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There is a large body of work in the international relations literature that uses formal game-theoretical methods to model strategic behavior based on this assumption. What is the role of this literature in IR theory, and by what standards should it be evaluated? This essay begins by observing that this literature is becoming increasingly bifurcated between the use of such modeling to generate predictive hypotheses, which are then evaluated by empirical, usually quantitative, analysis, and the use of such modeling to contribute to a generalized deductive model of international politics based on the assumptions of rational choice theory. The first use of modeling is based on an instrumentalist-empiricist philosophy of social science, the second on a scientific-realist philosophy. A third use of these methods, as heuristic models, based on a Weberian philosophy of social science, is becoming increasingly marginalized. The argument here is that this third use of formal game-theoretic modeling remains an eminently useful tool in the study of international relations, that risks being displaced by the uses of modeling noted above. Formal modeling can be useful both as a heuristic device, and corollarily as a prescriptive device. This essay discusses these uses of game theory, and the standards by which they can reasonably be evaluated. It argues that the use of evaluative standards designed for other uses of formal modeling are inappropriate to the use of this technique for heuristic purposes. In particular, it discusses situations in which statistical testing of models is either irrelevant to heuristic models, or actively misleading, and looks at the dangers of the mathematical complexity so often valued by rational choice theorists to heuristic models. In short, it argues for an evaluative standard of usefulness, rather than one of precision, for the heuristic use of game theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central thesis of this essay is that nation building ? however defined ? by foreign powers can rarely be accomplished and tends to be very costly, not merely in economic resources and those of political capital, but also in human lives. Hence, for both empirical, social science considerations and normative ones, foreign powers had best greatly scale back their ambitions and promises. The more these powers focus whatever resources they are willing and able to commit for the intervention at hand on a modest agenda, the more good they will do for the nation they seek to help and for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An exploration of the role that the social sciences can play in a time of great political contestation, drawing on Weber’s seminal reflections. Not the same topic empirically as originally proposed, but the same basic theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the institutional effects of judicial behavior. Significance of the study on public law on society; Factors which can impact the decisions of a judge; Description of the model on judiciary decisions.

Although students of democratic politics believe that right-wing extremism pose a threat to democratic norms and institutions, existing research tells us very little about the consequences of the newly emerged extreme right-wing parties (ERPs) across established democracies. Drawing on party literature and spatial theories of party competition, as well as the empirical data collected as part of the Manifestos Research Group (MRG) project, our study examines how the ERPs have influenced the political agenda of established democracies. Specifically, we argue that the rising electoral strength of the ERPs alone is not a sufficient indicator of right-authoritarianism influence on country?s political discourse. Instead, adjustment strategies by the established parties, such as preemption and accommodation, should be taken account in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of how rising right-wing extremism has structured the political agenda of contemporary democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gilles Deleuze had a life-long interest in Kant. To provide a new perspective on Deleuze?s political theory, to facilitate a conversation between Continental and Anglo-American political theorists, and to promote a certain way to be Kantian, I track how Deleuze interprets and transforms Kant?s contested legacy (or what I call the Kantian problematic). In this essay, I show how Deleuze reworks four key moves of the Kantian problematic: the identification of the problem, the engagement with common sense, the construction of principles, and the learning of principles. In the conclusion, I contest the thesis ? advanced by Paul Patton, Michael Hardt, and Philip Goodchild ? that Deleuze views Kant primarily as ?an enemy.? My claim, instead, is that Deleuze (like Foucault) cherishes the Kantian critical ethos even as he disavows Kant?s moral doctrines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral Coalitions are common in certain countries, and Japan is of the countries in which play a prominent role in deciding which parties win elections and control governments. Using coalitional theory and previous work on electoral coalitions, I derive and text four hypotheses about electoral coalitions in recent Japanese elections. I find that consistent with theoretical expectations, electoral coalitions become more widespread and effective with the passage of time from a major upheaval in the political landscape that increases informational uncertainty. In addition, patterns of coalition formation follow numerical incentives with the most popular coalition partners being those parties that can transfer the largest numbers of votes to a prospective alliance partner. Contrary to my theoretically informed expectations, I found that informational uncertainty clouds calculations of partisan advantage, leading to the surprising result that less cooperation occurs the more competitive a district is, but this suboptimal cooperation harms coalition efforts only slightly. I also found that the strong personal vote in Japan overwhelms the minor impact that the number of parties has on voter turnout in party list races. These last two finding suggest two important factors that affect electoral coalitions but exert little influence on governing coalitions: heightened informational uncertainty and a greater impact of candidate-centered voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The claim that interpretive research is neither rigorous nor objective is problematic, for several reasons. Definitionally, such arguments about the lack of rigor treat that term narrowly and, hence, miss the fact that in an analytic sense, interpretive work is, in principle, as rigorous as quantitative research. Philosophically, arguments about the lack of objectivity are based on ontological and epistemological claims that interpretive research denies obtain for human practices. Procedurally, both charges ignore or misconstrue how interpretive research is actually done. These arguments and debates matter because their rhetorical power has implications for the practice of social science, including the material and professional lives of its practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare the impact of ‘deferential’ judicial review and ‘Lochnerized’ judicial review on legislative outcomes. In the ‘Lochnerized’ system, judges use their veto power to substitute their class-based personal policy preferences for the policies enacted by the legislature. In the deferential system, in contrast, judges defer to the legislature in ordinary matters of socioeconomic policy and do not strike down the legislation. To compare the two types of judicial regimes, we develop a simple game-theoretic model with a legislature composed of a majority and minority party, a set of lower courts, and an appellate court. The legislative majority initially chooses whether to enact a policy. Any policy it enacts could be reviewed by a lower court. Some lower court decisions are in turn successfully appealed to the appellate court. We first identify how legislative anticipation of non-deferential judicial review affects legislative decisions. Secondly, we show that judicial review provided by an activist, politicized judiciary in which every judicial decision is politically motivated and legally unprincipled nonetheless secures important constitutional values better than deferential judicial review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the consociational theory of comparative politics. List of accusations against the proponents of consociation; Stance of conservatives on consociational ideas; Description of consociational politics.

The political theorist William Galston has argued that the liberal political tradition contains two distinct strands of philosophical thought. One emphasizes the principle of autonomy, while the other stresses the principle of diversity. As Galston notes, the principles of autonomy and diversity are in tension with each other. Autonomy-centered liberalism seeks to promote autonomy–in the Kantian and Millian senses. As such, autonomy-centered liberals are generally suspicious of religious belief and seek to confine it to the private sphere. Diversity-centered liberalism, on the other hand, seeks to maximize the public space (legally, institutionally, and culturally) in which different individuals and groups can live out their differences, limited only by the demands of liberal social unity. The state’s promotion of autonomy, Galston argues, is harmful to diversity, as it tends to undermine the ability of individuals and groups who give pride of place to faith or tradition to live according to their own best lights. My thesis is that much of the Supreme Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence can be understood in terms of the philosophical dichotomy drawn by Galston. Specifically, my argument is that from about 1947 until recently the Court was dominated by justices who understood the liberal political tradition as autonomy-centered. These justices (the strict separationists) have generally viewed religion as divisive and threatening to the social order and have thus sought to restrict it to the private realm. As the makeup of the Court has changed in recent decades, an understanding of liberalism that is diversity-centered seems to have emerged among a majority of the current justices. Consequently, church-state jurisprudence premised upon diversity-centered liberalism aims not to restrict religion to the private sphere but to ensure simply that the state does not directly promote religion. Such an approach to church-state issues thus results in a far more porous ‘wall of separation’ than does the autonomy-centered approach, as evidenced last term by the Court’s narrow approval, in the Cleveland voucher case, of the use of publicly funded tuition vouchers in religious schools. My thesis, then, is that the differing views on religion’s place in society, and the appropriate posture of the state vis-à-vis religion, that are found in much of the Court’s establishment clause jurisprudence seem to parallel Galston’s treatment of the broader liberal political tradition. In other words, the constitutional debate over the meaning of the establishment clause is fundamentally a debate over the nature of the liberal political tradition itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is an attempt to examine rational choice theory through a brief consideration of Plato’s Meno, a dialogue often neglected by students of political philosophy. It does so on the ground that Plato is among the most important pre-modern sources able to contribute to the debate surrounding rational choice theory and the role of mathematics in political science. The argument of the Meno raises the question of whether mathematics is suitable for understanding the human things and therefore politics. The reservations of Plato’s Socrates thereto have a timely relevance for today’s policy makers in general and rational choice theorists in particular. The entry way into this argument is the question: what is virtue, or human excellence? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the use of ideology critique in social sciences. Factors that make ideology critique to be regarded as deeply problematic; Reasons of social scientists and political scientists in their decision to continue to use ideology critique; Importance of ideology critique to theorists; Primary argument for the obsolescence of ideology critique.

Political theorists have long given Montesquieu’s Persian Letters short shrift, seeing it merely as a wind-up to The Spirit of the Laws, as a convoluted and awkward attempt to put forth ideas that the author would better articulate later. But this has been a mistake: The Persian Letters is not only a stand-alone work of political theory, but also has much to recommend it that Montesquieu’s later work lacks. The arrangement of the Letters--specifically, the foreignness of the travel narrative and the complications of the epistolary form--actually enhances the depth of the political knowledge contained within the work. Harmonizing itself with the necessary complexities of human nature and political life, the Persian Letters implicitly indicates some of the problems inherent with, and stands as a challenge to, more "traditional" political theorizing. The exotic conversation that dominates the Letters does not merely bring foreign wisdom to eighteenth-century France; properly recognized, it takes us out of our own conceits about political theory and political epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature in the social sciences deals with the way in which advanced democracies respond to structural economic (and social) change. We focus on processes of institutional change, and we start from the assumption that any new, or reformed, institutional set-up must be coherent. The requirement of coherence is the reason for one important aspect of the process of reform: there is competition between epistemic communities that propose different solutions to policy problems in different policy areas. This competition turns experts into ideological advocates, as experts in one area attempt to influence policies in other areas. We demonstrate the relevance of our argument through an analysis of Swedish economic and social policymaking in the post-war period. Our argument has two important implications: studying periods of transition and change is potentially more important than studying periods of equilibrium and stability, and soft variables–ideas, knowledge and norms–have effects on hard variables, such as economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer micorworlds are becoming a popular tool for both instruction and research in the natural and social sciences. Unlike a verbal description, the microworld provides the students an opportunity to experience in a non-passive and first hand manner the effect of alternative courses of action on the system they are exploring. This is because the student can repeat over and over the same sequence of events and observe the outcome of alternative effects. This presentation will illustrate how a relatively simple microworld was integrated into the classroom in courses in Israel and New Zealand in order to demonstrate to the students the constraints and dynamics of decision-making within the context of a protracted conflict. Another element that the students learned for themselves was the dilemma between their cognitive impulses and rational decision-making practices. The students were so captivated by this exercise that they did not want to leave the class when it ended, and requested to experiment with the simulator after the class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance concerns the performance of public organs. It is, on the one hand, a matter of procedures; of upholding certain modes of operation that accord with generally accepted codes of sound administrative behaviour (such as the principles of transparency, accountability and the rule of law). On the other hand, and more fundamentally, governance concerns the state’s capacity to deliver. Public organs shall not only behave in accordance with ‘the book’; they shall also get things done. The bottom-line, in other words, is effectiveness: the ability of state authorities to actually provide society with certain goods and services. It is generally assumed, however, that these two aspects of governance are in concert. Sound administrative practices (if properly applied) are believed to increase state efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The determinants of political democratization have long been debated within the social sciences, the media and among those concerned with public policy. We introduce a new explanatory variable into this discussion and suggest a different way for examining causal relationships. Specifically, we consider the impact of state repression on regime change and examine its influence within the context of a vector autoregression (VAR) model. This research allows us to assess the importance of not only repression and several other variables believed to be relevant but it also allows us to explore the existence of reciprocal relationships as well as lagged influences. From the results, we find that state repression does influence the likelihood of democratization, both positively and negatively dependent upon how far back into the past one considers. Additionally, we discover a complex set of relationships involving democratization, repression, democracy and domestic protest. The investigation has implications for not only how we study democratization but also how we go about understanding politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the attractions of social experiments to policymakers in the context of federalism. Aspects of the history of social experiments; Standard ethical justifications of social experimentation; Primary intellectual attraction of experiments; Central political attraction of experiments.

: In this essay, I explore limits of toleration as policy and the possible virtue of intolerance as individual practice within the theory of political liberalism. While any liberal theory puts boundaries on toleration as a policy, political liberalism may require a particularly narrow set of boundaries, particularly when we distinguish between doctrines that might be conditionally tolerated and those that might be safely accepted. A well-ordered society (or one that aspires to be well-ordered) might also require regulation by an ethic in which citizens exercise a kind of public-minded intolerance of expression that might undermine just arrangements. I explore this idea in the context of discussions in the public political forum and background culture of a well-ordered society. Finally, I offer some thoughts on strategies of intolerance that might help us move our current not-so-well-ordered society in the direction of fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue that Isaiah Berlin\’s central significance for liberal political theory and as an original practitioner of the history of political thought may be obscured by concentrating on his value-pluralism at the the expense of what I call his “anti-procrusteanism”, which I take to be a distinct moral commitment. I begin by offering an account of the content of Berlin\’s anti-procrusteanism, and then show how leads him to conceive of the history of ideas as an exercise in tracing the complex relations between ideas, personalities, and circumstances. These histories alert us to the moral dangers associated with excessive reliance on ideologies, and remind theorists to be aware of the need to supplement theory with political judgment. This “liberal sensibility” is one of Berlin\’s central but neglected legacies to political theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural America and its electorate are the subject of highly contradictory characterizations and judgments in academic literature across the social sciences. Some accounts suggest that rural locales are sterling examples of civic vitality, to be held up as models for the rest of the country on how to produce a truly enlightened political community, characterized by low crime, less hostility, better health, and civic and economic equality. A rather different view is expressed by those who are convinced that rural America is racist, homophobic, hostile to civil liberties, anti-government and generally at war with liberal political values. Using panel data from a study of rural adolescents from the Fall of 2001 and Spring of 2002, we examine the sources of conservative political socialization in the rural population. We find that many of the same features of rural life that are subject to widespread admiration: agrarianism, rootedness, entrepreneurship and involvement in community, are some of the same characteristics that are the foundation for conservative opinions on civil liberties, morality and the response to terrorism after 9-11. It is certainly possible to find citizens with liberal political values among the rural population, but many of the core features of rural life, including its rootedness, appear to conspire in favor of the values of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By now the idea that street-level bureaucrats create policy through their discretionary behavior is well established, but there is still considerable debate over whether the net effect of these actions for policy effectiveness is positive or negative. A key point of contention is not the substance of discretionary behavior, but rather the type of influences that motivate discretionary behavior. How much of the motivation is from the need to manage the demands of an unreasonable workload (Lipsky), how much from desires to sabotage policy or maximize leisure (Brehm and Gates), and how much is aimed at improving customer service or minimizing perceived problems with the system itself (Vinzant and Crothers; Sparrow )? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism can be seen as a form of globalization: the globalization of informal violence, exemplified centuries ago by piracy. Even the United States now views geographical space as a carrier of violence, rather than an effective barrier to it. The globalization of informal violence reflects patterns of asymmetrical interdependence, and reinforces some of the lessons learned about interdependence in the 1970s. State responses to non-state violence since 9/11 illustrate both the significance and limitations of international institutions as sources of collective legitimation and arenas for coordination of policy. Normatively, 9/11 gives new meaning to Judith Shklar’s phrase, ?the liberalism of fear,? reminding us of the reliance of liberal societies on multilateral efforts to maintain conditions in which they can thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed an institutional theory of generalized trust. Our argument is that the structure of contemporary institutions is an important and overlooked factor that matters for the generation of generalized trust. In particular, we develop a causal mechanism which explains and specifies the causal flow from impartial, un-biased and un-corrupt, just institutions responsible for the implementation of public policies to generalized trust. The impartiality and efficiency of these institutions influences basically citizens’ institutional trust and more specifically (1) how they experience feelings of safety and protection; (2) how citizens make inferences from the system and public officials to other citizens, (3) how citizens observe the behavior of fellow-citizens, and (4) how they experience discrimination against themselves or close others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Players are assumed to rank each other as coalition partners. Two processes of coalition formation are defined and illustrated: o Fallback (FB): Players seek coalition partners by descending lower and lower in their preference rankings until some majority coalition, all of whose members consider each other mutually acceptable, forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments for more inclusive politics have been linked with demands that politics assume a deliberative character. However, one important strand in such arguments has rested demands for the inclusion of marginalized groups on the assumption that the self is transparent to itself and that, in consequence, the self-understandings of persons and groups must be regarded as authoritative, or incorrigible. This assumption runs directly counter to the requirement of political deliberation that parties to deliberation may come to revise their understandings not only of others but also of themselves through participation in dialogue. As this implies a measure of self-opacity the notion that self-understanding is authoritative must be rejected and a hermeneutic, linguistically mediated model of self-understanding must be acknowledged to be the only plausible basis for deliberative politics. Contrary to the claim that we must defer to the self-understandings of our interlocutors, parties to deliberation have a positive obligation to challenge any self-understanding which appears to sustain distorted interpretations of persons' best interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My essay asks whether the concept of reconciliation is compatible with liberal democracy as it is understood by liberal theory. It concludes that the tensions between the two are deep, though perhaps not insurmountable in the end. It proceeds by outlining several different liberal commitments which create difficulties for liberalism to accept reconciliation. It then examines, but concludes skeptically towards, two liberal defenses of reconciliation, one a consequentialist one, the other a more deeply principled one. The warrants for reconciliation will likely lie outside of liberalism. Contemporary political theology provides one example of where deep warrants can be found. In the end, it might be possible to reconcile reconciliation so grounded with liberalism if liberalism is construed liberally enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communitarians often complain that liberal political thought offers us no moral ideal, no conception of the moral virtues, no view of a life well lived. As a result, they say, liberalism makes a genuine sense of community impossible. A true community, they argue, requires a common view of the good life. Without such a conception, it is impossible for men and women to find their happiness in common affairs rather than individual affairs. Without it, there are no grounds upon which to ask people to sacrifice for the common good. Without it, political and social life degenerates into atomism and anomie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the traditional enlightened account of modern secular institutions from Hume to Freud and in much contemporary political theory, those instituions are notable primarily for having eliminated the influence of religious beliefs, which can now be considered as harmful (or at best useless) illusions. But the work of Jeremy Bentham provides another trajectory for thinking about the history and structure of modern tolerant governments. In his thinking, government could be tolerant not because it simply rejected the power of religious beliefs but because it sought to organize their adherents in new ways. From his "Panopticon" to "Chrestomathia," the virtue of cooperative communal structures was that they permitted persons to retain their beliefs but participate with each other in new interactions; institutions of employment, instruction, and so on, would function as the means through which individuals with diverse beliefs would attain unprecedented recognition and visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000 both major parties courted the growing Latino [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 20th Century, on both the foreign and domestic legislative fronts, Congress delegated significant power to the executive branch. Cries of executive usurpation and congressional passivity are audible [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1992, the Clinton campaign ran on the slogan, "It’s the economy, stupid!" Eight years later, Al Gore "lost" to George W. Bush, despite the fact that many Americans believed the economy was the best it had been in their lifetimes. While economics matters in politics, an even more important calculation in determining how citizens vote is their sense of a candidate’s and a particular pary’s public values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of political class is a classical notion in political sociology. From its invention by Gaetano Mosca - who used it largely synonymously to ‚ruling class’ - to the present day it has been used in a variety of theoretical contexts, with slightly different meanings and vastly different implications. Also it has been much more widely used in some countries (especially in Southern Europe) than in others where it is largely unknown (in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in Scandinavia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republican campaign of preserving the traditional family is often viewed as a recent political phenomenon, one that has emerged as a part of the Culture Wars ushered in by Reagan in the Republican Party. In response Democrats have offered their own interpretation of the family, as first and foremost circumscribed by its economic need and claim that the Republican focus on family values is a diversion from 'family basics', such as adequate health care, housing, and education assistance. The paper identifies two dominant, underlying concepts of the family used in the partisan debate over family policy and places it within a historical context; it demonstrates that unlike conventional wisdom, similar competing ideological positions on the family were also extant in the policy debates of the Progressive Era. By collecting and coding testimony in congressional committee hearings for the 61st to 66th Congress (1910-1920) in the Progressive Era, the paper centrally finds that the dominant family ideologies of the two parties have been switched. The contemporary Republican conception of the traditional family as a natural, timeless unit that endures and transcends its economic condition was also espoused by southern Democrats in the Progressive Era. Moreover, the current liberal Democratic conception of the family, as determined by its economic circumstance (such as poverty) was then advocated most strongly by mid-western, progressive Republicans. The partisan ideological reversal on the family is a fundamental but overlooked phenomenon in the study of political parties, policy and political ideology. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists are usually aware that ideal types are merely constructs that pick out, indeed exaggerate preselected aspects of social reality. Nevertheless, there remains a tendency to treat them as if they referred to entities actually existing in the social world. This paper shows why the very attempt to avoid reification by denying existence to social things encourages a tendency to reify ideal types and other constructs which social science imposes on social reality. It argues that without a realistic ontology of the social, it is difficult to envision how social reality might "kick" at the constructs social science seeks to impose upon them and render them problematic. The constructs of social science select out of an infinite universe of facts only those which they, themselves, have predetermined to be germane. Once so selected, the facts become psychologically fused with the constructs that selected them. All science attempts to simplify and typify the reality it seeks to represent. However, it is the notion of a reality independent of the constructs science attempts to impose on it that compels scientists to abandon or modify these constructs as inadequate representations. Finally, the paper explores various concrete sources of orderliness in social reality that can serve as objective constraints on the hypotheses social science seeks to impose on them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to develop a comparative framework through which to understand state-economy relations in post-socialism. It conceives of the struggle over the economy as a two level struggle: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary American political thought the issue of memory and the dream of America have largely centered on Louis Hartz’s (1955) now classic The Liberal Tradition in America and scholarly reaction to its main thesis of the relentlessness of Lockean liberalism in American political discourse. As alluded to above memory serves to authorize an individual’s experience of and participation in the world. In a similar way collective memory authorizes the public/political sphere in which individuals must situate themselves and find a path in the company of others. This paper engages the question of authority in politics and the founding of the public sphere. The Hartzian thesis and Thomas Dumm’s (1987) elaboration of and reaction to it will map the terrain of American memory and the implications of that remembrance for the authorization of the dream of the American public sphere. With that in mind, I intend to explore the dimensions of a radically democratic rendering of that dream by Sheldon Wolin in his attempt to explode and multiply the narratives comprising collective memory and hence authorizing the public sphere in America, raising questions about the role remembrance has to play in our understandings of and hopes for politics. Through Arendt’s work on the nature and importance of authority in politics and her interpretation of the uniqueness of the American Revolution I hope to develop a critique of Wolin’s construal of remembrance and narrative as warrants for the creation of truly democratic political space. By way of a preview, the purpose at hand is not to discredit Wolin’s vision, but rather to deepen its meaning by probing what he leaves unattended to and what Arendt tantalizes us with--namely the centrality of emotion, of attachment, to founding the political realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several prominent arguments in the social sciences draw on the assumption that progressive redistribution is a central feature of democratic politics. Applying this premise, it is, e.g., argued that the poor should favor democracy, whereas rich elites should be antagonistic - with implications for how inequality and democratization relate. We investigate this assumption empirically by analyzing individual opinions about whether progressive taxation and redistribution are among the central characteristics of democracy, and find surprisingly weak support for it. We further analyze what factors make individuals more or less likely to consider redistribution central to democracy. Running multi-level logit models, we find that having lived under a Communist regime and - although less robust - currently living under a democracy make individuals less likely to associate democracy with redistribution. However, individuals with more to gain from progressive redistribution (i.e. little education and belonging to the lower classes) are more likely to make the connection between democracy and such redistribution. We discuss how our findings may contribute to explain two central puzzles in comparative politics; I) why do democracies not promote more redistributive policies than autocracies, and II) why is there no net empirical relationship between income inequality and democratization? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced analytics are an integral inferential component for knowledge discovery and dissemination. We employ network metrics on relational variables of interest to control for econometric estimation bias, inefficiency and inferential problems from non-spherical, network induced disturbances in sampled, unknown political networks. Our analysis follows a two-step procedure to establish a conceptual baseline and then integrate real-world data and questions pertinent for statistical inference. First, artificial networks are generated using two well-known graph models, Erdos-Renyi and Barabasi-Albert. Simulated, synthetic data is created across a range of graph sizes with multiple node-level network attributes and estimation bias at different sample sizes. This gives a picture of efficiency and consistency across network metrics, controlling for varied true-population sampling ratios. Second, we generate artificial networks across a broad range of graph model types compared to real networks from IMF's Direction of Trade Statistics and Correlates of War dyadic trade data. We then examine the consistency of each chosen metric across a wider range of possible network-creation processes. This information is visualized against one known and one potentially unknown statistic, R² and node sample size. Our unique approach provides analytical and estimative insights for opaque and dynamic real world financial networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political satire in popular culture has become increasingly prominent in recent years, especially through programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Political science professors have responded by employing more satire in their courses. The motivation is clear: students enjoy and are entertained by satire, research shows that they may actually be informed by it, and satire can make teaching a more enjoyable experience. Yet recent work suggests that political satire may encourage cynicism and decrease political efficacy among students--a finding likely to give instructors pause. Using classroom experiments, I systematically explore the effects of satire, focusing in particular on political efficacy. The results offer suggestive evidence refuting the earlier warning, indicating that satire does not decrease political efficacy; in fact, it may even increase it. Additionally, both qualitative and quantitative evidence presented here indicates that students enjoy satire and recommend that it be used to teach future courses. Although the results are certainly not conclusive, they may offer enough evidence to justify including an article from The Onion on the reading list or showing a clip from Saturday Night Live in class. For instructors that are so inclined, the appendix contains a catalogued sample of satirical articles, video clips, and cartoons that can be used to teach specific political science concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a survey of American students, principals, and teachers, we examine the varied instructional methods being employed by social studies teachers in ninth grade classrooms across the country to determine which methods and which combinations of methods do the best job of enhancing students' democratic capacity defined as their political knowledge, political efficacy, and intent to vote. Our results suggest that there are four broad teaching approaches employed by social studies teachers: traditional teaching, active learning, video teaching, and maintenance of an open classroom climate. Teachers may employ some combination of these approaches. The analysis indicates that approaches that foster an open classroom climate (encouraging student input) in combination with the others tend to be the most fruitful across the board. While any combination including an open classroom climate maximizes benefit, traditional teaching (i.e. use of methods including textbook reading, worksheets, memorization etc.) combined with an open classroom climate seems to do the best. Also, the results suggest that the combinations that work best for stimulating internal efficacy vary greatly from those stimulating the other citizenship outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on designing political science internship program that is intellectually challenging. It focuses on three major models on which internship programs are commonly based on. It has been found that there are several difficulties in internship programs. The author states that internships can attract students only if the program is designed offer that potential.

This essay focuses on the tensions between liberalism and capitalism through an analysis of Edmund Burke's political and economic thought. I argue that a joint reading of Burke's works on economy and empire highlights the limits of eighteenth-century liberal political economy and the specific challenge posed by "colonial capitalism." Burke's labors against the East India Company, I contend, should be read as an attempt to fortify "commercial" principles, on which British self-image rested, against the "rapacious" policies of British imperialism in India that threatened this liberal self-image. Thus conceived, Burke's denunciation of the Company can be construed as an index to broader historical contradictions between the liberal self-image of capitalism and the coercive processes of colonial displacement and extraction that was an integral part of its emergence. The essay concludes by outlining broader theoretical and methodological avenues of thought opened up by situating Burke in the colonialcapitalist context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of the basic ideas of various statistical inference methods used for simulating the quantities of interest in political science research. It also discusses the technical details of simulations of the first differences with various methods for ordinary logit as well as mixed logit models.

The article focuses on two important topics of political discussions including policy framing and the U.S. Energy Security which was discussed at Annual Convention for the American Political Science Association held on September 1-4, 2011 at Seattle, Washington. It mentions positive and negative impacts of energy security under popular and political perceptions.

The article discusses a research study conducted to analyze the efficiency of financial systems in India. Topics discussed include impact of legal traditions and codes in managing financial systems, mechanisms of reproduction of legal codes and power relations among different social groups and the state. It also discusses the relationship between power and legal codes.

Recent scholarship has questioned Franklin's understanding of politics, suggesting either that Franklin espoused no political form, or that he understood politics in terms of a balance of interests, and not according to universal principles, or in terms of a science. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that Franklin did espouse social compact theory, and that he understood this theory to be based upon the political and economic principles of the new science of politics. This understanding flows from Franklin's understanding of philosophy as the new "modern experimental philosophy." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes that paradigm of methodological nationalism ignores transnational networks, associations, and organizations and global social and economic structures. The author explains how methodological nationalism distorts research on migration in the social sciences. He also demonstrates that prominent positions on migration and political theory emerge from a methodological nationalist perspective.

The article offers information on the findings of a study on where, when and why elections fail or succeed using an August 2013 data-set that involves 33 countries. It mentions that the data compares an overall standardized 100-point PEI index for each contest and examines 11 dimensions of electoral integrity. It is inferred that PEI index shows high levels of external validity, internal validity, and legitimacy.