Search

Turkey has a complex political history, which can neither be seen as entirely democratic and liberal, nor as totally authoritarian and tyrannical. However, the recent controversy in Turkey over the effort of the ruling Justice and Development Party to lift a ban barring women from wearing Islamic headscarves in public buildings (including schools and universities), and the Constitutional Court's decision on June 5, 2008 to overturn parliament's actions highlights one of the more counterintuitive impediments that have prevented the country from becoming a fully consolidated liberal democracy. Furthermore, in the past, the European Court of Human Rights has supported Turkish efforts to impose secularism. Yet, I argue that secularism, which many believe to be an essential element of democratic politics, in the Turkish case, has turned out to be quite undemocratic. This paper explores this paradox in the context of recent events in Turkey. In addition, drawing from the Turkish case, this paper will more broadly revisit the link between secularism and democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to intervene into contemporary debates on the paradoxes of democratic founding by way of a critical engagement with conceptions of founding in contemporary political theory. Rather than subsume the problem into its diachronic or synchronic dimension, this paper contends that it is first important to investigate the concept of founding itself to better elucidate the problem. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the appeal of sub-state nationalism in developed liberal democracies such as Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom and Canada? The demise of sub-state nationalism in Western societies has been forecasted more than once: at the end of the 19th century in the context of the industrial revolution; in the 1950s and 1960s when modernization approaches to the state, politics and development were most influential; and, more recently, in the 1990s when many saw the processes of globalization were assumed to correspond strictly to cultural assimilation and political integration. In all these instances, there was an assumption that progress and modernity would represent the triumph of (nation-state) universalism over the 'deep diversity' represented by nationalist movements. Why, then, has sub-state nationalism survived in states that pose no physical threats to minorities but on the contrary offer a liberal-democratic environment and, in some cases, credible promise of prosperity? This is the question tackled in this paper. The paper first argues that understanding the appeal of sub-state nationalism requires its appreciation as a multidimensional phenomenon composed of three processes: the construction and expression of an identity; the definition of collective interests; and territorial mobilization. With this conceptualization in mind, the paper suggests that there exists six main reasons why sub-state nationalism continues to garner substantial support in several liberal democracies: the power of the notion of self-determination; the crystallization of national identity and nationalist politics in decentralized arrangements featuring autonomous political institutions; the presence of powerful nationalist narratives; institutional and constitutional questions that are either unresolved or have been addressed by a shaky compromise, which means they remain on the political agenda; the involvement of nationalist movements in debates of public policy; and processes of continental integration that help nationalist movements make the case for increased autonomy, and in certain circumstances independence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques assimilation norms in mainstream immigration literature, including literature that views itself as progressive, on 3 levels: the economic lens with which nearly every aspect of immigration to the U.S. is viewed; the primacy of the nation-state in all accounts that is obfuscated, thereby obscuring undemocratic aspects of assimilation norms; and finally the legal context of reception that shapes immigrants' experiences and which must be taken into account when assessing the "success" of the assimilation process. More broadly, the idea that assimilation norms are peaceful, mutual, consensual (and so on) is questioned and very briefly, the paper argues for post-national citizenship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the political writings of Iris Marion Young with attention to her radical call for expanded inclusion in the deliberative processes of modern politics. Unlike the Habermasian ideal of discursively established consensus, Young intends to expose and account for the multiplicity and indeterminacy of voices in a democracy. While Young's basic argument is that we must open political discourse to different kinds of voices than those acceptable according to traditional standards of Enlightenment rationality, her critique of politics implies more. Young's account of democratic politics not only requires a reconceptualization of the meaning of political identity, but also implies that a revised view of democratic theory aimed at trying to incorporate those that are excluded by assimilationist approaches to democratic politics. An assessment of these implications in this paper includes an evaluation of Young's structural recommendations, and also a discussion of the applicability of these recommendations in a broader political context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that trusting and actively engaged citizens contribute to the emergence and improvement of democracy has found theoretical expression in the concept of social capital. However, most of the existing literature focus on western societies. Thus, one may ask whether the hypothesized linkage between interpersonal trust and civic engagement on one hand, and political attitudes (including democratic values) on the other, is applicable to beyond the western context. This paper analyzes the impact of social capital in Japan, which shares more than half a century of democratic experience with other advanced industrialized countries, yet not their historical and cultural background. The paper specifically addresses how social capital operates differently across the urban-rural axis that constitutes a key feature of political life in this country. Findings regarding the impact of different components of social capital, including membership in different types of voluntary groups as well as informal networks, are presented and discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of the modern nation-state, public commemoration provides a socially unifying force capable of transcending the inherent multiplicity of democratic society. Affirming the significance of an individuated human being (citizen) as a member of the community (nation), practices of memorialization redeem death as singularity through a universalization of its meaning: the institutionalization of memory absorbs the meaning of life into that of the state in order to preserve a collective identity surviving beyond death. The following paper explores this phenomenon by examining the fifth century Athenian funeral oration as it is represented in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and Plato's Menexenus. Posing either a series of communal requirements or familial duties for how to properly account for the dead, these texts cast the political significance of commemoration in terms of ethical imperatives not far removed from those of modern democratic societies. Idealizing democratic life through a model of civic relations, these injunctions bind the individual to the material wellbeing of the community for the sake of legitimizing the prevailing social, economic, and political order. Rather than accept this politically disaffecting condition, this paper attempts to recover the importance of memory for politics by insisting on the role of public commemoration as a site of democratic practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between protest and social concertation in new democracies. Specifically, I ask whether inclusive institutions such as tripartite concertation engender social peace. Social pacts have featured prominently in processes of democratic transition and consolidation. Many new democracies, however, appear to lack the historical, institutional and organizational preconditions deemed necessary for these kinds of policies to succeed. The paper demonstrates that social concertation provides organized labor an institutionalized voice, thereby mitigating levels of overall and particularly violent protest. The success of concertative frameworks in restraining protest activity, however, also rests on whether the benefits workers derive – both political and economic – outweigh the costs of restraint under these institutions. Either because they directly reduce labor's collective standing or indirectly endanger workers' economic livelihood, flexible labor market policies work opposite to the logic of social concertation, thereby increasing protest activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative analyses of voter turnout, with few exceptions, focus almost exclusively on industrialized democracies. This paper seeks to determine whether the institutions and individual factors that have been empirically linked to turnout in consolidated democracies can be applied to developing democracies. To answer this question, election results and electoral statistics for developing democracies for all elections meeting minimal characteristics of legitimacy over the years 1974–2002 are used to estimate a cross-sectional time series model predicting turnout. Preliminary results indicate that, while institutions that affect the ease of the translation of a citizen's vote to representation matter in determining variation in voter turnout, those effects are conditioned on how far along the state is to consolidating its democracy. From these results, this paper concludes that there are additional unique factors that predict turnout in developing democracies, leaving the door open for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concedes that voter turnout, low level of political knowledge and general apathy toward politics is a sign that our democracy is in crisis as ordinary citizens are no longer participating in the rule of their country. Believing that participation is learned and not an inherent trait, this paper examines the current education system to see where it fails to facilitate political socialization. Judging the current political science, government and civics curriculum in public education to be insufficient, this paper examines alternative teaching methods that politically engage students. Secondly, the paper examines the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, implemented by the current Bush administration, to see how it affects resources and curriculum, and measures teachers' abilities to inspire students to learn. This paper cites surveys of textbooks and teacher and administrator interviews. Teaching methods like service learning that appear to engage students in politics are highlighted to encourage teachers to implement them into their current curriculum. Unequal education for students in low income and minority communities was found to inadequately socialize those students into passive rather than active citizens. Lastly, broader education reform is suggested for further study. These suggestions are just the first step to create a new curriculum that will inspire students to become responsible active citizens in their democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major subplot in the 2003 recall of California governor Gray Davis was the flurry of litigation seeking to block, postpone, or modify the election. This paper provides a summary of the recall lawsuits and compares the courts’ role in the recall process to their role in checking the direct initiative. The paper argues that unlike the direct initiative, the recall is a hybrid between direct and representative democracy, and thus that the courts’ participation in the recall process was less consequential than their central role in checking the direct initiative. Instead, the heavy recall litigation can be attributed to: the untested nature of the recall rules; a litigious political culture; and the high stakes in removing the governor of the nation’s largest state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of neoliberal reforms on the political activity of the poor in Mexico by paying attention to how low-income actors experience these reforms and how they adapt their political behavior in response to these changes. While many analysts maintain that free-market and democratic reforms reinforce each other, this paper argues that neoliberal reforms and the new linkages they establish between the state and citizens stifle the voice of the poor and create new foundations for their powerlessness. They do this not through the threat of force or sanctions, but by making mobilization and demand making more difficult, or by channeling discontent into arenas such as local governments or neighborhood councils that have little decision making power. As a result, lower-class citizens channel their activities less and less into state-directed activities such as petitions and protests and more into informal and self-help modes that do not put pressure on state-actors. The net effect is to insulate policy makers from pressures from below, with significant negative consequences for representation, accountability and voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks develop a better understanding of the media as a political institution by accurately conceptualizing the interplay between state power, civil society, and the media. In doing so, I argue that, under the right conditions, the media can play an independent role in the democratization process. I avoid overly deterministic arguments regarding the political alignment of the media. The news media is complex and can perform extremely varied roles. This paper seeks to clarify the conditions under which the media can lend support to various political actors, and by doing so; it should highlight the media as an important, yet under-theorized political actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between property rights, freedom, and democracy? Traditional theorists have focused on property rights as the cornerstone of democratic government and free society, while critics have countered that the promotion of property rights limits the expression of those ideals. This paper historicizes the debate, focusing on the American company town as a property-rights regime. The paper argues that property rights in this setting were decisive in limiting freedom and democracy in ways that public towns typically did not. That is, company-owned towns operated apart from the legal and political restraints that tethered nineteenth century municipalities ? however imperfectly ? to more democratic forms and outcomes. In contrast, profit maximizing company town owners arbitrarily regulated whatever aspects of life they thought necessary, and were typically free from public restraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do transitions by pact- ones in which the incumbent authoritarian elites engage in multilateral negotiation and compromise with democratic opposition elites ? depress the level of competition or contestation (substantively and behaviorally) across political parties in the subsequent democracy? This paper demonstrates - through a study of cross-party collaboration in Spain between 1977 and 2000 - that transitions by pact initially depress the degree of competition across political parties, as the democratization literature hypothesizes. However, while pact making produces birthmarks, the paper also demonstrates that pacted democracies are not necessarily frozen, but rather can be transformed into more competitive democracies. This suggests that transitions by pact are less prejudicial for long term democratic deepening than initially feared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the paper related to democratic political systems' judicial review to be presented at the Western Political Science Association annual meeting to be held in Oregon from March 22-24, 2014. It mentions that the lawyer Alexander Bickel solved the puzzle of the judicial review and adds that legal theorists and judges have moved to judicial minimalism, an approach to judicial review.

The article discusses a paper to be presented in the meeting of the U.S. Western Political Science Association as of February 2012, concerning why was the 1989 revolution in Romania for transitioning to democracy contrasted with the peaceful revolutions in other Eastern European countries in 1989 or before 1989. It discusses several topics including foreign aid and human rights in Romania which may be responsible for 1989 revolution. Also presented are two surveys in Romania regarding the same.

The relative importance of descriptive representation is a contentious issue in American politics. This paper investigates the relationship between descriptive representation and the political attitudes of the Latino population. Specifically, we test the impact of dyadic descriptive representation on Latino political efficacy and individual approval ratings of members of Congress. Building on normative theories of descriptive representation, we suggest that Latino co-ethnic representation is likely to bolster these political attitudes because Latino representatives provide cues to constituents that circumvent the social and psychological barriers that often impair successful inter-racial communication. We use the ANES 2008 Time-Series Study of the American electorate to analyze the impact of representation on Latino efficacy and Latino approval ratings of members of Congress. We find that descriptive representation bolsters feelings of external efficacy among Latinos and it leads to higher approval ratings of individual members of Congress. These results suggest that descriptive representation confers symbolic benefits that transcend policy outcomes among the Latino population. While the policymaking process remains central in representational government, our results imply that constituents also value other factors. In legislators' efforts to build loyalty and support within their district, being descriptively representative of constituents may go quite far in supporting the long-term health of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper on the meaning of silence in democratic theory and practice is presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association in Portland, Oregon on March 24, 2012. Topics discussed include the effect of silence on human interaction, relationship of silence with of justice, autonomy and equality and unequal conditions of democracy.

A conference paper on cultural racism of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political scholar is presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association in Portland, Oregon on March 22, 2012. It discusses the views of Tocqueville on American democracy and his justifications of French colonialism. It examines the nineteenth century racism in the U.S.

The following paper is a study of the deliberative development of the Mexican media, both broadcast and print, through the analysis of their current legal framework, culture, ownership scheme and common practices. It is grounded on archive research, interviews and literature review. Its analytical framework is based on particular concepts of the theory of deliberative democracy developed by contemporary philosophers such as Habermas, Bohman, Mansbridge and Cohen. Through this framework it argues that the major obstacles to democracy in Mexico, such as social and economic inequalities, patronage and a weak rule of law, constitute also obstacles to this deliberative development of the Mexican media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of the concept of tolerance for the successful operation of a democratic political system is evident by the large and growing literature treating aspects of it. Much of the earlier work on tolerance either focused on defining the concept and describing trends in the level of tolerance or in identifying whole system attributes that cause variation in that concept. This paper seeks to explain the effects of tolerance in a society, accounting for both individual and state political behavior. We find that as the level of tolerance in a state increases, the country's respect for human rights also increases. We also find that as an individual's level of tolerance increase, so too do their support for democratic government, interest in politics, and rejection of authoritarianism, among other behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship shows that the capacity and willingness of citizens to get involved in politics depend on a variety of factors. Drawing on three latest national survey data conducting before and after the 2001, 2005, and 2007 House of Representatives election in Thailand by the King Prajadhipok's Institute, this paper presents political engagement in election's trend, and argues that the quantity of political engagement and participation in Thailand are improved because people are interested highly in the election, and have adequate knowledge about candidates and electoral process. However, because they still have moderate levels of political efficacy, we could not expect a quality of their political engagement and participation. Moreover, based on a regression analysis of the 2007 data, a gap among people with different age, level of education, and those who live in Bangkok and who do not to participate in politics is existed. An uneven distribution of civic participation is then a critical obstacle of the development of Thai democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps more than any other thinker, the French theorist Georges Bataille seeks to sever the notion of sacrifice from an economy of exchange where one gives in order to receive; he instead sees in sacrifice a way of disrupting such orders and removing both the sacrificer and victim out of the world of utility. By conceptualizing sacrifice in opposition to the useful, Bataille sees in the former a way of participating in the sacred and partaking of sovereignty. Consequently, the notion of loss (inherent to sacrifice) begins to take on a rather positive quality, as opposed to its usual negative connotations. While Bataille's writings have gained recognition in the fields of sociology and literary theory, and enjoy increasing popularity in religious studies, his work is only recently being read within political philosophy. This paper contributes to this recent trend by examining Bataille's thoughts on sacrifice, as well as related notions like loss and excess. Of specific interest are the implications of a Bataillean understanding of sacrifice and loss for a pluralist democracy where loss is an inevitable aspect of politics. While not necessarily providing the final word regarding all issues that might arise as a function of loss in politics, Bataille's unique perspective on these topics contributes to our understanding of democratic citizenship by offering a serious alternative regarding the ways in which we understand the place of loss and sacrifice in political life. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his paper "Civic Environmentalism's Search for Identity: Reconciling Democracy and Environmental Protection" Kevin Rowe shows that civic environmentalism has some work to do to reconcile its two fundamental values. After briefly reviewing three broad critiques he offers, I address his proposal that civic environmentalism ought to strike a balance between its two main commitments. I observe that he has identified in civic environmentalism the more general problem of sustaining commitments to plural values. I then suggest that rather than speaking of balancing these commitments, we ought instead to focus on judgment as the faculty for determining courses of action that fulfill multiple values in light of circumstances. I then argue that civic environmentalism encourages institutions whose participants will exercise, and cultivate, their judgments in just this way, hence will be able to carry out the balancing Rowe proposes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enviromental campaigns to save the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR), 8 million hectares (21 million acres) of coastal temperate rainforest in British Columbia, have led the Government of BC to establish a series of protected areas and use conservation financing to support ecosystem-based land-use planning for the remaining territory. American charitable foundations played a central role by funding the campaigns of several environmental nonprofit organizations (ENGOs) and helping to raise $60 million for the conservation financing fund. This paper argues that analyses of the GBR campaigns and the resulting policy changes need to be informed by a more sophisticated understanding of the role that American foundations played; it also argues that this case study opens important questions about the politics of domesticity, governmentality, and democracy in contemporary times. By studying the relationships between three American foundations that funded campaigns and six ENGOs that received this funding, I develop a more detailed picture of the influence that foundations and their capital investments played in the development of ENGO campaign strategies and subsequent Government policies. First, this case challenges claims that American foundations operate only indirectly, though domestic ENGOs, and questions the pervasive assumption of political sovereignty over domestic policy. I argue that this shift to non-domesticity highlights the connection between foundation philanthropy as a form of capital accumulation and distribution and the increasing neoliberalization of a globalizing economy. Second, I note that American foundation funding had a direct influence on the constitution of the relevant BC policy network: the prioritization of ENGO actors within it and the exclusion of ENGO actors from it. I argue that it is helpful to consider foundations as another source of policy decisions, an authority that develops its own policy priorities and constitutes policy networks out of (potential) grantees. Third, I argue that ENGOs encountered significant pressure to shape themselves according to the business-oriented operations models used by foundations in order to secure the resources necessary to continue as part of both the foundation and BC government policy networks. I suggest that this influence can be usefully understood as a form of governmentality: techniques for constituting subjectivies according to established or desired norms. Throughout these three lines of investigation, the relationship between foundations and the neoliberalization of environmental campaigns continually reappears and bears direct influence on the models of democracy that are promoted through these activities. The changing spaces, forms, and practices of politics that neoliberatization brings have implications for traditional understandings of democracy, which have been linked in historically-contingent ways to formal structures and processes defined by and confined within territorial state governments and to more informal practices that are invoked through claims about local, grassroots, and community-based self-government. While the policy decisions between 2001 and 2007 were widely acclaimed as a "made-in-BC" solution, the questions of authority, political space, subjectivity and democracy raised here suggest that this case is not nearly so clear. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Privileged Intersections: The Race, Class, and Gender Politics of Prussian BlueWithin the managed democracy Sheldon Wolin calls "inverted totalitarianism" (2008), right-wing extremism is on the rise today, partly in response to the challenges globalization poses for the economic security and cultural identity of western nation-states. Contemporary right-wing extremist organizations have adopted new tactics that reflect this changing political reality. A growing white power music scene plays a major role in contemporary efforts of the radical right to recruit teenagers by creating an international scene of youth rebellion. In this paper, I use an intersectional approach to analyze the music of Prussian Blue, the neo-nazi folk duo, Lamb and Lynx Gaede. I argue that their music exemplifies how the "traditional family ideal" (Hill Collins 1998) can function as a site of intersecting class, gender, and race privileges. Their songs, I claim, reveal how the contemporary white power movement uses and abuses the power of music - what Martin Luther King called its soul force - to recruit the next generation of white supremacists. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates variation in women and men's paths to parliament. We draw on cross-national survey data of national and European parliamentarians from 15 west European democracies to analyze the function of gender in parliamentarian pathways. Comparing across these 15 democracies, we examine whether the function of gender in parliamentarian pathways varies by political, social and personal factors in parliamentarians' environments. Focusing in particular on the variation in the nature of gender-egalitarian political, social and personal contexts, we determine whether women and men converge, diverge or demonstrate stable distances in their pathway attitudes under these varied contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes 'critical ethical reflection' as an alternative to the standard mode of normative democratic theory. It suggests that normative democratic theory has the potential to become self-undermining and ideological. Critical ethical reflection starts not from the question of ideal conditions for the expression of public autonomy, but from the non-ideal conditions within which a collective will must be formed. This organizes democratic theory around the question of praxis, and in turn suggests that collective freedom can be expressed in the negative, as the determinate negation of specific forms of unfreedom, rather than just in the positive, as discussion oriented towards agreement. From this standpoint, the reconstructive tasks of democratic theory are not to develop procedures of rational justification, but to articulate concrete situations of wrong and unfreedom. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the obstacles within democracies to address well-documented injuries inflicted in the production and consumption of pornography. Drawing upon substantive legal challenges in Canada and the U.S., it notes that democratic ideals do not recognize gender specific harms asymmetrically directed towards women in a male dominated society. Canadian legal obscenity discourse makes judicial reviewers account for harm and inequality by introducing a concept of dehumanization, countering the primacy of free speech and expression. While promising as a discourse, it has not yet delivered change. Both countries lack institutional mechanisms for claimants hurt in the production or and/or consumption pornography. These challenges, in the context of developments in democratic theory and international human rights law, suggest the need for remedies that recognize these harms. For democracy to deliver equality among citizens, social equality should be affirmed by strengthening the legal rights of those victimized. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sources of democratic consolidation and deepening in Latin America have been under debate since the region's return to democracy in the 1970s and 1980s . We still, however, do not understand why those democratic values that provide the foundation for an enduring and deep democracy take hold in some contexts and not in others. This paper seeks to offer insight into the potential and limits of civil society as a vehicle for deepening democratic values in newer democracies. I analyze a large cross-national survey of Latin American citizens in 18 countries to examine the question: Is civil society in Latin America nurturing democratic values or breeding authoritarian sentiments? A multidimensional analysis of civil society brings nuance to our understanding of the relationship between civil society and democratic values. Ultimately, my analysis suggests a need to identify how transnational connections and domestic contextual factors affect the degree to which civil society cultivates or undermines support for the democratic process . ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democracy deficit in the Islamic world has long been recognized as a major challenge in present-day global politics. This paper assesses Muslim democracy, in terms of both its possibility and its sustainability. We evaluate the level of democracy in forty-six majority Muslim countries and find that five have sustained some level of democracy since 2000. We then look at two in particular - Mali and Senegal - to see if there are lessons that that we might glean from these two majority Muslim democracies in terms of encouraging and promoting democracy in other Muslim nations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many environmental problems are generated on a small-scale and only become problematic at the aggregate level. Addressing such environmentally harmful activities is difficult since the capacity to enforce regulations must be adequate to the task of dispersed and diffuse harm. Arguing that environmental political theory has not sufficiently established the uniqueness of environmental politics, this paper presents a preliminary framework for mapping environmental problems in order to understand the limits of both centralized and deliberative democratic institutions. This framework suggests that social-behavioral norms are crucial for dealing with problems that cannot be addressed by these institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jury nullification, an important feature of US criminal law since before the founding, provides a democratic check on the application of law to particular cases, where "democratic" is understood in terms of a popular veto of the kind favored by Machiavelli in the Discourses on Livy. This check, while not guaranteed to lead to any particular political results, nevertheless is important for political and in particular democratic theorists because the American polity appears to decide about the Schmittian friend-enemy distinction on the basis of law: criminals are enemies, and the law-abiding citizenry are friends. Yet since the founding, the operation of jury nullification has been eroded, taking it off the table as a check on friend-enemy decisionism. This paper explores this historical development and analyzes it primarily in terms of the thought of Machiavelli and Schmitt, with particular attention to the consequences for democracy of centralizing the power to determine legal (and thus, in American terms, political) enemies in the hands of America's least democratically accountable actors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore some of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the relationship between space and freedom when viewed through the lens of gender relations. I argue that there is a basic, irresolvable tension within democracy's ideal of freedom as inclusive participation in public space. Rather than look to the radical destruction of boundedness, or to unbound, "undomesticated" spaces as sites of radical democratic freedom, I propose that spaces of freedom might be found in those very place where we draw our boundaries and borders; we might examine these "in-between" spaces, or points of contact, seeking to understand how private or apolotical spaces are turned into democratic, public ones through collective constestation and the construction of new meaning. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political freedoms and other institutional variables within the control of government affect the provision of environmental protection, or is environmental protection a function of variables mostly outside the immediate control of the government? Previous research investigating the relationship between environmental protection and democratic freedoms has overestimated the significance of their impact mostly due to model specification bias. This paper evaluates the ability of the state to provide substantive environmental protection given its institutional constraints and external pressures. When seen in aggregate, environmental protection is a function of per capita income, the level of technology present in a nation, and the level of involvement of international environmental organizations. These findings provide qualified support for the I=PAT model of understanding environmental impact. Because these variables are mostly outside the control of the state, the state is limited in how it can provide environmental protection across a broad range of media and regulatory contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic politics necessarily involves the experience of loss on the part of its citizens. The degree and kind of such loss varies from a loss of private time or money in the interest of public service, to a loss of health or even life in the protection of one's state. Contemporary ethical and religious pluralism exacerbates this question by extending the realm in which this loss occurs from the material into the ideational. This paper begins with a discussion of the different ways in which political theory has traditionally dealt with questions of loss. I describe two basic ways in which this has been done: first, through a combination of appeal to some other (presumably higher) value, coupled with an appeal to a particular understanding of identity; and second, by interpreting loss within an economic context as a cost which can be compensated. I present a clarification of these approaches to loss with examples drawn from both traditional political theory literature (e.g. Plato and Rousseau), as well as contemporary political events. I then present a critique showing how each of these approaches fall short when it comes to understanding and addressing loss in the contemporary democratic context. In response to these shortcomings I suggest an examination of the concept of sacrifice as an alternative way to deal with questions of loss. Finally, a tentative research design for such an investigation is then proposed which includes analyses of different theories of sacrifice from a variety of thinkers including Danielle Allen, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Jacques Derrida, and Soren Kierkegaard. Although each of these authors presents differing understandings of this concept, each also provides theoretical tools that help respond to the shortcomings of the traditional approaches to loss. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American environmental legislation cannot be fully explained under traditional interest-group theory, which emphasizes the success of well-financed, organized interests. One alternate explanation holds that the American public accepts a new environmental ethos that is protective of the natural world and human health. In analyzing over five hundred environmental ballot questions, this paper establishes the emergence and persistence of a new environmental ethos as well as a dynamic voting pattern in favor of such environmental protections. As manifest in state-level environmental ballot questions, this ethos emerges in the early 1960s and grows in the subsequent forty years. Such environmental questions appear in higher numbers throughout time, address a wide-range of environmental problems, appear in a variety of states and regions, receive substantial funding, and with few exception are not the simple result of larger economic or political forces. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This paper looks at the concept of green civic republicanism and proceeds to discuss four key elements of republican thought - concern for the common good, virtue, participation, and the aesthetic imagination of community - and how they may be read with ecological considerations in mind. Accordingly, green civic republicanism can provide critical resources to help us picture one way in which ecological communities may be possible. It then examines an Arendtian contribution to this conversation by first outlining her theory of political action and shows how it allows us to critique green republicanism. I argue that the Arendtian account of political freedom is wise counsel to a green civic republican version of ecological responsibility because she moves it in the direction of democratic freedom. People are more willing to accept the tectonic social shifts required by the move to ecological responsibility - gentler lifestyles, more benign technologies, a re-thinking of economic development - if decisions are made from a condition of freedom they help to manifest. However, tough questions remain about the value of Arendtian and republican distinctions between "public" and "private" from a green point of view, as well as whether the republican approach and its Arendtian variant can adequately to cope with the global nature of many ecological problems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I seek to test a possible explanation for the contradiction between those scholars who contend that the U.S. is a model democracy and those who have contended that democracy has been in decline in the U.S. for many decades. The former may be focusing on democracy as an end, while the latter may be focusing on democracy as a means. Thus, election turnout may decline and major civic organizations may have lost members, but new or rarely used mechanisms may have taken their place. By examining the use of alternative means in the city of Claremont, California, over a two-month period of intense political activity in early 2005, the posited explanation was not substantiated. Alternative means served as means for communicating the views of a small group of individuals and misinformation. Thus, the alternative explanation was not confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, democracy has proven unable, or unwilling, to deliver political equality in the face of seemingly inevitable economic inequality. This paper synthesizes the responses to Karl Marx by thinkers Hannah Arendt, Sheldon Wolin, and Benjamin Barber, including Arendt's notions of the political as action and cyclical revolution, Wolin's dualistic distinction between politics and the political, and Barber's call for a global confederacy of civil societies. From these ideas I build a conception of democracy that might address political inequality without attempting to solve economic inequality first. The challenge remains to find a way to motivate the necessary levels of participation by the demos, and I suggest that aligning political participation to the same interests that make global capitalism so effective might also prove helpful in motivating greater civic participation. This claim would be stronger were the connection between political and economic inequality empirically demonstrated,and this recognition leads me to call for more study in that area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A serious criticism of deliberative democracy is that its practical focus is minimal. Theorists seem unconcerned about the practical applications of deliberative democracy and have restricted their concern to the normative value of deliberative democracy, leaving the practical realm out of their focus of inquiry. Another major drawback of scholarship in this area has been the limited focus of deliberative democracy on Western societies. Most theorists accept foundational assumptions that would seem to limit the unstudied applicability of their theories to societies that are relatively wealthy, homogeneous, well-educated, and culturally Western. This paper examines the practical applications of deliberative democracy by investigating a community conservation experiment in rural India. This case tests the feasibility of deliberative democracy in a small village community in a developing country-- a poor, semi-literate, tribal community that has been attempting to actualize the norms of environmental democracy. We ask whether wealth and socioeconomic and political equality are indeed prerequisites (necessary but not sufficient conditions) for deliberative democracy to function effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing data from the National Election Study Cumulative File, this paper finds that while the 6 item NES scale is an adequate measure of egalitarianism, it is not the only one. Acceptably fitting structural equations models also exist specifically for equal rights and two domain specific types of egalitarianism, economic and racial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the merits of Fiji's adoption of alternative voting in 1997. As such, it is part of a larger debate regarding the most appropriate electoral forms for deeply divided societies (Reynolds and Reilly 1999). Key players in this debate include Arend Lijphart (2002, 1991, 1977), a consistent advocate of proportional representation (PR) and consociational power sharing, and Donald Horowitz (2002, 1993, 1991, 1985), a proponent of alternative voting. This essay reviews the context for the adoption of AV in Fiji, and discusses the 1999 elections, the Speight coup, and its aftermath. It examines the criticisms advanced against AV by Jon Fraenkel (2001, 2000), who argues AV should be replaced, as well as arguments for AV advanced by Brij Lal (2002) and Ben Reilly (2001). The paper argues the weight of evidence does not support a blanket condemnation of AV. Changes in the way AV has been implemented are in order, but it would be unwise to replace AV before it has a chance to operate over a number of election cycles. Although the disproportional outcome of the 1999 elections may have been a destabilizing factor in the Speight coup of 2000, this action and the Rabuka coups before it are a reflection of deeper problems in Fijian politics. Electoral rules should not be changed lightly (Taagepera 2002). Over time and with modifications, political learning on the part of voters and politicians may enable AV to produce more proportionate outcomes, and it may very well lead to greater inter-ethnic cooperation. No set of electoral rules will work in Fiji unless efforts are made to address the real obstacles to democracy -- a lack of commitment to the rule of law and constitutionalism (Lawson 1996, 1991), conflicts over land, and the imbalance of power between communities (Premdas 1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The many institutional mechanisms for facilitating citizen participation in governmental decisionmaking all face the challenge of reconciling the often conflicting demands of procedural fairness, popular acceptance and involvement, and substantive rationality and effectiveness. One way of addressing this challenge is to establish participatory mechanisms, such as citizen advisory panels, that involve citizens in cooperative deliberation informed by expert advice. This paper examines four types of citizen panels (consensus conferences, planning cells, citizen juries, and deliberative polls) with the aim of understanding how they might best fit into the conceptual and institutional framework of representative democracy. I examine several ways of conceptualizing the representative status of citizen panels, focusing on the implications of different methods of selecting participants. I argue that representation on citizen panels is best conceived not in terms of the representation of individual or group interests, but of social and cultural perspectives. I also suggest that representation on citizen panels ought to be evaluated not in comparison to that of other political institutions, as it often has been, but in terms of its contribution to what I will call a representative field, which includes a wide range of governmental and non-governmental institutions. Representatives can neither filter nor transmit an autonomous public will, because representative institutions help constitute citizens as publics in the first place. As a normative standard, representative democracy thus applies to the entire political system and the ways that its elements interact, not to any single element in isolation from the others. When understood as advisory rather than decisionmaking bodies, citizen panels can make a limited but beneficial contribution to the representative fields of contemporary democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is three-fold: First, to assess the claim that urban democratic institutions are ?corroding? by examining the single case of Claremont, a small California city; second, to very briefly consider the generality of Claremont?s experience; and, third, to briefly and critically examine some of the explanations posited for the experiences described. We find that the ?corrosion? of democratic institutions exists, as many scholars have suggested. At the same time, though, as the ?corrosion? takes place, repair work is being done. The deteriorating trend may obscure the repair process?a process that may foreshadow a slowing of the decline and even the birth of new mechanisms for public control of the city. Claremont?s experiences appear to be replicated in other small cities, though the data presented is too limited to adequately confirm the generality of our findings. Finally, we will suggest that advocates of the ?decline of democracy? thesis tend to define democracy in terms of ?means,? rather than ?ends.? The old institutions that served as means may be ?corroding,? but new mechanisms may be arising. There is much greater ambiguity about the extent of decline when democracy is defined as an end, i.e., as a government reasonably responsive to the wishes of the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on Chilean democracy since the 1990 transition has been disjointed. Authors have assigned numerous "labels" to characterize Chilean democracy, which, compounded with the diverse features of the regime on which scholars have focused, makes for a very confused literature. Due to a lack of the same vocabulary and a shared analytic framework, the various characterizations in the 1990s of the Chilean regime failed to provide a coherent discussion of how to think about the Chilean transition and its post-transition regime. In this paper I look beyond the many labels for the regime to gain a better understanding of Chile not only in the context of various scholars' individual frameworks, but also from within the Chilean democracy literature as a whole. Behind the numerous labels lies a fascinating, ongoing discussion of Chilean democracy. Progress toward appropriately conceptualizing the regime requires that we shape our frameworks and analyses in terms of what is already available in the comparative and Chile-focused democratization literatures, and that we abstain from creating more labels. I also propose that scholars limit themselves to characterizing the regime as they see it at the time, rather than either employing the democratic label prematurely or withholding it based on the belief that a label itself can affect a regime's chances for a higher quality democracy in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The particular political and economic context of Latin America today has made it very difficult for leftist political organizations to successfully mobilize and push their agendas. The chilling effect of severe repression under authoritarian regimes along with the pressure for governments to maintain neoliberal economic policies has significantly constrained both the tactics and policy positions of leftist organizations. This preliminary paper seeks to describe the types of leftist mobilization that has developed since the transition to democracy and suggest possible explanations for these variations. I examine the case of Chile to provide an empirical example of the proposed theoretical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic theorists are debating the degree to which the "congruence" of associational institutions with national democratic institutions can and should act as a support (or "transmission belt," in Nancy Rosenblum's words) for national democracy, by training and socializing citizens in democratic character. After considering these theories and previous research, the paper examines the relationships between specific organizational institutions (elections, formal membership, parliamentary procedure, and so on) on members' attitudes of generalized trust, internal and external efficacy and regime support and behavioral participation through voter turnout and campaign engagement. The 1996 National Election Study affords a unique opportunity to combine a deep field of political variables with the characteristics of a set of voluntary associations mentioned by respondents. Institutional data on authority structures in fifty-nine large associations are imputed to NES respondents who mentioned them in new data from the NES 1996 Auxiliary File on Group Memberships. Factor-analytic measurement models provide latent constructs of organizational democracy, membership constitutionality and organizational success at the associational level and the outcome variables at the respondent level. Findings are generally weak or null; there is ample institutional variation among the large associations, but relatively little evidence of congruence effects, with the exception of some tenuous findings of congruence for generalized trust and internal efficacy and a hint of a relationship for external efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the features, functions, and implications of the ballot initiative as a policymaking institution by investigating the electoral success of the medical marijuana movement of the 1990s. Drawing on case studies of initiative campaigns in California and Maine, interviews with key actors, and document analysis, I explore how medical marijuana advocates successfully negotiated the demands of the initiative process and why opponents' attempts to defeat medical marijuana measures failed. By approaching the institutions of direct democracy from the perspective of ballot petitioners, I demonstrate how the features of the initiative process, including the lack of voter cues typical in candidate campaigns, the public nature of initiative battles, and the absence of compromise and amendability, benefit interests with particular skills and resources. While traditional policymaking institutions emphasize expertise, coalition-building, and deliberation that takes place among an elite audience, initiative policymaking places tremendous importance on organization, fundraising, advertising, and in particular framing and public marketing of a policy idea. In the case of medical marijuana, the initiative process allowed supporters to use their political skills and resources to expand the scope of conflict beyond what they saw as fainthearted legislators and powerful opponent law enforcement organizations in order to harness the public's support for medical marijuana as a policymaking resource. Contrary to the claims of many direct democracy opponents, I argue that money and organization are not responsible for manufacturing support for medical marijuana, but rather amplified the effects of existing grassroots and public support. Finally, the paper shows that the initiative process and the implementation of successful initiatives can allow different, even contradictory policy images and approaches to flourish at the state and federal levels. Venue-shopping on the part of... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]