Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, edited by Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder, assembles an impressive group of political scientists to critically discuss “the important analytical, normative, and policy issues associated with the contemporary practice of ‘grading states.’” The volume addresses a topic of importance to a wide range of political scientists in comparative politics, international relations, and political theory, and raises some fundamental questions about the role of political science at the nexus of theory and practice. We have thus invited a number of colleagues to discuss the volume and its broader implications for political science inquiry.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, political scientists have been paying more careful attention to the role of banking institutions as economic but also political institutions whose financial decisions involve the exercise of power and shape the conditions under which governmental decisions are made. Because the United States is still the world’s preeminent global economic power, the U.S. Federal Reserve looms particularly large in efforts to understand the financial roots of contemporary politics. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Desmond King’s Fed Power: How Finance Wins (Oxford University Press, 2016) is a major effort to analyze these questions, and so we have invited a cast of prominent political scientists to comment on the book as an account of “how finance wins.”

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, political scientists have been paying more careful attention to the role of banking institutions as economic but also political institutions whose financial decisions involve the exercise of power and shape the conditions under which governmental decisions are made. Because the United States is still the world’s preeminent global economic power, the U.S. Federal Reserve looms particularly large in efforts to understand the financial roots of contemporary politics. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Desmond King’s Fed Power: How Finance Wins (Oxford University Press, 2016) is a major effort to analyze these questions, and so we have invited a cast of prominent political scientists to comment on the book as an account of “how finance wins.”

Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, edited by Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder, assembles an impressive group of political scientists to critically discuss “the important analytical, normative, and policy issues associated with the contemporary practice of ‘grading states.’” The volume addresses a topic of importance to a wide range of political scientists in comparative politics, international relations, and political theory, and raises some fundamental questions about the role of political science at the nexus of theory and practice. We have thus invited a number of colleagues to discuss the volume and its broader implications for political science inquiry.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, political scientists have been paying more careful attention to the role of banking institutions as economic but also political institutions whose financial decisions involve the exercise of power and shape the conditions under which governmental decisions are made. Because the United States is still the world’s preeminent global economic power, the U.S. Federal Reserve looms particularly large in efforts to understand the financial roots of contemporary politics. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Desmond King’s Fed Power: How Finance Wins (Oxford University Press, 2016) is a major effort to analyze these questions, and so we have invited a cast of prominent political scientists to comment on the book as an account of “how finance wins.”

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.