International Political Science Abstracts
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00208345211009663 |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
163
I
POLITICAL SCIENCE : METHOD AND THEORY
SCIENCE POLITIQUE : MÉTHODES ET THÉORIES
71.1644 ABBONDANZA, G. — Middle powers and great powers
through history: the concept from ancient times to the pre-
sent day. History of Political Thought 41(3), 2020 : 397-418.
The lack of universally-shared definitions for middle powers and great
powers is a common issue in international relations theory, as invariably
outlined by the relevant literature. This research argues that this theoreti-
cal uncertainty is not due to an inherent limit of such definitions, but rather
to their insufficient adaptation to an ever-changing international system.
With a historical determinist approach, this article aims to demonstrate that
primal forms of middle and great powerdom can be traced back to two and
a half millennia ago, and it therefore examines three broad historical peri-
ods in which this occurred: antiquity, post-classical and early modern
times, and eighteenth century to the present time. By tracing the ancient
origins of the two concepts, it seeks to expand and refine middle power
theory and great power theory, while clarifying the reasons for their current
definitional confusion. [R]
71.1645 ABRAMSON, Scott F. ; MONTERO, Sergio — Learning
about growth and democracy. American Political Science
Review 114(4), Nov. 2020 : 1195-1212.
We develop and estimate a model of learning that accounts for the ob-
served correlation between economic development and democracy and
for the clustering of democratization events. In our model, countries’ own
and neighbors’ past experiences shape elites’ beliefs about the effects of
democracy on economic growth and their likelihood of retaining power.
These beliefs influence the choice to transition into or out of democracy.
We show that learning is crucial to explaining observed transitions since
the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, our model predicts reversals to au-
thoritarianism if the world experienced a growth shock the size of the Great
Depression. [R]
71.1646 ADIDA, Claire L.,, et al. — Broadening the PhD pipeline: a
summer research program for HBCU students. PS 53(4),
Oct. 2020 : 723-728.
This article introduces, describes, and evaluates a program designed to
broaden the PhD pipeline in Political Science to achieve greater equity and
inclusion. In its fifth year, the program brings undergraduate students from
two Historically Black Colleges and Universities to an R-1 Political Science
PhD department for a seven-week summer program, in which they are
paired with a faculty mentor to conduct research for, prepare, and present
an original research project. Additionally, participants attend methods
classes, GRE preparatory workshops, subfield presentations from gradu-
ate students and faculty in the host department, and social events. We
describe key lessons drawn from our experience in piloting this program.
We evaluate its success using data about the composition of the host in-
stitution’s PhD program and exit surveys conducted with all participants
from 2016 to 2018. [R]
71.1647 AHLBURG, Dennis A. — Covid-19 and UK universities. Po-
litical Quarterly 91(3), July-Sept. 2020 : 649-654.
Universities UK (UUK) has suggested that there may be very significant
losses to higher education as a consequence of Covid-19. However,
losses are likely to be substantially lower than the potential losses esti-
mated by UUK. But the magnitude of losses is very uncertain. The UUK’s
proposal to restrict undergraduate enrolment per university to stop institu-
tions poaching students is not in the interests of the most highly regarded
universities, or that of students. Some rationalisation of the sector should
be the price of further government support. Now is also the time to recon-
sider how university research is funded. [R]
71.1648 ALBRECHT, Holger — Diversionary peace: international
peacekeeping and domestic civil-military relations. Inter-
national Peacekeeping 27(4), Aug. 2020 : 586-616.
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military
relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce posi-
tive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an
authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mecha-
nisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in
Ben Ali’s Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad
presents obstacles for the coordination of coup plots at home. Second,
incumbents can allocate material resources to meet officers’ economic
grievances. Moreover, peacekeeping operations serve to enhance corpo-
rate institutionalization through specific training programmes. Finally,
peacekeeping contributes to a professional ethos and hence the depoliti-
cization of the officer corps. These findings give rise to the notion that con-
tributing to peace can have similar effects for domestic politics as going to
war. [R]
71.1649 ALLAN, Catherine, et al. — Jumping Off the treadmill: trans-
forming NRM to systemic governing with systemic co-in-
quiry. Policy Studies 41(4), 2020 : 350-371.
We reflect on our experience of using a systemic co-inquiry to provide new
insights into operationalizing Deliberative Policy Analysis (DPA) that may
assist it to speak more immediately to issues related to governing in the
Anthropocene. Natural resource management (NRM) in Australia em-
braced the global turn to governance, but demonstrated how difficult it is
to achieve systemic, collaborative approaches to management policy.
Community and organizational stakeholders in the case area were con-
stantly in motion but achieving no forward movement in collaborative gov-
ernance. Systemic co-inquiry is a facilitated process that enables emer-
gence of ideas and opportunities for transforming a situation. We describe
this process, present how it was used in the case area, then critically re-
flect on its contributions for governance and practice, and its theoretical
and political implications. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.2090]
71.1650 ALTER, Karen J. — Comprehending global governance: in-
ternational regime complexity vs. global constitutional-
ism. Global Constitutionalism 9(2), July 2020 : 413-423.
The After Fragmentation special issue unites political science conversa-
tions about regime complexity with legal/normative conversations about
global constitutionalism through a focus on the generation and resolution
of interface conflicts, defined as moments when overlapping elements or
rule incompatibilities generate actual conflicts. Yet scholars choosing
among these two perspectives actually have different objectives. After re-
viewing the two literatures, I argue that this special issue is closer to the
global constitutionalism perspective, which generally seeks legitimated or-
der. By contrast, the regime complexity literature asks how does the fact
that global governance is spread across multiple institutions in itself shape
cooperation politics. Investigating what it means to get ‘beyond fragmen-
tation’, I suggest that the potential or actuality of rule conflicts is not nec-
essarily a problem because conflicts are a normal and even salutary as-
pect of politics. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.1771]
71.1651 ANTUNES DE OLIVEIRA, Felipe — Development for
whom? Beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichot-
omy. Journal of International Relations and Development
23(4), Dec. 2020 : 924-946.
The developed/underdeveloped dichotomy is the starting point of main-
stream theories of development. Based on a theoretical framework inher-
ited from modernisation theories, they represent development as the pro-
cess through which productive structures in the Global South are trans-
formed following the footste ps of the Global North. Dependency theories
productively challenged this linear conception of development, but failed
to provide a consistent alternative because of their incapacity to move be-
yond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. In this article, I claim that
Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development finally indicates
a way to think of development beyond the developed/underdeveloped di-
chotomy. [R, abr.]
71.1652 ARGYLE, Lisa P. ; MENDELBERG, Tali — Improving
women’s advancement in political science: what we know
about what works. PS 53(4), Oct. 2020 : 718-722.
Women earn approximately half of all bachelor’s degrees in Political Sci-
ence but they comprise only 22% of full professors. Scholars have offered
various likely explanations and proposed many interventions to improve
women’s advancement. This article reviews existing research regarding
the effectiveness of these interventions. We find that many of the proposed
interventions have yet to be fully evaluated. Furthermore, some of the pol-
icies that have been evaluated turn out to be ineffective. Women’s men-
toring and networking workshops are the most promising of the fully tested
interventions. The potential for failure underscores the need for additional
evaluation of any proposed intervention before widespread implementa-
tion. [R]
Political science : method and theory
164
71.1653 ASLAM, Wali, et al. — Misplaced states and the politics of
regional identity: towards a theoretical framework. Cam-
bridge Review of International Affairs 33(4), 2020 : 505-526.
Whilst there is no shortage of analyses on the politics of regions in IR, little
attention has been paid to states who perceive that they do not properly fit
in the regions they happen to be located in. These are the ‘misplaced
states’: they stand out not so much because of material capacities but be-
cause they espouse an identity, manifested in different ways, in marked
contrast to the states around them. This article asks what causes this pro-
cess of a change in identity amongst misplaced states in different parts of
the world. Comparing across regions, it analyses why and how states re-
construct their identities in order to enhance or deemphasise their degrees
of regional conformity. By focusing on the ‘role-location process’ rooted in
role theory, this article contributes to the literature by conceptualising the
phenomenon of ‘misplacement.’ [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on
"Misplaced states and the politics of regional identity', introduced by the
author. See also Abstr. 71.2715, 2778, 2800, 2940, 2961, 2965]
71.1654 BABIC, Milan ; GARCIA-BERNARDO, Javier ; HEEMSKERK,
Eelke M. — The rise of transnational state capital: state-
led foreign investment in the 21st century. Review of Inter-
national Political Economy 27(3), June 2020 : 433-475.
Cross-border state-led investment is a recently rising, but understudied
phenomenon of the global political economy. Existing research employs
an anecdotal and case-oriented perspective that does not engage in a
systemic, large-scale analysis of this rise of transnational state investment
and its consequences for the transformation of state power in 21st-c. cap-
italism. We offer two original contrib utions: Conceptually, we operational-
ize transnational foreign state-led investment on the basis of weighted
ownership ties. These state capital ties are created by states as investors
in corporations around the world. Empirically, we demonstrate our ap-
proach by setting up and analyzing the largest dataset on transnational
state capital up to date. We show which different outward strategies states
as owners employ and classify states according to their relative positions
within the global network of transnational state capital. [R, abr.]
71.1655 BACKUS, Matthew ; LITTLE, Andrew T. — I don’t know.
American Political Science Review 114(3), Aug. 2020 : 724-
743.
Political decision makers make choices in a complex and uncertain world,
where even the most qualified experts may not know what policies will
succeed. Worse, if these experts care about their reputation for compe-
tence, they may be averse to admitting what they don’t know. We model
the strategic communication of uncertainty, allowing for the salient reality
that sometimes the effects of proposed policies are impossible to know.
Our model highlights the challenge of getting experts to admit uncertainty,
even when it is possible to check predictive success. Moreover, we identify
a novel solution: checking features of the question that only good experts
will infer — in particular, whether the effect of policies is kno wable — can
induce uninformed experts do say “I Don’t Know.” [R]
71.1656 BADERIN, Alice ; BARNES, Lucy — Risk and self-respect.
British Journal of Political Science 50(4), Oct. 2020 : 1419-
1437.
What is the nature of the experience of risk? Risk can impose distinctive
burdens on individuals: making us anxious, impairing our relationships and
limiting our ability to plan our lives. On the other hand, risky situations are
sometimes exciting, liberating and even empowering. The article explores
the idea that risk can result in benefits for the individuals who bear it. Spe-
cifically, we evaluate J. Tomasi’s claim that the experience of economic
risk is a precondition of individual self-respect. Philosophical claims about
the social bases of self-respect such as Tomasi’s have not been subjected
to sufficient empirical scrutiny. The article exemplifies an alternative ap-
proach, by integrating philosophical argument with the analysis of large-
scale survey data. [R, abr.]
71.1657 BAE Yooil ; LEE Yong Wook — Socialized soft power: re-
casting analytical path and public diplomacy. Journal of In-
ternational Relations and Development 23(4), Dec. 2020 : 871-
898.
Soft power debate has not analytically moved beyond the questions of
whether soft power matters and of whether soft power can work independ-
ent of hard power since Nye’s initial formulation. Furthermore, the question
of how a state selects the source(s) of its soft power remains silent in the
literature. This neglect leads to the underspecification of the nature and
content of a given state’s soft power policy. We fill in these gaps by recast-
ing the conventional understanding of soft power conceptually and analyt-
ically. Conceptually, we make the case that soft power should be under-
stood as a form of productive power for its conceptual and analytical dis-
tinction. On the basis of this reformulation, we specify an analytical frame-
work that helps map out how a state determines the sources of its soft
power. [R, abr.]
71.1658 BAFARASAT, Abbas Ziafati ; PUGALIS, Lee — In search of
cohesive metropolitan governance: enticements and obli-
gations. European Planning Studies 28(8), Aug. 2020 : 1474-
1492.
Exploring some critical ‘big’ and ‘bigger’ questions facing the governance
of metropolitan regions, we theorize how non-state actors, such as, busi-
ness organizations, entice local governments to participate in metropolitan
planning — an exercise which would then require the adherence of local
governments to framework obligations defined by the state. Through the
empirical case of the Ruhr metropolitan area of Germany, we demonstrate
that such a combination of enticement and process management (floating
obligation) can help to engender ‘cohesive’ metropolitan governance in
terms of conflict-settlement in the selection of a limited set of priorities —
an outcome which we then critically analyze in the wider context of ‘good’
metropolitan governance. [R]
71.1659 BALCELLS, Laia ; SOLOMON, Daniel — Violence, re-
sistance, and rescue during the Holocaust. Comparative
Politics 51(1), Oct. 2020 : 161-180.
What do different forms of anti-Semitic violence during World War II teach
us about the comparative study of political violence? We review three re-
cent political science books about the perpetrators of anti-Semitic vio-
lence, the responses of their Jewish victims, and the rescue efforts that
helped European Jews evade violence. These books demonstrate prom-
ising theoretical, empirical, and methodological uses for the rich historical
record about the Holocaust. We use these studies to highlight the meth-
odological innovations that they advance, the blurry theoretical boundaries
between selective and collective forms of mass violence, and the possibil-
ity of agentive action by perpetrators, victims, and rescuers alike. [R, abr.]
71.1660 BALIGA, Sandeep ; BUENO DE MESQUITA, Ethan ;
WOLITZKY, Alexander — Deterrence with imperfect attrib-
ution. American Political Science Review 114(4), Nov. 2020 :
1155-1178.
Motivated by recent developments in cyberwarfare, we study deterrence
in a world where attacks cannot be perfectly attributed to attackers. In the
model, each of $$ n $$ attackers may attack the defender. The defender
observes a noisy signal that probabilistically attributes the attack. The de-
fender may retaliate against one or more attackers and wants to retaliate
against the guilty attacker only. We note an endogenous strategic comple-
mentarity among the attackers: if one attacker becomes more aggressive,
that attacker becomes more “suspect” and the other attackers become
less suspect, which leads the other attackers to become more aggressive
as well. Despite this complementarity, there is a unique equilibrium. We
identify types of improvements in attribution that strengthen deterrence —
namely, improving attack detection independently of any effect on the
identifiability of the attacker, reducing false alarms, or replacing misidenti-
fication with non-detection. [R, abr.]
71.1661 BARABAS, Jason ; CARTER, Benjamin ; SHAN, Kevin — An-
alogical framing: how policy comparisons alter political
support for health care reform. American Politics Research
48(5), Sept. 2020 : 596-611.
Analogies have captivated philosophers for millennia, yet their effects on
modern public opinion preferences remain largely unexplored. Neverthe-
less, the lack of evidence as to whether analogies aid in political persua-
sion has not stopped politicians from using these rhetorical devices in pub-
lic debates. To examine such strategic attempts to garner political support,
we conducted survey experiments in the United States that featured the
analogical arguments being used by Democrats and Republicans as well
as some of the policy rationales that accompanied their appeals. The re-
sults revealed that analogies — especially those that also provided the
underlying policy logic — increased support for individual health coverage
mandates, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and even single payer national
health proposals. [R, abr.]
71.1662 BARNFIELD, Matthew — Think twice before jumping on the
bandwagon: clarifying concepts in research on the band-
wagon effect. Political Studies Review 18(4), Nov. 2020 : 553-
574.
I provide a clear definition and typology of bandwagon effects, grounded
in a review which reappraises existing scholarship. I argue that the band-
wagon effect is a distinct social phenomenon involving an individual-level
change in vote choice or turnout decision towards a more or increasingly
popular candidate or party, motivated initially by this popularity. I then
break this down employing a typology which draws on distinctions made
in the literature between static and dynamic, and conversion and mobili-
sation effects. This conception of the bandwagon effect leaves it open to
the operation of a variety of possible underlying processes. Scholars
should apply such clear concepts as are proposed here in bandwagon re-
search, to situate and clarify their contributions theoretically and offer a
Science politique : méthodes et théories
165
more nuanced understanding of whether, how and why bandwagon effects
occur across different political contexts. [R, abr.]
71.1663 BATTISTONI, Alyssa — Anthropocene politics. Perspec-
tives on Politics 18(3), Sept. 2020 : 881-885.
Those for whom the term “Anthropocene” tends to evoke academic fad-
dishness may be surprised to realize that the discourse about it is now two
decades old. The term was first proposed in a 2000 paper by the atmos-
pheric chemist P. Crutzen and biologist E. Stoermer to describe the geo-
logical epoch in which human activity has come to shape the Earth itself.
Although these debates have raged across the humanities and sciences
for years, political theorists have largely kept their distance. As the climate
crisis worsens, however, many may now be looking to play catch-up. If so,
each of the three books under review here holds out the promise of helping
us understand the theoretical implications of this epochal transformation.
[R, abr.]
71.1664 BAYER, Patrick ; GENOVESE, Federica — Beliefs about
consequences from climate action under weak climate in-
stitutions: sectors, home bias, and international embed-
dedness. Global Environmental Politics 20(4), 2020 : 28-50.
Climate policy has distributional effects, and ratcheting up climate ambi-
tion will only become politically feasible if the general public believes that
their country can win from ambitious climate action. We develop a theory
of belief formation that anchors distributional effects from climate action at
the sector level. Specifically, we study how knowing about these impacts
shapes public beliefs about collective economic consequences from cli-
mate policy — not only in a home country but also abroad. A nationally
representative survey experiment in the United Kingdom demonstrates
that respondents are biased toward their home country in assessing infor-
mation about winning and losing sectors: while beliefs brighten for good
news and worsen for bad news when the home country is involved, distri-
butional effects from abroad are discounted for belief formation. [R, abr.]
[See Abstr. 71.2057]
71.1665 BEARDSWORTH, Richard — Climate science, the politics
of climate change and futures of IR. International Relations
34(3), Sept. 2020 : 374-390.
This article considers what is necessary politically to respond to the em-
pirical challenge of climate change and to the present calls of climate sci-
ence (a carbon-neutral world by 2050). Its basic argument is that, among
an array of national and international actors, it remains the state that can
drive a successful politics of climate change. Without the heavy-lifting of
the state and the state’s ability as a national entity to motivate behavioural
change, neither the daunting scale nor imminent time-horizon of climate
mitigation and adaptation is possible. The article shows how this specific
argument, far from pitching anew nationalism against internationalism, can
bring the two presently polarized movements together. The article then
suggests that if these arguments are essentially valid, the discipline of In-
ternational Relations needs to focus much more on the climate challenge.
[R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.1710]
71.1666 BECKER, Megan — Qualitative replication as a pedagogi-
cal approach to teaching research methods. PS 53(4), Oct.
2020 : 802-806.
The importance of replication has been a major matter of discussion
among Political Scientists for decades. However, in the past five years,
the issue has gained greater traction, with many major journals adopting
official standards for Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT).
At the same time, scholars suggest the pivotal role that replication might
play in methods training for students. Unfortunately, these conversations
have been limited in that they emphasize quantitative methods and train-
ing of graduate students. This article offers commentary on the author’s
experience in introducing a qualitative replication project in an upper-divi-
sion undergraduate course. The students in the course replicated M. L.
Ross’s [“How do natural resources influence civil war? Evidence from thir-
teen cases”, International Organiz ation 58(1), Winter 2004: 35-67; Abstr.
55.250] influential article on the “resource curse,” but the assignment
framework can be adopted for various topics and contexts. [R, abr.]
71.1667 BEISER-McGRATH, Janina ; BEISER-McGRATH, Liam F. —
Problems with products? Control strategies for models
with interaction and quadratic effects. Political Science Re-
search and Methods 8(4), Oct. 2020 : 707-730.
We show in Monte Carlos that interaction terms can absorb the effects of
other un-modeled interaction and non-linear effects and analogously, that
included quadratic terms can reflect omitted interactions and non-lineari-
ties. This problem even occurs when included and omitted product terms
do not share any constitutive terms. We show with Monte Carlo experi-
ments that regularized estimators, the adaptive Lasso, Kernel Regularized
Least Squares (KRLS), and Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART)
can prevent the misattribution of interactive/quadratic effects, minimize the
problems of efficiency loss and overfitting, and have low false-positive
rates. We illustrate how inferences drawn can change when relevant prod-
uct terms are used in the control strategy using a recent paper. [R, abr.]
71.1668 BERDAHL, Loleen ; MALLOY, Jonathan ; YOUNG, Lisa —
Faculty perceptions of Political Science PhD career train-
ing. PS 53(4), Oct. 2020 : 751-756.
In face of the ongoing discrepancy between the number of Political Sci-
ence PhD graduates and the availability of permanent academic positions,
we consider attitudes of faculty members towards options to address this
issue. Based on a survey of faculty members in PhD-granting political sci-
ence programs at English-speaking Canadian universities, we find consid-
erable support for both reducing the number of PhD students admitted and
reforming curriculum to ensure graduates cultivate skills transferable to
non-academic environments. At the same time, faculty members are in-
clined to believe that PhD students themselves should shoulder the great-
est responsibility for career preparation. [R]
71.1669 BERG, Alastair ; BERG, Chris ; NOVAK, Mikayla — Block-
chains and constitutional catallaxy. Constitutional Political
Economy 31(2), June 2020 : 188-204.
The proposition that constitutional rules serve as permanent, fixed points
of interaction is challenged by the existence of contestable rule amend-
ment and the emergence of de facto authority. This observation not only
applies to conventional political constitutions, but to the fundamental rules
which govern interactions by numerous people using new forms of tech-
nology. Blockchain technology aims to coordinate action in a world of in-
complete information and opportunism, but the governance arrangements
in blockchain protocols remain far from settled. Drawing upon recent the-
oretical developments regarding constitutional change, we interpret
changes to the fundamental working rules of blockchain protocols as cen-
tral to the adaptive, emergen t nature of activity within this technological
space. [R, abr.]
71.1670 BERNHARD, Michael — What do we know about civil soci-
ety and regime change thirty years after 1989? East Euro-
pean Politics 36(3), Sept. 2020 : 341-362.
This essay discusses the lessons of thirty years of post-communist politics
for our understanding of the relationship between civil society and regime
change. It identifies four different modalities of civil society — insurgent,
institutionalized, uncivil and firewall — and discusses each in detail with
illustrations from post-communist politics. It shows how the politics of the
region has been a fertile field of study for innovation in contemporary un-
derstandings of civil society in comparative politics. [R] [See Abstr.
71.2511]
71.1671 BETZ, Timm ; COOK, Scott J. ; HOLLENBACH, Florian M. —
Spatial interdependence and instrumental variable mod-
els. Political Science Research and Methods 8(4), Oct. 2020 :
646-661.
Instrumental variable (IV) methods are widely used to address endogene-
ity concerns. Yet, a specific kind of endogeneity — spatial interdepend-
ence — is regularly ignored. We show that ignoring spatial interdepend-
ence in the outcome results in asymptotically biased estimates even when
instruments are randomly assigned. The extent of this bias increases
when the instrument is also spatially clustered, as is the case for many
widely used instruments: rainfall, natural disasters, economic shocks, and
regionally- or globally-weighted averages. Because the biases due to spa-
tial interdependence and predictor endogeneity can offset, addressing
only one can increase the bias relative to ordinary least squares. We
demonstrate the extent of these biases both analytically and via Monte
Carlo simulation. Finally, we discuss a general estimation strategy — S-
2SLS – that accounts for both outcome interdependence and predictor en-
dogeneity, thereby recovering consistent estimates of predictor effects. [R]
71.1672 BHATIA, Udit — Rethinking the epistemic case against
epistocracy. Critical Review of International Social and Politi-
cal Philosophy 23(6), Oct. 2020 : 706-731.
I focus on arguments which suggest that disenfranchising persons on the
grounds of incompetence is likely to produce epistemically sub-optimal de-
cisions. I suggest three ways in which such arguments can be strength-
ened. First, I argue that they can be untethered from the controversial ‘best
judge’ principle, according to which each person is the best judge of his or
her own interests. Second, I suggest that epistemic arguments against
epistocracy are currently insensitive to the nature of the groups that would
be excluded on the grounds of incompetence. Third, I argue that current
epistemic critics of epistocracy ignore how its basis for exclusion entails
consequences that are relevant to our assessment of its justifiability. In-
stead, I emphasise the deliberative costs that follow from the exclusion of
disadvantaged groups qua incompetent. [R, abr.]
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