The Institutional Effects of Executive Scandals

This book investigates the role of executive scandals in the contemporary American political landscape.

Brandon Rottinghaus (Author)

9781107102972, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2015

230 pages, 23 b/w illus. 21 tables
23.6 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.48 kg

'Presidential scholars will welcome and benefit from this finely crafted and useful book. The author is balanced and fair-minded, and allows the data to do the talking.' Michael A. Genovese, Congress and the Presidency

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.

Introduction
1. Studying scandals: state and national executive scandals
2. Strategic decisions: stonewall or come clean?
3. The institutional and political dynamics to political survival
4. The effect of scandal on executive action and policy selection
5. The effect of scandals on executive-legislative relations
6. Scandals and charges of corruption
7. The impacts and implications of executive scandals on the American political system.

Subject Areas: Government powers [LNDH], Central government [JPQ], Public administration [JPP], Politics & government [JP]