I Political Science : Method and Theory / Science Politique : Méthodes et Théories
| DOI | 10.1177/0020834519892861 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
727
I
POLITICAL SCIENCE : METHOD AND THEORY
SCIENCE POLITIQUE : MÉTHODES ET THÉORIES
69.7054 AGUILAR, Paloma ; KOVRAS, Iosif — Explaining disap-
pearances as a tool of political terror. International Political
Science Review 40(3), June 2019 : 437-452.
Despite the widespread use of disappearances as a central tool of terror
in recent decades, little is known about the emergence of the phenome-
non or its underlying rationale. We argue that growing international
accountability norms, coupled with the improved quality of reporting
human rights abuses, paradoxically reshaped the repressive strategies
of certain regimes and pushed them to deploy more clandestine and
extrajudicial forms of repression, predominantly disappearances. We
also explore the timing of disappearances: when a state decides to
deploy a particular instrument of terror can greatly benefit our under-
standing of why it was used. We show that repressive regimes tend to
use disappearances in the first period after a coup, taking advantage of
the general confusion and opacity to secure strategic benefits and
protect the regime from external scrutiny and future accountability. [R,
abr.]
69.7055 ÅHÄLL, Linda — Feeling everyday IR: embodied, affec-
tive, militarising movement as choreography of war. Co-
operation and Conflict 54(2), June 2019 : 149-166.
This article explores affective, embodied encounters between military
and civilian bodies in the everyday as choreography of war. It argues that
by paying attention to the intersecting political sphere of bodies, affect
and movement — through the metaphor of “dance” — we are not only
able to understand how security operates as a logic reproducing the
militarization of the everyday, but also able to identify a representational
gap, an aesthetic politics, potentially useful for resistance to such prac-
tices normalizing war in the everyday. It draws on two British examples
of where military moves disrupt civilian spaces in the everyday: an arts
project commemorating the Battle of the Somme, and a football game
taking place during Remembrance week. Through embodied choreogra-
phies of war in the everyday, dance is used as a metaphor to understand
militarization as an example of feeling Everyday IR. [R, abr.]
69.7056 ANDERSEN, David — Comparative democratization and
democratic backsliding: the case for a historical-insti-
tutional approach. Comparative Politics 51(4), July 2019 :
online.
In light of the alleged democratic recession in recent years, comparative
democratization research is now taking a turn to more party-political,
agency-centered, and historically contingent explanations of democratic
backsliding. I review three recent books that represent this trend to
varying degrees. Based on a historical-institutional approach, I assess
whether the theoretical propositions of these books are fruitful for ex-
plaining the gradual backsliding to competitive authoritarianism and
illiberalism in recent decades. I find th at the propositions in D. Ziblatt and
S. Levitsky’s How Democracies Die [Harvard U. P., 2018] in particular
risk leading to excessively voluntarist conclusions that are insensitive to
historical path dependencies. I end the review by specifying two models
that explain backslidings as institutional responses to (1) international
“exogenous” shocks or (2) “endogenous” demands unleashed by dynam-
ics of the democratic transition itself. [R, abr.]
69.7057 ARNALL, Alex ; HILSON, Chris ; McKINNON, Catriona —
Climate displacement and resettlement: the importance
of claims-making "from below". Climate Policy 19(6), July
2019 : 665-671.
Climate-induced population displacement and resettlement is an ongoing
problem around the world, and one that is being exacerbated by climate
change. To date, most attempts to address this problem have taken a
top-down approach in which international justice, legal and humanitarian
frameworks are extended ‘downwards’ by policymakers and govern-
ments to local populations. However, there has been limited systematic
work that emphasizes the abilities of affected peoples themselves to
develop and formulate their own justice-based solutions. This paper
presents an analytical framework for thinking about ‘bottom-up’ claims-
making that emphasizes naming, blaming, claiming and framing. The
framework enables claims-making to be distinguished from other forms
of community-based agency, such as adaptation. [R, abr.]
69.7058 ASAL, Victor ; GUSTAFSON, Daniel ; KRAUSE, Peter — It
comes with the territory: why states negotiate with eth-
no-political organizations. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism
42(4-6), Apr.-June 2019 : 363-382.
Given that minority ethno-political organizations are generally weaker
than states yet seek to change their policies or remove the ruling regime
from power, why would negotiation occur? States prefer to ignore or
repress such organizations, which typically have little to offer in return
amidst negotiations that can legitimize them while delegitimizing the
state. When a challenging organization establishes governing structures
and controls movement in part of a state's territory, however, it can easily
inflict significant economic and political costs on the state while also
possessing a valuable asset to exchange for concessions. An organiza-
tion with territorial control cannot be ignored, while the state will have a
strong incentive to negotiate before the state loses more face, the group
gains more legitimacy, neighboring states are more likely to invade. [R,
abr.]
69.7059 ASHAR, Sameer ; LAI, Annie — Access to power. Daeda-
lus, Winter 2019 : 82-87.
The traditional approaches to “access to justice” obscure the current
distribution of economic, social, and political power, and how that distri-
bution favors those who have power and burdens those who do not.
Consequently, the traditional approaches foreclose possibilities for a truly
just society. In the law clinic we led together for five years, we developed
models of lawyering with our students and community partners focused
on how lawyers can contribute to the redistribution of power in society
from those who accumulate and deploy it to those who are deprived of it.
[R]
69.7060 BACON, Tricia ; GRIMM ARSENAULT, Elizabeth — Al
Qaeda and the Islamic State's break: strategic strife or
lackluster leadership? Studies in Conflict and Terrorism
42(3), 2019 : 229-263.
Employing counterfactuals to assess individual and systemic explana-
tions for the split betw een Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-
Sham (ISIS), this article concludes that individual leaders factor greatly
into te rrorist alliance outcomes. Os ama bin Laden was instrumental in
keeping Al Qaeda and ISIS allied as he prioritized unity and handled
internal disputes more deftly than his successor, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Although a troubled alliance, strategic differences between Al Qaeda and
ISIS were not sufficient to cause the split. Rather, the capabilities of Al
Qaeda's leader determined the group's ability to prevent alliance rup-
tures. [R]
69.7061 BANSAK, Kirk — Can nonexperts really emulate statistical
learning methods? A comment on “The accuracy, fair-
ness, and limits of predicting recidivism”. Political Analy-
sis 27(3), July 2019 : 370-380.
Recent research has questioned the value of statistical learning methods
for producing accurate predictions in the criminal justice context. Using
results from respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurkers) who
were asked to predict recidivism, J. Dressel and H. Farid [“The accuracy,
fairness, and limits of predicting recidivism”, Science Advances 4(1), Jan.
2018: 5580] argue that nonexperts can achieve predictive accuracy and
fairness on par with algorithmic approaches that employ statistical
learning models. Analyzing the same data from the original study, this
comment employs additional techniques and compares the quality of the
predicted probabilities output from statistical learning procedures versus
the MTurkers’ evaluations. The metrics presented indicate that statistical
approaches do, in fact, outperform the nonexperts in important ways. [R,
abr.]
69.7062 BARBER, Benjamin ; MILLER, Charles — Propaganda and
combat motivation: radio broadcasts and German sol-
diers’ performance in World War II. World Politics 71(3),
July 2019 : 457-502.
What explains combat motivation in warfare? Scholars argue that moni-
toring, material rewards, and punishment alone are insufficient explana-
tions. Further, competing ideological accounts of motivation are also
problematic because ideas are difficult to operationalize and measure.
To solve this puzzle, the authors combine extensive information from
Political science : method and theory
728
World War II about German soldiers’ comb at performance with data
about conditionally exogenous potential exposure to Nazi radio propa-
ganda. They find evidence that soldiers with higher potential exposure to
propaganda were more likely to be decorated for valor even after control-
ling for individual socioeconomic factors, home district characteristics like
urbanization, and proxies for combat exposure. [R]
69.7063 BARREDO-ZURIARRAIN, Juan — The nature of capitalist
money and the financial links between debt-led and ex-
port-led growth regimes. New Political Economy 24(4),
Aug. 2019 : 565-586.
The aim of this article is to develop a consistent theoretical approach to
the financial links between the so-called debt-led (DLG) and ‘export-led’
(XLG) growth regimes. Assuming the endogenous supply of money and
the unstable dynamics of financial markets, the leveraging process of
DLG regimes is taken as an inherent dynamic of developed domestic
financial systems, without the need of any external capital inflow. Foreign
inflows are not a requ isite for such expansions; however, attracted by
high expected returns, they can play a key role in fueling DLG cases.
Alternatively, current-account imbalances are not an indicator of the
international financial flows but rather a side effect stemming fro m the
productive, financial and trade links between DLG and XLG countries.
Based on this approach, we study the relationship between changes in
credit and current-account balances in several countries before and after
the crisis of 2008. [R, abr.]
69.7064 BELLAMY, Richard,, et al. — The democratic production of
political cohesion: partisanship, institutional design and
life fo rm. Contemporary Political Theory 18(2), June 2019 :
282-310.
What binds a democratic society together? This would seem a well-
rehearsed topic in modern political theory, but on closer scrutiny, it may
appear less so. If we reformulate the question, it may become clearer
why: what binds democratic society together? The emphasis on ‘demo-
cratic’ is the clue here. Much recent discussion on the cohesive force in
democracies has been parasitic on other debates, such as that between
cosmopolitans and communitarians on justice as the first virtue of socie-
ty; that between nation-state-based and post-national views of contem-
porary politics or that about the cultural aspects of democratic citizenship
as the glue that makes democracy work. All such views and debates
tend to assume a somewhat ‘externalist’ perspective, so to speak, of the
problem of cohesion in democracies. [R, abr.]
69.7065 BERK, Gerald — State building through mediation: the US
anti-submarine warfare operations research group in
World War II. Polity 51(3), July 2019 : 466-497.
This article explains the difference between mobilization and mediation;
provides a theory of state building for mediation in wartime and applies
that theory to the case of the United States’ Anti-Submarine Warfare
Operations Research Group (ASWORG) in World War II. Drawing on
actor-network theory and theories of emergent institutions, and inspired
by pragmatism and complexity theory, I explain how scientists and
soldiers in ASWORG learned through joint reflection to mediate the
incommensurable practices of science and warfare in ways that neither
could predict. They transposed techniques from physics to warfare in
operations research; recomposed operations research from a scientific
control system to a monitoring system that facilitated mutual learning;
recombined defensive and offensive military tactics; and circulated
themselves between the factory, the laboratory, and the battlefield to
speed the adjustment of new technologies and military tactics. [R] [See
Abstr. 69.7482]
69.7066 BETZ, Timm ; POND, Amy — Foreign financing and the
international sources of property rights. World Politics
71(3), July 2019 : 503-541.
How do firms protect themselves against infringements of their property
rights by their own government? The authors develop a theory based on
international law and joint asset-ownership with foreign firms. Investment
agreements protect the assets of foreign firms but are not available to
domestic firms. This segmentation of the property rights environment
creates a rationale for international financial relationships between firms.
By forming financial relationships with foreign firms, domestic firms gain
indirect coverage from the property rights available to foreign firms under
investment agreements. If a government is less likely to violate the
property rights of covered foreign firms, it is also less likely to violate
property rights for assets held jointly by domestic and foreign firms. This
article presents systematic evidence from data on the activities of firms in
countries that have investment agreements with the US. [R, abr.]
69.7067 BILALI VOLLHARDT, Rezarta — Victim and perpetrator
groups’ divergent perspectives on collective violence:
implications for intergroup relations. Political Psychology
40, Suppl. 1, Feb. 2019 : 75-108.
We integrate and juxtapose what we know about construals of collective
violence by delineating the different dimensions along which these
construals differ between victim and perpetrator groups: regarding the
question of who is the victim, who is responsible for the harm doing, what
the perpetrator’s intent was, how severe the violence was, and when it
took place. Then, we discuss the individual- and group-level factors (e.g.,
collective narratives, social identities) that shape these construals, as
well as their implications for attitudes regarding the conflict and support
for relevan t policies. Perpetrator groups try to cope with moral identity
threats and preserve a positive image of the in-group, while victim
groups try to protect their in-group from future harm doing and desire
acknowledgment of their group’s experiences. [R, abr.]
69.7068 BLAIS, André, et al. — What is the cost of voting? Electoral
Studies 59, June 2019 : 145-157.
Despite a wealth of literature on the determinants of electoral turnout,
little is known about the cost of voting. Some studies suggest that facili-
tating voting slightly increases turnout, but w hat ultimately matters is
people's subjective perceptions of how costly voting is. This paper offers
a first comprehensive analysis of the subjective cost of voting and its
impact on voter turnout. We use data from an original survey conducted
in Canada and data from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project
which covers 23 elections among 5 different countries. We distinguish
direct and information/decision voting costs. That is, the direct costs that
are related to the act of voting and the costs that are related to the efforts
to make (an informed) choice. [R, abr.]
69.7069 BLINDER, Scott ; FORD, Robert ; IVARSFLATEN, Elisabeth
— Discrimination, antiprejudice norms, and public sup-
port for multicultural policies in Europe: the case of reli-
gious schools. Comparative Political Studies 52(8), July
2019 : 1232-1255.
This study examines public support for a key contested multicultural
policy in contemporary Europe: the provision of religious schools. Sub-
stantively, it provides new experimental evidence demonstrating the
existence of discrimination against Muslims on a central issue of multi-
cultural social policy. Theoretically, it proposes an explanation for varia-
tions in patterns of discrimination that highlights the role of individua ls’
motivation to control prejudice. Through moderation analysis, we show
that individuals who express stronger motivation to control prejudice are
more likely to treat Muslim and Christian requests for religious schools
equally, and they are more likely to retain their support for Muslim
schools in the wake of a threatening Islamist terrorist incident. Because
we conducted the experiments in three countries, we in addition find
societal-level patterns of variation. [R, abr.]
69.7070 BRAIDWOOD, Travis — You want to spend my money
how? Framing effects on tax increases via ballot propo-
sitions. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 19(1), March
2019 : 29-52.
Recent scholarly work has discovered that modest changes in the fram-
ing of the titles and summaries of ballot measures can have dramatic
effects on voter approval. This work expands upon these findings by
exploring the effect of language specificity on support for ballot proposi-
tions that require the voter to pay for the measure with tax dollars. Alt-
hough extensive research has explored ballot measure language com-
plexity, left unanswered is the role of detailed language in altering sup-
port. Utilizing original experimental data, this work explores the framing
effects of increasing specificity of proposed use of tax expenditures on
support for ballot questions. Ultimately, this research finds that proposi-
tions providing more information to voters substantially increases the
likelihood of support for those measures. [R, abr.]
69.7071 BROMS, Rasmus ; DAHLSTRÖM, Carl ; FAZEKAS, Mihály
— Political competition and public procurement out-
comes. Comparative Political Studies 52(9), Aug. 2019 :
1259-1292.
This article asks if low political competition is associated with more
restricted public procurement processes. Using unique Swedish munici-
pal data from 2009 to 2015, it demonstrates that when one party domi-
nates local politics, noncompetitive outcomes from public procurement
processes are more common. What is most striking is that the risk of
receiving only one bid, on what is intended to be an open and competi-
tive tender, considerably increases with long-standing one-party rule.
The article contributes to a significant body of work on the detrimental
effects of low political competition, and the results are particularly inter-
esting from a comparative perspective because Sweden is a highly
unlikely case in which to find such tendencies. [R, abr.]
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