Robert Singh

‘I, the People’: a deflationary interpretation of populism, Trump and the United States Constitution

Abstract This paper advances a deflationary interpretation of populism, Donald Trump and the United States Constitution. It accepts that Trump utilizes a populist pose but rejects populism as too reductive for understanding his ascension and constitutional challenge. First, it argues that, although he merits the designation, Trump reveals more about populism than populism does about him. Trump illustrates populism’s conceptual elasticity, but employing it as a frame to understand him imposes coherence upon a figure whose monetized politics are chaotic, shallow and unanchored by principle. Second, populism provides a necessary but insufficient condition for critically explaining Trump’s ascension, either in terms of electoral populism or populism in power. Third, while democratic deconsolidation under Trump’s presidency cannot be discounted, the Constitution remains resilient in most important respects. A dispassionate constitutional sociology counsels a deflationary understanding rather than an uncritical alarmism that too frequently reproduces and reinforces the darker aspects of Trump’s populist political logic.

Capital Punishment in the United States: A New Abolitionism?

For some readers, capital punishment proved one of the most disconcerting features of Jonathan Freedlands widely acclaimed book on Anglo-America, Bring Home the Revolution. Observing that opinion polls show Americans and Britons to hold similar views on capital punishment(a 1996 MORI poll put British support for the death penalty at 76 per cent), Freed-land noted that, despite its prohibition in the UK,opponents of judicial killing have hardly won the argument among the British people. In-stead our political system has simply failed to express the popular will . . . what is often a cause for self-congratulation with progressive Britons imagining ours to be a more civilised society than the US should perhaps be a trigger for self-doubt. American democracy ensures the public get their way, even if the result is not always pleasant. The British system cannot say the same.

The rise and fall of legislative service organisations in the united states congress

Book synopsis: The abolition of Legislative Service Organisations by the 104th Congress (1995–96) constituted one of its earliest achievements. Although political dissensus had surrounded the role and activities of LSOs throughout their institutional existence, the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections was the critical factor prompting their abolition. Prior reform attempts had faltered upon the Democratic partys post‐1954 dominance of the House of Representatives and the diffuse representational and institutional benefits which LSOs conferred upon their members. However, when, under a new Republican majority, the perceived costs of LSOs were held to exceed their benefits, the organisations were rapidly terminated. The abolition of LSOs lends new and additional support to scholars who emphasise the continued salience of party to congressional politics in the United States.

The Obama Administration: what can social science offer?

This paper reports on the 2009 Academy of Social Sciences annual debate about prospects for the new United States administration. Just half way into the ‘first hundred days’ of President Barack Obamas term, a panel of social scientists, convened by Philip Davies, Director of the British Librarys Eccles Centre for American Studies, addressed the question of what social science could offer the new president in various areas of policy and government action. Each of the panellists was offered the opportunity to revisit their presentations in the light of the discussion that took place, and this paper brings these thoughts together. Dilys Hill introduces the contributions with an overview commentary on the debate contributions. Andrew Rudaleviges analysis of the scholarship on managing the presidency leads him to state that ‘Presidential leadership lies … in garnering the benefits of centralising without losing the wider expertise brought to bear by a decentralised process. Herein—somewhere!—lies the holy grail of Cabinet Government, American-style.’ George C. Edwards examines presidential strategies for government with the conclusion that ‘Rather than creating the conditions for important shifts in public policy, such as moving public opinion in their direction, effective leaders are the less heroic facilitators who work at the margins of coalition building to recognise and exploit opportunities in their environments.’ Jenel Virden points out that in 2008 the percentage and numerical turnout of women was higher than that for men; women voted more for Obama than did men; and they were strongly hopeful that under the new administration prospects would improve. Having engaged so successfully with this sector of the population, the Obama Administration is under pressure to recognise and address its needs. Robert Singh points out that there are necessary reservations about the utility of social science in informing an Obama foreign policy, but nonetheless elaborates three propositions and seven principles that could usefully frame the administrations approach.

Taking Care of Business: The Politics of Executive Pay in the United Kingdom

In the 1990s, the remuneration of executive directors of private corporations became a political issue in the United Kingdom. Although issues of pay equity featured prominently in post‐war British politics, the question of directors’ pay had previously generated no political controversy. In this article, we argue that nine distinct factors account for the politicisation of directors’ pay, together reflecting the transformation of the British political economy that occurred after 1979. However, although the politicisation of executive compensation led to the establishment of the Cadbury and Greenbury Committees ‐ whose recommendations on corporate governance reform were widely adopted by private companies — no substantive reforms to the corporate regime governing executive pay occurred. The tactical exigencies of party politics since the later 1980s contributed to the absence of statutory regulation of executive compensation, and the continuing political dissensus over the issue.

The Congressional Black Caucus in the United States Congress 1971-1990

Summary The establishment of the Congressional Black Caucus in the United States Congress, in 1971, inaugurated a new era in the history of black congressional representation. The Caucus represented a novel attempt at a form of collective national black political leadership, seeking to influence both the executive and legislature to secure symbolic and substantive policy advances for blacks beyond, as well as within, the districts of its members. This attempt foundered, however, upon the incentives to individualism inherent in the electoral and institutional environments of the contemporary Congress. The enduring political legitimacy of the CBC was sustained less by an ability to obtain tangible policy achievements than upon the continuing perceived need among blacks for a group within the Congress dedicated explicitly, and exclusively, to the articulation of black interests.

The United States Congress and nuclear war powers: explaining legislative nonfeasance

ABSTRACT Scholarly debate over the role of the United States Congress in approving military action has focused on the respective war powers granted the executive and legislature by the United States Constitution. Although a voluminous literature has examined the institutional and partisan politics shaping their exercise, a conspicuous lacuna concerns nuclear war powers. Despite periodic but mostly ineffective reassertions of congressional prerogatives over war, the decision to employ nuclear weapons has been left entirely to presidential discretion since 1945. Explaining this consistent refusal by Congress to rein in the ultimate presidential power and exercise co-responsibility for the most devastating form of war relies less on disputatious constitutional grounds than on three arguments about congressional dysfunctionality, legislative irresponsibility, and the relative costs of collective action by federal lawmakers on perilous national security questions.

In Defense of the United States Constitution

Constitutional reform is a topic of perennial academic debate, perhaps now more than ever amid sharp polarization in the electorate and government. At once a cogent, new contribution to the scholarly literature and appropriate for American politics and government students, this book mounts a provocative, nonideological defense of the US Constitution, directly engaging proposals for reform and providing a rare systematic argument for continuity: Our politics may be broken but our system is not. Writing from an international perspective with an array of fascinating data, the author draws on theory, law, and history to defend the republican order under political stress and intellectual challenge.