About

New York State (NYS) has experienced a succession of crises over the past half century—so much so that one might reasonably suggest that crisis governance has become a “normal” feature of our contemporary state and local politics. This website is devoted to exploring New York State politics and governance through the lens of crisis as an umbrella term for the range of challenges that the state has faced, with an emphasis on the economic, political, and leadership challenges of governing in the Empire State since the 1970s. In doing so, we seek to contribute to the deeper understanding of New York’s unique history and politics in a way that we believe will be of interest to all state and local politics scholars. Crisis governance studies have proliferated, but there are few treatments focusing on state and substate crisis management generally or outside of the context of natural disaster or emergency disaster response. By applying a crisis lens to the study of NYS, we demonstrate the challenges and pitfalls of the ubiquitous language and framing of crises and the ongoing academic debate over what constitutes a crisis.

This website is a companion resource to Governing New York State Through Crises, edited by Laurie Buonanno, Lisa Parshall, Fred Floss, and Byron Brown (June 2026, SUNY Press).