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This paper begins with the suggestion that Protestant theological interpretation and religious practice are important, although thoroughly under-analyzed, factors in the emergence and structure of early political populist movements in Prairie Canada. Specifically, Protestant Christian theology originating in the United States, which is so often mentioned as a factor in the evolution of that country's democratic theory and practice, has also significantly influenced the development of a general, "pre-ideological" populist political spirit that exists in the Canadian Prairies. This paper provides a working definition of populism, with specific focus on its anti-establishment and anti-elite characteristics, before reviewing relevant literature related to religious influence on populist political sentiment in both the United States and Canada. This paper concludes with the suggestion that, although it is reasonable to expect a similar connection in Prairie Canada as one finds in America between religion and populism, further research is required to establish an empirical link. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explore the potentially profound political implications of new research into the neuroarchitecture of the brain, especially the role of the mirror neuron system (MNS) which yields compelling evidence that humans are hard-wired for empathy. The same affective brain circuits are automatically mobilized upon feeling one's one pain and observing the pain of others. However, if morality is rooted in biology, in the raw material or building blocks for the evolution of its expression, how do we explain the disjunction between.x000d.its presence and a massive societal empathy deficit? Why hasn't this moral intuition produced a more ameliorating effect? I seek to examine the role of political culture, especially the cultural narrative of hyper-individualism as it interacts with this biological predisposition toward pro-social behavior. The paper draws upon recent work in biology, neuroscience, primatology, cultural studies, political science, psychology and sociology. In an attempt to avoid the dangers of neuroscientific reductionism, I'm comfortable with what William Connolly describes as "...politics through which cultural life mixes into the composition of body/brain process. And vice versa." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which Democrats and Republicans disagree over policy in the U.S. Congress. No one disputes that the parties are increasingly voting differently from one another, but this papers calls into question the popular conception that the parties’ policy stances are also becoming more divergent. An examination of cosponsorship reveals that bills, prior to being placed in the meat grinder of the legislative process, are as bipartisan now as they have always been. Furthermore, I present evidence that shows that it is the actual procedural machinations on the floor of both the House and the Senate that have driven the parties apart. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact on Congress of many types of collective action-demonstrations, lobbying, speeches, etc.-for 60 policy proposals on the congressional agenda 1989-90. For well over 30 years, researchers have systematically collected data on political activities from newspaper articles and estimated their impact on policy change. Most often the data have been on protest and its impact has been gauged for a single issue. This paper advances this research tradition in four ways. It (1) analyzes congressional action on a stratified random sample of 60 policy proposals; (2) uses data on all forms of political activity aimed at influencing congressional action on those proposals, as described in the press; (3) searches many publications in order to find data on as much political activity as possible; and (4) tests hypotheses about how much collective action there is likely to be, and about which types are especially likely to have an impact. There proves to be very little collective action; most of it is associated with a small number of proposals, while most proposals evoke little or none; the lack of collective action limits its impact. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks how state attributes affect the degree to which two states' interests converge as a result of interaction within intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). My previous research provides evidence that more interaction within IGOs is associated with greater interest convergence over time. However, not all pairs of states are expected to experience the same degree of convergence. In this paper, I propose that different types of similarity between two states can make state agents predisposed to the acceptance of new ideas from one another and thus enhance the degree to which intra-IGO interaction may lead to state interest convergence. Dyadic attributes hypothesized to condition the effects of interaction on interest convergence include regime type similarity and common culture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks and offers an answer to the question: Could it be worth thinking about Kant on same-sex marriage? Admittedly, with his reputation for sexual repressiveness, Kant may seem like an odd choice of philosophers if one wants to argue in favor of same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, in this paper, I make just such an argument by first considering the moral problem that Kant sees in sexual desire and his argument that marriage offers the solution to that problem. Then, I make an argument for same-sex marriage rights by building upon Kantian notions of non-ideal conditions and permissive laws, which improve upon those conditions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks how researchers can better measure and operationalize social norms as variables in theories of the policy process. As standards of appropriate behavior for a given identity, norms are a distinctive and powerful type of idea relevant to many public policy contexts, but have received relatively little attention among policy theorists. This omission may be partly due to methodological difficulties. Measuring the presence of norms in a given political setting through surveys or interviews can be challenging given the "taken for granted" nature of many norm-based beliefs (Elster 2007). Documenting the causal relationship between a norm and a particular policy choice can be even more challenging (Campbell 2004; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Yee 1996). This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for studying the political influence of norms, including interviews, surveys, experiments, content analysis, and QCA. The paper pays close attention to the challenge of distinguishing norm-driven behavior from behavior driven by self-interest, as well as the relationship between normative ideas and normative rhetoric (Finlayson 2004; Raymond and Olive 2009). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the evolution of five neoliberal social and economic policies reformed under the Chilean military dictatorshipâ€"the value-added tax, the health care system, labor code, educational sector, and pension systemâ€"and argues that the very institutional features that the military government designed to ensure long-run stability have actually facilitated dramatic transformation after the return to democracy in the value-added tax, health care, and pension systems. In the education system and labor code, it was the inability of reformers to exploit authoritarian institutional features that stymied equity-oriented changes under democracy. The findings of this paper question received notions regarding the persistence of Pinochet’s institutions of social policy provision, and more broadly, the logic of institutional “lock-in” and entrenchment effects in sociological and political analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that traditional western political theory, because of its exclusive reliance on the western canon, is by definition a limited enterprise. A comparative perspective allows us to understand the nature and basis of a civilizational criterion against which the degree of civility and humanness of the Other is measured by different civilizations. Theoretical claims made in the paper are supported by references to several encounters between the west and its others with a special focus on European encounter with the New World. The absence of an Europe-like system of ideas among the Amerindians provides for a unique opportunity to see the role played by canonicity in the construction of Other and a re-evaluation of Self. The paper contributes to the broader argument in favor of comparative political theory as a new subfield of political theory in the west on the one hand, and serves as a critique of prevalent modes of political theorizing in the west on the other. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Malaysia-Indonesia relations have become increasingly problematic and difficult to manage in a more liberal post-Mahathir era. Whilst government-to-government relations between the two countries have been testy or at times even tumultuous over the past five decades or so, it is the recent deterioration in people-to-people relations, meaning the perceptions and attitudes that each nations' citizens have of each other, which is now a major cause of concern and the contention of this paper. Malaysia under new leadership, is very likely to be increasingly inward-looking, with Najib Razak seeking to gain legitimacy against the growing influence of the opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, and hence bilateral relations with Indonesia will eventually take a back seat. In effect, Malaysia's relationship with its most important ASEAN neighbour is facing significant challenges with growing domestic problems in both countries exacerbated by the current global economic uncertainties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the widespread fear and reaction of the laicist segment of the Turkish society against the revival of certain Islamic sociocultural elements in the country. On and off, the issue has frequently been the top political agenda in Turkey since the 1950s. One stream in the literature suggests that the conflict is due to a center-periphery cleavage. Another line of thinking argues that this is by nature a fundamental conflict, because Islamic values are antithetical to Western ones. Alternatively, this paper explains this conflict with out-group and cognitive biases involved in the ways the two groups generate meaning and knowledge about themselves and one another by their experiences. This paper examines this mutually-constitutive process by looking at five major experiences in near history that correspond to five major identity-constituting steps. Findings indicate that, Islamic resurgence is a more complex process with numerous non-religious dimensions that involve change while in interaction with the Other. Yet hostile intergroup interaction involves high levels of out-group bias, and in the case of the ongoing fear of Islamic resurgence, this translates into a vilifying otherization process, which leads to an exaggerated perception of reality, eventually causing laicists to interpret all demands of free religious practice and expression as fundamentalism, if not concessions to a theocracy in the making. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of individuals' perceptions of social inequality on their political engagement in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Using new survey data in 13 CEE countries, the preliminary findings suggest that individuals who see excessive amounts of social inequality exhibit lower levels of social activity including opportunities to build social capital and a deeper community life (including perceptions of their own political efficacy) than those who do not. However, this high perceptions group also displays a consistent and distinct pattern of political engagement in the form of interest, knowledge, and political participation. More interestingly, in contrast to the overall corrosive effect of income inequality on political engagement, especially for lower income individuals, the mixed effect of social inequality only weakly and sporadically mediated by individuals' income levels despite initial evidence that income moderates perceptions of social inequality. Thus, overall, we find evidence that social inequality is not only theoretically separate from income inequality but also exerts an independent influence on individuals' engagement with democratic politics in post-communist states.This paper analyzes the effects of individuals' perceptions of social inequality on their political engagement in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Using new survey data in 13 CEE countries, the preliminary findings suggest that individuals who see excessive amounts of social inequality exhibit lower levels of social activity including opportunities to build social capital and a deeper community life (including perceptions of their own political efficacy) than those who do not. However, this high perceptions group also displays a consistent and distinct pattern of political engagement in the form of interest, knowledge, and political participation. More interestingly, in contrast to the overall corrosive effect of income inequality on political engagement, especially for lower income individuals, the mixed effect of social inequality only weakly and sporadically mediated by individuals' income levels despite initial evidence that income moderates perceptions of social inequality. Thus, overall, we find evidence that social inequality is not only theoretically separate from income inequality but also exerts an independent influence on individuals' engagement with democratic politics in post-communist states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the CBS reality television series Survivor: Gabon to consider how its themes perpetuate colonial legacies. Of particular interest is how the current season claims to occur in earth's last Eden. Such a claim relates to previous Western colonial missions, both in its Christian overtones and characterization of Africa as an untamed wilderness. The landscape is characterized as a danger in its juxtaposition with the safe surroundings of the US and as a pure, untouched wilderness in which contestants aim to triumph over their fellow "tribe" members. In addition, the show's portrayal of Gabon as undeveloped is reinforced by the depiction of Gabonese citizens as primitive. The paper will ultimately argue that the themes reminiscent of 19th Century colonialism create an overarching justification for a Western presence in Gabon, as the show draws a Social Darwinist moral promoting American superiority and individual competition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how natural disasters impact social capital, and why. The June 2008 Flood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which crested at a record five feet over the 500-year flood level, provides a dynamic case study from which I analyze the under-explored intersection between natural disasters and social capital. Using a highly stratified and differentiated collective version of social capital, which I arrive at by intersecting the theories of Bourdieu and Putnam related to the structural and cultural aspects of social capital, this paper, through qualitative interviews with flood victims and informants in Cedar Rapids, shows that: a resident's perception of social capital after a natural disaster is shaped by their vulnerabilities and buoyancies, which vary substantially and need to be understood contextually with scrutiny for detail and nuance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses how our conceptions of community and citizenship should be transfigured on account of the theoretical and ethical concerns revealed by statelessness. Taking my point of departure from the work of Arendt, I show how the phenomena of statelessness reveals tensions in our conceptions of political membership and human rights, while highlighting the dilemmas that any approach must address. The paper then shifts from a diagnostic to a prescriptive focus, turning to the Habermasian notion of discourse ethics as a means to theorize the issues raised by statelessness and the idea of a claim to community. While discourse ethics offers a useful framework, I argue that we need a supplementary orientation toward openness, given that statelessness has at its core the problem of inclusion. In addressing this more fundamental question of inclusion, I turn to contemporary theorists of agonistic democracy whose focus on the contestability of terms and the fundamentally unsettled nature of the political provide resources for conceptualizing more open notions of political membership. I conclude by showing how discourse ethics and agnostic theory can be used to imagine communities that eschew the exclusions that create statelessness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how European level deliberations affect individual opinions, and how this translates into domestic public policies. It looks at deliberation as a way to investigate non-coercive modes of governance in the European Union, in particular the Open Method of Coordination and uses the Bologna Process, designed to create a European Higher Education Area, as an example. This paper suggests a theoretical framework inspired by political philosophy to understand the impact of deliberation on individual attitudes and policies. It also uses multiple lenses of analyses, relying on participants' surveys, a case study of deliberations leading to the Sorbonne declaration of 25 May 1998 and an analysis of domestic implementation to understand how deliberation affects many levels of policy-making. Results show that individuals change opinions in Bologna Process deliberations toward a more economically liberal perspective. This change transfers into domestic reforms because European and domestic deliberations are connected: the arguments learnt in European deliberations are used in domestic deliberations. But the extent of change depends on the level of entrenchment of the issue and personal interests. Those results lead to inferences on the way to achieve consequential deliberative decision-making in the Open Method of Coordination in conclusion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the overall role of the U.S. Foreign Policy's consequences for democratization in Latin America, in an era when Latin America has democratically elected left presidencies, and when new-born democracies (in most cases at least) are supposed to become consolidated. After a historical overview of the U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America during the 20th century; showing that doubts consistently could be raised on the issue of U.S. democratic assistance and Latin America; the paper moves into three main parts. In the first part cases when the United States promoted democratic development and liberal democracy with capitalism is explored. In the second, cases when the United States defeated democratic left-wing rule with strong anti-capitalism is explored. Finally, the third part deals with the question that this paper conclusively attempts to address - what implications the U.S. historical democratic record toward Latin America might have for democratic development and democratic setbacks when the region once more is facing the reality of democratically elected left presidents? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze levels of corruption under different types of party list proprotional representation (PR) in a cross-national setting. Employing more robust statistical methods and Monte Carlo simulations, it demonstrates that Chang and Golden's (2007) hypothesis concerning the positive association of open-list PR with political corruption after controlling for district magnitude is not robust to an extended dataset including the mixed-member systems. Despite weak statistical evidence in the pooled dataset, this paper shows that closed-list PR combined with plurality/LR-Hare formula can induce more corrupt behavior in presidential systems with weak party organizations, such as South Korea and Ukraine. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a 'feminist institutionalist' approach to explore and understand the gendered dynamics of change and innovation in the institutions of candidate selection and recruitment in the United Kingdom. The focus of the paper is on multiple inter-connected 'paths' of institutional reform in the British Labour Party: situating the specific case of institutional innovation and (re)design of the institutions of political recruitment in post-devolution Scotland within a background of party reform processes at the UK level. Drawing on the findings of a micro-level case study of a Scottish constituency selection contest, the paper argues that the 'success' of institutional reform in the Labour Party is a complex and contingent question. Drawing on the insights of both feminist and new institutional theory, the paper attempts to theorize these institutional interconnections, illustrating the difficulties of reforming and redesigning the institutions of selection and recruitment in a multi-level party system. The paper concludes by offering some theoretical suggestions as to the complex and gendered dynamics of institutional innovation, design, continuity, and change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question: What human capital and structural aspects of social capital determine multifaceted collaboration among scientists in six fields of science and engineering? Borrowing literature from social network and S&T human capital, this paper develops a multi level model of multifaceted collaboration and presents a set of testable hypotheses. Then using data from a national survey of men and women faculty in six fields, we analyze the multi level data: relationship and ego level with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) technique to predict multifaceted collaboration. HLM findings indicate that structural factors of social network are positively associated with multifaceted collaboration. When the ego and alter are both female faculty, the collaboration is less likely to multifaceted. Findings also indicate that S&T human capital factors such as affiliation to labs, interdisciplinary publications, and interaction with the university's technology transfer office are positively associated with the likelihood of multifaceted collaboration. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for research and science policy ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the organization of Chinese nationalist movements in 2008. I focus on online facilitation of offline activism for Chinese nationalists. The paper articulates the framing, organizing, financing, recruiting as well as reconfirming effect of cyberspace on social movement. First, the Internet plays a remarkable role in mobilizing collective action across boarders. The BBS forums broadcasts protest appeals and boycotting actions, provides follow-ups and feedbacks, and financially supports upcoming protests. Second, Cyberspace has recruiting effect among the politically inactive population, having engaged a large number of female Chinese. Finally, high technology diffuses nationalist emotions at a global base. The imagined “patriotic community” reconsolidates the nationalist identity in the overseas Chinese community. The data was collected through web-based surveys and content analysis of postings. The research enriches academic understanding of how virtual communities transform public opinion into a new form of globalized cultural trend for a cross-sectional ethnic community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the sixth in a series of papers based on a project examining the interplay of party, interest groups and money and their influence on elections and health care policy in the state of Iowa. This particular paper will focus on the 2008 state legislative elections. It will examine the spending patterns of the Iowa Democratic and Republican Party legislative caucuses, as well as the six groups I have been following (The Iowa Federation of Labor, The Iowa Federation of Independent Businesses, The Iowa Medical Society, The Iowa Health Care Association, The Iowa Hospital Association, and Wellmark, Iowa's Blue Cross/Blue Shield Provider). Data will come from both campaign finance reports filed with the state and from interviews with legislative leaders, with a particular focus on the role of health care issues in the election and how the election results might impact the future of legislation in this area in the state. The research design for the project, which began with the 2004 state legislative elections, has this election as the endpoint of data collection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests the assumption in recent democratization literature that economic inequality declines after democratization. Existing research fail to address theoretical and methodological problems. The theoretical problem is the similar treatment of different levels of democracy. There is no reason to believe that the relationship between democratization and inequality is linear. This paper tests the relationship between different levels of democratization and inequality. It also addresses two methodological problems in previous studies: unobserved heterogeneity and missing data. By relying on cross sectional regressions, earlier studies produce biased results. I construct a panel analysis using and updated dataset and employ a fixed-effects model. Existing research employs list-wise deletion to deal with missing data. I use multiple imputations to eliminate bias and get more tractability from the data available. The finding of this paper is that the assumption in the democratization literature that upon transition to democracy the majority will benefit from greater income equality does not hold. This paper finds a non-monotonic relationship: low levels of democracy are associated with higher levels of income inequality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Paper explains why the TRIPs Agreement was successfully concluded and why antitrust negotiations failed in the WTO. By identifying the key variables that distinguish the two areas of cooperation, this Paper challenges the argument that the TRIPs Agreement would offer an instructive precedent for antitrust negotiations in the WTO. Building on these two case studies, the Article further seeks to lay groundwork for a more general theory explaining when the WTO is able to foster cooperation among states and when agreements within the WTO are likely to be unsuccessful. The theory suggests that the likelihood of the WTO agreement is positively correlated with the coherence of the great powers support as well as with the salience of interest group support. Similarly, the WTO agreement is expected to positively correlate with the degree of distributional conflict among states and the likelihood of defection, as states seek to exploit the comparative institutional advantages of the WTO. Finally, a positive correlation is expected to exist with the WTO agreements and the extent of net benefits available from those agreements as well as with the lack of other institutional alternatives available for states pursuing cooperation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are currently more than two million prisoners that are incarcerated within America’s prison system, as opposed to 744,000 in 1985 (Myser, 2007). America has the world’s largest incarceration rate of about 1 in 143, as compared to other nations in Europe with rates of 1 in every 1,000 people are incarcerated. Furthermore, it cost about $40 billion a year to maintain the nation’s prison system (Travis, 2005). Recidivism is a major factor contributing to these extraordinary incarceration rates. Of the 600,000 prisoners released from prison each year, over two-thirds of that population will return to prison within the first three years of their release (Harding & Morenoff, 2008; Myser, 2007).Transitional programs seek to effectively reintegrate newly released prisoners into their communities by providing them with jobs, housing, education, and life skills. This paper aims to examine and compare the factors influencing the effectiveness of such programs. Specifically, this paper will offer case analyses of two transitional programs , Delancey Street and the Gemeinschaft Program, and will offer a cross-analysis of the costs and benefits of programs like these. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper compares the similarities between the elections of 2008 and 1932, especially because each election was during an economic crisis. In the paper, I compare the various differences and the several common points between these two ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subordinate position of women in Rousseau has been the subject of many feminist critiques, but most have seen this subordination as the byproduct of Rousseau’s deficient view of nature and natural differences. In contrast, this paper argues that Rousseau’s confinement of women in the family serves a larger political goal; namely, forging the bonds between male citizens necessary for a healthy political community. Previous works on Rousseau and gender have overlooked his concern with the deleterious effects that sexual competition can have on a political community. This paper rectifies this omission by demonstrating the central role that sexual competition holds in Rousseau’s political thought. Competition among men for the affection of a woman, inhibits the development of friendship among men, fuels the desire for esteem, and, in the extreme, may lead to violence and bloodshed. If a stable political community is to be established, sexual competition and sexual passions need to be regulated and controlled. This paper argues that Rousseau proposes to do this by giving women a new education: one that artificially makes women more dependent than men, emphasizes modesty, and removes them from the attentions of men. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subfield of American Political Development has concerned itself with explaining how the United States moved from being the "state of courts and parties" to the form associated with the modern state. However in the course of examining this shift little attention has been paid to one of the most overt developments of state capacity in America - the creation in the first half of the Twentieth century of a state police force in every state bar Hawaii. This rapid and intense creation of a police capability by the states has been largely overlooked by the subfield, with only one serious attempt to provide an explanation for this trend in terms of American political development, which itself predates much recent APD literature. This paper seeks to review the creation of one force, New York, with the intention of showing that state police development can offer scholars an important site for assessing the manner in which state capacity grows. Drawing on the work of Carpenter, the paper argues that in some instances institutional development can be most effectively explained not in terms of the demonstrated capacity of a bureaucracy itself, but paradoxically as a consequence of another bureaucracy's demonstration of capacity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of women in politics is a subject of constant discussion and research, with a focus on the progress women have made as elected officials. While it is important to look at how women have advanced in elected office, it is also necessary to study how women operate within the legislative bureaucracy. Congress is in the business of passing legislation to solve a myriad of issues, and congressional staff play a key role in assisting legislators to acquire the necessary information and resources to make appropriate decisions. This paper uses empirical data and qualitative interviews to offer an analysis of legislative staff in the U.S. House of Representatives from a gender perspective. First, the paper examines staff legislative portfolios â€" are women assigned “women’s issues,” such as abortion, health care, and education, while men are assigned more traditionally masculine issues, such as defense and finance? Second, it investigates whether traditional gender stereotypes impact work-delegation practices among congressional staff. Finally, it explores potential implications of staff gender differences on how Congress functions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of democracy around the world raises important theoretical questions. What affects the process of democratization? Some countries have started this process from similar experiences. They have broken with the authoritarian regime at the same time, and implemented the same type of reforms, but still, some are more successful than others. The answer to this question will allow officials to take better measures and implement better reforms to speed up the process of democratic consolidation. This paper investigates if corruption has a negative effect on the process of democratization. Corruption can slow down the process of democratic consolidation by creating economic inefficiencies, increasing income inequality, and perpetuating obstacles to participation and competition, thus diminishing the legitimacy of the political regime by negatively affecting people’s trust. Using a two stage least squared regression model, this paper controls for endogeneity in the relationship between corruption and democracy by using the level of tariffs in one country as an instrumental variable for corruption. The results are significant supporting the hypothesis that corruption negatively affects the level of democracy in one country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the internet in political campaigns has certainly received a great deal of attention in the 2008 presidential election. However, there is little work demonstrating whether the increased use of the internet as an information gathering tool has served to alter the way that potential voters develop political attitudes. Specifically, this paper attempts to evaluate those younger voters that are attempting to use the internet to find political information via blogs, online news outlets, or even social networking sites. The paper uses the 2006 National Election Studies dataset in order to determine whether younger voters that relied more heavily on the internet were more likely to develop a negative opinion of President George W. Bush than those who used more conventional forms of media (such as television, radio, or print news). The findings demonstrate that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between the amount of internet usage and approval of President Bush for individuals under the age of 31. For individuals over the age of 31 there is no statistically significant relationship. Additionally, the other forms of media usage are not correlated with attitudes toward President Bush regardless of age. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of domestic economic activity as a motivator toward state conflict has long assumed a secondary position to the more tangible instruments of state power. Domestic manipulations of the money supply have rarely been discussed in conjunction with interstate behavior. The purpose of this paper is to bridge the gap between inflation and aggression. First, this paper will lay the theoretical framework connecting changes in the money supply to a state’s propensity to initiate hostility. Second will follow a discussion of the mechanisms by which a state engages in this behavior. Finally, data collected from a thirty year period in the twentieth century will be tested to determine the explanatory power of inflation on the likelihood of conflict initiation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of the right in European politics have started to cast more doubt upon the European Union (EU) enlargement, especially one involves Turkey. The negotiations which started in 2005 are progressing at snail’s pace. Frustrated with the recalcitrance of the major EU powers, the Turkish masses seem to be growing increasingly cold to EU membership. .x000d..x000d.The Turkish population is becoming split over the issue of Turkish membership in the EU. This paper, using the results of a survey of nationally representative sample of Turkish voters before the 2007 legislative elections in Turkey, analyzes who among the Turkish voters support EU membership of Turkey and who oppose it, and why? This paper also addresses whether EU membership transcends party politics and constitutes a “state project” supported across partisan lines? The paper ends with examining if Turkey and the EU fall apart and decide to trek different routes what lies ahead for the interface of Turkey and EU member countries in NATO, and Council of Europe, and on issues of energy, security, immigration and beyond? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between oil and international conflict is crucial for global security. The evidence suggests that petrostates engage in more than twice the number of aggressive international disputes than do non-petrostates. Why do petrostates engage in so many militarized interstate disputes? Moreover, what accounts for the variance among petrostates? The variation among petrostates, as well as between petrostates and non-petrostates, suggests that their domestic politics play an important causal role in explaining the international outcomes. This paper offers an explanation for the war-proneness of petrostates that links the politics of oil to the behavior of domestic leaders. Leaders of domestic revolutions, whether the clerics in Iran or the militant socialists in Venezuela and Libya, tend to adopt aggressive, dissatisfied foreign policies that lead to international disputes. This paper introduces a new quantitative dataset and uses it to test the theory presented. It shows that the mix of revolutionary leaders and oil income is an explosive combination, and understanding the dynamics of their interaction can tell us much about modern international politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explain the creation of terrorist organizations by political parties. Extant literature argues that institutional structural constraints, such as electoral systems, are more likely to lead political parties to create terrorist organizations, thus omitting religious-based political parties in the analysis. This paper hypothesizes, however, that party ideology is the most important factor to explain the creation of terrorist organizations by political parties regardless of structural institutional constraints. Using Poisson random effect model for panel data from 28 countries between 1965 and 2003, this paper shows that party ideology is positively correlated with the formation of terrorist organizations, even after controlling for institutional structural constraints. The implication of these findings is important for policy makers eager to create stable polities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of agenda setting at the state level remains a largely understudied phenomenon among legislative and state politics scholars. As state legislatures become more professionalized they are increasingly able to compete with the governor in agenda setting and policy formulation. This paper will examine the relationship between the institutional characteristics of legislatures and the ability of the legislature to compete with the governor in setting the state’s agenda. Using a cross-sectional study of six states, this paper combines in-depth interviews of legislators, legislative staff, and executive branch officials with newspaper articles, committee schedules, speeches, and budget proposals to determine the origin and amount of attention given to specific policy issues at the state level. Cobb and Elder’s (1971) distinction between the systemic and institutional agendas of government will be used as a theoretical framework through which to examine agenda setting at the state level. A logistic regression model is used to examine how factors such professionalism and the presence of divided government affect the ability of the legislature to compete with the governor to set the state’s agenda. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed paper will attempt to study an intuitively obvious but long neglected role of identity in power transition in international politics. It refines and tests the claim that the level of identity formation in international politics determines the amount of violence (Adler 2001) and extent to which certain actions of states are interpreted as friendly, inimical, or rival in the system (Wendt 1999). Such varying levels of identity between rising and hegemonic states during power transitions determine the level of agreement between them over the nature and the extent of revisionism of the international system under given conditions. Thus, a dyad made up of rising and hegemonic states with high levels of mutually shared positive identity will react to power transition in a pacific manner. In contrast to such fairly high pacific case of power transition, dyads that possess fairly low levels of mutually shared positive identity are more likely to adopt adversarial strategies toward each other in international politics. The proposed paper will include a dataset about types of behavior of rising states from different regions of the world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed paper aims at exploring what ordinary people want their governments to do in the wake of globalization and democratization in East Asia. Specifically, it first examines mass attitudes toward government responsibilities for taking care of various specific social and economic problems. Second, it investigates mass attitudes toward government spending on various specific policy programs. Third, it examines mass attitudes toward government action on various economic policies. Ultimately, the proposed paper explore whether East Asian mass publics are supportive of state expansion or retrenchment and on which areas or policies they demand for more or less state action..x000d.These and other related questions are explored in the context of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) surveys recently conducted in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Through an analysis of the survey data, we highlight key features of East Asian beliefs in the scope of government, account for differences between countries and differences within countries in demands for government action, and ultimately shed light on the changing relationship between citizens and the state in capitalist democracies of East Asia where state activism is deeply rooted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary focus of this paper is to address certain concerns scholars have had with Nietzsche, specifically his political philosophy. Criticisms of Nietzsche's thought are presented through a presentation of an article written by Martha Nussbaum entitled, "Is Nietzsche a Political Thinker?" Nussbaum argues that there are certain criteria that determine what makes someone a "serious political thinker." However, I argue that these criticisms of Nietzsche may not be founded upon a careful reading of Nietzsche's works. Many of the criticisms Nussbaum has of Nietzsche's philosophy and their lack of political seriousness may be confronted by presenting examples from Nietzsche's extensive body of work. This paper will present Nietzsche as a political thinker who should be taken seriously, if only because his philosophy bears upon issues that concern those who are interested in political and social philosophy, much in the same way that Marx's philosophy does. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophical foundation of the copyright system in the United States is based on utilitarianism that views authors rights as a mere product to facilitate the desired end of encouraging the creation literary and artistic works for the general public. A result of utilitarianism is an over reliance on market rewards to provide an incentive for authorial creativity. This paper argues that this produces a diversity of literary and artistic works that may be of inferior quality and that may not necessarily promote the progress of society. The thesis in this paper is that authorship and creativity is a product of authentic human expression that the law must encourage. While the commercial market for literary and artistic works encourages the creation of diverse works to meet popular demand, the market also encourages the creation of works that may lack social and cultural value or utility. This paper argues that natural law philosophy, which believes in a natural order for society and man, has a lot to teach us about the copyright system as a larger ethical and moral institution to promote the progress of society and the process of authentic authorship that ought to be the basis for recognizing authorial rights in creative works. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political science field has developed a good understanding of how political institutions shape policymaking incentives. This paper investigates whether these incentives differ given underlying societal preferences. Analyzing the provision of public goods, I begin capturing preferences with a measure of ethnic fractionalization. However, I modify this rudimentary conceptualization by adding a measure of how ethnicity is distributed amongst income groups, what I call ethnic-income cross-cuttingness (in reference to the term cross-cutting cleavages). The paper first introduces this new measure and accompanying cross-national dataset. It then builds a socio-institutional theory of the policymaking process. Specifically, following the Horowitz school, I argue that when society is highly ethnically fractionalized and lowly cross-cutting, that small, majoritarian districts generate better incentives for politicians to cater to broader segments of society and provide more broadly-targeted public goods. This stands in contrast to the traditional institutional wisdom (Lijphart school) that large, PR districts are always best for public goods provision. I test my theory with a dataset of 40-odd developing democracies between 1970-2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of suicide terrorism has generated a great deal of attention from scholars in recent years.While many initial analyses involved essentialist explanations, many recent explanations downplay the roleof religion in suicide terrorist violence. This paper will argue that neither view is sufficient. Instead, themost important determinant of the varying levels of violence among suicide terrorists is the ideology of aterrorist group; terrorist groups that justify their actions through a religious ideology will be more violentthan non-religious groups. The paper will demonstrate this through a quantitative study of data on suicideterrorist attacks and the conditions in which they occur, demonstrating that the correlation between groupsespousing a religious ideology and the number of fatalities they causes through suicide attacks isstatistically significant. Through such a study, it will show that the level of violence seen among suicideterrorists cannot be explained solely through environmental factors, and ideational aspects must be takeninto account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes the recent (summer 2008) intra-EU-European clash between Italy and Romania as a starting point for a critical analysis of the present state of a EU-European citizenship. The paper argues that the central problem of a EU-European citizenship, as evidenced in the clash, lies in the fissures between the construction of citizenship as a political identity associated with the protective functions of a nationally-framed "state" and "Europe" as a topos of a historical-cultural and normative identity claim. It relies in its analysis on the general literature on (EU-) citizenship and on Roma in Europe; Italian, Romanian and international news coverage; interviews with Romanian politicians, intellectuals, and a leading Roma activist as the summer events unfolded; materials provided by various national and transnational organizations. That the normative invocation of a common European identity at the moment appears less and less able to muster the force necessary to check the political allure of a return to the strong nationally-framed protective state is seen as part and parcel of the larger crisis of institutional reform that presently defines the EU-European project of regional integration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses survey data from 2004 from eight democracies in Central America, Mexico and Colombia from the Latin American Public Opinion Project to explore political legitimacy and its links to political participation. Theory argues that political legitimacy is multidimensional; this proves empirically correct, producing six legitimacy dimensions. Six modes of political participation are also identified empirically. Prior research on Costa Rica had suggested that some legitimacy-participation functions are U-shaped, such that citizens with very high and very low legitimacy norms would take part in politics more than those with intermediate legitimacy norms. This paper employs OLS regression analysis to test for the effects of legitimacy upon participation, modeling the effect of both linear and quadratic forms of political legitimacy to test for the curvilinear relationships, as well as the influence of multiple intervening and control variables. By far the predominant form of relationship revealed is indeed U-shaped. The paper explores the implications of this finding for both the legitimacy research and for the potential stability of democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a quantitative content analysis of media coverage of ethanol appearing in the New York Times from 1998 to 2008, paying particular attention to changes overtime in the quantity, tone, and framing of coverage. The analysis also takes into account key political and economic events such as elections, economic downturns, and energy crises, and the role of various political actors. Lastly, the paper includes a discussion of the public opinion and policy implications of the trends in media coverage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shows that socio-economic, regional, ethnic, or religious identities in Turkey are deeply intertwined and different status groups harp on cultural identities to promote their interests in the existing relations of power. I examine the “skin-whitening” efforts of the urban bourgeoisie who promoted binary distinctions such as “modern-primitive,” “developed-backwards,” “secularist-Islamist,” or “Istanbullu (from Istanbul)-tasrali (from countryside) to define “black Turks” and simultanously to define their superior self. I also show that when the “blacks” finally mobilized in the post 1980s, they claimed this “black” identity and engaged in counter-othering which contributed to further deepening of social polarization in the society. The paper relies on personal observations during field research in urban and rural cities of Turkey, in-depth interviews conducted with Islamic and Kurdish actors, as well as text books and print media. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to explain impact of countries' natural energy resource wealth on ethnic warfare and ethnic violence. Contribution to the current literature is twofold. First, I argue that there is linkage between international and domestic actors, and this linkage has an important role in understanding diverse effect of energy abundance on ethnic violence and ethnic warfare. Second, evidence from Pooled Cross-Section Time-Series regression models indicate that energy resource wealth fosters internal ethnic violence but lessens ethnic warfare. To the my knowledge, the paper is the first effort to speculate the significant role played by international community and energy importing industrialized countries in preventing ethnic warfare but their failure to do so on ethnic violence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of policy diffusion has recently come under closer scrutiny as researchers tried to disentangle the various channels through which policies diffuse across jurisdictional boundaries (e.g.: learning vs. competition). At the same time, researchers became interested in the question of how to differentiate between genuine diffusion and common exogenous shocks. What has been largely overlooked so far is the way in which diffusion influences interact with political and institutional conditions within jurisdictions. This paper argues that the same diffusion influence can exert different effects depending on the political and institutional conditions in the jurisdiction subject to this influence. I thus propose modeling the effect of diffusion processes as conditional upon the political and institutional specifics of jurisdictions. As an example of this approach, the paper studies diffusion influences and their conditional effects in the context of smoke free air legislation and tobacco taxation in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Using data for the time from 1970-2007, I show that effects of diffusion change considerably if state-level political conditions (control of state legislature) are taken into account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the risk of conflict between the US and China is incomplete in a major aspect: Few studies pay sufficient attention to how a war could occur between these states. Available analyses propose speculative scenarios for a Sino-American war without grounding their arguments in historical evidence. This state of scholarship is problematic, since understanding the mechanisms through which China's rise could lead to war with the US is essential to estimating the risk of war and uncovering the conditions that would prompt a conflict. And a major obstacle to discovering the pathways for war is the absence of research on America's past interactions with rising powers. This paper aims to overcome these shortcomings by providing a systematic historical scrutiny. We investigate how the US came to fight wars with ascending powers in the past. The examined cases include American wars with Imperial Germany (1917-19), Nazi Germany (1941-45), and Imperial Japan (1941-45). Also analyzed is how the US avoided a fight with the ascendant Soviet Union (1946-62). This paper, however, goes beyond a mere historical survey: We apply relevant historical findings to exploring probable pathways for a future conflict between China and the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have witnessed a minor explosion literature in political theory seriously considering the problems of designing constitutions in the light of democratic ideals, including works with both domestic and trans-national ambitions. This paper explores the theses that a) three importantly different methodological approaches can be discerned in the literature, b) that the three approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses, and c) that a modified approach can draw on the strengths while avoiding most of the weaknesses. Serially examining and critically evaluating ‘imaginative institutional reaction’ (e.g., Levinson (2006) or Sabato (2007)), ‘rational optimization’ (e.g., Vermeule (2007)), and ‘Aristotelian comparativism,’ (e.g., Lutz (2006)), the paper concludes that a comparative approach is recommended, but that it ought dispense with an Aristotelian orientation in favor of reference to the ideal of constitutional democracy understood as regulative ideals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]