I: Political Science: Method and Theory/Science Politique: Méthodes et Théories

DOI10.1177/002083451606600601
Published date01 December 2016
Date01 December 2016
Subject MatterAbstracts
661
I
POLITICAL SCIENCE : METHOD AND THEORY
SCIENCE POLITIQUE : MÉTHODES ET THÉORIES
66.6247 ABDEL-NOUR, Farid Responsible for the state: the
case of obedient subjects. European Journal of Political
Theory 15(3), July 2016 : 259-275.
This article explains how we ordinary subjects of a state who are neither
political leaders nor functionaries are responsible for outcomes that are
properly attributed to that state and that took place during our adult
lifetime. Its focus is on the connection we forge to those outcomes via
our obedience alone. If our responsibility as subjects is justified, it would
apply under all regime types including oppressive and authoritarian ones.
The argument is that this responsibility can only be justified within a
minimal account of agency and a bare-bones account of responsibility.
Thus, while we incur a burden of responsibility for the state via our
obedience alone, that burden does not suffice to either blame us or
extract remedies from us for state injustices. [R, abr.]
66.6248 ABDULLAH, Walid Jumblatt Assessing party structures:
why some regimes are more authoritarian than others.
Australian Journal of International Affairs 70(5), 2016 : 525-
540.
This article [addresses] the puzzle of why, amongst undemocratic states,
some regimes are more authoritarian than others. The author contends
that differing party structures result in different authoritarian outcomes.
The lack or absence of intra-party democracy ensures that elites remain
cohesive and that there are lesser opportunities for the opposition to take
advantage of divisions in the party, whereas in a party with intra-party
democracy, there is a greater possibility of elite disunity, which could be
capitalized on by the opposition, and there is also a greater likelihood of
a different ideology being propagated by defectors from the party. The
cases of the People's Action Party in Singapore and the United Malays
National Organization in Malaysia are used to illustrate the author's case.
[R, abr.]
66.6249 ABELS, Gabriele The gender gap in political science
education in Germany. European Political Science 15(3),
Sept. 2016 : 322-331.
Gender studies in Germany is not a fully integrated aspect of political
science training. Only very few of the about 70 political science institutes
include gender research in their teaching programs. This is surprising
given that there are a number of factors that support a stronger institu-
tionalization of gender studies, such as the size of the German political
science community, an increase in female faculty, and equal opportunity
policies that have been adopted by the German Political Science Associ-
ation. This article discusses the restrictive factors that impact upon
gender studies within Germany and compares a 2009 study on the
mainstreaming of gender topics in B.A. and M.A. programs in political
science with a more recent 2014 survey. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.6427]
66.6250 ABULOF, Uriel We the peoples? The strange demise of
self-determination. European Journal of International Rela-
tions 22(3), Sept. 2016 : 536-565.
The self-determination of peoples is a fundamental legitimating principle
of the international system; it justifies the system’s very existence.
Through a vast diachronic corpus and pertinent data-sets, this article
nevertheless reveals a puzzling decline in the public discourse on, and
practice of, self-determination over the last 50 years. I identify and
assess four structural explanations for this decline: “lexical change”
(replacing self-determination with alternative terms); “silent hegemony”
(taking the norm for granted); “reactive rhetoric” (echoing conflicts and
new state formation post hoc); and “mission accomplished” (rectifying the
incongruence between national boundaries and state borders). I further
suggest that powerful state actors and persuasive academics have
sought to “tame” self-determination as both principle and practice, retain-
ing the term but altering its meaning fr om a source of threat into a re-
source for containing it. [R, abr.]
66.6251 ACHARYA, Amitav "Idea-shift": how ideas from the rest
are reshaping global order. Third World Quarterly 37(7),
2016 : 1156-1170.
An “idea-shift” is taking place that may be of greater consequence for
global governance than the ongoing “power shift” or the rise of new
powers. [Some] non-Western thinkers and practitioners have contributed
to new concepts and approaches that have radically altered the way we
think about development, security and ecology, among other areas. Their
ideas are often dismissed or downgraded in the West as imitation, or the
product of the Western education of their creators, or of partnership with
Western collaborators, governments, donor agencies and multilateral
institutions dominated by the Western powers. Challen ging this view, this
essay holds that ideas from the postcolonial world, its thinkers and
policy-makers have played an important role in the making of the post-
war norms of governance, such as universal sovereignty, human rights,
international development and regionalism. [R, abr.] [First article of a
thematic issue on "The UN and the Global South, 1945 and 2015: past
as prelude?"; edited and introduced, pp. 1147-1155, by Thomas G.
WEISS and Pallavi ROY. See also Abstr. 66.7114, 7116, 7191, 7205,
7215]
66.6252 ACUTO, M ichele ; RAYNER, Steve City networks:
breaking gridlocks or forging (new) lock-ins? International
Affairs 92(5), Sept. 2016 : 1147-1166.
Today, we live in an "urban age" of near-planetary urbanization where
cities are at the forefront of all sorts of agendas. Yet little attention is
offered to the active role of cities as political drivers of the urban age.
There might today be more than two hundred "city networks" globally,
with thousands of para-diplomatic connections actively defining relations
between cities, international organization and corporate actors. This
actively networked texture of the urban age shapes all areas of policy
and, not least, international relations, and holds much promise as to
possible urban solutions to global challenges. Based on an overview of a
representative subset of this mass of city-to-city cooperation (n=170),
this article illustrates the landscape o f city networking, its issue areas
and institutional shapes, and its critical features. [R, abr.]
66.6253 AHMAD, Aisha Going global: Islamist competition in
contemporary civil wars. Security Studies 25(2), Apr.-June
2016 : 353-384.
The global landscape of modern jihad is highly diverse and wrought with
conflict between rival Islamist factions. This research proposes that the
adoption of a global identity allows an Islamist group to better recruit and
expand their domestic political power across ethnic and tribal divisions
without being constrained by local politics. Islamists that rely on an ethnic
or tribal identity are more prone to group fragmentation, whereas global
Islamists are better able to retain group cohesion by purging their ranks
of dissenters. To examine these two processes, I present original field
research and primary source analysis to examine Islamist in-fighting in
Somalia from 2006-2014 and then expand my analysis to Iraq and Syria,
Pakistan, and Mali. [R, abr.]
66.6254 AKÖZ, Kemal Kivanç ; ARBATLI, Cemal Eren Information
manipulation in election campaigns. Economics and Poli-
tics 28(2), July 2016 : 181-215.
We provide a game-theoretical model of manipulative election cam-
paigns with two political candidates and a Bayesian voter. The latter is
uncertain about how good the candidates are. Candidates take unob-
servable, costly actions to manipulate voter's opinion about their posi-
tions. We show that if the candidates differ in campaigning efficiency,
and the voter receives the biased campaign messages with some noise,
then the cost-efficient candidate can win the election with higher proba-
bility than her opponent even when she is ex-post an inferior choice for
the voter. Our paper offers a novel informational justification for imposing
limits on campaign spending and encouraging diversity in the supply of
political information. [R]
66.6255 ALDRIN, Philippe ; HUBÉ, Nicolas Le participatinisme
saisi par la pensée d'État (Participationism and state
thought). Gouvernement et Action publique 5(2), Apr.-June
2016 : 9-30.
Contemporary political rhetoric is definitively participatory. This special
issue looks at these practices and rhetorical political transformations
differently, by stepping aside from the vast specialized literature on
participatory democracy on one side, and on governance on the other
side. We define a process of state participationism, as a new state
thought that defends the introduction of organized procedures of deliber-
ation, participation, and recruitment of non-institutional actors in the
decision-making process of public executives. Moreover, we have cho-
sen to study the participationism practiced by authorities holding the
legitimate monopoly of enactment of the common good and of the public
interest. Far from seeing a "democratization of democracy" in it, this
Political science : method and theory
662
special issue compares different situations taken from different political
regimes and societies, including those where the democratic order taken
from different political regimes, and s ocieties. [R, abr.] [Introductio n to a
thematic issue on "The participatory state", edited by the authors. See
Abstr. 66.6255, 6765, 6931, 6995, 7059, 7117]
66.6256 ALLEN, Barbara, et al. Partisanship and perceptions of
fairness: ignoring the facts. Journal of Experimental Politi-
cal Science 3(1), Apr. 2016 : 32-43.
This paper examines how contextualizing the claims made in negative
political advertising affects perceptions of their fairness. This has implica-
tions for the components of fairness judgments, e.g., if “truth” is a com-
ponent of fairness, being informed that a claim is untrue should under-
mine perceptions of its fairness, as well as for the efficacy of “fact-
checking". Our experiments show some effects of being informed that a
claim is untrue but few if it is characterized as taken out of context or as
irrelevant. [R, abr.]
66.6257 ALLEN, Ira ; ALLEN, Saul God terms and activity sys-
tems: a definition of religion for political science. Political
Research Quarterly 69(3), Sept. 2016 : 557-570.
This paper synthesizes diverse strains in recent scholarship on religion
to propose a theoretically attuned definition well suited for empirical
political science. Religions are defined as systems of shared activity
organized around transcendental signifiers. Transcendental signifiers are
readily identifiable in public discourse and are “god terms” that organize
(or rest at the center of organized) systems of shared activity. This
parsimonious definition admits both belief-oriented and practice-oriented
phenomena and allows political scientists to study religion as it shapes
political acts, interventions, and possibilities. For illustrative purposes,
the paper examines a key speech delivered by Sukarno at Indonesia’s
founding moment, in which naturalistically observable transcendental
signifiers mark the mobilization of religion. [R, abr.]
66.6258 ALONSO, Alba ; LOMBARDO, Emanuela Ending ghetto-
ization? Mainstreaming gender in Spanish political sci-
ence education. European Political Science 15(3), Sept.
2016 : 292-302.
Mainstreaming gender in political science education requires legislation,
structures, instruments, and critical actors, not to mention a favorable
political context for putting the issue on the agenda. This article exam-
ines these issues in the Spanish context with particular reference to the
opportunities afforded to the mainstreaming of gender in higher educa-
tion as a result of the European Higher Education Area and the policies
pursued by the Socialist Zapatero government (2004-2011). [R, abr.]
[See Abstr. 66.6427]
66.6259 ALTMAN, Daniel The strategist's curse: a theory of
false optimism as a cause of war. Security Studies 24(2),
Apr.-June 2015 : 284-315.
This article proposes a new theory of false optimism as a cause of war.
Named for its similarity to the winner's curse in auctions, this theory
explains how and why established sources of misperception (cognitive,
psychological, bureaucratic, and organizational) interact with the selec-
tion of one military strategy from a set of alterna tives to produce a sur-
prising amount of additional false optimism. Even if a state's general
perceptions of how well it will fare in a potential war are not biased
toward optimism, this theory explains why its perceptions of the particular
strategy on which it will base its plans for fighting that war will be sys-
tematically biased toward optimism. [R, abr.]
66.6260 AMIGHETTI, Sara ; NUTI, Alasia A nation’s right to
exclude and the colonies. Political Theory 44(4), Aug.
2016 : 541-566.
This essay contends that post-colonial migrants have a right to enter
their former colonizing nations, and that these should accept them. Our
novel argument challenges well-established justifications for restrictions
in im migration-policies advanced in liberal nationalism, which links
immigration controls to the nation’s self-determination and the legitimate
preservation of national identity. To do so, we draw on post-colonial
analyses of colonialism, in particular on Edward Said’s notion of “inter-
twined histories”, and we offer a more sophisticated account of national
identity than that of liberal nationalists. In our view, the national identity of
former colonizing nations cannot be understood in isolation from their ex-
colonies. This entails that liberal nationalists cannot justify the restriction
on the entrance of members of the nation’s former colonies by resorting
to an argument about the preservation of national identity. [R, abr.]
66.6261 ANDERSE, Rasmus Fonnesbaek It's the geography,
stupid! An introduction to geographical information sys-
tems in political science. Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 118(2),
2016 : : 249-270.
Technological advances in geographic information systems (GIS) soft-
ware and the ubiquity of geo-coded data in recent years have opened up
the possibility of political science research that is attentive to (1) spatial
aspects of political phenomena and (2) potential biases resulting from
the dominance of country- and individual-based analysis in the discipline.
I first present GIS and its possibilities for researchers, including existing,
user-friendly GIS database), and then show how GIS and spatial data
have been used to examine the effects of artificial borders in Africa on
civil war and development. Finally, I offer my thoughts on how GIS can
move forward political science in each of the traditional subfields of
comparative politics, international relations and public administration. [R]
66.6262 ANISIN, Alexei Violence begets violence: why states
should not lethally repress popular protest. International
Journal of Human Rights 20(7), 2016 : 893-912.
State repression committed upon political opposition is one of the most
commonly reoccurring events in the age of the nation-state. A popular
question has been whether repression increases or decreases mobiliza-
tion during periods of social conflict. I demonstrate that when repression
is aimed at large social movements, regardless of movement strategy
and characteristics, repression will, on average, increase dissident
mobilization. These effects are even greater when the movement seeks
regime-change and is highly threatening. Statistical analysis gives
support to my argument which concurrently raises important policy-
oriented questions regarding civil resistance and governmental human
rights practices. [R]
66.6263 AVANT, Deborah D. Pragmatic networks and transna-
tional governance of private military and security ser-
vices. International Studies Quarterly 60(2), June 2016 : 330-
342.
In 2004, private military and security companies lacked effective transna-
tional governance. Ten years later, however, an agreed-upon framework
drew these services within established international law. It inspired
various complementary non-binding instruments and instigated changes
in government policy. Hegemonic-order theories, whether realist or
liberal, would e xpect this change to reflect shifts in US preferences. But
the US displayed no initial interest in transnational coordination. I build
an alternative explanation from pragmatism and network theory. A
Swiss-led process created connections among stakeholders around the
problem of regulating private military and security companies. Relatively
open interactions among participants spurred original ideas, which in turn
appeared useful for addressing the issue. Their usefulness, led more
actors to “buy into” the process. [R, abr.]
66.6264 BAKER, Travis J. ; SCHWARTZ, Thomas Interbranch
cooperation and the shadow of the future. Constitutional
Political Economy 27(3), Sept. 2016 : 319-331.
Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD) experiments confirm and extend R. Axelrod’s
(The Evolution of Cooperation, New York, 1984) Shadow of the Future
hypothesis: subjects cooperate in infinitely repeated PD, but they also
cooperate until near the end in finitely repeated PD. So the extended
hypothesis is that cooperation depends on the probability of continued
play. We test it for interbranch cooperation under separated-powers
constitutions, specifically those of the American states, using the end of
governors’ final terms as end points and the rate of overridden vetoes as
the extreme case of a breakdown in interbranch cooperation. Controlling
for a variety of factors, including divided government, we find support for
the hypothesis. [R, abr.]
66.6265 BALESTRI, Claudio On the inefficiency of political
exchange. Public Organization Review 16(2), June 2016 :
167-178.
In contrast to market exchanges, political exchanges have been widely
criticized on ethical grounds. Going beyond the well-known moral criti-
cism regarding the exchange of votes, the paper demonstrates how in
politics, ethics and economics can go hand in hand. Specifically, it
proposes an unusual perspective on transaction costs, by arguing that
the enhancement of such costs can be required to achieve efficient
results in specific circumstances, where the free bargaining among
parties conflicts with the public issue to be addressed. This suggests the
basic idea that, while in markets transaction costs should be reduced, in
politics, they may require to be enhanced. [R, abr.]
66.6266 BALZACQ, Thierry ; CAVELTY, Myriam Dunn A theory of
actor-network for cyber-security. European Journal of In-
ternational Security 1(2), July 2016 : 176-198.
This article argues that some core tenets of Actor-Network Theory (ANT)
can serve as heuristics for a better understanding of what the stakes of
cyber-security are, how it operates, and how it fails. Despite the centrality
of cyber-incidents in the cyber-security discourse, researchers have yet
to understand their link to, and affects on politics. We close this gap by

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