Comparative Politics
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Rights and Votes
1065.DOC 3/29/2012 5:23:12 PM Daryl J. Levinson Rights and Votes abstractT .T T This Article explores the functional similarities, residual differences, and interrelationships between rights and votes, both conceived as tools for protecting minorities (or other vulnerable groups) from the tyranny of majorities (or other dominant social and political actors). The Article starts from the simple idea that the interests of vulnerable groups in collective decisionmaking processes can be protected either by disallowing certain outcomes that would threaten those interests (using rights) or by enhancing the power of these groups within the decisionmaking process to enable them to protect their own interests (using votes). Recognizing that rights and votes can be functional substitutes for one another in this way, the Article proceeds to ask why, or under what circumstances, political and constitutional actors might prefer one to the other—or some combination of both. While the primary focus is on constitutional law and design, the Article shows that similar choices between rights and votes arise in many different areas of law, politics, and economic organization, including international law and governance, corporations, criminal justice, and labor and employment law. author.T T David Boies Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. Thanks to Gabriella Blum, Ryan Bubb, John Ferejohn, Barry Friedman, Heather Gerken, Ryan Goodman, Bernard Grofman, Don Herzog, Roderick Hills, Daniel Hulsebosch, Michael Klarman, Robert Keohane, Janos Kis, Douglas Laycock, Michael Levine, Dotan Oliar, Benjamin Sachs, Adam Samaha, Peter Schuck, Matthew Stephenson, and Adrian Vermeule, and to participants in workshops at Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, and University of Virginia School of Law, for useful comments on drafts. -
Analyzing Change in International Politics: the New Institutionalism and the Interpretative Approach
Analyzing Change in International Politics: The New Institutionalism and the Interpretative Approach - Guest Lecture - Peter J. Katzenstein* 90/10 This discussion paper was presented as a guest lecture at the MPI für Gesellschaftsforschung, Köln, on April 5, 1990 Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Lothringer Str. 78 D-5000 Köln 1 Federal Republic of Germany MPIFG Discussion Paper 90/10 Telephone 0221/ 336050 ISSN 0933-5668 Fax 0221/ 3360555 November 1990 * Prof. Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University, Department of Government, McGraw Hall, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853, USA 2 MPIFG Discussion Paper 90/10 Abstract This paper argues that realism misinterprets change in the international system. Realism conceives of states as actors and international regimes as variables that affect national strategies. Alternatively, we can think of states as structures and regimes as part of the overall context in which interests are defined. States conceived as structures offer rich insights into the causes and consequences of international politics. And regimes conceived as a context in which interests are defined offer a broad perspective of the interaction between norms and interests in international politics. The paper concludes by suggesting that it may be time to forego an exclusive reliance on the Euro-centric, Western state system for the derivation of analytical categories. Instead we may benefit also from studying the historical experi- ence of Asian empires while developing analytical categories which may be useful for the analysis of current international developments. ***** In diesem Aufsatz wird argumentiert, daß der "realistische" Ansatz außenpo- litischer Theorie Wandel im internationalen System fehlinterpretiere. Dieser versteht Staaten als Akteure und internationale Regime als Variablen, die nationale Strategien beeinflussen. -
The Politics of Group Representation Quotas for Women and Minorities Worldwide Mona Lena Krook and Diana Z
The Politics of Group Representation Quotas for Women and Minorities Worldwide Mona Lena Krook and Diana Z. O’Brien In recent years a growing number of countries have established quotas to increase the representation of women and minorities in electoral politics. Policies for women exist in more than one hundred countries. Individual political parties have adopted many of these provisions, but more than half involve legal or constitutional reforms requiring that all parties select a certain proportion of female candidates.1 Policies for minorities are present in more than thirty countries.2 These measures typically set aside seats that other groups are ineligible to contest. Despite parallels in their forms and goals, empirical studies on quotas for each group have developed largely in iso- lation from one another. The absence of comparative analysis is striking, given that many normative arguments address women and minorities together. Further, scholars often generalize from the experiences of one group to make claims about the other. The intuition behind these analogies is that women and minorities have been similarly excluded based on ascriptive characteristics like sex and ethnicity. Concerned that these dynamics undermine basic democratic values of inclusion, many argue that the participation of these groups should be actively promoted as a means to reverse these historical trends. This article examines these assumptions to explore their leverage in explaining the quota policies implemented in national parliaments around the world. It begins by out- lining three normative arguments to justify such measures, which are transformed into three hypotheses for empirical investigation: (1) both women and minorities will re- ceive representational guarantees, (2) women or minorities will receive guarantees, and (3) women will receive guarantees in some countries, while minorities will receive them in others. -
Arend Lijphart and the 'New Institutionalism'
CSD Center for the Study of Democracy An Organized Research Unit University of California, Irvine www.democ.uci.edu March and Olsen (1984: 734) characterize a new institutionalist approach to politics that "emphasizes relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics." Among the other points they assert to be characteristic of this "new institutionalism" are the recognition that processes may be as important as outcomes (or even more important), and the recognition that preferences are not fixed and exogenous but may change as a function of political learning in a given institutional and historical context. However, in my view, there are three key problems with the March and Olsen synthesis. First, in looking for a common ground of belief among those who use the label "new institutionalism" for their work, March and Olsen are seeking to impose a unity of perspective on a set of figures who actually have little in common. March and Olsen (1984) lump together apples, oranges, and artichokes: neo-Marxists, symbolic interactionists, and learning theorists, all under their new institutionalist umbrella. They recognize that the ideas they ascribe to the new institutionalists are "not all mutually consistent. Indeed some of them seem mutually inconsistent" (March and Olsen, 1984: 738), but they slough over this paradox for the sake of typological neatness. Second, March and Olsen (1984) completely neglect another set of figures, those -
PSC13 Introduction to Comparative Politics Course Description
PSC13 Introduction to Comparative Politics Instructor: Richard S. Conley, PhD Office hours: TBA Email: [email protected] Teaching Assistant: Li Shao Course Description This course introduces students to the discipline of comparative politics, a subfield in political science. Students of comparative politics study politics in countries around the world. Our course will focus on several important themes in the subfield including the science and the art of comparative politics, ideology and culture, political development, democracy and democratization, and the political economy of development. The approach in the class will be global in three senses of the term: 1) it provides broad coverage with select cases in Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Middle East, and Africa, 2) it offers conceptual comprehensiveness, and 3) it promotes critical thinking. Learning Objectives: The general objective of this course is to increase the students knowledge of political realities all aver the world. Students will learn the many ways governments operate and the various ways people behave in political life. By the end of the term students should be able to: accurately describe political life in select countries in all of the world’s geographic regions; show a familiarity with a wide range of substantive issues in comparative politics and be able to discuss them critically; demonstrate mastery of the main theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of comparative politics. Required Text Mark Kesselmen, Joel Krieger, William Joseph (eds.). Introduction to Comparative Politics (6th Edition, 2012). Available as an Electronic Book. ISBN-10: 1111831823; ISBN-13: 978- 1111831820. Other texts will be available as electronic files Course Hours The course has 26 class sessions in total. -
Theda Skocpol
NAMING THE PROBLEM What It Will Take to Counter Extremism and Engage Americans in the Fight against Global Warming Theda Skocpol Harvard University January 2013 Prepared for the Symposium on THE POLITICS OF AMERICA’S FIGHT AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING Co-sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and the Scholars Strategy Network February 14, 2013, 4-6 pm Tsai Auditorium, Harvard University CONTENTS Making Sense of the Cap and Trade Failure Beyond Easy Answers Did the Economic Downturn Do It? Did Obama Fail to Lead? An Anatomy of Two Reform Campaigns A Regulated Market Approach to Health Reform Harnessing Market Forces to Mitigate Global Warming New Investments in Coalition-Building and Political Capabilities HCAN on the Left Edge of the Possible Climate Reformers Invest in Insider Bargains and Media Ads Outflanked by Extremists The Roots of GOP Opposition Climate Change Denial The Pivotal Battle for Public Opinion in 2006 and 2007 The Tea Party Seals the Deal ii What Can Be Learned? Environmentalists Diagnose the Causes of Death Where Should Philanthropic Money Go? The Politics Next Time Yearning for an Easy Way New Kinds of Insider Deals? Are Market Forces Enough? What Kind of Politics? Using Policy Goals to Build a Broader Coalition The Challenge Named iii “I can’t work on a problem if I cannot name it.” The complaint was registered gently, almost as a musing after-thought at the end of a June 2012 interview I conducted by telephone with one of the nation’s prominent environmental leaders. My interlocutor had played a major role in efforts to get Congress to pass “cap and trade” legislation during 2009 and 2010. -
Semester at Sea Course Syllabus
Democratization and Modernization: Concepts, Issues, and Approaches SEMESTER AT SEA COURSE SYLLABUS Voyage: Spring 2013 Discipline: Political Science PLCP 3500: Democratization and Modernization: Concepts, Issues, and Approaches Division: Upper division Faculty Name: Tao XIE Pre-requisites: This course has no pre-requisites. However, intellectual curiosity in and prior exposure (academic or otherwise) to politics and history of non-U.S. countries, as well as knowledge about U.S. foreign policy, would be quite useful. COURSE DESCRIPTION This is an upper-level political science course that examines the major concepts, issues, and approaches in scholarly research on democratization and modernization. Given the nature of the Semester at Sea program, this course pay special attention to processes of democratization and modernization in countries located along the route, as well as topics that are highly relevant for these countries. As the ship departs the U.S., the oldest democracy in the world, the course starts with discussions about democracy, including how to conceptualize democracy, the relationship between economic development and democracy, and the pros and cons of different forms of democratic governance. When the ship approaches Japan, we will shift attention to Japanese politics and U.S.-Japan relations. We will take a brief look at the cultural underpinnings of the Japanese democracy, as well as the major issues in U.S.-Japan relations. As the ship departs Kobe, we will spend three classes on China, the largest (in terms of population, territory, and economy) country on the route. We first address the rise of China, particularly its implications for regional and international security. -
Measuring the Research Productivity of Political Science Departments Using Google Scholar
The Profession ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Measuring the Research Productivity of Political Science Departments Using Google Scholar Michael Peress, SUNY–Stony Brook ABSTRACT This article develops a number of measures of the research productivity of politi- cal science departments using data collected from Google Scholar. Departments are ranked in terms of citations to articles published by faculty, citations to articles recently published by faculty, impact factors of journals in which faculty published, and number of top pub- lications in which faculty published. Results are presented in aggregate terms and on a per-faculty basis. he most widely used measure of the quality of of search results, from which I identified publications authored political science departments is the US News and by that faculty member, the journal in which the publication World Report ranking. It is based on a survey sent appeared (if applicable), and the number of citations to that to political science department heads and direc- article or book. tors of graduate studies. Respondents are asked to I constructed four measures for each faculty member. First, Trate other political science departments on a 1-to-5 scale; their I calculated the total number of citations. This can be -
Theda Skocpol | Mershon Center for International Security Studies | the Ohio State Univ
Theda Skocpol | Mershon Center for International Security Studies | The Ohio State Univ... Page 1 of 2 The Ohio State University www.osu.edu Help Campus map Find people Webmail Search home > events calendar > september 2006 > theda skocpol September Citizenship Lecture Series October Theda Skocpol November December "Voice and Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy" January Theda Skocpol Professor of Government February Monday, Sept. 25, 2006 and Sociology March Noon Dean of the Graduate Mershon Center for International Security Studies April School of Arts and 1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201 Sciences May Harvard University 2007-08 See a streaming video of this lecture. This streaming video requires RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free. Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She has also served as Director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard from 1999 to 2006. The author of nine books, nine edited collections, and more than seven dozen articles, Skocpol is one of the most cited and widely influential scholars in the modern social sciences. Her work has contributed to the study of comparative politics, American politics, comparative and historical sociology, U.S. history, and the study of public policy. Her first book, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge, 1979), won the 1979 C. Wright Mills Award and the 1980 American Sociological Association Award for a Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship. Her Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Harvard, 1992), won five scholarly awards. -
PS 103 Intro to Comparative Politics
Principles of Comparative Politics Political Science 250 Instructor: Wade Jacoby Office: 742 SWKT Office Phone: 801-422-1711 E-mail address: [email protected] Office hours: Mondays 3:30-5pm in 742 SWKT TA: Adam Stevenson, office hours, Wednesdays, 9-10 am and by appointment in 109 HRCB Introduction: This course shows you how and why to compare political systems to one another. By ‘political,’ I mean pretty obvious things like electoral rules, legislatures, and courts, but I also mean things like economics and non-government organizations and civil wars. During the course, we will discuss: What is comparative politics? What makes for good comparisons? What are the characteristics of a state? How have states emerged across human history, ancient and modern? How do class, ideology, and nationalism influence politics? What do the variety of political institutions and regimes look like? What is the role of economics in the populist backlash? Why do some regimes transition to democracy? Why are some countries rich and others poor? How do political institutions shape patterns of economic development? What are the varieties of ways people participate in politics? How do social movements and civil society affect politics? Why does politics sometimes become violent? How does identity shape political participation? How does globalization affect the state? We will address these questions by looking both at theoretical approaches and by studying larger trends and actual cases in a variety of countries around the globe. Right away, you will notice that our readings provide different—and often conflicting— answers to the big questions above. We won’t always have time to resolve the debates— and many of them have not been resolved by scholars either. -
SIS 802 Comparative Politics
Ph.D. Seminar in Comparative Politics SIS 802, Fall 2016 School of International Service American University COURSE INFORMATION Professor: Matthew M. Taylor Email: [email protected] Classes will be held on Tuesdays, 2:35-5:15pm Office hours: Wednesdays (11:30pm-3:30pm) and by appointment. In the case of appointments, please email me at least two days in advance to schedule. Office: SIS 350 COURSE DESCRIPTION Comparative political science is one of the four traditional subfields of political science. It differs from international relations in its focus on individual countries and regions, and its comparison across units – national, subnational, actors, and substantive themes. Yet it is vital to scholars of international relations, not least because of its ability to explain differences in the basic postures of national and subnational actors, as well as in its focus on key variables of interest to international relations, such as democratization, the organization of state decision-making, and state capacity. Both subfields have benefited historically from considerable methodological and theoretical cross-fertilization which has shaped the study of international affairs significantly. The first section of the course focuses on the epistemology of comparative political science, seeking to understand how we know what we know, the accumulation of knowledge, and the objectivity of the social sciences. The remainder of the course addresses substantive debates in the field, although students are encouraged to critically address the theoretical and methodological approaches that are used to explore these substantive issues. COURSE OBJECTIVES This course will introduce students to the field, analyzing many of the essential components of comparative political science: themes, debates, and concepts, as well as different theoretical and methodological approaches. -
Rewriting the Epic of America
One Rewriting the Epic of America IRA KATZNELSON “Is the traditional distinction between international relations and domes- tic politics dead?” Peter Gourevitch inquired at the start of his seminal 1978 article, “The Second Image Reversed.” His diagnosis—“perhaps”—was mo- tivated by the observation that while “we all understand that international politics and domestic structures affect each other,” the terms of trade across the domestic and international relations divide had been uneven: “reason- ing from international system to domestic structure” had been downplayed. Gourevitch’s review of the literature demonstrated that long-standing efforts by international relations scholars to trace the domestic roots of foreign pol- icy to the interplay of group interests, class dynamics, or national goals1 had not been matched by scholarship analyzing how domestic “structure itself derives from the exigencies of the international system.”2 Gourevitch counseled scholars to turn their attention to the international system as a cause as well as a consequence of domestic politics. He also cautioned that this reversal of the causal arrow must recognize that interna- tional forces exert pressures rather than determine outcomes. “The interna- tional system, be it in an economic or politico-military form, is underdeter- mining. The environment may exert strong pulls but short of actual occupation, some leeway in the response to that environment remains.”3 A decade later, Robert Putnam turned to two-level games to transcend the question as to “whether