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Power and powerlessness remain important topics in the political science literature. Since Lukes (1974), power has been viewed as possessing three dimensions: the ability to affect behavior, the ability to limit alternatives, and the ability to influence thoughts and perceptions. Intimately connected to notions of power are questions of quiescence. Why do people "chose" to remain powerless? Why do some individuals and groups rise up against the power holder while others submit passively? Rather than invoking institutional factors, this paper attempts to frame the issue of power and powerlessness in terms of evolutionary biology. Social animals have relatively stable dominance hierarchies. Position in the hierarchy is coupled with changes in the hormonal balance of the animal's brain. The biochemistry of animals at the bottom of the scale leads to higher stress levels and a more lethargic attitude. This paper considers the applicability of this idea to powerlessness in mankind. It postulates a "fourth face" of power, a physiological one. Investigations into this area could have important theoretical ramifications both in understanding the nature of powerlessness and in finding novel ways of breaking the cycle of powerlessness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on local government cooperation and finds an over-reliance on environmentally imposed incentives and constraints as explanatory factors. By contrast, there is insufficient treatment of the actions, interactions, and reactions exhibited by the actors who govern local institutions. By conceptualizing local government actors as embedded in a larger social structure, it is possible to see the ways in which these actors, as parts of a whole, might interact to achieve regional objectives. This paper examines the metropolitan social structure of institutional actors, along with the social psychology of organizing, and proposes some specific avenues to a better understanding of how and why cooperation occurs in metropolitan areas. Rather than assume the fortunes of local governments are solely dependent on external initiatives, this view holds that actors help to create the metropolitan environment of which they are a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the largely forgotten work of Gilbert Burnet (1688), revealing the connection between compromise and the idea of a social contract. It helps illuminate a different apprehension of politics across the English Channel. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper employs the distribution of heights within male populations and between males and females in pre-historic, agrarian and industrial societies to measure inequality and to examine its economic and political sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present a research design which tests the effect that structured communication based on Jurgen Habermas's "ideal speech" situation has on the efficiency of common pool resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The actual significance of ?class? as a structural basis of inequality remains in almost every society, while the academic interest in it declining. In particular, the development of capitalist social stratification that perpetuates the structure of the unequal distribution of opportunities and resources, combined with the legal/institutional changes of the past decades, makes class more significant than any other factors (such as gender, ethnicity, or race) in explaining inequality of historically suppressed groups. A range of empirical evidence indicates that class factor still remains a significant, and sometimes the most significant, cause of social inequality today. Neglect the continuing significance of class as such, however, the advocates of ?multiculturalism? tend to reduce the issue of minority group inequality to a matter of cultural recognition. Criticizing the ?culturalist? approach of multiculturalism, in this paper, I purpose to argue that the significance of class as a structural basis of inequality continues, and this makes it necessary to bring a class perspective back into equality discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Hobbes' Leviathan to uncover how Hobbes' believed that his teaching could come into practice. The paper focus' on how Hobbes believed his teaching could be universally valid. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This proposal paper shows economic individualists are likely to participate in politics whereas social individualists are unlikely to do the same thing. The relationship between individualism and participation is explored in this proposal paper. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though they are often spoken of as though they were alike, Emerson and Whitman are very different thinkers. The tensions between them highlight the tensions between individualism and democracy in ways that illuminate both the past and the present. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social groups are understood to influence individual opinion; however, little work has examined how the impact of social group attachment on opinion varies as a function of change in political discourse which connects said groups to political issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global development practices--while touted as economically, socially, and politically beneficial--succeed only in forcing underdeveloped nations into a constant state of reaction, thereby stripping these nations of political or national agency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German and American politicians draw on diverse, yet culturally shared concepts of representation. By utilizing sociological and anthropological approaches, these concepts can be studied and interpreted in their distinct contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 50 years, we have been regaled with anecdotal accounts of an acclimation period for newly commissioned Supreme Court justices by scholars, reporters, and Court insiders alike. Some of the justices themselves have admitted that it took several years to become accustomed to the increased workload, new processes, and prestige that accompany this high office. But given these extensive reports, why have academics found the acclimation effect so elusive? To answer this question, I first draw from the anthropology, management, psychology, and sociology literature to develop a theory of judicial acclimation. This theory leads to a novel hypothesisâ??namely that the variance around a justice's votes should increase with time, as the justice is able to decrease his reliance on cognitive heuristics. This hypothesis is then subjected to empirical testing, the outcome of which supports the hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A content analysis of popular stories and movies demonstrates that they normalize and valorize flawed social structures and overwhelmingly model only individual level responses to the equities, tyranny and injustice characters may encounter. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I model the level of political control over agency rule makers informally as a problem in which rule makers optimize both their short and long term utility under constraints imposed by their principals and the interest group community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social contracts have long been characterized as appealing to either actual consent (e.g., Hobbes & Habermas) or Ideas (e.g., Kant & Rawls) for legitimacy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, however, appeals to both, hence gaining the benefits of two approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the recent literature on social capital since Putnam, and a consideration of the links between this literature and the main works of Tocqueville. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth and proliferation of groups focused upon a growing diversity of "the family" has grown dramatically. Today, this values' conflict is increasingly sharp and populated by numerous and focused groups defending their many approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I estimate both the tactical and indirect-economical and political-effects of rough terrain on civil conflict onset. Rough terrain is significant more for its effects on state capacity rather than the tactical considerations of insurgents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital theory, particularly the work of Robert Putnam, has received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention. We argue that Putnam?s formulation ignores the ways in which race is fundamental and constitutive to the structure and function of social capital in the United States. We suggest an alternative framework, one that focuses on the effects of social relations. Such a framework: (1) treats race as more than an independent variable; (2) addresses the structural factors underlying social capital development; and (3) includes the role of gatekeepers in the process. This approach would allow us to have a more accurate, and nuanced, understanding of how social capital operates in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though comparative state policy frameworks sometimes account for societal norms, as reflected in concepts such as political culture, policy traditions, innovativeness, and religiosity, few consider specific cognitive and normative imperatives that promote or impede the adoption of particular policies. One approach that does is the new institutionalism in sociology, which emphasizes legitimacy-seeking actors who face pressures to conform to cultural rules, norms, and expectations regardless of the efficiency implications of the practices to which they conform. This article introduces comparative state policy researchers to the new institutionalism in sociology, emphasizing basic concepts and arguments and suggesting how reliance on this framework may enable researchers to better integrate rational actor and cultural-based views for understanding why states choose the public policies that they do. Interviews with national- and state-level experts in Medicaid nursing facility reimbursement illustrate the utility of the sociological institutionalism for comparative state policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of the public goods model, this paper evaluates the theory of hegemonic stability for the post World War II period using quantitative methods. The results support the theory of a benevolent hegemon. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between social capital and support for democratic principles, performance and institutions in Japan, with specific focus on the effects of different types of civic associations, as well as urban-rural differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of social capital and postmaterialist values both have respectable genealogies in the social sciences. They are often seen to covary in particular ways, but these relationships are generally considered spurious, attributable to various intervening or antecedent variables. This paper seeks to specify an independent and direct relationship between generalized trust (akin to "bridging" social capital) and postmaterialism on the one hand, and particularized trust (akin to "bonding" social capital) and materialism on the other. In order to test these claims and properly control for rival hypotheses, a hierarchical generalized linear model is employed using data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey (released May 2004). The data provide strong support for both posited relationships. In light of these results, opportunities for future research are enumerated and discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conditions under which white Americans will express that being white systematically benefits them. It furthermore examines the role of recognizing this privilege in support of policies of racial equality. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations, considered critical indicators of functioning democracy, are undertheorized. This paper drawsfrom political science, sociology, and public management to develop a more general approach to collective action. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings of a survey that examines the connections between experiences in multicultural high school social studies programs and the development of a civic identity. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits that classic, The American Voter, in particular the chapter on the politics of social group membership. The analysis is based on 2000 and 2004 ANES data. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper (1) addresses questions of the "scientificity" of the social sciences and (2) argues for the incorporation of the concept of the imaginary into social and political analysis. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the place of the family in Hegel's project of reconciliating human beings to the modern political world. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to conduct a comprehensive empirical study of the ways in which social capital is present and facilitates the undemocratic ends of organized crime groups in Russia. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the formation of the modern public sphere in the Middle East product of social conflicts for hegemony. Focus of research will be on the modern legal system and discourse and the case studies will be Egypt, Turkey and Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the adverse effect on rural inequality following the arrival of the neoliberal market in land a remote Ecuadorian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how political factors (such as the level of civil rights, or state regulation of religion) and sociological ones (such as inequality and development) influence the interaction between religious beliefs and religious practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops a political theory of endogeneous institutional change that emphasizes associational relations within families of institutions and the interactive properties of a given institutional mix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interpretes the capital punishment debate in Nigeria as an expression of the struggle for the identity of the Nigerian state [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and evaluates arguments about how, and in what way, various societal institutions foster higher levels of social capital across the industrial democracies and the American states. The principal finding is that, contrary to much e [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most definitions of religion in Political Science are based on Protestant notions of faith as more important than practice in capturing religious world views. The tendency to overstate the importance of text is based on monotheistic assumptions based on particular theological traditions. The operationalization of religion can only follow a more universal, or self-consciously particularistic, definition of religion. Debates within anthropology and sociology over culture inform the definition of religion offered here. An attempt is made to define religion based on a recognition of complexity, while offering an operationalization of this complex concept that can be used for research that is amenable to users of multiple methods. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

150 years after his death his 1859 Tocqueville remains one of America’s most beloved political philosophers. He is said to have explored our politics and culture with unrivaled astuteness. But how do Tocqueville’s observations of America stand today? This panel will be dedicated to exploring whether Tocqueville’s discussions of American mores, religion, and civic culture are congruent and continually relevant to the US of the 21st century. This panel thus seeks to investigate and critically appraise current social and political realities seen through a Tocquevillean lens, bringing together insights from political science, sociology, and history. This panel also aims to suggest new directions in Tocqueville scholarship and future avenues of research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a two-stage model of communication in which self-discovery arguments in the first stage give rise to speaker credibility in the second, cheap-talk signaling stage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in social group members’ attitudes toward in- and out-groups defined by race, sex, religion, age, and class are tracked from 1964 to 2002, and the effect of group-relevant issues, such as affirmative action, on polarization is assessed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alasdair MacIntyre’s criticisms of liberal individualism cannot stand in light of further examination. The functional concept of a human being he demands as support for ethical claims can in fact be constructed for liberal individualism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interested Reader--Questions of nature's role in politics--what constitutes a people, justice, necessity--thread together into a singular significant problem: what is religious? This essay proposes that within the framework of religiosity we can better understand nature's place in politics. This being so, it is in contrast to Weber's Sociology of Religion that I begin with the desire to define religiosity--to say what it is. Das religiose Wesen is not so much intent on illuminating the various expressions of religion as it is preoccupied with understanding its essence. To provide answers, Thucydides serves as an invaluable educator.Thucydides' History provides us with a case study like no other. With it we can analyze human nature writ large: we see the rise of a people, observe their division, note the dissolution of their ancestral, and finally question the cancer of self-doubt that sets in as to the justness of their Justice--I meant to say: their crisis of faith.Das religiose Wesen takes into account the whole of Thucydides' History, but focuses on three particular sections. The Archaeology treats the constitution of the human edifice [1.1-19]. The speeches of the Athenians at Sparta [1.73-77] and Melos [5.85-111] discuss its dissolution. Throughout it all, nature's role in politics is increasingly revealed as a matter of "religiosity". As with Thucydides' History, this essay considers the Nietzschean corpus, but focuses on one article in particular, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. The central questions Nietzsche raised here not only preoccupied his later writings but are most relevant and revealing to the topic at hand.Divided into two parts, the first part of Das religiose Wesen examines the nascent emergence and mature decline of a people, the second strives to grasp the modus operandi behind it-- ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

n recent years, an ever expanding political, economic, sociological, and even anthropological literature has tried to give convincing answers to each of the following two questions: (i) Why do we have civil wars in some countries and not in others? (ii) Why does post-conflict peace endure in some countries, while it collapses into renewed fighting in others? Building on our earlier work on political institutions, economic development, and civil war as well as the mentioned literature on causes and consequences of intrastate conflicts, their prevention and recurrence, we argue that addressing the second question ignoring the first almost inevitably leads to answers that are affected by selection bias. In fact, we can show that the non-random selection of civil wars biases not only estimates for the error term and the parameters in all directions, but can falsely indicate that duration dependence of post-conflict civil peace is present when it actually is not. Therefore, we first theoretically develop and then empirically test a rational institutionalist two-stage selection duration model that accounts for the non-random sample selection to explain the variation in the endurance of peace in countries with civil war experience. This is done simultaneously estimating the selection outcome (civil war) and the duration outcome (length of post-conflict peace) using full-information maximum likelihood estimation on a data set of more than 100 civil wars during the 1950-2000 period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the motivating sources of political awareness. Utilizing cross-sectional data from four national surveys, I establish a baseline effect of socio-demographic characteristics on general political awareness. Next, I estimate the effects of these same variables on awareness to issues of specific interest to respondents. I find that though the propensity to gather information is a general predisposition based on education, curiosity, and general political interest, peoples' attention to specific issues varies based on whether or not information is relevant to one's specific interests. While the greatest source of variation is the general "curiosity/interest" trait, a secondary source of motivation for paying attention to issues stems from self interest, or having a material-interest at stake. Evidence from this study suggests that citizens with low-levels of general political knowledge may, nonetheless, possess personally relevant information enabling them to communicate key desires to representatives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the concept of a social utility function, an individual receives positive utility from payoffs to others. I create a formal evolutionary model, in which a formula for social utility function is not assumed but found endogeneously. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lifecycle of the norm abolishing the death penalty for child offenders who are 18 years or younger took 80 years to complete. From its origin in Russia in 1922 to its twilight in the United States (U.S.) in 2005, a total of 134 countries are believed to have abolished the death penalty for child offenders. This study will present the history of abolition for child offenders globally. Through international relations theory, especially constructivism, world polity approaches from sociology, and international legal theory, it will argue that the norm emerged primarily in European and Latin American countries that were well-integrated into the international system. Emergence was followed by a rapid cascade that occurred in the early 1960s, ushering in a period of acceptance that ended in 2005 with U.S. compliance. This study will also assess arguments that suggest there were different motivations for abolition at different periods in the norm’s lifecycle. It will address the motivations of states that comply as well as the primary methods of diffusion for early and late adopters, the role of international and regional law in shaping state behavior, the intrinsic quality of the norm and other indicators such as region, regime type, gross domestic product and the advent of compulsory education. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion and democracy mutually define themselves: the emergence of the "spirituality" category in contemporary sociology of religion highlights the very process of the "democratisation of the sacred". ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A roundtable on Harvey Mansfield's provocative new book, Manliness, which offers the first comprehensive study of the quality of manliness and a defense of manliness in our "gender-neutral society." ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic epistemology overlooks the epistemic relevance of the socio-political context of ideas.We need an epistemology which is attentive to the fact that socio-political contexts and truth claims are mutually-constitutive. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]