opportunities.

Wandile Sihlobo offers insights into the role of agriculture in the South African economy from an agricultural economy perspective, and provides political economy insights that are rooted in the experiences of farming communities on the ground and right through the value chain.

Beyond insights on the realities this book offers the government, the private sector, and anyone interested in the betterment of the South African economy, tools to grapple with this duality, and proposes a framework for bolstering the black farming segment for growth and competitiveness – and ultimately food security.

Externally-promoted institutional reform, even when nominally accepted by developing country governments, often fails to deliver lasting change. Diasporans-immigrants who still feel a connection to their country of origin-may offer an In-Between Advantage for institutional reform, which links problem understanding with potential solutions, and encompasses vision, impact, operational, and psycho-social advantages. Individuals with entrepreneurial characteristics can catalyzing institutional reform. Diasporans may have particular advantages for entrepreneurship, as they live both psychologically and materially between the place of origin they left and the new destination they have embraced. Their entrepreneurial characteristics may be accidental, cultivated through the migration and diaspora experience, or innate to individuals' personalities. This book articulates the diaspora institutional entrepreneur In-Between Advantage, proposes a model for understanding the characteristics and motivational influences of entrepreneurs generally and how they apply to diaspora entrepreneurs in particular, and presents a staged model of institutional entrepreneur actions. I test these frameworks through case narratives of social institutional reform in Egypt, economic institutional reform in Ethiopia, and political institutional reform in Chad. In addition to identifying policy implications, this book makes important theoretical contributions in three areas. First, it builds on existing and emerging critiques of international development assistance that articulate prescriptions related to alternative theories of change. Second, it fills an important gap in the literature by focusing squarely on the role of agency in institutional reform processes while still accounting for organizational systems and socio-political contexts. In doing so, it integrates a more expansive view of entrepreneurism into extant understandings of institutional entrepreneurism, and it sheds light on what happens in the frequently-invoked black box of agency. Third, it demonstrates the fallacy of many theoretical frameworks that seek to order institutional change processes into neatly definable linear stages.

The New Jersey State Constitution is a completely revised new edition that provide an outstanding constitutional and historical account of the state's governing charter. In addition to an overview of New Jersey's constitutional history, it provides an in-depth, section-by-section analysis of the entire constitution, detailing the many significant changes that have been made since its initial drafting. This treatment, along with a table of cases, index, and bibliography provides an unsurpassed reference guide for students, scholars, and practitioners of New Jersey's constitution.
State constitutions perform different functions and contain different provisions from the more-familiar U.S. Constitution. The book first outlines the historical development of New Jersey's state constitution from 1776 to the present and explains the highlights of the process of state constitutional development, leading to the current New Jersey constitution. Next, each section of the current constitution is analyzed, including its origins, general intent and purpose, and important judicial interpretations illustrating the types of situations in which the section can come into play, including references to key academic analysis of each section. Careful explanation is provided, with illustrations from cases, of the complex and evolving relationship between rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and rights guaranteed by the New Jersey constitution. In many instances, New Jersey's rights can be more protective than those included in the Federal Constitution. Finally, the book provides a thorough bibliographical essay reviewing the evolution of the New Jersey constitution.
The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research.
Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.

5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adults-- are denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on
universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--both for election outcomes, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little
known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will
inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.

Oil Booms and Business Busts looks at how government policymaking shapes a puzzling phenomenon in economic development-the "curse" of natural resources. It investigates how oil and mineral wealth shapes a government's policies toward the business environment, entrepreneurs, and innovative activities. Other similar work either ignores the role of government policymaking in oil wealth, treats it as another effect of the rentier state, or dismisses it as illogical and incoherent. One might expect that in light of such abundances governments would encourage entrepreneurship and new businesses to compete and grow in the market, but Nimah Mazaheri shows that resource wealth instead incentivizes policymakers to focus on satisfying the interests of existing elites. They, more than oil-poor nations, institute barriers that impede the activities of domestic firms and entrepreneurs, with the result being unimpressive economic performance over the past half-century. This is the first book to examine how oil wealth affects non-elite actors who own the small and medium-sized firms that absorb a majority of the economic and labor force of these countries. Looking at two of the most important oil-producing countries in the world, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the book provides an original theory about the factors that shape a logic of policymaking in oil producing states. To extend his theory Mazaheri also looks at India, which is one of the world's main coal producers. He does this to show the effects of the gain and loss of a massive resource windfall on state policymaking toward the private sector. Ultimately Mazaheri argues that such policymaking impedes the development of a middle class and therefore democratization-a factor that can have overarching political repercussions for governmental stability.

At the turn of the millennium, Nepal was the world's last remaining Hindu kingdom: even the most skeptical of observers could hardly imagine that the institution of the monarchy could ever be in jeopardy. In 2001, however, Nepal's popular King Birendra was killed in the royal palace. The crown passed to his brother Gyanendra, but the monarchy would never fully recover. Nepal witnessed an anti-king uprising in April 2006, and over the course of two years, an interim administration systematically took over all the king's duties and privileges. Most decisively, beginning in the summer of 2007, the government began blocking the king from participating in his many public rituals, sending the prime minister in his place instead. Demoting Vishnu argues that Nepal's dramatic political transformation from monarchy to republic was contested-and in key ways accomplished through-ritual performance. By co-opting state ritual, the king's opponents were able to attack the monarchy's social identity at its foundations, enabling the final legal dissolution of kingship in 2008 to take place without physically harming the king himself. All once-royal rituals continue to be performed, but now they are handled by the country's President-a position created in 2008 to take over state ceremonial functions. Ex-King Gyanendra Shah continues to live in Nepal, is permitted to move about the country and abroad, but is no longer king in any respect. Mocko's book theorizes the role of public ritual in producing Nepal's state ideology. It examines how royal ritual once authorized kings to serve as the privileged apex of national governance and how, in the 21st-century, those rituals stopped serving the king and began instead to authorize rule by a party-based 'head of state.' Demoting Vishnu illustrates how upheaval in ritual contexts undermined the institutional logic of the monarchy, demonstrating in very public ways that kingship was contingent, opposable, and ultimately dispensable.

This book provides a succinct account of the major periods in evolution of Russia's 'strong state' construct by reviewing the external and internal contexts of its emergence, progression, and fall in Muscovy, St. Petersburg, Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Russia, with an emphasis on the last two decades. Each time a combination of these contexts was distinct, thereby producing different political outcomes in Russia. The book argues that a perspective on Russia from a Western viewpoint is limited and that there has been an alternative way of thinking about the nation and its problems. While focusing on contemporary developments of the Russian state, the book situates them in a broader historical context and highlights that the roots of these developments are in the Tsar's autocratic system. Russia's strong state has evolved and survived throughout centuries and that alone suggests its historical vitality and possible future revival. From this perspective, the central scholarly question is not whether Russia will recreate a strong state, but, rather, what kind of a strong state it will be and under which circumstances it is likely to function.

The Case for a Second Republic: South Africa’s Second Chance is a timely intervention that navigates South Africa’s transition as a republic over the past 30 years on the one hand, and the conundrum of the government of national unity on the other.

This book is not just politically thought-provoking, but erudite, educational and informative. It performs an urgent analytical sweep of 30 years of South Africa’s democracy, charting the long historical path that laid the foundations for the country’s geographical space from which its sovereignty derives. As an historian, Maloka takes the reader through an illuminating tour de force, spanning early South African history, the formation of the 1910 Union of South Africa and the democratic era.

In this book, Maloka differentiates the idea of a ‘Second Republic‘ from the so-called ‘Second Transition’ advanced by some ANC and Alliance partners around 2012. He also posits the idea of the ‘re-foundation of the state’. Maloka rejects the ongoing hysteria about South Africa becoming a ‘failed state’. Maloka calls for the crafting of a new governance paradigm based on three pillars: a self-reliant mind-set; a technocratic state (not political braskap); and substantive people’s power through street committees and direct election of public representatives.

Maloka strongly advocates for discussions around the possibility of the Second Republic, so as to find better mechanisms to address these issues that are a stubborn legacy of a long history of the country.

The 2008 presidential election made American history. Yet before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, there were other "historic firsts": Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972, and Jesse Jackson, who ran in 1984 and 1988. While unsuccessful, these campaigns were significant, as they rallied American voters across various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. One can also argue that they heightened the electoral prospects of future candidates. Can "historic firsts" bring formerly politically inactive people (those who previously saw no connection between campaigns and their own lives) into the electoral process, making it both relevant and meaningful? In Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes Politics, Evelyn M. Simien makes the compelling argument that voters from various racial, ethnic, and sex groups take pride in and derive psychic benefit from such historic candidacies. They make linkages between the candidates in question and their own understanding of representation, and these linkages act to mobilize citizens to vote and become actively involved in campaigns. Where conventional approaches to the study of American political elections tend to focus on socioeconomic factors, or to study race or gender as isolated factors, Simien's approach is intersectional, bringing together literature on both race and gender. In particular she compares the campaigns of Jackson, Chisholm, Obama and Clinton, and she draws upon archival material from campaign speeches, advertising, and newspaper articles, to voter turnout reports, exit polls, and national surveys to discover how race and gender determined the electoral context for the campaigns. In the process, she reveals the differences that exist within and between various racial, ethnic and sex groups in the American political process at the presidential level.

Postcolonial African Anthropologies showcases some postcolonial ethnographies and aims to figure out how and why anthropology has engaged with conversations on decolonisation and postcolonialism.

The postcolonial ethnographies in this book show that Africans may not necessarily interpret and communicate their experiences in the ways that anthropologists trained in Western institutions and disciplines do, but they are multi-vocal and are ever present to speak with authority on their experience. This book then, deepens and diversifies conversations on Africa and in particular, a 'postcolonial' Africa to understand the position of anthropologists, the position of Africans and the positioning of the discipline of anthropology in Africa.

In The Arizona State Constitution, John D. Leshy provides a comprehensive history of Arizona's constitutional development. Adopted at the height of the progressive movement, the Constitution contains many progressive innovations. Leshy describes these along with the dramatic changes the state has undergone in subsequent decades. He also includes a section-by-section commentary which crisply discusses the evolution and interpretation of each section, including significant court decisions. Thoroughly updated to reflect amendments and court cases through the fall of 2012, the second edition of The Arizona State Constitution is an essential reference guide for readers who seek a rich account of Arizona's constitutional evolution.
The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research.
Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.

After Empires describes how the end of colonial empires and the changes in international politics and economies after decolonization affected the European integration process. Until now, studies on European integration have often focussed on the search for peaceful relations among the European nations, particularly between Germany and France, or examined it as an offspring of the Cold War, moving together with the ups and downs of transatlantic relations. But these two factors alone are not enough to explain the rise of the European Community and its more recent transformation into the European Union. Giuliano Garavini focuses instead on the emergence of the Third World as an international actor, starting from its initial economic cooperation with the creation of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 up to the end of unity among the countries of the Global South after the second oil shock in 1979-80. Offering a new - less myopic - way to conceptualise European history more globally, the study is based on a variety of international archives (government archives in Europe, the US, Algeria, Venezuela; international organizations such as the EC, UNCTAD, and the World Bank; political and social organizations such as the Socialist International, labour archives and the papers of oil companies) and traces the reactions and the initiatives of the countries of the European Community, but also of the European political parties and public opinion, to the rise and fall of the Third World on the international stage.