Preliminary Material -- Mapping Political Performances: A Note on the Structure of the Anthology /E.J. Westlake -- Performance as Sepulchre and Mousetrap: Global Encoding, Local Deciphering /Avraham Oz -- Witnesses in the Public Sphere: Bloody Sunday and the Redefinition of Political Theatre /Paola Botham -- Orality and the Ethics of Ownership in Community-Based Drama /David Grant -- The Théâtre du Soleil's Trajectory from “People's Theatre” to “Citizen Theatre:” Involvement or Renunciation? /Bérénice Hamidi-Kim -- Ways of Unseeing: Glass Wall on the Main Stage /Tal Itzhaki -- To Absent Friends: Ethics in the Field of Auto/Biography /Deirdre Heddon -- Reading the Blacks Through the 1956 Preface: Politics and Betrayal /Carl Lavery -- Barbarians and Babes: A Feminist Critique of a Postcolonial Persians /Sydney Cheek O'Donnell -- Performing Stereotypes at Home and Abroad /Tom Maguire -- The Comeback of Political Drama in Croatia: Or How to Kill a President by Miro Gavran /Sanja Nikčević -- Local Knowledges, Memories, and Community: From Oral History to Performance /David Watt -- Modalities of Israeli Political Theatre: Plonter, ARNA'S Children, and the Ruth Kanner Group /Shimon Levy -- Documenting the Invisible: Dramatizing the Algerian Civil War of the 1990S /Susan C. Haedicke -- The Erotic Politics of Critical Tits: Exhibitionism or Feminist Statement? /Wendy Clupper -- The Güegüence Effect: The National Character and the Nicaraguan Political Process /E.J. Westlake -- Do the Ends Justify the Means? Considering Homeless Lives as Propaganda and Product /Beverly Redman -- The Birabahn/Threlkeld Project: Place, History, Memory, Performance, and Coexistence /Kerrie Schaefer -- Non-Naturalistic Performance in Political Narrative Drama: Methodologies and Languages for Political Performance with Reference to the Rehearsal and Production of E to the Power 3--Education, Education, Education /Lloyd Peters -- Gay Muslims and Salty Meat Pies: The Limits of Performing Community /Sonja Arsham Kuftinec -- About the Contributors.

Political Performances: Theory and Practice emerges from the work of the Political Performances Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research/Fédération Internationale pour la Recherche de Théâtrale. The collection of essays strives to interrogate definitions and expand boundaries of political performance. Members of Political Performances are from around the world and so approach the intersection of politics and performance from very different perspectives. Some focus on socio-political context, others on dramatic content, others on political issues and activism, and still others examine the ways in which communities perform their collective identity and political agency. The organizational structure of Political Performances highlights the variety of ways in which politics and performance converge. Each section - "Queries", "Texts", "Contexts" and "Practice" - frames this confluence according to certain common threads that emerge from essays that deal with topics from the ethics of autobiographical performance, the political efficacy of verbatim theatre, the challenges of community-based performance, political and self-censorship, and the impossibility of representing atrocity. The essays challenge existing ideas of political performance and point the way to new approaches.

In a democracy, we generally assume that voters know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. We also assume that voters consider candidates' competence, honesty, and other performance-related traits. But does this actually happen? Do voters consider candidates’ policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians’ performances in office factor into the voting decision? In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought. Lenz looks at citizens’ views of candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, natural disasters, and episodes of economic boom and bust. Noting important shifts in voters’ knowledge and preferences as a result of these events, he finds that, while citizens do assess politicians based on their performance, their policy positions actually matter much less. Even when a policy issue becomes highly prominent, voters rarely shift their votes to the politician whose position best agrees with their own. In fact, Lenz shows, the reverse often takes place: citizens first pick a politician and then adopt that politician’s policy views. In other words, they follow the leader. Based on data drawn from multiple countries, Follow the Leader? is the most definitive treatment to date of when and why policy and performance matter at the voting booth, and it will break new ground in the debates about democracy.

This book stages a timely discussion about the centrality of identity politics to theatre and performance studies. It acknowledges the important close relationship between the discourses and practices historically while maintaining that theatre and performance can enlighten ways of being with others that are not limited by conventional identitarian languages. The essays engage contemporary theatre and performance practices that pose challenging questions about identity, as well as subjectivity, relationality, and the politics of aesthetics, responding to neo-liberal constructions and exploitations of identity by seeking to discern, describe, or imagine a new political subject. Chapters by leading international scholars look to visual arts practice, digital culture, music, public events, experimental theatre, and performance to investigate questions about representation, metaphysics, and politics. The collections seeks to foreground shared, universalist connections that unite rather than divide, visiting metaphysical questions of being and becoming, and the possibilities of producing alternate realities and relationalities. The book asks what is at stake in thinking about a subject, a time, a place, and a performing arts practice that would come ‘after’ identity, and explores how theatre and performance pose and interrogate these questions.

World Political Theatre and Performance brings together scholars and practitioners from multiple locations to analyse counter-hegemonic theatre and performance. International case studies are framed by a common reflection on the meaning of radical practice in the face of global neoliberalism.

Focusing on the experiences of people in Russia and Ukraine, Staging Democracy shows how some national leaders' seeming popularity rests on local economic compacts. Jessica Pisano draws on long-term research in rural communities and company towns, analyzing how local political and business leaders, seeking favor from incumbent politicians, used salaries, benefits, and public infrastructure to pressure citizens to participate in command performances. Pisano looks at elections whose outcome was known in advance, protests for hire, and smaller mises en scène to explain why people participate, what differs from spectacle in totalitarian societies, how political theater exists in both authoritarian and democratic systems, and how such performances reshape understandings of the role of politics. Staging Democracy moves beyond Russia and Ukraine to offer a novel economic argument for why some people support Putin and similar politicians. Pisano suggests we can analyze politics in both democracies and authoritarian regimes using the same analytical lens of political theater.

Grass root democracy is a fascinating concept at present and is very often used nowadays. The functioning of the grassroot democracy largely depends on the congruence of the perception of policy makers at the top of the system and the beneficiaries at the bottom of the subject matter. If the leaders at the grass root level understand the spirit of the decentralisation of power in the backdrop of the context, the realization of the objectives of the devolution of power will be easier.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many questioned whether the large number of political appointees in the Federal Emergency Management Agency contributed to the agency's poor handling of the catastrophe, ultimately costing hundreds of lives and causing immeasurable pain and suffering. The Politics of Presidential Appointments examines in depth how and why presidents use political appointees and how their choices impact government performance--for better or worse. One way presidents can influence the permanent bureaucracy is by filling key posts with people who are sympathetic to their policy goals. But if the president's appointees lack competence and an agency fails in its mission--as with Katrina--the president is accused of employing his friends and allies to the detriment of the public. Through case studies and cutting-edge analysis, David Lewis takes a fascinating look at presidential appointments dating back to the 1960s to learn which jobs went to appointees, which agencies were more likely to have appointees, how the use of appointees varied by administration, and how it affected agency performance. He argues that presidents politicize even when it hurts performance--and often with support from Congress--because they need agencies to be responsive to presidential direction. He shows how agency missions and personnel--and whether they line up with the president's vision--determine which agencies presidents target with appointees, and he sheds new light on the important role patronage plays in appointment decisions.

This volume explores the foundations of trust, and whether social and political trust have common roots. Contributions by noted scholars examine how we measure trust, the cultural and social psychological roots of trust, the foundations of political trust, and how trust concerns the law, the economy, elections, international relations, corruption, and cooperation, among myriad societal factors. The rich assortment of essays on these themes addresses questions such as: How does national identity shape trust, and how does trust form in developing countries and in new democracies? Are minority groups less trusting than the dominant group in a society? Do immigrants adapt to the trust levels of their host countries? Does group interaction build trust? Does the welfare state promote trust and, in turn, does trust lead to greater well-being and to better health outcomes? The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust considers these and other questions of critical importance for current scholarly investigations of trust.

Federalism and Political Performance features a panel of international experts who compare the political performance of federal and non-federal states and evaluate the impact of different types of federation.