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Research investigating whether natural disasters help or hurt politicians’ electoral fortunes has produced conflicting results. Some find that voters punish elected officials indiscriminately in the wake of a natural disaster (i.e. ‘blind retrospection’). Others find that voters instead incorporate elected officials’ subsequent relief efforts in their assessment (i.e. ‘attentive retrospection’). We argue that an additional consideration affects voters’ response to natural disasters: the elected official’s partisan affiliation. We contend that whether voters reward or punish incumbents following a disaster is influenced by whether or not the official is a co-partisan. We look for evidence of such ‘partisan retrospection’ by examining the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the 2012 presidential election, and find that voters’ reactions to disaster damage were strongly conditioned by pre-existing partisanship, with counties that previously supported Obama reacting far more positively to disaster damage than those that had earlier opposed him. We then use existing data to investigate the relationship between disasters and presidential elections between 1972 and 2004. We find that incumbent-party candidates performed no worse in disaster-affected co-partisan counties than in non-affected co-partisan counties, but that they underperformed in disaster-affected counties safely in the opposing party column.

Two current members of the U.S. Supreme Court took their seats despite allegations of sexual harassment (Clarence Thomas) and sexual assault (Brett Kavanaugh) leveled against them during their confirmation hearings. In each instance, the Senate vote was close and split mainly along party lines: Republicans for and Democrats against. Polls showed that a similar division existed among party supporters in the electorate. There are, however, differences among rank-and-file partisans that help shape their views on the issues raised by these two controversial appointments to the nation’s highest court. Using data from a national survey of registered voters, we examine the factors associated with citizens’ attitudes about the role of women in politics, the extent to which sexism is a problem in society, the recent avalanche of sexual harassment charges made against elected officials and other political (as well as entertainment, business, and academic) figures, and the #MeToo movement. We are particularly interested in whether a strong sense of partisan identity adds significantly to our understanding of people’s attitudes on these matters. In addition, our experimental evidence allows us to determine whether shared partisanship overrides other factors when an elected official from one’s own party is accused of sexual misbehavior.

This paper describes student outcomes from participating in a week-long out-of-school action civics program designed to increase students’ civic and political competence and engagement. Using analysis from four years of survey data, this paper presents findings related to changes in students’ civic competence as a result of participating in the program, including findings related to both first time and repeat campers. Data revealed that participants experienced gains in half of the civic competence construct variables, with first-time campers experiencing significant gains in five of the civic competence construct variables. Data analysis suggests that iEngage, an action civics summer experience, was effective in increasing elements of students’ civic competence, including their ability to get people to care about a problem, organize and run a meeting, write an opinion letter or contact a media outlet to express their views, and contact an elected official or community leader to address an issue.

À travers l’analyse de cinq films, l’étude entend démontrer que, dans le cinéma italien, l’élu politique incarne toujours un anti-héros. En ce sens, le cinéma joue un double rôle. D’une part, il décrit et anticipe des évolutions institutionnelles fondamentales, en illustrant notamment le passage de la 1ère à la 2ème République. D’autre part, il contribue à construire un discours collectif sur les élus en influençant les rapports entre les citoyens, les politiciens et les institutions., Analyzing five films, this study intends to demonstrate that, in Italian cinema, the elected official always embodies an antihero. In this sense, cinema plays a twofold role. On the one hand, it describes and anticipates fundamental institutional changes, illustrating in particular the transition from the First to the Second Republic. On the other hand, it helps build a collective discourse on elected officials by influencing the relationships between citizens, politicians, and institutions.

President Trump mentioned the potential antiviral benefits of hydroxychloroquine as the COVID-19 crisis became evident in the United States. Politics and mass media in the United States have been undergoing a process of partisan polarization over the last 20-30 years. While partisanship has long affected reactions toward news or information, particularly when it comes from an elected official, the situation appears to be worsening in American politics. Even a search for potential cures or useful medication in the face of a public health crisis is hampered by partisanship and polarization.

Nurses are experienced leaders, understand how to improve quality and access to care, and have the essential skills to be an elected official. Knowing the key tasks to running a campaign is critical to achieving an elected office role. This article presents a call to action for nurse leaders, advice on running for office, and lessons learned from a nurse running for State Senate.

To what extent do leaders of nonprofit organizations run for elected office? We address this question through an exploratory study using survey data from a random sample of 184 leaders of nonprofit human service organizations in the United States. Drawing upon theories of political ambition, we explore the factors that may shape nascent political ambition (propensity to run) as well as expressive political ambition (running for office). We find that nonprofit leaders are no more likely to run for office than the average citizen, but interest in running is much more common. We identify several individual-level and professional socialization factors associated with political ambition. Our study makes an important theoretical contribution by outlining a model of political ambition for the nonprofit sector that can be tested in future studies, and makes an important practical contribution by highlighting ways that associations and nonprofit industry groups might convert nascent ambition into expressive ambition.

Extant women & politics literature suggests males are perceived to be better leaders than females. Men are more likely than women to be perceived as competent, decisive, and capable of handling crises--all important qualities for elected officials. This research suggests, on average, female elected officials are viewed as less competent than their male colleagues. Yet, extant literature typically examines perceived competency of elected officials in a vacuum. Notably, the research does not take in to account how the gender and quality of opposing candidates may influence the perceived competency of an elected official. In this research note, we address this limitation by examining evaluations of members of the U.S. House (henceforth MC) relative to the evaluations of their challenger. We find gender differences are larger and more pronounced when we compare male and female MCs competing against quality challengers.

In fields such as Sociology and Political Science, there have been, over the course of three decades, attempts to engage elected officials in “Evidence-Based Decision-Making”. Evidence is generally conceived as “expert” advice provided to politicians. A question that has gained more centrality in recent years is “why do elected officials not trust expert opinion or technical evidence?” and the answer to this question has been sought in historical or general terms (e.g. Irwin 2006; Weiss et al. 2008; Kraft et al. 2015). Here I will propose an alternative question: “when politicians exhibit a lack of trust in expert advice, how is such skepticism publicly accounted for?” I will examine this question by utilizing a case study ethnographic approach to the City of Toronto’s controversial decision to endorse the Hybrid alternative for the Gardiner expressway. By doing so, I intend to show that knowledge controversies are not inherently a form of deficiency on the part of the elected official – that they are ignorant to the implications of evidence – but rather the standard by which elected officials and appointed experts review and understand evidence can lead to very different (although both reasonably ‘correct’) conclusions.

Eight out of the ten most recent Japanese prime ministers were sons of an elected official. Some of them, such as Koizumi Jun-ichirō, Asō Tarō, Hatoyama Yukio, and Abe Shinzō were from families wit...

Why do office-motivated politicians sometimes espouse views that are non-congruent with their electorate’s? Can non-congruent statements convey any information about what a politician will do if elected, and if so, why would voters elect a politician who makes such statements? Furthermore, can electoral campaigns also directly affect an elected official’s behaviour? We develop a model of credible “cheap talk”—costless and non-binding communication—in elections. The foundation is an endogenous voter preference for a politician who is known to be non-congruent over one whose congruence is sufficiently uncertain. This preference arises because uncertainty about an elected official’s policy preferences generates policymaking distortions due to reputation/career concerns. We show that cheap talk can alter the electorate’s beliefs about a politician’s policy preferences and thereby affect the elected official’s behaviour. Informative cheap talk can increase or decrease voter welfare, with a greater scope for welfare benefits when reputation concerns are more important.

Because the elected official requires the civil servant's expertise and the latter owes its survival to its political superior, many see this interface as a strategic opportunity. This dynamic scoping review of the existing literature gathers the main works about strategic transmission of information in a descriptive framework tailored to the needs of practitioners in the state apparatus. Since strategy is likely to influence the output of a decision, formal literature should be considered as a toolbox able to optimize information transmission. Aware of this reality, the public actors break the strategic determinism of such exchanges.

In a national context of transferring their competences to intercommunal institutions, reducing their resources and weakening of their regulatory prerogatives, local elected representatives in small cities, and their technical services, are faced with issues that often exceed their capacity for action. The implementation of a participatory urban project requires a paradigm shift in the political and professional cultures they have inherited. It clearly makes it necessary to rethink their roles and modalities of intervention.Based on the experience of an architectural and urban planning agency, this thesis analyses the place and the modalities of action of the elected representative as "Occasional Contracting Authority", for urban projects organized with significant and unusual participatory ambitions for the community. On the basis of three case studies, it describes and interprets the difficulties encountered by the small city and its accompanying structure. Relying on an approach of "observant participation" and on the Theory of Social Regulation, this research examines the conflicts and negotiations within the system of actors implied in the urban project in which the local elected is involved.; Dans un contexte national de transfert des compétences à l’échelon intercommunal, de diminution de leurs ressources et d'affaiblissement de leurs prérogatives réglementaires, les élus locaux de petites villes et leurs services techniques sont confrontés à des enjeux qui dépassent bien souvent leurs compétences et les moyens dont ils disposent. Or, la mise en œuvre d'un projet urbain participatif suppose d’opérer un changement de paradigme vis-à-vis des cultures politiques et professionnelles dont ils ont hérité. Elle rend manifestement nécessaire de repenser leurs rôles et leurs modalités d'intervention.À partir de l'expérience d’une agence d’architecture et d’urbanisme, cette thèse analyse la place et les modalités d'action de l’élu comme « Maître d’Ouvrage occasionnel » dans le cadre de projets urbains organisés avec des ambitions participatives importantes et inhabituelles pour la collectivité. Basée sur trois études de cas, elle décrit et interprète les difficultés conjointement rencontrées par la petite ville et la structure qui l'accompagne. En s’appuyant sur une démarche de « participation observante » et sur la Théorie de la Régulation Sociale, cette recherche examine les conflits et négociations au sein du système d’acteurs du projet urbain dans lequel gravite l’élu local.

In a national context of transferring their competences to intercommunal institutions, reducing their resources and weakening of their regulatory prerogatives, local elected representatives in small cities, and their technical services, are faced with issues that often exceed their capacity for action. The implementation of a participatory urban project requires a paradigm shift in the political and professional cultures they have inherited. It clearly makes it necessary to rethink their roles and modalities of intervention.Based on the experience of an architectural and urban planning agency, this thesis analyses the place and the modalities of action of the elected representative as "Occasional Contracting Authority", for urban projects organized with significant and unusual participatory ambitions for the community. On the basis of three case studies, it describes and interprets the difficulties encountered by the small city and its accompanying structure. Relying on an approach of "observant participation" and on the Theory of Social Regulation, this research examines the conflicts and negotiations within the system of actors implied in the urban project in which the local elected is involved. It highlights the importance for an architectural and urban planning agency to be able to decipher the underlying stakes that govern action and decision-making.The attitudes of elected representatives towards participation are diverse. But this perspective still seems to them above all to be a constraint and a source of uncertainty, all the more so since they are now institutionally fragile. The rise in power of the intercommunal level disrupts their role: they tend to be deprived of the elaboration of the main decisions as much as it becomes mysterious for the citizens involved. The opacity of decision-making mechanisms, linked to the reconfiguration of the local political system, is accentuated all the more since project engineering in small cities is poorly controlled by elected representatives and their technical services.The difficulties in implementing a participatory system are also due to the low acculturation of local elected representatives to the approaches of urban projects, and to the types of studies or expertise they require to mobilise. For its part, an agency of urbanism and architecture, until then rather accustomed to intervene as urban project supervisor, does not necessarily have the in-house skills to understand and analyse the systems of actors it is confronted with, in all their subtleties. It must thus acquire new knowledge in this register in order to be able to better accompany these approaches. It can then act as a lever in the implementation of a participatory urban project method that goes beyond the application of a few tools. However, the level of achievement of its mission and of this type of initiative seems to depend above all on the will and capacity of the mayor or the president of the intermunicipality, to achieve this approach and to assume it with the inhabitants and other political and institutional actors.; Dans un contexte national de transfert des compétences à l’échelon intercommunal, de diminution de leurs ressources et d'affaiblissement de leurs prérogatives réglementaires, les élus locaux de petites villes et leurs services techniques sont confrontés à des enjeux qui dépassent bien souvent leurs compétences et les moyens dont ils disposent. Or, la mise en œuvre d'un projet urbain participatif suppose d’opérer un changement de paradigme vis-à-vis des cultures politiques et professionnelles dont ils ont hérité. Elle rend manifestement nécessaire de repenser leurs rôles et leurs modalités d'intervention.À partir de l'expérience d’une agence d’architecture et d’urbanisme, cette thèse analyse la place et les modalités d'action de l’élu comme « Maître d’Ouvrage occasionnel » dans le cadre de projets urbains organisés avec des ambitions participatives importantes et inhabituelles pour la collectivité. Fondée sur trois études de cas, elle décrit et interprète les difficultés conjointement rencontrées par la petite ville et la structure qui l'accompagne. En s’appuyant sur une démarche de « participation observante » et sur la Théorie de la Régulation Sociale, cette recherche examine les conflits et négociations au sein du système d’acteurs du projet urbain dans lequel gravite l’élu local. Elle met en évidence l'importance pour une agence d’architecture et d’urbanisme de parvenir à décrypter les enjeux sous-jacents qui régissent l'action et la prise de décision. Les attitudes des élus face à la participation sont diverses. Mais cette perspective leur apparait encore surtout comme une contrainte et une source d’incertitude, d'autant plus qu'ils se trouvent actuellement institutionnellement fragilisés. La montée en puissance du niveau intercommunal bouleverse leur rôle : l'élaboration des principales décisions tend à leur échapper autant qu'elle devient mystérieuse pour les citoyens impliqués. L’opacité des mécanismes de décision, liée à la reconfiguration du système politique local, s’accentue d’autant plus que l’ingénierie de projet dans les petites villes est peu maîtrisée par les élus et leurs services techniques.Les difficultés à mettre en œuvre un dispositif participatif tiennent aussi à la faible acculturation des élus locaux aux démarches de projets urbains, et aux types d'études ou d'expertises qu'elles nécessitent de mobiliser. De son côté, une agence d'urbanisme et d'architecture, jusqu'alors plutôt habituée à intervenir comme maître d'œuvre urbain, ne dispose pas forcément au départ des compétences en interne lui permettant d'appréhender et d'analyser les systèmes d'acteurs auxquels elle est confrontée, dans toutes leurs subtilités. Elle doit ainsi acquérir de nouveaux savoirs dans ce registre pour pouvoir mieux accompagner ces démarches. Elle peut alors jouer un rôle de levier dans la mise en œuvre d'une méthode de projet urbain participatif allant au-delà de l'application de quelques outils. Pour autant, le niveau d'aboutissement de sa mission et de ce type d'initiative paraît surtout dépendre de la volonté et de la capacité du maire ou du président de l'intercommunalité, à porter et à assumer cette démarche auprès des habitants et des autres acteurs politiques et institutionnels.

For small towns three common factors for financial fraud are most apparent: inadequate trained staff, elected official's failure to institute strict audit budgetary controls, and the willingness to appoint an entrusted administrator to assume complete control over the financial managerial process. This is conference paper investigates the cultural-organization factors that allowed for publicly appointed officials to perpetrate such budgetary fraud of public monies and the financial safeguards that may prevent and discourage such fraudulent behavior.

La collusion et la corruption sont des phénomènes contre lesquels les sociétés de tout temps luttent, mais ils ne cessent de se renouveler. L’élu municipal, par la proximité et la localité de son pouvoir, est l’un des plus à risque à se laisser corrompre. La Commission d'enquête sur l'octroi et la gestion des contrats publics dans l'industrie de la construction est révélatrice à cet égard. Le présent mémoire vise à identifier les incidences de cette commission sur la législation en matière contractuelle municipale, sur les droits individuels des élus municipaux ainsi que sur la validité des contrats publics conclus dans un tel contexte. Dans un premier temps, nous nous attarderons aux enquêtes du XXe siècle, lesquelles ont entraîné les premières modifications législatives en matière de lutte à la corruption au niveau municipal. Dans un deuxième temps, nous dresserons un portrait des révélations de la Commission Charbonneau et des modifications législatives qu’elle a engendré en matière contractuelle. Dans un troisième temps, nous étudierons le recours disponible à la municipalité mis en place depuis le début de l’enquête de la Commission Charbonneau, soit la demande en suspension provisoire à l’encontre d’un élu accusé au criminel. En parallèle, nous analyserons la nouvelle interprétation des tribunaux du régime de protection financière des élus dans ce même contexte. Dans un quatrième temps, nous nous attarderons aux conséquences au niveau pénal, civil et déontologique que sont susceptibles de subir les élus au comportement répréhensible. Nous identifierons les objectifs sur lesquels les tribunaux ont mis l’accent dans le contexte de la Commission Charbonneau. Dans un cinquième temps, nous étudierons les conséquences de la corruption sur la validité du contrat municipal. Dans le contexte de la récente décision de la Cour d’appel dans Ville de Montréal c. Octane Stratégie inc., 2018 QCCA 223, quel du Code civil du Québec ou de la common law est le mieux adapté à la réalité municipale? Finalement, nous étudierons la voie que le législateur a choisie afin de réprimer les entreprises ayant participé à un système frauduleux et dolosif des appels d’offres à la suite de la Commission Charbonneau. Nous tenterons de déterminer si la Loi visant principalement la récupération de sommes payées injustement à la suite de fraudes ou de manœuvres dolosives dans le cadre de contrats publics, RLRQ, c. R-2.2.0.0.3 prévoit des règles de preuve aussi exceptionnelles que certains ne le soutiennent. À travers ces différents chapitres, nous verrons que le législateur et les tribunaux sont constamment à la recherche d’un équilibre entre les droits individuels et l’intérêt public, lequel est, somme toute, difficile à atteindre., Collusion and corruption are phenomena against which society has always fought. However, they never cease to renew themselves. The elected municipal officials, due to the proximity and locality of their power are one of those most at risk to be corrupted. The Commission d’enquête sur l’octroi et la gestion des contrats publics dans l’industrie de la construction is revealing in this regard. This dissertation aims to identify the impact this commission had on municipal contracts legislation, on the individual rights of the elected municipal officials as well as on the validity of public contracts concluded in this context. Firstly, we will consider the investigations of the 20th century which led to the first legislative changes with regards to the battle against corruption at the municipal level. Secondly, we will dress a portrait of the revelations stemming from the Charbonneau Commission and the legislative changes this commission had on contractual law. Thirdly, we will study the recourse available to the municipality that has been put in place since the beginning of the investigation of the Charbonneau Commission, that being the application to declare provisionally incapable a member of a municipal council for which there are criminal accusations. In parallel, we will analyse the new interpretation that the Courts have given to the elected officials’ financial protection regime in this same context. Fourthly, we will evaluate the consequences at the penal, civil and ethical level the elected officials with reprehensible conduct are susceptible to incur. We will identify the objectives on which the Courts have put emphasis in the context of the Charbonneau Commission. Fifthly, we will study the consequences of corruption on the validity of the municipal contract. The violation of public policy rules leads to the nullity of the contract. In the context of the recent decision of the Court of appeal in Ville de Montréal c. Octane Statégie inc., 2018 QCCA 223, which of the Civil code of Québec or the common law is best adapted to the reality of municipalities? Finally, we will study the path the legislator chose, following the Charbonneau Commission, to repress businesses that participated in a fraudulent system of call for tenders. We will try to determine if the Act to ensure mainly the recovery of amounts improperly paid as a result of fraud or fraudulent tactics in connection with public contracts, RLRQ, c. R-2.2.0.0.3 provides for rules of evidence as exceptional as some argue. Throughout these different chapters, we will see that the legislator as well as the Courts are constantly searching for a balance between individual rights and public interest, balance which is, all in all, difficult to attain.

This study examines the interplay between political influence and regulatory decision-making. Political influence is captured based on whether a bank is headquartered in a state where an elected official holds a chair position on a congressional committee related to the banking and financial services industry. Using data of US commercial banks over the period 2000–2015, we show that our measure of political influence reduces a bank's probability of receiving a formal regulatory enforcement action. Results are robust to the use of alternative model specifications and the sample restrictions. However, we find that various bank and environmental characteristics are important conditional factors.

Governments do not always enforce their laws, even when they have the means of doing so, and lax enforcement is common in the domain of immigration policy. To explain this paradox we develop a political agency model where gains from migration are unevenly distributed, and an elected government chooses both quotas and their enforcement. We show that distributional concerns can have perverse effects on migration policy since a utilitarian government may set a quota to appease the electorate, but then strategically under-invest in its enforcement. Under-investment is more likely, the larger the preference gap between median and average voter, and the higher the likelihood of a populist challenger gaining office. Our analysis also indicates that redistributive taxation reducing the share of enforcement cost borne by the median voter exacerbates the problem, whereas a compensatory tax rebate financed through a tax on profits from migration alleviates the conflict of interest, thus reducing illegal immigration.

International audience; Territorial restructuring appears to be a product of “rational” variables (technical, political and territorial), but also of “irrational” ones. The emotions of elected officials also partially condition the construction of territories and the redrawing of their boundaries. Drawing on a series of interviews with mayors, analysis of the way in which their emotions affect their decisions is made, and the territorial restructuring that ensues. In the national context of a France affected by institutional change (the new phase of decentralisation), the urban area of Le Havre (Normandie) illustrates the issues of restructuring that occur in many territories. The project of an amalgamation of three inter-municipalities to create a larger entity helps to provide input into the works of the local geopolitics. In addition to the significance of the boundary and the project, a majority of elected officials from one of the inter-municipalities sees it as being a forced absorption (backed by the former mayor of Le Havre, today the Prime Minister of France). Discussions about the questions of territoriality, identity (urban versus rural), and of sovereignty take place in a context where the affective dimension plays a significant role. Consequently, the literature from the fields of “emotional geography”, “political geography”, “cognitive analysis of public policies” and “territorial development” constitute the theoretical framework of this article. The cognitive sciences are also brought into play in order to analyse the cognitive structure of mayoral emotions. Every mayor of the inter-municipality who “joined the resistance” took part in semi-directive interviews carried out in the city hall on condition of anonymity. The data collected were the object of a contents analysis, a comparative analysis and a textual statistical analysis. We were able to determine from the Le Havre case that the more an elected official benefits from cognitive competences and resources in the framework of his “job as mayor” (high level of instruction, strong leadership and expertise), the less permeable he seems to be to the emotions inherent in territorial play. These could have a lesser influence on his decisions and he might be prone to a form of “pragmatism”. Conversely, those elected officials having few resources at their disposal will be more inclined to allow their emotions to affect the restructuring in question. If, according to our findings, this correlation appears significant, our analysis is more than an interdependence and it is not a matter of opposing competences and emotions. The essential point of our article lies elsewhere. Spatial restructuring combines political, cognitive, territorial and emotional dimensions. Furthermore, isolating the latter variable would lead to a loss of its heuristic potential. Both the cause and consequence, the emotions experienced by mayors are active principles, but also indicative of territorial play. Studying the redrawing of space through the prism of emotions makes it possible to shed light on the decision-making processes at work, the mechanisms of governance activated and the geopolitics that ensue. The emotions are an enhancing substance, intensifying the questions of power, identity and sovereignty, etc. In that, they constitute a springboard for action and a move from word to deed.; Les recompositions territoriales apparaissent comme le produit de variables « rationnelles » (techniques, politiques et territoriales), mais également « irrationnelles ». Aussi, les émotions des élus conditionneraient en partie la construction des territoires et le découpage de leurs périmètres. À partir d’une série d’entretiens auprès de maires, il s’agira d’analyser la manière dont leurs émotions influencent leurs décisions et les recompositions territoriales qui en résultent. Le projet de fusion entre trois intercommunalités de l’aire urbaine havraise, afin de créer une communauté urbaine, permettra d’illustrer le phénomène. Outre la pertinence du périmètre et du projet, celui-ci est vécu par la majorité des élus d’une des communautés comme une absorption forcée (soutenue par l'ancien maire du Havre, aujourd’hui Premier ministre). Ainsi les questions de territorialités, d’identité (urbaine versus rurale), de souveraineté vont être débattues dans un contexte où la dimension affective joue un rôle significatif et conditionne en partie les découpages territoriaux.

It is a hallmark of a science-based profession that its members conduct and publish research. In her 2012 address to the Police Superintendents Association for England and Wales, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom called on the British police to do just that. Since the Home Secretary is equivalent to the Attorney General of the United States or the Minister of Interior in many other countries as the chief elected official responsible for policing, her injunction to publish research is a major reflection on the police profession. This volume is one response to her injunction. It will not be the last. Police research was once the sole domain of professional social scientists. No longer. Police professionals now make major contributions to research, just as practicing professionals do in other fields. Medical research is full of practicing clinicians, many of whom split their time between research and practice. Surgeons are first authors of important research articles, with their statisticians in second authorship spots. This volume reflects an aspiration to see the same pattern develop in policing in which research leadership moves from academics to professionals. The articles in this volume are therefore as remarkable for their authorship as they are for their contents. Fully half of the authors are current or former police professionals. Five of the seven first authors of these articles are police professionals. All of the police professionals hold master’s degrees in evidence-based policing from the University of Cambridge, and one (Peter Neyroud) is a Cambridge PhD candidate—after commanding thousands of police officers in two large British police agencies. They are all in the vanguard of the kind of evidence-based police profession that the U.K.’s new ‘‘College’’ of Policing (a professional membership and standard-setting body founded in 2012) is designed to promote, by identifying and applying the best evidence of what works in policing for over its core membership of 200,000 U.K. police professionals (see www.college.police.uk) and academics from universities across Britain. Authors in this volume are also active in the Society of Evidence-Based Policing (SEBP; www.sebp.police.uk), whose 2,000 members globally are linked to universities on four continents and whose winter 2015 U.K. conference included presentations from police-research partnerships from nine universities and police services.

When I conceived of the Theatre Journal special issue on Minor Asias, artist Kristina Wong came immediately to mind because of work she had done in Uganda and her embodied political performance as an elected official in Los Angeles Then COVID-19 and the latest wave of Black Lives Matter protests delayed the interview, and in the interim Wong started the Auntie Sewing Squad, which sewed thousands of masks for communities in need In the wake of all these events, Kristina and I reconnected to discuss the links of politics and performance and the transversal relationships between different minoritarian communities © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the establishment of this new type of elected official and the conduct of those in office during the first twelve months of their official existence, and to consider whether a compelling case has yet been made for its retention as the principal method of police governance. Design/methodology/approach – The paper will review policy papers and data which preceded and followed the establishment of the office of police and crime commissioner (PCC) in November 2012; review the 2012 elections and their implications, review conduct since, particularly in respect of formal duties, principally setting budgets and police and crime plans; consider the potential for politicisation; and consider whether a case has been made for the retention of the office in future. Findings – The paper concludes that the government has succeeded with PCCs in implementing a major plank of the Conservative party's 2010 manifesto. It can reasonably be anticipated that the Conservatives will promote this record at the next election. However, it is simply too early to tell if PCCs are individually or collectively adding value to the sum of policing in England and Wales. A compelling case for their retention as a means of police governance is therefore yet to be made. On the other hand, Labour has still to determine whether it will offer the electorate an alternative in 2015. Research limitations/implications – With only ten months having elapsed since the first elections, it is early to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness or, more pertinently, the added value that PCCs have brought to policing. Conversely, the first twelve months was an opportunity for PCCs to make a positive impression and this has not occurred. Practical implications – PCCs ought to be subject to a rigorous appraisal of effectiveness. This is unlikely, for political reasons, to occur. Originality/value – First rigorous review of PCCs based on a review of available data.

Which factors shorten or lengthen the survival of a scandal involving a chief executive? Using new data tracking scandals involving presidents and governors from 1972 to 2011, I chart the duration of each political, personal, and financial scandal faced by an elected official, their staff, or nominees. I specifically examine institutional, political, and economic factors to investigate what factors quicken a “negative” end to a scandal. National chief executives and their staff are more likely to survive a scandal when they have more partisans in the legislature but are less likely when there is greater political opposition, however there is no comparative effect at the state level. Positive economic growth and public approval have no effect on survival of a scandal at either the national or state levels. These findings clarify how the political environment shapes the duration of executive scandal.

This past year I directed a short documentary about Harvey Milk’s legacy that was an Oscar contender for the  Annual Academy Awards. Harvey Milk was an extraordinary person who fought through barriers, obstacles, and opponents to fight for social justice and equal rights. Despite other people trying to browbeat or bully him into staying quiet he knew he had to stand up and fight. My film emphasizes that everyone has a voice and that you have to make is heard on any issue, topic, debate, or proposition that you are strongly for or against and you shouldn’t stay quiet just because someone says you have to. My film depicts a great example of a public figure that came from a childhood and adulthood of being picked on and suppressed. It started when I was an intern at West Hollywood City Hall. I was placed on a committee to plan Harvey Milk Day and think of possible ideas to celebrate his astonishing achievements. Like many other people, I first heard about Harvey Milk from the  Academy Award-winning film “Milk” starring Sean Penn. Until I was put on this committee, all I knew about Harvey Milk was that he was the first openly gay elected official. With a passion for film and politics, inspiration hit and I had only four weeks to direct, produce, and edit a short film about Milk. I scheduled interviews with the mayor of West Hollywood, West Hollywood City Council members, LGBT activist Torie Osborn, Assemblyman Richard Bloom, and Assemblywoman Betsy Butler. I asked them for their views on his legacy, why he was such an inspirational and transformative political figure, and how his legacy lives on today. It was an amazing experience for me to interview people who, for the most part, had first-hand experience of living in

Previous research by Nickerson (2007a) testing 13 email get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns concludes that email from third parties is not an effective method of increasing voter turnout. We conducted three rounds of email GOTV experiments in San Mateo County, California, in cooperation with the local registrar, the elected official responsible for administering elections. Unsolicited emails sent from the registrar consistently increased turnout among registered voters. The treatment effects are small, but statistically significant. In contrast, identical messages sent from a fictional voter mobilization organization had no measurable effect, consistent with Nickerson's results. We conclude that email sent from an official source can in fact be a cost-effective method of increasing turnout.

Last year, my collaborator Adrian Ventura, director of the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (Workers' Community Center, or CCT), asked me to write a letter to an elected official on the organization's behalf. Adrian is a Maya K'iche', the largest of the 22 Maya ethnicities in Guatemala, and the CCT is an immigrant workers' rights organization in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He wanted to ensure that the letter clearly explained the organization's analysis of why Central American immigrants, and especially the Guatemalan Maya, had come to the United States.1 "We didn't come for the American dream," he reminded me. I asked him what, specifically, he wanted in the letter. "Ah, Lisa," he responded, with a bit of exasperation. "You're the anthropologist. You've been with us so long, you know what to write."

Curtis Compton/ZUMA/PA Last week tens of thousands of US students walked out of class in a peaceful protest against gun violence, including these protesters in Atlanta, Georgia. Their words and signs were powerful: “The adults have failed us. If any elected official gets in our way, we will vote them out.” “Fix this before I text my mom from under a desk.” One of the most memorable things about the horrible aftermath of …

What are the decision-making criteria used by public admin istrators in recommending which goods and services should be provided by local governments? Do city managers and administrators base their decisions on political criteria such as citizen support, elected official buy in, and special interest group advocacy, or do they focus on transaction and regulation costs and cost-benefit analysis? These ques tions are part of the ongoing debate in public administration about the relative importance of economic and political criteria in budget decision making. Empirical evidence at the local level has informed this largely normative discussion. In this article, survey methodol ogy is used to explore classic economic and budgeting theories in the context of budget decision making, with particular attention paid to economic and political criteria.

This article presents personal observations regarding some of the benefits to the public and some of the challenges faced when a professional engineer in services as a local elected official. This is not a scholarly paper. Rather, it is a series of personal observations of one engineer serving in a specific local elected role, with some conclusions drawn that may be of interest to other engineers who may consider serving the public in political office.

The purpose of the study was to determine the most ideal 2016 Philippine presidential candidate based from preferences of millennial voters. The use of conjoint analysis warrants this intention by providing overall and individual utility models of preference. A total of n=900 millennial voters participated in the study. It was found out that political experience of the presidential candidate is the most important attribute, while occupation/profession is the least important. Overall, the millennial voters prefer a Philippine president who is an economist, with experience as elected official, liberal-thinker, prioritizes economic growth, and holds a doctoral degree. Individual preferences of voters were also discussed.

In an effort to contribute to knowledge about political-administration relations in state government, this article presents the results of the author's participant-observation as a state legislator. Academics or public administration practitioners have written much of the literature on political-administrative relations. Little has been presented by politicians. The author reviews how the politicians with whom he served related to state administrators. He suggests that state legislators did not have a consistent approach in these relationships. Rather, administrators variously are enemies, allies, whipping boys or behind-the-scenes resources, depending on any given political situation in state government. Hence situational political logic dictated state political-administrative relations, driven by the self-interest of each particular elected official.

Antonio Villaraigosa was elected mayor in May 2005, unseating the incumbent James Hahn, a moderate Democrat, by a 59 percent to 41 percent landslide. Instantly, the new mayor's face was everywhere, on the cover of Newsweek, on the network news stations. The "bold" and "charismatic" mayor was profiled on National Public Radio and in nearly every major newspaper in the country. The stories focused on his prominence as a Latino mayor in the country's second largest city. They also highlighted his early years—as the son of an abusive father, a rebellious teenager, a high school dropout (before returning to get his diploma, then graduating from UCLA)—and described his growth as a progressive activist and elected official. They portrayed his ascent—as Villaraigosa often does himself—as an updated version of the American dream.

New urban developments are not legal in most U.S. communities. Rarely are they built “by right.” Their creation requires protracted negotiation and variances to existing codes because most municipal zoning codes are written to support sprawl and not urban, mixed-use, walkable developments. Site-specific exemptions from the codes are both time-consuming and expensive, and fail to address the underlying flaws in the existing code.

The State of Texas's local government investment pool, TexPool, has faced major challenges in the 1990s. This article provides an overview of two major events involving TexPool: (1) a $2.2 billion “run” on the pool in 1994 and (2) the out-sourcing of TexPool's functions in 1997. The article describes these events and analyzes potential implications for other state-administered investment pools. The article addresses issues such as: (1) the need to develop investment policies and practices that are suitable for a particular pool's objectives and purpose, (2) whether a state government has a responsibility to ensure that participants in a state investment pool do not incur losses, (3) the possible implications of having an elected official as the person with primary responsibility for overseeing the pool, and (4) concerns related to the outsourcing of state investment pools. This article is intended to encourage debate on the policies and practices of state investment pools, which currently are serving more than 15,000 local governments in the United States.

Ambassadors have a unique role in the structure of the state and thus in their views on the art of statecraft. Neither elected official nor civil servant, diplomats are expected to be both a symbol...

We study the impact of elected officials' re-election concerns on their decisions on whether to undertake new projects. The value of a project to a jurisdiction depends in part on its elected official's uncertain ability at providing some public goods. Our main result is that the elected official's willingness to pay for the project differs from voters' willingness to pay. If the incumbent official expects to lose (win) the election, then she is willing to pay more (less) than the project's total value to voters. We show how our analysis can be applied to bidding wars among jurisdictions for firms.

The media play an integral role in communicating political information from elected official to citizen. Most research examining the relationship between media coverage and governors focuses on campaigns and concludes that the media at times do not always portray campaign messages accurately for female candidates (Kahn 1994; Devitt 2002). Very little is known about how the media cover the policy priorities of sitting governors and whether it varies by gender. We address this gap in the scholarship and examine the degree to which the media represent accurately governors' policy agendas – specifically those outlined in a governor's most visible speech, their annual state of the state address. To execute this analysis, we content analyze annual state of the state address from 2010 and the resultant newspaper coverage. We find evidence to suggest gender differences in media coverage of governors but additional data are needed to conduct a more detailed analysis.

Did you read the news about the politician who co-opted a police helicopter, a harbor patrol boat and a compliment of Baltimore’s Finest to help him propose to his girlfriend? Did he really need police protection to propose? If so, aren’t there plenty of qualified private security firms available for the job?The real question this incident raises is whether being an elected official confers free access to public property? It shouldn’t, nor should status as an elected official create an entitlement to private property. But this happens not infrequently and recently it happened to music star Jackson Browne when John McCain’s campaign grabbed Browne’s music.They decided, after many beers I am sure, that Jackson Browne’s 1977 hit song RUNNING ON EMPTY fit the bill. The album on which the song was recorded was also called Running on Empty and was well known, having achieved Platinum status seven times over. That the song was subject to United States copyright protection should pose no problem, I am certain they thought. For them, the song was free for the plucking. They were, after all, a national political campaign, running a United States Senator for the highest elected office in the land. And pluck the song they did. The chemistry could not have been worse.

This brief essay suggests that Article II of the Constitution be amended to make the Attorney General an elected official.

All elected executives—presidents, governors, and mayors—seek approval from their constituencies. Even though these officials may deny its importance, they almost universally realize that citizen approval is a kind of political capital, which can be enhanced or squandered. Approval ratings are a running tally of how citizens view their elected leaders. A number of political actors carefully watch ratings to judge the range of possibility in political activity. An executive with high approval ratings will find it easier to succeed with the legislature because individual legislators will be reluctant to defy a popular executive. An elected official with high approval ratings will also find it easier to deal with the bureaucracy since individual members of the bureaucracy will perceive the executive as having support for his or her policies. On the other hand, if approval ratings are low or dropping, the executive will find that opponents in the legislature are more aggressive, while supporters are hard to find. Also, in negotiating with the bureaucracy, individual department heads and others will feel freer to make decisions on their own, knowing that the executive’s authority is weakened. In sum, approval simply makes governing easier.