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Policy study visits - formal visits or tours made by participants to a specific site or sites outside of their own jurisdiction to observe and gather information about a policy or policies in place at the site(s) ? are a form of policy learning through the processes of policy transfer. In this paper we review the research literature in the fields of organizational and policy learning and in policy transfer in order to generate hypotheses about policy study visits and their potential effectiveness. We then set forth a tentative typology of policy study visits and discuss various functions they might serve. We discuss the probable roles played by the visit participants, host, and organizers in affecting the effectiveness of the visit. We define effectiveness to include not only the communication of policy ideas to participants, but also that these ideas are adequately assessed and that conclusions derived from that assessment are utilized in policy making. Finally we describe research we are undertaking to better understand policy study visits and to test the hypotheses we generate in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the position that the ?Transatlantic Crisis? of the early 2000s has also on the face of it been a crisis for EU collective action in external policy: instead of a ?Europe that can say no? in the light of US challenges, there appears to have been a failure to produce any consensus on policy. Most obviously, the chaos of EU Member State responses to the approach and conduct of the Iraq war raised questions about the continuing feasibility of EU collective action in such episodes, throwing doubt for some on the future development of ?European foreign policy?. But this turbulent episode must be placed within the broader context of developments in EU external collective action and EU-US relations, and can usefully be analysed through concepts of collective action theory. The paper pursues such an analysis, first by reviewing the implications of a ?Europe that can say no? to the US, next by briefly summarising the narratives provided by other approaches, and then by setting out relevant collective action concepts. It then argues that collective action possibilities and processes in EU external policy lie on a spectrum delineated by a number of key factors and that therefore analysis and evaluation should take account of the unevenness and variation between sectors of policy. In this light, the ?EU crisis? of the early 2000s becomes part of a much broader picture in which the EU has scored notable successes as well as policy failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the current state of qualitative research methods in political science and political communication, through a review of textbooks, conference papers, key earlier works, and recent controversies. Despite advances during the past quarter century, qualitative methods of research, analysis, and writing remain at the margins due to the positive philosophical orientation of political science. Although they have provided a staging ground for complaints against that orientation in recent debates, qualitative approaches to knowledge serve principally as a tool for exploratory work and as a foil to police the boundaries of mainstream political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws from the philosophical literature to develop lessons for empirical researchers. The paper begins with a discussion of the relationship between causal and counterfactual statements, and the problem of necessary and sufficient conditions for causation. It then goes on to present four different frameworks for understanding causality drawn from the philosophical literature: the neo-Humean regularity approach, the counterfactual framework, the manipulation perspective, and the mechanisms and capacities approach. The paper argues that all four can inform empirical work in the social sciences and that good causal inferences typically draw upon all four. The paper continues with a discussion of the crucial problems that each framework addresses such as proving a regular connection between events, establishing the existence of necessary connections between events, ruling out common causes, insuring exogeneity of the putative cause, and dealing with the preemption problem. The paper also discusses the problem of identifying interaction effects. The paper concludes with an exposition and critique of the Neyman-Rubin-Holland statistical perspective on causation. We argue that the NRH theory is sometimes too "thin" a theory for reliable causal inferences B especially when it is naively extrapolated to all research situations without an understanding of the difficulty of supporting its assumptions. Therefore, it would be better to develop a "thick" theory of causality that requires researchers to verify a number of different conditions before claiming causal relationships. Specifically, this paper explores how the Apossible worlds@ theory developed by philosophers has been embedded in the NRH theory of experimental (and observational) inference through the AStable Unit Value Treatment Assumption or SUTVA.@ The possible worlds theory argues that a causal connection can be established between a putative cause C and effect E if and only if two conditions are satisfied. First, C must covary with E in the actual world. Second, the absence of C in the Aclosest@ counterfactual world must result in the absence of E. The paper shows that Rubin=s SUTVA makes some very strong assumptions about the degree to which control groups in experiments constitute the Aclosest@ or Amost similar@ possible world to the treatment world. These assumptions are often treated as if they are innocuous, but, in fact, they are very strong and likely to be violated in some important instances. Consequently, more attention should be paid to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a new and original data set ten years in the making, the authors explain the sources of socialist party reformism and radicalism in 18 countries in Europe, North America and Australasia prior to World War I. In this paper, we evaluate the validity and persuasiveness of alternative hypotheses with a structural equation model against the data we have gathered. In so doing, we build on, and partly refute, explanations put forward by Seymour Martin Lipset (in his Presidential Address to the APSA), Peter Katzenstein (in Small States), and Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune (in Paper Stones). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the use of simulations to teach negotiation theory and issues in international relations has become more common, using them to focus on a wider variety of political science topics is still rare. Further, a format for general social science simulation creation that can be readily used by educators does not exist. To address these issues, this paper explores the effective integration of simulations into a course, and suggests a useful pedagogical framework–focusing on the choice between educating students about process or content–for building social science simulations. Finally, the paper presents web-based software to facilitate the creation of simulations (face-to-face or computer-mediated) based on the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does a panel exploring the popular writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, literary works that the author himself often termed fairy-tales or fairy-stories, make any sense as part of America’s largest annual meeting of political scientists? Even in the "Politics and Literature" section, would we not use our time and intellects better by focusing on non-fiction, or at least on less self-consciously fantastic works of fiction? What can we, as students and teachers of political science generally, and for some of us of political philosophy more specifically, hope to gain from reading and discussing Tolkien’s texts amongst ourselves and with other scholars in the humanities? In brief, what has Faërie to do with Political Philosophy? My paper addresses these questions through a three-part exploration. First I venture an account of how Tolkien himself might have responded. I base my interpretation primarily on Tolkien’s essay "On Fairy-Stories," in which the master craftsman explains how he understands his literary art; its relation to reason, nature, and truth; and its value for human life. I argue that among the functions Tolkien considers fairy-story (or "myth") to fulfill particularly well, the one he terms "recovery" is of special importance to students of humanistic social science. Then, in the second part of the paper, I propose the portrayal of property, justice, and friendship in the narrative of The Hobbit as one important opportunity for such recovery. If this "child’s story" can spur adult readers to wonder at the real world and provide them with solid food for social thought, as I argue that it can, what might we expect from, in its author’s own estimation, the more mature and serious masterwork The Lord of the Rings? Finally, in the paper’s brief conclusion, I consider what relevance the recovery that Tolkien’s fantasy facilitates might have for denizens of contemporary liberal democracies. Here I build on Tocqueville’s classic treatment of literature in the modern democratic age. I suggest that Tolkien’s work constitutes an example the fruitful combination of aristocratic and democratic spirits described by Tocqueville. Tolkien’s fairy-stories both challenge and reassure us, supporting some of our better instincts while simultaneously "prop[ping] us up on the side where we lean" (see Democracy in America, vol. II, pt. 1, ch. 15). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through reviewing what we know to date about the consequences and outcomes of revolutions, this paper argues that one of the most important consequences of revolution is its escalation of the state-building imperative. Seen in this light, ideology and international pressures can be understood as crucial for understanding revolutionary outcomes, through conditioning and reinforcing the effects of state-building pressures. Together, these variables account for many of the outcomes of revolution typically examined by social scientists interested in post-revolutionary state and society development. More generally, the paper demonstrates that revolutions have consequences for the very processes that (re)create a state’s political, social and/or economic order. Revolutions affect the structure and process of politics, the policy decisions of leaders, the likelihood of success or failure of those policies, and even the nature of the actors most likely to participate in, be excluded from, or benefit from social, political, and economic interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks a question that to the best of my knowledge has not been asked the social sciences: What is the Homeland and how is it shaped? By "Homeland" I mean the territory for which people are willing to sacrifice their blood and treasure. Homeland, in this paper thus, refers not to any specific homeland but to the general concept. While "homeland" is a commonly used term in the United States, in other cultures the terms "fatherland" or "motherland" are more common. These terms, and others like it, are laden with emotional overtones and assign special value to a circumscribed territory. This paper therefore seeks to explain how the territory of the Homeland is defined and circumscribed. I focus in particular on the historical case of FRance under Philip teh Fair (1285-1314). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central thesis of this paper is that the classical notion that scientific concepts can be specified in terms of necessary and/or sufficient conditions does not reflect scientific practice. Instead, an understanding of concepts as being generated by the formation of focal or prototypical ‘core’ members and extended to novel observations or experiences on the basis of perceived similarities is proposed (Rosch 1973, 1975, 1983; Berlin & Kay 1969). This leads to conceptual sets characterized by graded membership and fuzzy borders, with much of the ‘construction’ of social reality, taking place at the borders of fuzzy concepts. Efforts to solve the problem of borderline cases through better definitions and operational specifications have been unsuccessful. Rather than viewing borderline cases as methodological problems to be ‘solved’, this paper argues that we should focus on the deliberative processes whereby an instance is rules ‘in’ or ‘out’ of a given conceptual category. Not only are such processes informative via-à-vis the assumptions, relationships, and theories that both imply and are implied by the concept, but also with regard to the normative, political, or deeper psychological processes that are always present in scientific practice. The understanding of concepts developed here helps make sense of contemporary social scientific practice and renders otherwise puzzling debates over topics such as ‘transitions to democracy’ or the ‘democratic peace’ both more intelligent and intelligible. The paper develops these ideas with specific focus on how we conceptualize and indeed effect international change. The interrelationship between conceptual change and apparent changes in the empirical world is thereby made central. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a decade of, by and large, successful thoroughgoing reforms in several Post-communist countries, it has to be recognized that the results of change contradict certain assumptions commonly held valid in political science. The paper outlines major theoretical premises of what might be summarized as the ?impossibility theorem of holistic reform? and examines the discrepancy between theory-based expectations, on the one hand, and rather successful en-deavors of policy reform and institutional policy over the course of transition. Thorough in-stitutional changes have been implemented through demanding policy programs concerning fiscal stabilization, structural reforms and privatization. Reform governments proved apt to strategic planning as well as policy-oriented learning when they identified windows of oppor-tunity and adapted to the international environment. They secured the feasibility of the re-form packages by choosing a proper way of sequencing as well as creating pre-emptive forms of conflict resolution. In this paper, some empirical findings are confronted with the theory-based propositions. Relative to the discrepancy between theory and practice, suggestions are made concerning the validity of the skeptical theoretical assumptions. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses different approaches to reading the works of Eric Voegelin. Voegelin’s writings all deal in one way or another with questions of interpretation, and thus readers are challenged to orient their own hermeneutical strategies toward the philosophical issues of interpretation inherent in Voegelin’s work. The approach favored in my paper is a non-dogmatic reading of Voegelin, one that bears similarities to literary criticism, without, however, discounting Voegelin’s claim to rigorous scholarship in the social sciences and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A generation ago Alasdair MacIntyre asked, somewhat rhetorically, ?Is a Science of Comparative Politics Possible?? MacIntyre said no, largely because he was reacting to those political scientists who were working with a model of their discipline drawn largely from the physical sciences. Whether or not one agreed with his strict behavioralist vision of science, MacIntyre’s essay also raised questions of continuing relevance concerning the proper unit of analysis for comparative politics. This paper argues that students of comparative politics need to expand their scope beyond institutions and other hardy perennials to include comparisons of different modes and understandings of political causality. Using empirical examples drawn from the world of African football (soccer), it argues that there are three alternative understandings of political causality are present, and that these coexist in a variety of ways. These are: first, the contemporary scientific mode that most social science simply takes for granted and assumes, quite unthinkingly, to be universally applicable and valid in all circumstances; second, a largely spiritual and religious mode based on the interventions of a supreme deity or its archenemy; and third, a mode based on the active manipulation of supernatural forces that in much of Africa is usually called witchcraft or sorcery. The paper also argues that this plurality of alternative understandings of causality means that political science needs to end its monogamous relationship with the scientific mode so as to permit a more nuanced appreciation of how people actually understand and act within the political universes they create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to present a generalization of spectral analysis as a new tool for political scientists. Spectral analysis (or Fourier analysis) is the foundation of most time-series analysis and many other types of analysis in engineering and the natural sciences. This paper draws on recent work in mathematics to show how the powerful machinery of spectral analysis can be applied to a non-time series subject in the social sciences: analysis of voting on the Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European economic integration has been much more successful than European political integration. This paper argues that European political integration lacks good justifying arguments. More generally, the debate over the European project lacks a clear understanding of what constitutes a good justifying argument. This paper proposes a reasonable standard of justification that all arguments in support of political integration ought to be able to satisfy. On the basis of this theory of justification, the paper considers a number of different arguments in support of a European postsovereign polity. While most euro-enthusiasts favor postsovereignty over a European superstate, this paper argues that a European superstate lacks some of the more obvious failings of a postsovereign polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greatest challenge for the social sciences is to explain change, or more specifically social, political, economic, and organizational change. The starting point must be an account of human learning, which is a fundamental prerequisite for explaining such change. The ability to learn is the main reason for the observed plasticity of human behavior and the interaction of learning individuals gives rise to change in society, polity, economy and organizations. Because learning is the main object of inquiry of cognitive science, only a dogmatic attitude would prevent social scientists interested in phenomena related to change from paying appropriate attention to its findings. The revolution of the last few decades in cognitive science has produced valuable insights regarding the processes of individual learning across different types of environments. The objective of this paper is to show that a broad range of social phenomena can be accounted for in a different way when one pays the due attention to the way individuals learn. Besides, the paper shows how cognitive path dependence is linked to institutional path dependence and how institutional path dependence leads in turn to economic path dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent and influential theorizing suggests that rules of the political game explain major political puzzles and are solutions to diverse political problems. But this theorizing relies on the assumption that these institutions become insulated from exogenous factors, including those which led to their original adoption. To explain this, institutional theorists argue that institutions largely endogenize their own support through diverse mechanisms of positive feedback. This emerges as a key micro-foundation in the institutionalist project in political science. This paper argues that institutionalists offer two main models of self-perpetuation: "proactive" endogenization of support, characteristic of major social policies; and "defensive" endogenization, characteristic of technologies and diverse social conventions. Several prominent studies argue rules of the political game approximate the second model, since they are solutions to coordination problems. I argue these rules do not meet the criteria of either model. Because these rules are caught up in distributional conflicts and the costs of their revision is not that high, they remain dependent on conditions exogenous to the rules themselves. As such, wider socio-political contexts rather than institutions provide the predominant explanation of several major outcomes. The conditions which generate stability vs. change in rules of the game are stylized in terms of variations in levels of distributional conflict and power asymmetries. The paper concludes that this dependence of rules on exogenous conditions profoundly jeopardizes our ability to recommend rules of the game as solutions to problems in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central goal of description is to explore - that is to establish when, what, how and where something happened - and thereby prepare the groundwork explaining of why it happened. While social science methodology readily acknowledges this division of labor, it treats description as something without much structure that therefore cannot be as systematically evaluated as an explanation. This paper challenges this assumption by showing that description has a distinct structure that consists of five distinct elements: finding and recording of facts, selecting evidence, scaling, and reordering time and space. And given this structure, the quality of description can be evaluated just as systematically as the quality of explanations. The paper illustrates the elements of description and the criteria for its evaluation by drawing on the Goldhagen and Browning controversy from the late 1990s on what motivated ordinary Germans to participate in the Holocaust. This controversy is helpful because both scholars explored the very same documents but ended with very different analyses. The subsequent broader scholarly debate contained many interesting insights into the structure as well as quality of description that has broader implications for social science. In explicating these implications more fully, it is hoped that description will receive more systematic attention and will improve the development of testable hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viewing Soviet-type regimes in terms of their alleged totalitarian essence blinded scholars, policy-makers, and the general public, to readily-visible, readilycomprehensible processes driving fundamental change. Over time, gaps between the totalitarian model and reality became increasingly apparent, and the model was subjected to devastating barrages of criticism. Some scholars argued for the the model's continuing validity, others sought to repair it by modifying the set of essential, while others sought to integrate the study of totalitarian regimes into mainstream social science, yet no integrataive alternative paradigm ever emerged. Even today, the concept of totalitarianism continues to impede understanding of these regimes. Essentialistic thinking mistakenly collapses three distinct senses of totalitarianism, which the paper breaks apart: 1) totalitarianism as Utopia; 2) totalitarianism as actuallypracticed ideology; and 3) totalitarianism as reality. The utopian idea of totalitarianism never came anywhere close to realization, but it was embedded in the actual practice of all regimes called totalitarian, yet actual practice reflected the specific pragmatic modifications under each regime. Beyond such pragmatic modifications, hard institutional constraints prevented totalitarian regimes from coming anywhere near to their utopian ideals-even under Stalin. Disaggregation of these three senses may open the way towards fruitful research of totalitarianism in each sense, as well as towards integrated theory. Although the present paper focuses on the concept of totalitarianism, the approach it develops is applicable to other cases where essentialist styles of inquiry stand in the way of fruitful inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our political science department created a majors only section of Introduction to Government and Politics two years ago to achieve several department goals (improve writing, provide a baseline assessment, improve retention through a cohort experience, etc.). Unlike the typical survey approach to this course, we designed our majors only section to examine politics and governing around a central theme, specifically the tension of res publica and individual rights in democratic governance. The core readings consist of three books-Joseph Ellis' American Creation, Anthony Lewis' Gideon's Trumpet, and Larry Diamond's The Spirit of Democracy. We selected Ellis to illustrate the tension between res publica and individual rights underlying the compromises forged during the founding and early years of the republic. The students read Gideon's Trumpet as a case study in the evolution and expansion of individual rights in federal systems and as a springboard to exploring contemporary concerns involving the tension between individual rights and res publica (e.g. Patriot Act). Diamond's study of democratization extends America's perception of res publica on a global scale or a concern for the common good of all people. The course ends with a return to the United States, where students are asked to propose and examine policy recommendations in their five-page paper around the theme of Diamond's final chapter where he argues that America has become a troubled democracy. To assist our first-year students in making the leap from theoretical conceptualization to policy recommendations, they spend the final three sessions of the course working in groups to generate, debate, and expand their policy recommendations in the five key areas Diamond targets for reform: influence peddling, corruption, campaign finance, protecting freedom, enhancing participation, and bridging the bipartisan divide. Each group reports their initial policy recommendations to the class and explains/defends their ideas to their classmates. The two professors who team-teach the course grade and return the papers as part of the course requirements. They also submit clean copies of the papers to the department curriculum & assessment committee, who select two members to assess (blind review) the papers on the basis of the department's Student Learning Outcome #5 (the extent to which the students successfully convey the tension between res publica and individual rights in their essays). This paper reports fully on our experience, including the department's goals for this course and its design and assessment results. Appendices contain the course syllabus, our essay grading rubric, and the department's assessment plan for the BA in Political Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the recent exchange in Psychometrika illustrates (Green and Yang 2009; Sijtsma 2009), 60 years after the original paper (Cronbach 1951), the psychometric community is still trying to instruct readers on how to meaningfully interpret and report Cronbach's α. Most students of public opinion know that α is not the most sophisticated measure of a scale's internal consistency (Borsboom 2006; Bentler 2009). However, it remains the most often cited measure of reliability. More disturbingly, most researchers use a "large enough" coefficient α to illustrate something that is not mathematically warranted (unidimensionality or trait strength). Given the slippage between advanced statistical methods and those who use reliability analysis in applied public opinion research, this paper sets out to illustrate a new way to think about Cronbach's α and to show how the size, and therefore "statistical significance," of α is largely a function of the number of items in the analysis and the number of subjects taking the test. Through Monte Carlo simulation, this paper simplifies interpretations of α by clearly deriving the limits of its usefulness, illustrating its sensitivity to sample and scale sizes, and providing users with an additional measure to make α comparable across different scales and samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider the possibilities (and pitfalls) of integrating high quality comparative-historical analysis (CHA) with other empirical strategies such that the combination may yield more than the sum of the parts. I focus on nested analysis as the best-established mixed-method approach, which typically combines CHA with crosscountry statistical analyses. But I also highlight how other types of combinations, including the use of matching and experimental methods, might be both promising and viable for answering questions typically left open by nested analyses. (This paper is being prepared for a volume on Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, edited by James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than half a century, scholarly studies of the antievolution movement have been concerned almost exclusively with its influence on the teaching of the natural sciences, especially biology. Yet from its inception in the 1920s, antievolution agitation has been aimed not only at the natural sciences but also, and almost as often, at the social sciences. Moreover, although antievolution campaigns had only limited impact on the natural sciences in the United States, it can be shown that they played a significant part in the development of the early twentieth century social sciences. This paper tells this previously untold story. Using public writings and private papers of antievolution activists, academic social scientists, and university officials from the 1920s, it examines how antievolutionism contributed to the creation of a set of characteristics--secular, scientific, and professional--that came to define the emerging social sciences. In concluding, the paper describes how antievolutionists have carried out campaigns aimed at the social sciences since that time, and it suggests that their efforts continue to influence the disciplinary identity of social scientists even today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political Scientists have been explicitly concerned with the role of decision-making institutions in policymaking since the beginning of modern political science, if not earlier. Contemporary formal approaches such as the social choice based analyses of Tsebelis's Veto Players theory (2002) have formed the foundation of a good deal of comparative political research on crossnational policy changes. This paper shows that the static assumptions that underlie these analyses drive a number of the most important conclusions of these arguments. When models such as Veto Players are put in motion the resulting conclusions about policy dynamics become more ambiguous. This finding helps to explain why these arguments have been so difficult to square with empirical reality across contexts, suggests a possible explanation for divergence from the standard veto players arguments, and points to simulation based theoretical exercise aimed at specifying the circumstances where the conclusions based on static analyses hold and where they fail. The paper concludes with the observation that while static analysis is excellent for demonstrating how institutions work in any one circumstance, they are more limited in explaining what institutions do to policy changes across different dynamic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the role of area studies research in comparative political and social science is presented. It develops a model of how regional differentiation occurs historically. It also suggests ways to think about regions no merely as geographically proximate states, but clusters of interacting institutional forms. It proposes two practical strategies for inter-regional comparative research.

Western European countries differ according to the ways in which they organize local government, not least in the manner in which mayors are selected, in the mayors' statutory positions and responsibilities, and the institutional relations between the council and the mayor/executive board. The institutional arrangements have been modified in several countries. Focal question in the paper is whether the institutional reforms have resulted in a revitalization of local politics and democracy. A first measure to revitalize local politics is a separation of local political powers. In Germany, the UK, Italy, and the Netherlands powers of the council as the representation of the citizenry at the one hand, and the Mayor or the Executive Board at the other, have been separated. They now both have their more or less exclusive statutory powers, tasks and responsibilities, in some cases resulting from the introduction of directly elected mayors. Question then is, whether these policies lead to a revitalization of local politics. Secondly, in a number of Western European countries governments have introduced direct elections for the mayor's office. Despite differences between countries, in all cases the assumption is, that direct mayoral elections do make a difference and that directly elected mayors will appear to be strong leaders. Question, however is to what extent is mayoral performance affected by selection procedures and the statutory position of the mayoral office? The results of a number of comparative empirical studies will be presented in the paper. It will become clear that there are huge differences in mayoral performance. Several factors influencing that performance will be identified. The most important conclusion is that mayoral selection procedures and statutory positions do affect mayoral performance, although not as much as expected. Other factors are at stake. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes survey data from the 1999 European Value Study to conduct a quasi-experimental analysis of the relationship between ideological consistency and policy preferences of Germany's mass public. Given Germany's division until 1990 it is plausible that respondents from East and West Germany grew up with different socializations in both systems, albeit a common language and cultural background. This paper models the influence of this diverse experience on ideological thinking, and examines the effects on the understanding of political issues. We argue that respondents' stances on policy preferences can be predicted from their left-right self-placement. The findings suggest that huge differences do exist in the ideological coherence and attitude structuring of respondents. Citizens in the East seem to understand the term 'left' quite well compared to Western Germans who lack giving consistent answers to a 'left' ideological position. On the other hand, Eastern Germans face difficulties in applying the term 'right' in a meaningful way. These results have crucial implications for recent debates about the structuring of beliefs and relevance of ideological thinking in the mass public, the use of ideological labels in the elite discourse as well as political communication. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connection between rights, international courts and the changing nature of democratic participation. The general comparative model developed is then applied to a time-series analysis of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The paper is the first to offer a systematic social science analysis of ECHR decisions with particular emphasis on changing democratic opportunities for individuals at both the domestic and supranational level. The findings reveal how rights and access to the ECHR have come to shape how international legal institutions serve as arenas for public participation - a consequence that brings into question dominant theories of international organization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the conceptual development and practice of SSR within the framework of theories of state and state formation. This involves highlighting the importance of contextual understanding - both in terms of understanding the operational context in the existing structures of host states, as well as understanding the historical and theoretical complexities in social engineering. Using theories of state and state formation to inform the field of SSR is significant as it brings SSR closer to the existing discourses of state-building and post-conflict peace-building, as well as provides a theoretical foundation for such activities. The useful merger of development and security created the concept of SSR. The concept now needs an injection of state formation theory to be further developed.Although considerable advances have been made in our understanding of the processes of nation-building and SSR, we argue that the dominant formulations, as expressed in handbooks, strategic documents and policy formulations, need to be problematized in two respects. First, substantial parts of the literature, handbooks and official documents are characterized by a reliance on social engineering and on "methods" to effect complex socio-political transformations, a belief underpinned by a lack of contextual understanding of the aims (state-building) as well as the operative environments (target countries). Second, attempts to provide a rich context have focused on the processes of conflict prior to intervention, the conduct of intervention itself and on its aftermath. While this is important, we argue that more attention should be given to existing structures of state, society and polity in order to understand the possibilities of success of state-building and SSR. The processes of SSR are laudable and present important steps towards more holistic conceptions of security and international development. However, the findings of this paper cautions against having too high expectations on the possibility of SSR fulfilling its goals of creating states that are both stable and democratic and accountable. Instead, we should distinguish carefully what level of ambition is realistic for each specific project depending on local circumstances. A contextual understanding based on existing state-, society- and polity structures enable the design of better benchmarks and objectives as well as more realistic policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has showed that policy agendas' issue attention is invariably punctuated: long periods of incrementalism alternate with short bursts of frenetic activities. In their seminal Politics of Attention, Baumgartner and Jones state that especially friction accounts for this pattern. This paper explores a second mechanims leading to punctuations: imitation and cascading. Political actors sometimes devote a disproportionally large amount of attention to an issue because other actors are doing the same. The paper contributes theoretically by specifying the conditions conducive for political cascades. It contributes empirically by showing that cascades are indeed at least partially responsible for the punctuated pattern of policy agenda's issue attention. Drawing on an extensive and longitudinal data set of Belgian news media, it is substantiated that a considerable part of the punctuatedness of Belgian media attention is due to media imitating each other. It is argued that these cascading processes remain not confined to the mass media butare to be found all over the political system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological research finds robust and pervasive evidence that negative stimuli tend to have a greater impact on individuals than do positive stimuli. This paper seeks to incorporate this cognitive trait into our understanding of retrospective voting. While scholars have found evidence of such an asymmetry in macro-level studies of economic voting, survey based studies tend to conclude the opposite - that individuals exhibit no 'negativity bias' in responses to economic conditions. This paper experimentally tests whether citizens respond to incumbent actions in an asymmetrical fashion. In the experiments, subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions which received either negative, positive, or neutral information about a specific policy change occurring during an incumbent's term in office and asked to evaluate the incumbent. Results from the experiment suggest citizens do indeed respond asymmetrically to objectively equivalent positive and negative policy changes but that this asymmetry is more a product of citizens' expectations of elected officials than an inherent negativity bias in information processing. Results also suggest that responses to positive and negative policy information are moderated by the quality of the prior policy status quo and generally unaffected by partisanship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin's attempt to conceptualize the political has been often regarded as a failure. For many readers of him, Benjamin produces contradictions rather than lessons by oscillating between subject and object, discontinuity and continuity, and theology and political theory. Challenging this view, this paper attempts to rearticulate Benjamin's unique understanding of the political and reevaluate his contribution to political theory. In so doing, this paper is divided into three parts. First, I highlight the concept of "phantasmagoria of history" as Benjamin's central diagnostic notion. Phantasmagoria of history refers to the way of doing history that constructs the mythic continuity between past and future, and prefigures the future unfolding of the new with the boundaries of the fateful. The deadly effect of it is the complete submission to the status quo, which obliterates not just the vision of the change but the energy to enforce it. Secondly, emphasizing that Benjamin's novel conception of history is developed as a prescriptive conceptual tool against phantasmagoria of history, I will examine the "dialectically reversed remembrance" and "pathos of nearness" as its central notions. It is well known that Benjamin focuses on the ruins from the past and advocates discontinuity as opposed to "homogenous, empty time," but it is often dismissed as romantic, nostalgic, or undialectical. As I shall argue, however, Benjamin's historical method is to be understood as a specific way of experiencing the present, not the past. Lastly, I highlight Benjamin's view of the political as the production of the new historical time when the "truthful" is actualized and, in doing so, try to find a possible way to reconcile Benjamin's theological and political motifs. In my view, Benjamin neither resorts to God in dealing with politics nor neglects the unforeseeable nature of human affairs. Rather, he attempts to create moments of political praxis when the yet-unknown forms to imagine future emancipation appear "like" (not "as") a miracle. Overall, this paper will argue that Benjamin understands the political as a process that replaces the "fateful" acceptance of the given with the "truthful" moments of engagement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following paper, I focus on the writings of two of the more prolific authors in early Mexican American scholarship; namely, Ernesto Galarza and Americo Paredes. In particular, I argue in this paper that these authors serve to ground important questions of ontology and epistemology surrounding the constitution of Mexican Americans in the social sciences, and in doing so establish important precepts for subsequent research in Chicano and Latino politics. While Galarza and Paredes were by no means the only Mexican American social scientists examining the conditions of Mexican Americans in the U.S. between 1920 and 1960, their work is significant because it successfully challenges the logic of "ethnicity theory" and the forms of Americanization that galvanized understandings of race, while expanding the critique of inequality to questions of discourse and the production of knowledge. Thus, Galarza and Paredes were significant for the way they broke from tradition in the social sciences, examining both the politics surrounding Mexican American communities and the politics of social science research. Finally, they were key to the foundations of Latino politics and politically conscious research by shifting the ontological perspective to one situated in the lived experiences of Mexican Americans, and in the process introducing alternative subject positions that would challenge prevailing stereotypes about the population. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to CodeRecent literature on qualitative and quantitative social science methodology focuses on issues of causal inference and hypothesis testing given existing data (Brady and Collier 2005; King et al. 1994). Another literature has focused on the antecedent question of concepts in social science research, along with the related questions of conceptual validity and conceptual stretching (Adcock and Collier 1999; Goertz 2006; Sartori 1970). The step that lies between the formulation of social science concepts and strategies of causal inference is coding. Despite its obvious importance, methodologists have yet to identify a standard approach to process of turning conceptual variables into real variables that analysts can study using qualitative and/or quantitative methodologies. Yet clearly, both qualitative and quantitative researchers make implicit coding decisions in nearly all positivist (and much non-positivist) social science research. All too frequently, coding practices are opaque, ad hoc, and only weakly linked to concept or theory. This presents an obvious barrier to knowledge cumulation in the social sciences.This paper proposes a "Coding Standard" to remedy this problem. In the spirit of Adcock and Collier (1999), the Coding Standard is a unified framework that unites the enterprise of coding conceptual variables for qualitative and quantitative researchers alike. The Coding Standard applies in particular to discrete (nominal, ordinal, and categorical) variables. It stresses four vital components of coding: theory, clarity, generality, and replicability. Theory is the conceptual basis of any coding scheme, and stipulates the possible values a variable can take (see Goertz 2006). Clarity refers to the existence of straightforward operational definitions of a variable's values, grounded in observable empirical facts (i.e., what phenomena must an analyst observe to identify the existence of "political protest"?). Generality refers to the ability of coding schemes to travel outside of their original empirical domains, and if not, the provision of clear theoretical reasons why not (i.e., can one code government types from the "Varieties of Capitalism" literature in Latin America?). Replicability refers to the ability of a naïve researcher to recreate a coding decision or a dataset and achieve the same findings (if a new researcher attempted to recreate the Polity dataset, would she create an identical dataset?). Replicability links the Coding Standard to King's (1995) "Replication Standard" as well as recent work by Lindley (2006) on replicability in small-n research.After introducing the Coding Standard, the paper adjudicates thirty coding applications in modern political science. Examples are drawn randomly from a sample of the top comparative politics and international relations journals from the past five years. The emphasis lies on small-n research: in sharp contrast to what practitioners often claim are the comparative strengths of small-n research, qualitative projects are often the most significant violators of best practices as identified by the Coding Standard. The analysis shows that weak coding practices are a common problem in both qualitative and quantitative work, suggesting that wider attention to the Coding Standard is a crucial step in building progressive research programs in social science. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demographic literature on population growth among ethnic minorities observes a puzzling trend: Minorities tend to have higher rates of natural increase than majorities. With recourse to the sociobiological paradigm of interethnic behaviour proposed by van den Berghe (1978, 1981), this paper accounts for this puzzle by positing the notion of a demographic security dilemma. The realist tenet of the international-relations literature holds that conditions of anarchy give rise to a "security dilemma" in which even non-aggressive moves to enhance one's security are perceived by others as threatening and trigger countermoves that ultimately reduce one's own security (Jervis 1978). Although the "security dilemma" has been discounted as a viable explanation of political stability during the second half of the twentieth century (Holsti 1991, 1995, 1996) it has been shown to have a useful application to domestic ethnic conflict (Posen 1993). The paper refines this latter application. It hypothesizes that states where an already sizeable ethnic minority exhibits higher rates of natural increase than the dominant majority tend to take protective measures to bolster the majority's grip on power but that these measures, in turn, precipitate higher fertility rates as an unintended consequence. The paper uses the demographic exceptionalism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a test case. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Evolution SeriouslyOrion LewisSven SteinmoAbstractIn this essay we take evolutionary theory seriously. The term 'evolution' is generally used rather casually by political scientists and the basic idea motivating our inquiry was to see whether specific concepts and/or insights from theories based on biological evolution can be profitably applied to social and political institutions. The paper opens with a brief outline of several basic insights into the evolutionary process developed over the past 150 years. First, we highlight Darwin's fundamental (and highly controversial) insight that evolutionary change depends on the uniqueness of every individual within a population or species. Because all individuals are different, they will respond to or adapt to different environmental stimuli in unique ways. His 'Survival of the Fittest" theory does not imply that the strongest, smartest, or 'best,' creatures are the most likely to reproduce. Rather, he argued that those individuals who happen to have generated either physical or behavioral characteristics that give them some small advantage in their local environment are most likely to succeed in that environment. These individuals are more likely to have offspring than those without the advantage and therefore over time the population will be dominated with this physical or behavioral trait. Secondly, evolutionary theories begin with an understanding of change as being a simultaneously endogenous and exogenous process. Instead of seeing the process as one of fundamental stability (what political scientists and economists would call 'equilibrium') evolutionary theorists understand the world as a 'complex adaptive system.' From an evolutionary point of view it makes no sense to speak of "independent" and "dependent" variables when explaining long term change. The environment in which an organism lives affects the development of that organism, just as the organism affects the environment in which it lives. Evolution, then, is a dynamic and interactive process in which small changes in the environment and/or small changes in an organism's genes may result in significant long term changes in the environment and the population.We then briefly discuss the ontological and epistemological implications of these insights. We show that evolutionary theorists have rejected the model of science drawn from early versions of Newtonian physics. In this view, traditional physics assumes stable units of analysis and fixed laws governing behavior. Neither of these assumptions is useful for students of evolution. Instead, theirs is an historical science which utilizes comparative historical methods, presents historical narratives, and 'most plausible' explanations. Evolution is neither predictive nor falsifiable. In the second part of the paper we attempt to use some of the insights drawn from evolutionary theory to help solve two foundational questions that political science are currently addressing: The origins of human preferences and explaining institutional change. We suggest that evolutionary theorists' focus on the gene reproduction (all organisms' fundamental desire is to pass on their genes) is significantly more helpful for understanding the origins of human preferences than either Rational Choice's assumption that we are all individual utility maximizers, or Historical/Sociological Institionalism's assumption that preferences are produced by the institutions themselves. Finally, we attempt to push an analogy between genes (which are rules governing cell reproduction and behavior) and political institutions (which are also rules governing reproduction and behavior)... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to build bridges across quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive traditions. I engaged this task to find common ground for communication with a range of colleagues from different disciplines; to demonstrate the varieties of quality available when social science is applied well; and to use multiple methods to produce policy. In re-reading the paper, I find that the first two tasks were possible, but the third has escaped me. It is certainly possible to find bridges across social science disciplines; they are not incommensurable, as some would argue. There are also ways in which we can recognize quality in research of different traditions. Still, these traditions look at the world differently when it comes to their answer to the basic question, "what should we do next." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the relationship between process tracing and the role of elite interviewing as a means of data collection, and makes two central points about the relationship between these two aspects of comparative research.First, the paper highlights the importance of elite interviewing as a means of collecting the kind of data necessary to carry out process tracing studies. While previous work on process tracing does mention the role of interviewing as a means of gathering data, the principal emphasis to date has been on documentary research. This paper highlights the advantages that elite interviewing can have relative to documentary research, such as the ability to gain information that may not be included in released documents, and the opportunity to probe individuals with further questions once they have advanced what may be the 'official' version of events.Second, the paper also addresses the implications of using alternative sampling approaches when employing the process tracing approach. In particular, the paper argues that when using the process tracing methodology, it is more appropriate to employ non-probability sampling techniques for identifying elite interview subjects. In probability studies, randomisation is used to ensure that the final sample is representative of the population from which it was drawn, and this enables researchers to generalise findings taken from the sample to the broader population. With process tracing, however, the aim of conducting interviews is not to generalise to the population, but rather to uncover specific data from key individuals concerning a particular chain of events. The paper explores different forms of non-probability sampling, as well as the criteria that should be considered before choosing between them. The paper argues for using a combination of reputational and positional criteria when selecting interview subjects - that is, interview respondents are chosen not just by virtue of their political positions and their known involvement in the process of interest, but also by virtue of their reputation among their peers as established through the method of chain-referral, or snowball, sampling. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between demographic change and ethnic violence has been one of the basic research questions in social sciences and the one that has not been studied systematically in comparative settings. The proposed paper will present new research on this question funded by the grants of the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. It focuses on Russia where ethnoreligious hate crime has been an increasingly prominent social problem since the late 1990s. The study examines demographic, socioeconomic, and policy contexts that give rise to violence such as skinhead riots and street raids by chain-and-rod wielding toughs; torchlight marches and attacks on mosques and synagogues; murders and beatings of foreign residents and diplomats; desecration of Jewish cemeteries and intimidation of Chinese traders by whip-cracking Cossack gangs. Explanations of these events by Russian experts have evoked well-known social science theories emphasizing rebellious youth subculture, rapid social change, prejudice, and political "normalization of violence." These factors, however, fail to explain regional variation in hate crime rates across Russia's provinces, cities, and counties over time. Addressing important gaps in empirical and theoretical knowledge, the proposed study will for the first time model and test the combined effects of migration and demographic trends on ethnoreligious violence and militant interethnic hostility in the Russian Federation. Using negative binomial regression modeling, the paper finds significant support for new hypotheses derived from an adaptation to the Russian context of the multicausal "defended neighborhood" model of hate crime developed and the security dilemma model of anti-migrant hostility. Even when data is aggregated by large units (provinces) and when most regions are ethnically homogenous, negative binomial estimates reveal that ethnoreligious hate crime rates tend to be higher when more migrants arrive in predominantly Slav regions. And in ethnically heterogeneous regions the number of hate incidents is likely to decrease as the proportion of migrant group rises (with the exception of East Asians). The paper reveals that Russian regions with over 95% population Slav are likely to be at significant risk of intense Slav-Caucasus ethnic violence in the coming decade (resembling perhaps Northern Ireland in the early 1970s) if the proportion of Caucasus ethnic groups there increases by more than 5% and other conditions are held constant. Even higher rates of Slav-East Asian violence are predicted for mixed Slav-non-Slav regions in which the proportion of East Asians over a decade may increase by 2-3%. And contrary to conventional wisdom, the model showed that more hate violence is likely in provinces with lower unemployment and higher education and income levels--not because of the underlying socioeconomic conditions represented by these indicators, but because they are also proxies for non-Slav in-migration levels that may not have been captured completely by the census data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The volume and variety of ideas and accompanying policy research available to members of Congress and executive branch officials are enormous and have grown tremendously in the past thirty-five years. For all of the resources invested in the production of this work, there is remarkably little evidence of how it is used by policymakers to inspire, formulate, or improve the content of public policy (Shulock 1999, Rich and Weaver 1998, Whiteman 1985, 1995). It is well established that expertise can be influential in agenda-setting (Kingdon 1995, Baumgartner and Jones 1993) and that ideas can inform the direction of policy change (Derthick and Quirk 1985, Hall 1989, Campbell 2004). But how does that happen? And what are the differences between ideas and expertise - and among the types of expertise and ideas made available to policymakers? In this paper, I examine how public policy think tanks package and present their ideas and research to inform - and influence - policymakers. I analyze, in particular, how the greatly expanded number of nonprofit think tanks have deliberately organized in ways to cater to demands from policymakers for supportive rather than original material. Aggressive marketing strategies have become dominant across the range of organizations involved in providing research in national policymaking (Rich 2004). And a tension has developed between the provision of ideas versus expertise by think tanks (Rich 2005).The analysis draws on new data from a national survey of think tank leaders who take different approaches to producing and promoting their work. I combine these findings with qualitative findings from 65 new interviews with those at research organizations and those that support them at private foundations and within government. A major portion of the paper explores the relationships between funders and researchers - and the effects of these relationships on how think tanks seek to promote ideas and expertise in American policymaking. The paper reveals a diversity of strategies for how ideas - and expertise - achieve traction in policymaking. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that complexity theory offers a way to build on and supersede the limitations of historical institutionalism. The argument, however, is not grounded in an epistemological debate regarding the appropriateness of complexity theory, including the likely most widely discussed application of complexity theory - neo-Darwinian evolution, in contradistinction to more traditional research approaches to political science. This debate is a crucial one, to be sure, as political science as a discipline seeks to continually improve its scientific inquiry. Rather, this paper suggests that while some phenomena studied by political scientists are most appropriately addressed through such approaches as linear rational choice or functionalist analyses, many of the subjects of study appear to be phenomena for which complexity theory is better suited. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are four basic 'new institutionalisms' in political science: three older ones-rational choice, historical, and sociological institutionalism-plus a fourth newer 'new institutionalism'-discursive institutionalism. Although these all focus on institutions, they otherwise differ along a wide variety of continua, with debates among them often having the characteristics of war. In this paper, I suggest that rather than continuing with the methodological wars, we should declare peace and consider the four institutionalisms' complementaries, incompatibilities, and contributions to the explanation of politics. The paper focuses in particular on the fourth 'new institutionalism,' discursive institutionalism, which is concerned with both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse. It argues that although this is the newest and least developed of the 'new institutionalisms,' it has the greatest potential for reconciling approaches and providing insights into the dynamics of institutional change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offer some preliminary reflections on ways we might situate the Supreme Court in time as a distinctive political institution. To date, American politics scholars have worked to fold the Court into models of politics and development designed with other institutions in mind. I survey these efforts, and cite some prominent developments in the work of Baumgartner and Jones (public policy model) and David Mayhew (against electoral realignments) that may help us to think more effectively in the future about the Court. The paper marks the beginning of my theoretical thinking about a broader book project whose topic is the nature and development of constitutional liberalism in the twentieth century as seen through the prism of the thought of three seminal liberal Supreme Court justices who span the century, from its ascendency, to its peak, and it current decline: Brandeis, Brennan, and Breyer. Some reflections on each of these justices, independently, and in relation to one another, and in relation to political liberalism more generally, is included. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This papers examines the current state of American politics in the light of some traditional conservative political ideals. Drawing particularly on Edmund Burke's concerns about the dangers of unrestrained political will, the paper argues that many of the institutions to which we have looked to temper raw political will have been undermined. Finally, the paper suggests that because the American right has been the major protagonist in, and beneficiary of, the present erosion of countervailing institutions, it falls to the left to protect these conservative political ideals. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The professionalisation of politics in Western industrialised nations has been well documented (Borchert 2003). The extension of the franchise and the gradual introduction of salaries for elected representatives has led, in most nations, to the formation of a political class who share a common interest in preserving and promoting the means to pursue a political career. However, there is variation across nations and across time, in some cases professional politicians are divided by sociological and ideological differences and fail to form a coherent political class. This paper exams variation in one country, Britain, across time. It assesses whether the increasing homogeneity amongst politicians educational and class background has produced a more unified group. Alternatively it considers whether the entry of a more diverse group of politicians, particularly women, has fractured the political class. This paper establishes that there are differences in the early career backgrounds of men and women MPs. It provides evidence of a political class, where attitudes to professionalisation are consistent across party and other divides, and a gendered political class where attitudes to reforming working hours and providing childcare facilities are fractured by sex, cohort and party. Finally it provides an agenda for future research into gender differences in Parliamentary careers. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper grows out of a book-length project concerned with the philosophical and historical intersection of the idea of "the citizen" and of "the soul" in the ancient, medieval and early modern political thought of western civilization. Within this larger narrative, my chapter on Locke seeks to document the ways in which Locke wrestles with the early modern rejection (by Machiavelli and Hobbes, for example) of a tradition of conceptualizing civic life, obligation and dutyin a word, citizenshipin terms of the human priority of caring for the soul. Locke's treatment of the matter of cultivating citizens for his liberal polity confronts the fact that the modern revolution in politics, which he seeks to extend, begins with the rejection of citizenship as a kind of spiritual vocation. Lockes extension of this revolution involves, in turn, a separation of care of the soul from politics, which he identifies exclusively with care of the body (e.g., in the original Letter concerning Toleration), and, at the same time, a rehabilitation of the idea that citizenship properly entails the spiritual perfection of the liberal citizen qua human being (particularly in his Thoughts concerning Education). My paper thus explores why and how Locke ties his essentially materialist politics to a conceptualization of the liberal citizen that nevertheless represents citizenship as a kind of spiritual vocation. Moreover, I argue that Lockes understanding of the soulcraft required by a liberal polity shapes both his treatment of the Church as a private, informal but also key institution in the social-moral equation of liberal society and his radical departures from orthodox Christian theology (as, for example, in his rejection of the central Christian doctrine of original sin). Finally, I contend that tying Lockes treatment of religion and theology to his attempts to work out the moral and cultural conditions of a liberal politics sheds a proper light on the question of his relation, as a political thinker, to Christianity, not to mention the question of his own religious commitments. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current social science holds that identities are socially constructed. Yet the insights of constructivism still have to be operationalized. Most political science studies have taken identities (whether ethnic, national, gendered, or otherwise) as independent variables, and used them to explain political outcomes. This paper reverses the causal arrow and contends that constructivism tells us that identities themselves require explanation. Accordingly, it takes identities and identity construction as dependent variables, and tries to explain how a given set of identities was constructed in one particular spatial and temporal context. Specifically, the paper examines how religious, gender, and national identities were discursively constructed in early postcolonial India, by examining legislative debates over the reform and codification of Hindu family law in the 1950s. Two key conclusions emerged from the analysis. First, the discursive construction of these different forms of identity was highly interconnected: the construction of religion and nationalism could not be understood without gender; nor could the impact of nationalism on religion and gender be captured by studying any of them in isolation. Both Hindu socio-religious tradition and secular Indian nationalism were gendered constructs: gender was constitutive of religious and national identity in this time period. Second, political factors were central to how these discursive identities were constructed, at least at three levels: the democratic political system; the state; and individual leadership. Accordingly, I suggest that identities are not just socially but politically constructed; and as such, unraveling and explaining these processes is a critical task for political science. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguing that political risk in international business is a multifaceted phenomenon, this paper draws upon earlier theoretical and empirical research and utilizes a variety of publicly available sources to develop a framework for political risk assessment. A composite political risk index is created, covering 192 countries and territories for the period 1996-2003 and consisting of three sub-dimensions: socio-political instability and grievances, political institutions, and economic governance. In the course of the paper, the multidimnesional nature of political risk and the link between sources of political risk and political risk effects are thoroughly discussed. The construction of the index is described in detail, and the main results of the estimation are examined and commented upon. We also conduct a time-series cross-section analysis of the relationship between our index and foreign direct investment inflows, finding that political risk, broadly defined, significantly affects multinational companies' location decisions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that informal institutions serve an important intermediate role in explaining the process of endogenous institutional change, which in turn, contributes to regime durability. The causal mechanism underlying the flexibility of formal institutions stems from the often informal interactions between various state and non-state actors at the local level. Formal institutions comprise a myriad of constraints and opportunities, which may motivate everyday actors to devise novel operating arrangements that are not officially sanctioned. With repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own. I call the resulting norms and practices adaptive informal institutions since they represent creative responses to formal institutional environments that actors find too constraining. Adaptive informal institutions may then inspire reform of the original formal institutions. This iterative logic is illustrated by three major institutional changes that have occurred in the course of China?s private sector development since the late 1970s. Taken together, the empirical cases show that even in non-democratic contexts, the etiology of formal institutional change may lie in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions. When viewed from this perspective, regime durability in China amidst the rise of potentially destabilizing social forces becomes less puzzling. Even though economic reforms have marginalized the original social bases of the Communist Party, ultimately, the most important formal institutions have proven to be flexible, and even responsive, to the actors driving the country?s economic growth, private entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that Kant?s third Critique, Critique of the Power of Judgment, reconciles the tension between Kant?s conceptions of nature and freedom and thereby offers both a conception of politics and political action. By restoring what we call ?the primacy of the ought,? Kant bridges the deep separation between fact and value that Hume had established. One of the implications of Hume?s argument was a conception of politics as concerned solely with resource distribution. We call this the ?political economy conception? of politics. Kant?s solution allows for a richer conception of politics, beyond mere resource distribution. Yet, contra the Romantics, cooperative conflicts do not drop out of politics altogether. What emerges is recognition of the ineluctably dual nature of politics: politics is about finding solutions to cooperative conflicts but it is also, and in the first instance, about human culture. The abstract conception of politics makes room for the actual practice of politics, for contests over what we should do, what we should be, and what types of institutions would facilitate our development. Kant?s conception of our powers of judgment and our use of that power provides the basis upon which we can and ought to seek solutions to those very questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]