The Changing Face of Executive Politics: Crisis and Austerity

Executive Politics has witnessed considerable changes over the past few decades. Changes in electoral and party politics have altered the way in which politicians interact with the executive apparatus of the state. The administrative part of the executive has similarly witnessed considerable transformation, whether in terms of restructuring, dispersion of authority sideways, upwards and/or downwards, retrenchment or alterations in tool-set to steer societal and economic actors. The contemporary age of austerity and the reduction of policy space offer a further challenge to the ways in which executive politics are conducted, particularly how politicians are able to exercise electorally successful strategies, how specific forms of ‘austerity or crisis politics’ have been designed and developed and how policy and administrative strategies are able to resourcefully affect behaviour. This proposal therefore invites papers that explore the context of executive politics in the following key areas: - transformations of the state in the light of change in executive politics, and how these changes affect the organisation of central, regional and local government; - changes to patterns of decision-making within the core executive of national states; - changes in political-administrative understandings across political systems; - changes to policy instruments and policy strategies, for example, in the context of regulatory responses to the financial crisis or the changes in redistributive politics in the context of austerity and growing social inequalities, as well as demographic, social and climate change; - the change in trans-governmental capacity and political leadership in the light of changing understandings of risk and crisis.