Watergate, Iran-Contra, Lewinsky, Enron, Bridgegate: according to the popular media, executive scandals are ubiquitous. Although individual scandals persist in the public memory and as the subject of academic study, how do we understand the impacts of executive indiscretion or malfeasance as a whole? What effect, if any, do scandals have on political polarization, governance, and, most importantly, democratic accountability? Recognizing the important and enduring role of scandals in American government, this book proposes a common intellectual framework for understanding their nature and political effects. Brandon Rottinghaus takes a systematic look the dynamics of the duration of scandals, the way they affect presidents and governors' capacity to govern, and the strategic choices executives make in confronting scandal at both the state and national levels. His findings reveal much about not only scandal, but the operation of American politics.

This collection of original essays by leading scholars and advocates offers the first international examination of the nature, causes, and effects of laws regulating voting by people with criminal convictions. In deciding whether prisoners shall retain the right to vote, a country faces vital questions about democratic self-definition and constitutional values and, increasingly, about the scope of judicial power. Yet in the rich and growing literature on comparative constitutionalism, relatively little attention has been paid to voting rights and election law. Democracy and Punishment begins to fill that gap, showing how constitutional courts in Israel, Canada, South Africa, and Australia, as well as the European Court of Human Rights, have grappled with these policies in the last decade, often citing one another along the way. Chapters analyze partisan politics, political theory, prison administration, and social values, showing that constitutional law is the fruit of political and historical contingency, not just constitutional texts and formal legal doctrine.

Popular perception holds that presidents act "first and alone," resorting to unilateral orders to promote an agenda and head off unfavorable legislation. Little research, however, has considered the diverse circumstances in which such orders are issued. The Dual Executive reinterprets how and when presidents use unilateral power by illuminating the dual roles of the president. Drawing from an original data set of over 5,000 executive orders and proclamations (the two most frequently used unilateral orders) from the Franklin D. Roosevelt to the George W. Bush administrations (1933-2009), this book situates unilateral orders within the broad scope of executive-legislative relations. Michelle Belco and Brandon Rottinghaus shed light on the shared nature of unilateral power by recasting the executive as both an aggressive "commander" and a cooperative "administrator" who uses unilateral power not only to circumvent Congress, but also to support and facilitate its operations.

This collection of original essays by leading scholars and advocates offers the first international examination of the nature, causes, and effects of laws regulating voting by people with criminal convictions. In deciding whether prisoners shall retain the right to vote, a country faces vital questions about democratic self-definition and constitutional values and, increasingly, about the scope of judicial power. Yet in the rich and growing literature on comparative constitutionalism, relatively little attention has been paid to voting rights and election law. Democracy and Punishment begins to fill that gap, showing how constitutional courts in Israel, Canada, South Africa, and Australia, as well as the European Court of Human Rights, have grappled with these policies in the last decade, often citing one another along the way. Chapters analyze partisan politics, political theory, prison administration, and social values, showing that constitutional law is the fruit of political and historical contingency, not just constitutional texts and formal legal doctrine."