Confounding Classic Models of Voter Behaviour

2013 ABSTRACTS / RÉSUMÉS 2013 Abray-Nyman, Tim ([email protected]) Confounding classic models of voter behaviour: The challenge of automatic cognition This paper examines the dissonance at the intersection of classic, social-psychological models of voter behaviour and contemporary, multidisciplinary investigations of non-conscious - or automatic - cognitive processes. Taking inspiration from researchers such as Paul Quirk and James Kuklinski, the paper will explore the assumptions at work in classic social-psychological voter-behaviour research and suggest a reassessment of those models in light of contemporary cognitive science. While significant advances have been made, the dominant mode of voter-behaviour inquiry remains largely within the sphere of the Michigan tradition - a tradition rooted in classic social psychology that focuses on models of active, systematic cognition, heavily influenced by classic models of social and economic interaction. What these studies do not take into account - in Canada and elsewhere - is the influence of non-conscious, automatic processes of cognition. This paper will explore readily available avenues of investigation into phenomena often miscategorized as, for example, instances of irrationality or voter error. It is hoped this paper will demonstrate that this mode of inquiry is ripe with explanatory and predictive potential - not for the purposes of depriving voters of their essential, rational humanity but, rather, to improve our understanding of our innate strengths and weaknesses when engaging with such a complex and demanding process as participatory democracy. This paper is the first installment in a course of ongoing theoretical and experimental research intended to incorporate contemporary models of cognition into our theories of voter-behaviour and political communication. Abu-Laban, Yasmeen ([email protected]) Bakan, Abigail ([email protected]) Human Rights, the Question of Palestine and the Paradox of the United Nations As an international organization, the United Nations (UN) has held out the promise of overcoming domestic and international challenges to the principle of universal human rights. In particular, in the aftermath of the experience of German Nazis and the Jewish genocide, the UN General Assembly adopted the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By 1966, the General Assembly had also adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, along with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Although this trajectory towards the establishment of an International Bill of Human Rights has widely been perceived to be successful in supporting challenges of practices of colonialism, slavery, and discriminatory ideologies based on legalized racism, there remain scholarly debates. In particular, the extant scholarship on human rights tends to pit those who uphold the universal applicability and possibilities of human rights against those who feel it masks biases whether towards national citizenship, ethnocentric (Western) and secular values and interests, or inequitable social relations including those of class and gender. We argue that the UN has served as a site for the institutional support of both rights advancement and rights denial. In this way, better understanding contemporary debates such as those generated by the Durban process, as well concretizing abstract debates over the universality of human rights may arise from attending to the foundational development of the UN as an international organization in relation to both the human rights revolution, as well as the unresolved Question of Palestine. Aguirre, Kelly ([email protected]) Prefigurative Practices- An Epistemological Shift in Conceiving Indigenous Self-Determination Frantz Fanon’s Marxist-humanist manifesto on Algerian independence The Wretched of the Earth continues to be broadly applied as relevant to the context of Indigenous decolonization on/of Turtle Island. Recently its ongoing appeal and some of the contours of its limitations have been given insight by Dené scholar Glen Coulthard. Particularly significant is Coulthard’s interest in a concept of prefigurative practice, as it is gestured toward but not elaborated by Fanon. I will suggest this concept may be mobilized to describe a kind of 'epistemological shift' in conceiving self-determination being articulated by numerous critical Indigenous thinkers away from a discourse of recognition’s presuppositions of Indigenous political and intellectual dependency. For example, self-determination seen as an attainment or assertion of sovereignty as it can be reconciled to and under the dominant state order, the continued intransigence of which is still acutely experienced by Indigenous peoples. It is to reconsider seeking legitimacy and verification through discourses and structures complicit in foundational and ongoing dispossessions and other colonial violences against Indigenous peoples - to affirming and enacting their inseparable vital presence, lands, cultural lifeworlds, narratives and practices of resistance to these violences. I will argue that as a move from demanding accommodation and a defensive posture to focusing on self-(re)generative, ‘alterNative’ forms of community, this shift challenges us to apprehend the expression and exercise of self-determination as it is made immanent in everyday praxis, grounded in Indigenous understandings of freedom and what it is to live a good life. Akuffo, Edward ([email protected]) Interregional Cooperation between the AU and NATO: the case of promoting Peace and Security in Libya Libya has witnessed the most deadly confrontation of what has been called the ‘‘Arab Spring’’. The Libya political crisis attracted several actors into that country. The key among these actors is NATO which enforced the Security Council Resolution 1973 to protect civilians. Although the NATO-led air operation included states beyond the North Atlantic alliance, African states and regional organizations played a marginal role to enforce the Security Council resolution. Indeed, some African states openly opposed or criticised the NATO intervention in spite of the fact that NATO supported the AU in its intervention efforts in Darfur and Somalia. Moreover, the Libya intervention appears to have had a wider impact on (in)security in African states as it is being played out in northern Mali where Al Qaeda elements, and Tuareg rebels who fought for Col. Ghaddafi have captured towns and imposed strict Sharia laws. Against this background, this paper seeks to address two interrelated questions. First, what has been the impact of NATO’s intervention in Libya on its cooperation with the AU to promote peace and security in Africa? Second, how can the AU and NATO turn their disagreement on the Libya intervention into an opportunity to strengthen the emerging interregional cooperation between them? I argue that even though the AU faces structural and financial constraints it is better equipped than its predecessor, OAU, to play a leading role and collaborate with NATO and the UN to promote long term peace, security, and stability in Libya. Alfred, Taiaiake ([email protected]) Altamirano-Jimenez, Isabel ([email protected]) Corntassel, Jeff ([email protected]) Lightfoot, Sheryl ([email protected]) Watson, Scott ([email protected]) This roundtable is devoted to the interaction between IR theory and the study of Indigenous Politics. The field of International Relations has been mostly silent on the issue of Indigenous Politics (and/or complicit in its silencing), while the study of Indigenous Politics has not drawn extensively on the insights of IR theory. Empirically, the politics of indigenous peoples seems fruitful ground for IR scholars. Indigenous peoples often organize across state borders and are increasingly turning to global networks and institutions. Furthermore, a fundamental mechanism of indigenous-settler relations - the treaty - is a key concept in the field of international relations, yet remains understudied. From a theoretical perspective, the neglect of indigenous politics in IR itself is in need of further exploration, as is the role of theories of international relations in the marginalization and colonization of indigenous peoples. This roundtable, as a keystone of the workshop, confronts and engages with these absences in the field of IR, and asks how the study of of indigenous politics may inform or challenge international relations theory, how IR theories may appropriately and usefully be applied to the study of indigenous peoples, and how IR theory has contributed to the marginalization of indigenous peoples. Allam, Nermin ([email protected]) The January 25th Uprising: A Revolutionary Situation in Egypt's Contentious Politics Popular media dub the episode of mass protests that swept Egypt in early 2011 and led to President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation as a revolution. The paper at hand takes a different stance providing a nuanced conceptualization of the uprising. It suggests that the January 25th uprising is an episode of contention within Egypt’s contentious politics. This episode of contention ostensibly qualifies as a revolutionary situation and not a full revolution. Charles Tilly (1978) writing on historical and modern revolutions, distinguishes between a ‘‘revolutionary situation’’and a ‘‘revolutionary outcome’’arguing that for a revolution to be complete it has to combine both. According to Tilly, a revolutionary situation exists when some kind of collective

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