I Political Science: Method and Theory Science Politique: Méthodes et Théories
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451806800201 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
161
I
POLITICAL SCIENCE : METHOD AND THEORY
SCIENCE POLITIQUE : MÉTHODES ET THÉORIES
68.1605 ABU-LABAN, Yasmeen — Narrating Canadian political
science: history revisited (presidential address to the
Canadian Political Science Association Toronto, Ontario
May 30, 2017). Canadian Journal of Political Science 50(4),
Dec. 2017 : 895-919.
The 150 mark for Confederation and the founding of the modern Cana-
dian state comes at a moment when at universities across Canada it is
now routine to acknowledge traditional territory, and in so doing to
recognize a longer history, dating before 1867 and the establishment of
European colonies (Canadian Association of University Teachers, 2016).
Territorial acknowledgements also give recognition to the Indigenous
peoples who lived and continue to live on the land, as well as the ways in
which land figures into Indigenous identities and ontologies in ways that
are typically very different than settlers (Battell Lowman and Barker,
2015: 48-68). Such acknowledgements are also happening at cultural
events and even hockey games. As a consequence, we are living in a
moment in which we are being reminded about buried and unacknow-
ledged history, as well as about the colonial past and the colonial pre-
sent. [R, abr.]
68.1606 AGENSKY, Jonathan C. — Recognizing religion: politics,
history, and the “long 19th century”. European Journal of
International Relations 23(4), Dec. 2017 : 729-755.
This article advances an “entangled history” approach that emphasizes the
constitutive, relational, and historical dimensions of religion — as a practice,
discursive formation, and analytical category. It argues that these public
dimensions of religion share their conditions of possibility and intelligibility in
a political order that crystallized over the long 19th c. The neglect of this
period has enabled IR to treat religion with a sense of closure at odds with
the realities of religious political behavior and how it is understood. Refo-
cusing on religion’s historical entanglem ents recovers the concept as a
means of explaining international relations by “recognizing” how it is consti-
tuted as a category of social life. This article speaks to renewe d debates
about the role of history in IR, proposing entanglement as a productive
framing for international politics more generally. [R, abr.]
68.1607 AITCHISON, Guy — Rights, citizenship and political
struggle. European Journal of Political Theory 17(1), Jan.
2018 : 23-43.
This paper adds a new perspective to recent debates about the political
nature of rights through attention to their distinctive role within social
movement practices of moral critique and social struggle. The paper
proceeds through a critical examination of the Political Constitutionalist
theories of rights politics proposed by Jeremy Waldron and Richard
Bellamy. While political constitutionalists are correct to argue that rights
are "contestable" and require democratic justification, they construe
political activity almost exclusively with reference to voting, parties and
parliamentary law-making, neglecting the vital role rights play in political
struggle outside and against the official institutions of democratic citizen-
ship. This paper locates the political nature of rights in their conflictual
logic as "claims" in multiple spheres that function to mobilise oppositional
support against powerful adversaries and challenge dominant under-
standings. [R, abr.]
68.1608 AJZENHAMER, Vladimir — Bojno polje praxis: realističko-
konstruktivistički duumvirat i "posrtanje" liberalnog in-
ternacionalizma (Battlefield praxis: the alliance of realism
and constructivism and the “fall” of liberal international-
ism). Medunarodni Problemi (International Problems) 69(2-
3), 2017 : 262-282.
Today, IR scholars mostly discuss abandoning the idea of macro-theory
and the pluralistic silence in which medium-scale theories resonate in
peace. However, this "diagnosis" still does not give us an answer to the
question of who really won the fight of so-called big theories, or which
theoretical paradigm today has the greatest influence within the disciplinary
field. Applying the idea of reflex ivity between IR theory and the practice of
foreign policy, the author rejects the restrictions of the mythos of the disci-
pline and turns to the analysis of international political praxis as an instru-
ment for the identification of the theoretical impact. [R, abr.] [See Abstr.
68.1753]
68.1609 ALIKHANI, Behrouz — Post-democracy or processes of
de-democratization? United States case study. Historical
Social Research 42(4), 2017 : 189-206.
C. Crouch has collected evidence to demonstrate how current democratic
societies, with a new wave of economic liberalism in the past four decades,
have entered a "post-democratic" era. He uses the formula of a parabola to
highlight the structure of this long-term transformation. According to h im, in
the "post-democratic" period the democratic institutions still remain formally
intact, but the political class has increasingly become more dependent on
big corporations and financial institutions and less dependent on ordinary
citizens. I integrate this concept of democracy in a process-sociological
concept of democratization and de-democratization. It is discussed why the
second concept is more reality congruent than the less differentiated and
static concept of "post-democracy". With the aid of this new process or
figurational sociological concept, one is able to empirically investigate both
processes of democratization and de-democratization. To conclude the
paper, this new concept is briefly applied to the ongoing political and social
processes in the US. [R]
68.1610 ALOIS, Paul — Lessons for effective governance: an
examination of the Better Work program. Global Govern-
ance 24(1), Jan.-March 2018 : 139-157.
Recent decades have seen a proliferation of global multistakeholder
initiatives that address “problems without passports,” but the effective-
ness of these initiatives is debatable. This article discusses Better Work,
an initiative that improves labor standards in the garment industry. It
provides an overview of the program and discusses five lessons from
Better Work that can be applied to other initiatives. These are: coopera-
tion can be more effective than coercion; training complements the
application of incentives; local ownership is critical for global initiatives;
international organizations can anchor initiatives to prevent capture by
powerful stakeholders; and multinational corporations can be responsible
partners, but should not play a leading role. [R]
68.1611 ALONSO-MEIJIDE, J. M. ; ÁLVAREZ-MOZOS, M. ; FI-
ESTRAS-JANEIRO, M. G. — Power indices and minimal
winning coalitions for simple games in partition function
form. Group Decision and Negotiation 26(6), Nov. 2017 :
1231-1245.
We propose a generalization of simple games to partition function form
games based on a monotonicity property that we define in this context.
This property allows us to properly speak about minimal winning embed-
ded coalitions. We propose and characterize two power indices based on
such coalitions. Finally, the new indices are used to study the distribution
of power in the Parliament of Andalusia that emerged after the elections
of March 22, 2015. [R]
68.1612 AMMICHT QUINN, Regina — Verantwortung als Irritation:
Ethische Überlegungen (Responsibility as irritation: ethi-
cal considerations). Politische Vierteljahresschrift Sonder-
heft 52, 2017 : 106-122.
The concept of responsibility is a crucial term in the field of ethics, even
though it is quite new in this context. Before the 19th c., the concept of
guilt (retrospectively) and duty (prospectively) were used to analyze
problems of "responsibility". The emerging idea of responsibility was
supposed to guarantee more flexibility and openness in a changing and
more complex world. Today, the diffusion of responsibility challenges its
meaning and meaningfulness. The effort to uphold this idea often results
in precise, manageable and role-specific systems of responsibility,
comparable to (older) systems of "guilt" and "duty". The article traces
forms and effects of specific moral responsibility by referring to two
novels by Heinrich von Kleist and Cormac McCarthy. The analysis
demonstrates that moral responsibility cannot be captured in closed
systems of rules with limited scopes. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 68.1897]
68.1613 ANDERSEN, Rune Holmgaard ; SCHULZE, Jennie L. ;
SEPPEL, Külliki — Pinning down democracy: a Q-method
study of lived democracy. Polity 50(1), Jan. 2018 : 4-42.
The social sciences disagree on how democracy should be defined and
measured. This study approaches the conceptualization of democracy
from the demos side. Using Q-methodology, we pin down the way
ordinary Estonians live and understand democracy. The analysis reveals
three distinct discourses: a libertarian democracy as freedom; a partici-
patory democracy as empowerment; and a populist democracy as the
utopia of good policies. It also points to strong consensus on what it
means to live together in society. The study tests the correspondence
between defined democracy and lived democracy; it demonstrates how
Political science : method and theory
162
Q-methodology can objectivize the subjective; and it provides new
empirical knowledge about how ordinary people perceive democracy.
Understanding how people conceive of democracy is essential for ensur-
ing measurement validity when using either conventional quantitative or
qualitative approaches. [R]
68.1614 ARNDT, Christoph — An empirical model of issue evolu-
tion and partisan realignment in a multiparty system. Po-
litical Research Quarterly 71(1), March 2018 : 59-74.
Since E. Carmines and J. Stimson’s [“On the structure and sequence of
issue evolution”, American Political Science Review, 80(3), 1986: 90 1-
920; Abstr. 36.5611], the concept of issue-evolution has become a
common theoretical toolkit to examine and explain polarization around
cultural issues and partisan realignment in the US. Analyzing whether
and how their concept travels to electoral change in a multiparty system
would provide more theoretical leverage and create empirical knowledge
on the logic of issue-evolution outside the US and also whether the logic
of electoral change differs from US-style two-party systems. This article
applies the issue-evolution concept to a multidimensional multiparty
system using micro-level data from 1971 to 2011 in combination with
data on elite-level polarization to demonstrate that partisan realignment
in Denmark follows an issue-evolution process with niche parties as main
drivers. [R, abr.]
68.1615 ARRIOLA ECHANIZ, Naiara — Las consecuencias de la
globalización en el derecho constitucional: aportaciones
de la miríada de corrientes doctrinales (The conse-
quences of globalization for constitutional law: Contribu-
tions of the myriad doctrinal currents). Revista de Estu-
dios políticos 178, Oct.-Dec. 2017 : 171-188.
The phenomenon of globalization goes beyond the national borders
established after the Second World War, generating a global village with
problems that cannot be solved by a single State or a specific interna-
tional organization. This paper analyses globalization from a politico-
legal perspective, to understand its effects on constitutional law in rela-
tion to democracy, the guaranteeing of Human Rights, and national
economic powers. [R]
68.1616 ASAL, Victor ; DELOUGHERY, Kathleen ; SIN, Steve —
Democracy, inclusion, and failure in counterinsurgency.
Foreign Policy Analysis 13(4), Nov. 2017 : 913-930.
Why do the strong lose? Intuitively, stronger violent actors should win in
wars against weaker actors. The literature on insurgencies suggests that
democracies will do worse than other countries. However, there is little
quantitative literature on why states succeed or fail in their efforts against
insurgencies, and the key works find that democracy does not matter.
We argue that the combined effect of political inclusion and political
competition present in inclusive democracies is a key missing comp o-
nent impacting the success or failure of counterinsurgency (COIN).
When procedural elements of democracy are combined with political
inclusion, countries are less likely to be successful at suppressing insur-
gencies because normatively they are less willing to be as repressive
and ruthless as necessary. [R, abr.]
68.1617 BACHELOT, Carole — L’étude des partis politiques: entre
permanence et renouveau (Studying political parties: the
old and the new). Pouvoirs 163, Nov. 2017 : 127-139.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the analysis of political parties
has produced a rich and highly diversified literature. The paper presents
the recent evolution of the political science literature, by looking at the
dynamics that have affected its traditional analytical categories (entre-
preneurial, organizational, societal) and the emergence of “new partisan
objects” which call for a hybridization of perspectives and methods. [R]
[See Abstr. 68.2024]
68.1618 BACON, Edwin — Teaching applied politics: from em-
ployability to political imaginary. Politics 38(1), Feb. 2018 :
94-108.
The growth of applied politics teaching in recent years is often conflated
by academics, institutions, and professional associations with the em-
ployability agenda increasingly promoted by government. Many academ-
ics object to the imposition of neo-liberal values on universities, the
commodification of higher education, and a focus on employability in
their teaching. These developments, coupled with a sense that the
teaching of practical politics lacks intellectual rigour, undermine the
growth of applied politics courses and programmes. There is, however,
no reason why applied politics teaching must embrace neo-liberal norms.
Nor is the alternative the introduction of courses teaching the practice of
radical activism. Norms and values in applied politics can come from
students, producing content and knowledge as they develop skills and
approaches to practical politics. [R, abr.]
68.1619 BADENHOOP, Elisabeth — Calling for the super citizen:
citizenship ceremonies in the UK and Germany as tech-
niques of subject-formation. Migration Studies 5(3), Nov.
2017 : 409-427.
Migration and citizenship studies tend to conceive of naturalization and
of citizenship ceremonies as highly ambivalent procedures. They simul-
taneously include and exclude migrants by granting full membership to
certain migrants while separating them from national-born and other
migrant citizens. Yet, existing studies with their focus on the inclu-
sion/exclusion divide tend to overlook another key dimension of citizen-
ship ceremonies. I argue that citizenship ceremonies should be unde r-
stood as techniques of subject-formation that aim at the modification and
optimization of the self-understanding and behaviour of newly-
naturalized citizens by confronting them with specific expectations. This
article demonstrates that local state representatives encourage natural-
ized citizens to transform themselves to become a political, economic
and cultural asset to the nation-state. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 68.1720]
68.1620 BAILEY, David J., et al. — Challenging the age of auster-
ity: disruptive agency after the global economic crisis.
Comparative European Politics 16(1), Jan. 2018 : 9-31.
This article explores the different forms of disruptive subjectivity that
have developed in the context of the post-2008 global and European
crises. The article traces developments both before and after 2008, with
a specific focus on events in Spain and the UK. These country contexts
are chosen due to their considerable differences in terms of the impact
that the cris is had; yet we witness notable similarities with regard to the
instances of refusal and resistance observed, especially in terms of the
motives held and forms adopted, albeit with differences in scale. The
paper presents the results of qualitative research, including 65 in-depth
interviews, to highlight the way in which disaffection, the search for voice,
and the threat of withdrawal from relations of exploitation have each
become problematic as means of dissent following 2008. [R, abr.] [First
article of a thematic issue on "Contention in the age of austerity in
Europe: the emergence of new alternatives?", edited and introduced, pp.
1-8, by David BAILEY and Louisa PARKS. See also Abstr. 68.2748,
2779, 2790, 2915, 2940, 2944]
68.1621 BALTHASAR, Dominik — "Peace-building as state-
building"? Rethinking liberal interventionism in contexts
of emerging states. Conflict Security and Development
17(6), Nov. 2016 : 473-491.
Contemporary policy-making guided by the "liberal peace" holds that
peace is necessary for states to emerge, and that peace-building and
state-building do not only go in tandem, but are mutually reinforcing. Yet,
in view of both the historical record of state-making and empirical evi-
dence provided by liberal interventionism, this proposition appears
questionable. In order to shed light on the reasons underpinning the
relationship between prevailing peace-building practices and the funda-
mental exigencies of state-making, this article proposes that while
peace-building is principally about creating a situation of non-violent co-
existence despite prevailing differences and, thus, essentially geared at
accepting and enshrining institutional and identity pluralism, state-making
is vitally aimed at replacing institutional and identity multiplicity with
greater degrees of rule hegemony and standardisation. [R, abr.]
68.1622 BANTA, Benjamin R. — Lev eraging the idea of “humani-
tarian war”. International Relations 31(4), Dec. 2017 : 426-
446.
In attempting to bring the frame of war more directly into the discussion
over humanitarian intervention in the early 1990s, A. Roberts quipped
that “‘humanitarian war’ is an oxymoron that may yet become a reality”
[“Humanitarian war: military intervention and human rights”, ibid. 69(3),
July 1993: 429-449; Abstr. 44.820]. No longer was humanitarianism only
meant to restrain the means of warfare, but the violent and political logic
of war was now supposed to serve the caring and universal dictates of
humanitarianism. This essay takes the chance to theorize the idea of
humanitarian war further to help improve our understanding of the reality
that has become of it, where not only humanitarian interventions or
coercive enactments of the “Responsibility to Protect” feature humanitar-
ian casus belli, but even more geopolitically motivated wars often do as
well. [R, abr.]
68.1623 BARAKAT, Sultan ; WALDMAN, Thomas — Cumulative
influence: the case of political settlements research in
British policy. Policy Studies 38(6), Nov. 2017 : 640-663.
The concept of the political settlement has risen to occupy a central
place in British policy toward conflict-affected and fragile states. Yet, at
around the turn of the millennium, the term was barely mentioned in
official circles and the so-called "good governance" approach held sway
as the dominant operational mode. So, how had this transformation in
policy approach come about and what was the role of research? We
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