I Political Science : Method and Theory / Science Politique : Méthodes et Théories
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208345211065567 |
757
I
POLITICAL SCIENCE : METHOD AND THEORY
SCIENCE POLITIQUE : MÉTHODES ET THÉORIES
71.7334 ADLER, Emanuel ; DRIESCHOVA, Alena — The epistemo-
logical challenge of truth subversion to the Liberal Inter-
national Order. International Organization 75(2), Spring
2021 : 359-386.
Truth-subversion practices, which populist leaders utilize for political dom-
ination, are a significant source of current pressure on the Liberal Interna-
tional Order (LIO). Truth-subversion practices include false speak (flagrant
lying to subvert the concept of facts), double speak (intentional internal
contradictions in speech to erode reason), and flooding (the emission of
many messages into the public domain to create confusion). Aiming to
destroy liberal truth ideals and practices, truth subversion weakens epis-
temological security; that is, the experience of orderliness and safety that
results from people's and institutions’ shared understandings of their com-
mon-sense reality. It privileges baseless claims over fact-based opinions,
thus creating communities of the like-minded between which communica-
tion becomes impossible. Truth subversion challenges the LIO's three key
institutions: democracy, markets, and multilateralism. [R, abr.] [See Abstr.
71.7405]
71.7335 ADLER-NISSEN, Rebecca ; ZARAKOL, Ayşe — Struggles
for recognition: the liberal international order and the mer-
ger of its discontents. International Organization 75(2),
Spring 2021 : 611-634.
The Liberal International Order (LIO) is currently being undermined not
only by states such as Russia but also by voters in the West. We argue
that both veins of discontent are driven by resentment toward the LIO's
status hierarchy, rather than simply by economic grievances. Approaching
discontent historically and sociologically, we show that there are two
strains of recognition struggles against the LIO: one in the core of the
West, driven by populist politicians and their voters, and one on the semi-
periphery, fueled by competitively authoritarian governments and their
supporters. At this particular moment in history, these struggles are digi-
tally, ideologically, and organizationally interconnected in their criticism of
LIO institutions, amplifying each other. The LIO is thus being hollowed out
from within at a time when it is also facing some of its greatest external
challenges. [R] [See Abstr. 71.7405]
71.7336 ANSELL, Ben ; CANSUNAR, Asli ; ELKJAER, Mads Andreas
— Social distancing, politics and wealth. West European
Politics 44(5-6), 2021 : 1283-1313.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, governments across Eu-
rope have attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by limiting the
movement of their citizens. We analyse whether the level of compliance
with social distancing measures is associated with political, economic, and
demographic factors. In particular, our interests lie in two areas. First, as
lockdowns have dragged on, many countries see some political re-
sistance, often, though not always, from populist movements: are localities
that support populist movements more likely to ignore social distancing
measures? Secondly, economic security: do localities with higher levels of
income and wealth have higher levels of social distancing? We combine
anonymised movement data from people’s mobile phones drawn from the
Google Community Mobility surveys with subnational economic and de-
mographic data to answer these questions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.7890]
71.7337 BAELE, Stephane J. ; BETTIZA, Gregorio — "Turning" eve-
rywhere in IR: on the sociological underpinnings of the
field's proliferating turns. International Theory 13(2), July
2021 : 314-340.
In the past two decades, calls for International Relations (IR) to ‘turn’ have
multiplied. Having reflected on Philosophy's own linguistic turn in the
1980s and 1990s, IR appears today in the midst of taking — almost sim-
ultaneously — a range of different turns, from the aesthetic to the affective,
from the historical to the practice, from the new material to the queer. This
paper seeks to make sense of this puzzling development. Building on
Bourdieu's sociology of science, we argue that although the turns ostensi-
bly bring about (or resuscitate) ambitious philosophical, ontological, and
epistemological questions to challenge what is deemed to constitute the
‘mainstream’ of IR, their impact is more likely to be felt at the ‘margins’ of
the discipline. From this perspective, claiming a turn constitutes a position-
enhancing move for scholars seeking to accumulate social capital, under-
stood as scientific authority, and become ‘established heretics’ within the
intellectual subfield of critical IR. [R, abr.]
71.7338 BARCELO, Joan ; ROSAS, Guillermo — Endogenous de-
mocracy: causal evidence from the potato productivity
shock in the old world. Political Science Research and Meth-
ods 9(3), July 2021 : 650-657.
Despite a high cross-country correlation between development and de-
mocracy, it is difficult to gauge the impact of economic development on
the probability that autocracies will transition to democracy because of en-
dogeneity, especially due to reverse causation and omitted variable bias.
Hence, whether development causes democracy remains a contested is-
sue. We exploit exogeneity in the regional variation of potato cultivation
along with the timing of the introduction of potatoes to the Old World (i.e.,
a potato productivity shock) to identify a causal effect of urbanization, a
proxy for economic development, on democratization. Our results, which
hold under sensitivity analyses that question the validity of the exclusion
restriction, present new evidence of the existence of a causal effect of
economic development on democracy. [R]
71.7339 BARNICKEL, Christiane — Kritik und Normativität in der
(empirischen) Legitimitätsforschung (Critique and norma-
tivity in (empirical) legitimacy research). Politische Viertel-
jahresschrift 62(1), March 2021 : 19-43.
This article takes the long-standing debate within legitimacy research
about the dichotomic differentiation between normative and empirical ap-
proaches, which is perceived to be too reductionist, as a starting point to
identify different normative dimensions inherent in empirical legitimacy re-
search. For this purpose, a systematization is suggested that draws upon
the discussion on normativity and critique as well as on the differentiation
between valuation and evaluation as suggested by (sociological) valuation
studies. It is argued that these distinctions help make different emphases
in legitimation research more precise, particularly in empirical legitimation
research. The article extracts two guiding differences between, first, valu-
ation and evaluation and, second, between who valuates and evaluates.
[R, abr.]
71.7340 BARTA, Zsófia ; MAKSZIN, Kristin — The politics of credit-
worthiness: political and policy commentary in sovereign
credit rating reports. Journal of European Public Policy
41(2), June 2021 : 307-330.
How much do politics and politically sensitive policy choices matter for
sovereign credit ratings? We contend that while policy is consistently im-
portant for rating decisions, attention to politics varies with perceived un-
certainty. Quantitatively analysing the text of 635 sovereign rating reports
issued by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) between 1999 and 2012 for 40 Eu-
ropean countries, we find that S&P scrutinises policy with similar intensity
across countries, but political scrutiny was less intense in developed coun-
tries and prospective EU members (categories formerly associated with
lower uncertainty) than in emerging countries until the crisis dispelled illu-
sions of lower uncertainty in these categories. [R, abr.]
71.7341 BAS, Muhammet A. ; McLEAN, Elena V. — Expecting the un-
expected: disaster risks and conflict. Political Research
Quarterly 74(2), June 2021 : 421-433.
This study examines the relationship between disaster risks and interstate
conflict. We argue that in disaster-prone areas actors’ rational expecta-
tions about the likelihood and magnitude of potential future disasters can
make conflict more likely. The relationship emerges when future disasters
are viewed as shocks that are expected to shift the relative power balance
among states. If large enough, such expected shifts can generate commit-
ment problems and cause conflict even before any disasters take place.
Our approach represents a shift of focus from previous research, which
investigates the effect of actual disasters and ignores rational expectations
regarding future events. We use a simple game-theoretic model to high-
light the commitment problem caused by disaster risks. We then discuss
and apply an empirical strategy enabling us to disentangle effects of dis-
aster proneness from effects of actual disaster events. [R, abr.]
71.7342 BELLAMY, Richard — Between utopianism and realism:
the limits of partisanship as an academic methodology.
Political Studies 69(3), Aug. 2021 : 481-491.
Taking debates about democracy in the EU as an example, F. Wolkenstein
proposes that normative theorists should adopt a ‘partisan’ approach that
engages with ‘formative agents’ to advocate for transformative political
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