I: Political Science: Method and Theory; Science Politique: Méthodes et Théories
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451806800601 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
719
I
POLITICAL SCIENCE : METHOD AND THEORY
SCIENCE POLITIQUE : MÉTHODES ET THÉORIES
68.6920 ABRAMS, Jesse, et al. — How do states benefit from
nonstate governance? Evidence from forest sustainabil-
ity certification. Global Environmental Politics 18(3), Aug.
2018 : 66-85.
Forest sustainability certification is emblematic of governance mecha-
nisms associated with neoliberal state reforms. Despite being conceived
as a means of compensating for the unwillingness or inability of states to
regulate forest practices, in practice, forest certification has come to
entail complex and hybrid relationships between private-sector, civil
society, and government actors. Indeed, states have increasingly em-
braced certification as a means of complementing or even supplanting
traditional forms of governmental regulation of the forest sector. Yet
processes of neoliberalization imply both an expansion of opportunities
for hybrid governance and a weakening of the state capacity that is often
needed for successful implementation of certification initiatives. We
analyze the complex relationships between neoliberalization, state
capacity, and certification through two contrasting cases in Wisconsin
(US) and Entre Ríos (Argentina). [R, abr.]
68.6921 ALASUUTARI, Pertti — Authority as epistemic capital
Journal of Political Power 11(2), 2018 : 165-190.
The article proposes that authority denotes an actor’s appeals or other
references to objects or facts that she expects others to respect or fear.
The paper identifies four types of authority: capacity-based, ontological,
moral, and charismatic. That is, authority can be built on the assumption
that an actor is capable of accomplishing things; on expertise or re-
spected accounts of reality; on deference to principles; and on extraordi-
nary awe attached to an organization or individual. Such authority can be
called epistemic capital. Those who are more successful in piling up
epistemic capital behind their projects have more influence on others’
conduct. [R]
68.6922 ALBRECHT, Holger ; EIBL, Ferdinand — How to keep
officers in the barracks: causes, agents, and types of
military coups. International Studies Quarterly 62(2), June
2018 : 315-328.
What are the most efficient strategies to prevent military coups d’état?
The answer depends on coup agency, that is, who attempts to overthrow
the regime: elite officers or lower-ranking combat officers. Elite officers
and lower-ranking combat officers have different incentives, opportuni-
ties, and capacities when it comes to perpetrating coups. Using original
data on coup agency, public spending, and officer salaries in the Middle
East and North Africa, we find that counterbalancing — a strategy de-
signed to increase barriers for coup plotters’ coordination efforts — and
higher shares of defense spending prove more effective at preventing
coups by elite officers. However, higher social spending reduces the risk
of coups by combat officers. Political liberalization has mixed effects on
military agents. [R, abr.]
68.6923 ALBRECHT, Holger ; KOEHLER, Kevin — Going on the
run: what drives military desertion in [Syrian] civil war?
Security Studies 27(2), Apr.-June 2018 : 179-203.
This article studies individual military insubordination in the Syrian civil
war, drawing on interviews with deserters from the Syrian army now
based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. A plausibility probe of existing
explanations reveals that desertion opportunities originating in conflict
events and the presence of safe-havens fail to explain individual desert-
ers' decision-making. Accounting for socio-psychological factors — moral
grievances and fear — generates more promising results for an inquiry
into the conditions under which military personnel desert. While moral
concerns with continued military service contribute to accumulating
grievances among military members engaged in the civil war, fear — that
is, soldiers' concerns for their own safety — is a more effective triggering
cause of desertion. The article presents a theory-generating case study
on the causes of military insubordination and disintegration during violent
conflict. [R, abr.]
68.6924 ALISON, Laurence, et al. — Between a rock and a hard
place of geopolitically sensitive threats — critical inci-
dents and decision inertia. Behavioral Sciences of Terror-
ism and Political Aggression 10(3), Sept. 2018 : 207-224.
While the SAFE-T model of decision making emphasizes naturalistic
decision making, its potential for cross-comparative analysis of incidents
with global implications remains underutilized, which the current paper
aims to address. It draws upon open-source reports from unclassified
American, British and Russian intelligence reports to explore the man-
agement of three types of 10 high-profile geopolitically sensitive threats
from acro ss the globe. Combining the benefit of the theore tical frame-
work and hindsight knowledge of the analyzed incidents, the paper
facilitates theoretical understanding of decision inertia and failures to act.
Encouraging the consideration of multiple scenario endings contingent
on a wide spectrum of factors and unique cultural-historical context, it
also helps identify past decision errors in order to inform assessment and
management of similar geopolitical threats in the future. [R, abr.]
68.6925 ALVARADO-ESPINA, Eduardo — Una aproximación
crítico-contextual al declive de la democracia en la era
neoliberal (A critical-contextual approach to the decline
of democracy in the neoliberal era). Revista española de
Ciencia política 47, July 2018 : 69-91.
This article reviews and discusses the main premises of the liberal and
post-Marxist theories of democracy. A substantive concept of democracy is
built by combining the central elements of liberal pluralism and agonist
pluralism (political equality, political pluralism and accountability). Finally,
using this concept as a framework for analysis, two contextual dimensions
are established that affect democracy as a political system: dominant
culture (ideology) and social structure (inequality). From this theoretical
framework, it is established that democracy, as a system that articulates
political life, is dysfunctional to a society with a neoliberal ideology. [R, abr.]
68.6926 ALVAREZ, R. Michael ; LEVIN, Ines ; LI Yimeng — Fraud,
convenience, and e-voting: how voting experience
shapes opinions about voting technology. Journal of In-
formation Technology and Politics 15(2), Apr.-June 2018 : 94-
105.
We study previous experiences with voting technologies, support for e-
voting, and perceptions of voter fraud, using data from the 2015 Coop-
erative Congressional Election Study. We find that voters prefer systems
they have used in the past, and that priming voters with voting fraud
considerations causes them to support lower-tech alternatives to touch-
screen voting machines — particularly among voters with previous
experience using e-voting technologies to cast their votes. Our results
suggest that as policy-makers consider the adoption of new voting
systems in their states and counties, they would be well-served to pay
close attention to how the case for new voting technology is framed. [R]
68.6927 ANDERSEN, Simon Calmar ; JAKOBSEN, Mads Leth —
Political pressure, conformity pressure, and performance
information as drivers of public sector innovation adop-
tion. International Public Management Journal 21(2), Apr.
2018 : 213-242.
Why public organizations adopt and abandon organizational innovations
is a key question for any endeavor to explain large-scale developments
in the public sector. Supplementing research within public administration
on innovation with the related literature on policy diffusion, this article
examines how external factors such as conformity pressure from institu-
tionalized models, performance information from other organizations,
and political pressure affect innovation adoption. By the use of two
survey experiments in very different political contexts — Texas and
Denmark — and a difference-in-differences analysis exploiting a reform
of the political governance of public schools in Denmark, we find that
public managers respond to political pressure. We find no indications
that they emulate institutionalized models or learn from performance
information from other organizations when they adopt organizational
innovations. [R, abr.]
68.6928 ANTONIADES, Andreas — Hegemony and international
relations. International Politics 55(5), Sept. 2018 : 595-611.
The paper interrogates the state of the art in hegemony analysis in IR.
First, I discuss the limitations of using IR theories as a point of departure
for analysing the phenomenon of hegemony in world politics. Second, I
identify the ‘agent-structure problématique’ and ‘critical realism’ as two
different waves of hegemony theorising and examine their contributions
and limitations. Then I outline how we can move beyond the current state
of the art, in order to develop a more comprehensive framework of
analysing hegemony. Focusing on the multiple movements of power
within a hegemonic order, the paper advances a conceptualisation of
hegemony as a complex power ecology — a dynamic order that draws
Political science : method and theory
720
on multiple and conflicting social forces and temporalities, which, in the
final analysis, denote an existential battle for determining desire and the
meaning of life. [R]
68.6929 ARUNACHALAM, Raj ; WATSON, Sara — Height, income
and voting. British Journal of Political Science 48(4), Oct.
2018 : 1027-1051.
The claim that income drives political preferences is at the core of politi-
cal economy theory, yet empirical estimates of income’s effect on politi-
cal behavior range widely. Drawing on traditions in economic history and
anthropology, we propose using height as a proxy for economic well-
being. Using data from the British Household Panel Study, this article
finds that taller individuals are more likely to support the Conservative
Party, support conservative policies and vote Conservative; a one-inch
increase in height increases support for Conservatives by 0.6 per cent.
As an extension, the study employs height as an instrumental variable
for income, and finds that each additional thousand pounds of annual
income translates in to a 2-3 percentage point increase in the probability
of supporting the Conservatives, and that income drives political beliefs
and voting in the same direction. [R]
68.6930 BAKER, Andrew — Macroprudential regimes and the
politics of social purpose. Review of International Political
Economy 25(3), June 2018 : 293-316.
A missing ingredient in the political economy of post-crisis financial
reform is the neglect of questions of social purpose in both policy debate
and IPE scholarship. Social purpose is defined as a vision of the desir-
able or good economic system, derived from combinations of economic
analysis and ethical reasoning. It is of particular relevance and impor-
tance to macroprudential regime-building, because the foundational
macroprudential conceptual frameworks developed by the Bank for
International Settlements and the Geneva Group from 2000 onwards
display the features of a macrosocial ontology that draw on a Minsky-
Keynes tradition. By focusing on systemic outcomes and collective social
expectations, such an ontology creates the basis for so-called macro-
moralities that provide ethical justifications for public forms of systemic
stabilization. [R, abr.]
68.6931 BALINT, Peter ; ERIKSSON, Lina ; TORRESI, Tiziana —
State power and breastfeeding promotion: a critique.
Contemporary Political Theory 17(3), Aug. 2018 : 306-330.
State-sponsored breastfeeding promotion campaigns have become
increasingly common in developed countries. By using the tools of liberal
political theory, as well as public health and health promotion ethics, we
argue that such campaigns are not justified. They ignore important costs
for women, including undermining autonomy, fail to distribute burdens
fairly, cannot be justified neutrally and fail a basic efficacy test. Moreover,
our argument demonstrates that breastfeeding campaigns are a rare
case that bridges the fields of public health ethics (which focuses on
coercive measures to protect third parties) and the ethics of health
promotion campaigns (which focuses on encouraging voluntary change
that benefits the target individuals themselves). [R, abr.]
68.6932 BANG, Henrik ; MARSH, David — Populism versus neo-
liberalism: is there a way forward? Policy Studies 39(3),
May 2018 : 251-259.
Populism is a contested concept. In this conclusion we do not want to
rehearse these contestations. Rather, we re-emphasize: the extent of the
threat that populism poses for liberal democracy; the failure of most
mainstream Economists and Political Science to understand the nature
of the threat; and the putative ways of renewing democracy. [R] [First
article of a thematic issue of the same title, edited by the authors. See
also Abstr. 68.6933, 6967, 7098, 7237, 7287, 7356]
68.6933 BANG, Henrik P. — The American dream: who else but
the young can revive it? Policy Studies 39(3), May 2018 :
274-291.
Many in the mainstream see the rise of populism and the victory of D.
Trump as a minor, transient, disturbance of the balance between stability
and pluralism in liberal democracy, caused by a temporary economic
setback promoting a cultural backlash in the shape of an emotionally
driven nativism, traditionalism and anti-politics. For them, it will disappear
again as soon as the economy recovers and progressive, reasonable
and multicultural, post-materialist values take charge of democracy
again. In contrast, I argue that populism constitutes a serious threat to,
perhaps the end of, American democracy as we know it, with its dream
of creating a viable coupling between outward-looking progressivists and
inward-looking traditionalists. The situation calls for the young to inter-
vene and reinvigorate democracy. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 68.6932]
68.6934 BARRIOS-SUVELZA, Franz — El control contramayori-
tario como marco de análisis de la influencia del nuevo
constitucionalismo latinoamericano sobre la democracia
(Countermajoritarian control as framework for th e analy-
sis of the influence of the new Latin American constitu-
tionalism upon d emocracy). Revista española de Ciencia
política 47, July 2018 : 39-68.
Both critics and endorsers of the new Latin American constitutionalism
(NLAC), as the wave of constitutional reforms carried out in Venezuela,
Ecuador and Bolivia between 1999 and 2009 referred to, agree that
these reforms have altered the countermajoritarian control devises in the
above countries. However, this finding shows some conceptual flaws
relating to several aspects such as: (a) the nature of the countermajor i-
tarian control devices; (b) their logic of relationship with democracy; (c)
what the very existence of these devices reveals about the scope of
democracy itself; (d) the entity where these devises and democracy
operate, and finally (e) the actual novelty of NLAC compared to the past
which, from some perspective, lacked a developed system of counterma-
joritarian control. This article proposes a new conceptual approach to
resolve these conceptual dilemmas. [R, abr.]
68.6935 BASTA, Karlo — The social construction of transforma-
tive political events. Comparative Political Studies 51(10),
Sept. 2018 : 1243-1278.
Comparative political scientists have sought to remedy their subdisci-
pline’s structuralist tendencies by paying greater analytical attention to
transformative political events. Yet, our conceptual understanding of
events remains rudimentary. The article addresses this conceptual gap
in two ways. First, it foregrounds symbolic meaning-making as the
constitutive attribute of events. Second, it demonstrates that events are
not inherently agency-facilitating by developing the concept of prospec-
tively framed events. These are occurrences that actors know will take
place, but of whose outcome they are uncertain. Political challengers
frame the upcoming event so as to discursively trap incumbents into
political action they would rather not undertake. The article demonstrates
this process by tracing the conflict between secessionist challengers and
political incumbents within the Catalan nationalist movement between
2006 and 2010. The concluding section discusses the causal implica-
tions of the argument. [R]
68.6936 BELL, Sam R. ; MURDIE, Amanda — The apparatus for
violence: repression, violent protest, and civil war in a
cross-national framework. Conflict Management and Peace
Science 35(4), July 2018 : 336-354.
Why does repression sometimes work to stop violent protest and some-
times heighten protest? We argue that the effect of repression on protest
depends critically on a “memory of violence” within the state. Without this
memory, the costs of continued protest in the face of increased repres-
sion are often too great for unrelenting mobilization, effectively suppres s-
ing the political violence. We focus on a global sample of repression and
protest data at the weekly level from 1990 to 2009. In states with civil war
histories, repression can mobilize a population previously primed for
violent protest. [R]
68.6937 BENNION, Elizabeth A. ; LAUGHLIN, Xander E. — Best
practices in civic education: lessons from the Journal of
Political Science Education. Journal of Political Science
Education 14(3), 2018 : 287-330.
The Journal of Political Science Education (JPSE) provides over a
decade of research on political science pedagogy, featuring empirical
research documenting best practices in the field. This article provides an
overview of JPSE-published research on the topics of civic education
and engagement. It summarizes the number and scope of articles on this
topic and highlights key findings from the journal’s first 12 years. This
comprehensive overview of past research is designed to facilitate high
quality future research. A detailed exploration of past research provides
a useful “jump start” for teacher-scholars eager to advance the scholar-
ship and pedagogy of engagement. [R]
68.6938 BLAIS, André — The language of political science: should
it be English? European Political Science 17(3), Sept. 2018 :
337-339.
Whether we like it or not, English has become the lingua franca of politi-
cal science. The symposium presents three thoughtful essays about the
pros and cons of this domination and what can and should be done to
mitigate the negative consequences. [R] [See also articles by Peter A.
KRAUS, "In defense of a multilingual political science", pp. 340-348;
Jean-François LASLIER, "The consequences of internationalization on
research topics in economics", pp. 349-357; David LUBLIN, "The case
for English", pp. 358-365]
To continue reading
Request your trial