New Research Examines the Rise of Federal Government Breakdowns, and How They Can be Stopped

The winner of the 2015 John Gaus Award Lecture, Paul C. Light from New York University, is featured in PS: Political Science & Politics 49.1 with a lecture "Vision + Action = Faithful Execution: Why Government Daydreams and How to Stop the Cascade of Breakdowns That Now Haunts It."

Light argues that focusing on government breakdowns is important because they reveal the effects of recent disinvestment in the government's capacity to implement policy, and warn about future threats to faithful execution of the laws. He argues that the number of government failures have significantly increased over time, through the examination of a number of case studies since 2001.

These case studies include the NSA leaks exposed by Edward Snowden, the shooting in Fort Hood by an Army Specialist, and alleged State Department e-mail security breaches by Hillary Clinton.

The Features Symposium in PS 49.1 explores how the arts and popular culture shape campaigns and elections, and how aesthetic appeals to voters have changed over time.

The symposium, titled "The Art of Elections" and guest edited by Nancy S. Love of Appalachian State University, examines the role of campaign advertising, theatrical techniques, comedy shows, campaign theme songs, poster campaigns and storytelling on social media.

The contributing authors question whether the arts and popular culture can promote a more inclusive and representative democracy, or whether it manipulates voters. This symposium includes "Elections as Theater" (Mark Chou, Roland Bleiker, and Nilanjana Premaratna) which looks at the performative and theatrical elements of elections, while "'I Won't Back Down,' or Will I?" (Eric T. Kasper and Benjamin S. Schoening) examines historic presidential campaigns' use of music without copyright, and "Hanging Around Us in Plain Sight" (Hal Elliott Wert) covers the impacts of printing technology on the history of the American campaign poster. Three additional symposium articles discuss important elements of campaigns and elections including campaign ads (Paul A. Passavant), political satire (Jamie Warner), and social media (Himanee Gupta-Carlson).

This issue also contains the Profession Symposium "Assessment in Political Science Redux", guest edited by Michelle D. Deardorff. This provides an introduction to the status and practice of assessment in both political science and public administration. The contributors to this symposium consider the development and implementation of program or curricular review. This broad focus means the symposium is universally applicable, regardless of the subfield, methodological orientation, departmental composition, or institutional type.

Finally, this issue features articles "On the Ethics of Crowdsourced Research" (Vanessa Williamson), on the relevance of science in government decision making (Susan Mason) as well as four articles on teaching.

PS: Political Science & Politics can be accessed through a joint subscription with American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics or to members of the American Political Science Association (APSA). A few select articles are made freely available for a period of time. To view all the articles from PS 49:1, click here.

Published for the American Political Science Association, PS: Political Science & Politics tackles some of the most topical issues today. PS is led ably by the editorial team of Phillip Ardoin (Chair and Professor, Appalachian State University) and Paul Gronke (Professor, Appalachian State University and Reed College).