Showing papers in "Perspectives on Politics in 2009"

The Politics of International Regime Complexity

Abstract: The increasing density of international regimes has contributed to the proliferation of overlap across agreements, conflicts among international obligations, and confusion regarding what international and bilateral obligations cover an issue. This symposium examines the consequences of this “international regime complexity” for subsequent politics. What analytical insights can be gained by thinking about any single agreement as being embedded in a larger web of international rules and regimes? Karen Alter and Sophie Meunier's introductory essay defines international regime complexity and identifies the mechanisms through which it may influence the politics of international cooperation. Short contributions analyze how international regime complexity affects politics in specific issue areas: trade (Christina Davis), linkages between human rights and trade (Emilie Hafner-Burton), intellectual property (Laurence Helfer), security politics (Stephanie Hofmann), refugee politics (Alexander Betts), and election monitoring (Judith Kelley). Daniel Drezner concludes by arguing that international regime complexity may well benefit the powerful more than others.

The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement

Abstract: We restate and clarify the idea of the “cartel party,” a concept that has found considerable traction in studies of parties throughout the democratic world, including those far from the original research site and data on which the cartel model was based. The cartel party thesis holds that political parties increasingly function like cartels, employing the resources of the state to limit political competition and ensure their own electoral success. The thesis has been subject to varied empirical testing and to substantial theoretical evaluation and criticism. Against this background, we look again at the cartel party thesis in order to clarify ambiguities in and misinterpretations of the original argument. We also suggest further refinements, specifications and extensions of the argument. Following a background review of the original thesis, we break it down into its core components, and then clarify the terms in which it makes sense to speak of cartelization and collusion. We then go on to explore some of the implications of the thesis for our understanding of contemporary democracies and patterns of party organization and party competition and we identify a possible agenda for future research in party scholarship.

Response to Ellen Mickiewicz's review of When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina

Abstract: Ellen Mickiewicz has done an excellent job of presenting the key elements of our argument and empirical analysis about why the mainstream press proved incapable of independent news framing at critical junctures in the Iraq War. She then raises a series of excellent broader questions: What about the responsibility of government institutions to hold those in power accountable? What about the independent force of public opinion? Were earlier administrations as able to spin the press as successfully as the Bush administration? Each of these questions might well fuel a book. I can only address them briefly in this response.

Oligarchy in the United States

Abstract: We explore the possibility that the US political system can usefully be characterized as oligarchic. Using a material-based definition drawn from Aristotle, we argue that oligarchy is not inconsistent with democracy; that oligarchs need not occupy formal office or conspire together or even engage extensively in politics in order to prevail; that great wealth can provide both the resources and the motivation to exert potent political influence. Data on the US distributions of income and wealth are used to construct several Material Power Indices, which suggest that the wealthiest Americans may exert vastly greater political influence than average citizens and that a very small group of the wealthiest (perhaps the top tenth of 1 percent) may have sufficient power to dominate policy in certain key areas. A brief review of the literature suggests possible mechanisms by which such influence could occur, through lobbying, the electoral process, opinion shaping, and the US Constitution itself.

Liberal Internationalism 3.0: America and the Dilemmas of Liberal World Order

Abstract: Liberal international order - both its ideas and real-world political formations - is not embodied in a fixed set of principles or practices. Open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective prob- lem solving, the rule of law - these are aspects of the liberal vision that have made appearances in various combinations and changing ways over the last century. I argue that it is possible to identify three versions or models of liberal international order - versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. The first is associated with the ideas of Woodrow Wilson, the second is the Cold War liberal internationalism of the post- 1945 decades, and the third version is a sort of post-hegemonic liberal internationalism that has only partially appeared and whose full shape and logic is still uncertain. I develop a set of dimensions that allow for identifying different logics of liberal inter- national order and identify variables that will shape the movement from liberal internationalism 2.0 to 3.0.

The Power and Peril of International Regime Complexity

Abstract: The proliferation of international rules, laws, and institutional forms raises important questions for regime theory. Looking at the theoretical and empirical arguments presented by all the contributors, however, it seems clear that that complexity's effects on actor strategies—particularly powerful actors—remain open to debate. Some of the posited effects of international regime complexity have contradictory or cross-cutting effects. Further effects of regime complexity—cross-institutional strategizing, the asymmetrical distribution of legal and technical expertise, and the fragmentation of reputation—can erode the significance of institutions in complex environments. This contribution considers the effect that regime complexity has on how powerful actors approach world politics—in part by connecting the current debate with past discussions about the significance of international regimes in world politics.

Political Theory, Political Science, and the End of Civic Engagement

Abstract: Within a span of fifteen years civic engagement has become a cottage industry in political science and political theory, but the term has now outlived its usefulness and exemplifies Giovanni Sartori's worry about conceptual “stretching.” This article traces civic engagement's ascension as a catch-all term for almost anything that citizens might happen to do together or alone, and illustrates the confusion that its popularity has occasioned. It proposes that civic engagement meet a well-deserved end, to be replaced with a more nuanced and descriptive set of engagements: political, social, and moral. It also examines the appeal of engagement itself, a term that entails both attention and energy. Attention and energy are the mainsprings of politics and most other challenging human endeavors. But they can be invested politically, or in associative pursuits, or in moral reasoning and follow-through, and those types of engagement can, but need not, coincide. We should be asking which kinds of engagement—which kinds of attention and energetic activity—make democracy work, and how they might be measured and promoted.

Americans' Social Policy Preferences in the Era of Rising Inequality

Abstract: Rising income inequality has been a defining trend of the past generation, yet we know little about its impact on social policy formation. We evaluate two dominant views about public opinion on rising inequality: that Americans do not care much about inequality of outcomes, and that a rise in inequality will lead to an increase in demand for government redistribution. Using time series data on views about income inequality and social policy preferences in the 1980s and 1990s from the General Social Survey, we find little support for these views. Instead, Americans do tend to object to inequality and increasingly believe government should act to redress it, but not via traditional redistributive programs. We examine several alternative possibilities and provide a broad analytical framework for reinterpreting social policy preferences in the era of rising inequality. Our evidence suggests that Americans may be unsure or uninformed about how to address rising inequality and thus swayed by contemporaneous debates. However, we also find that Americans favor expanding education spending in response to their increasing concerns about inequality. This suggests that equal opportunity may be more germane than income redistribution to our understanding of the politics of inequality.

Overlapping Institutions in the Realm of International Security: The Case of NATO and ESDP

Abstract: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union's (EU) European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) both occupy the policy space of crisis management. This overlap has two effects. First, overlap has generated “chessboard politics” shaping member state strategies. Second, institutional overlap has generated a number of feedback effects. The prior existence of NATO shaped the conceptualization and organization of ESDP at its creation, and the existence of two alternative security institutions continues to influence the ways that the institutions evolve—how each institution defines security interests and how member states adjust the mandate of each institution to address changes in the security environment. Because both institutions are intergovernmentally organized and consensus-based, the actions and decisions of both institutions reflect the agreements of members. Chessboard politics and feedback effects are consequently interrelated—states strategize to affect outcomes in one venue or another, and decisions in one institution can affect decisions and behaviors in the other institution.

All Politics Is Local: The Reemergence of the Study of City Politics

Abstract: The study of local politics has been relegated to the periphery of political science and many explanations have been offered for the marginalization of the subfield. I offer three related arguments for why scholars should revisit the study of sub-state politics. First, the local level is the source of numerous political outcomes that matter because they represent a large proportion of political events in the United States. Secondly, there are methodological advantages to studying local politics. Finally, analyzing politics at the sub-state level can generate thoroughly different kinds of questions than a purely national-level focus and can offer different answers to questions that apply more generally. Research on local politics can and should contribute to broader debates in political science and ensure that we understand both how and why cities are unique.

Regime Shifting in the International Intellectual Property System

Abstract: The international intellectual property system provides an important illustration of how regime complexity shapes domestic and international strategies of states and non-state actors. This article describes and graphically illustrates the multifaceted nature of the international intellectual property system. It then analyzes the consequences of regime complexity for international and domestic politics, emphasizing the strategy of regime shifting and its consequences for chessboard politics and the domestic implementation of international rules.

Overlapping Institutions in Trade Policy

Abstract: This article examines the effect of overlapping institutions in trade policy, where the World Trade Organization, preferential trade agreements, and other economic negotiation venues give states many options for negotiating rules and settling disputes. This article argues that overlapping institutions influence trade politics at three stages: selection of venue, negotiation of liberalization commitments, and enforcement of compliance. First, lobby groups and governments on both sides of a trade negotiation try to choose the set of rules that will favor their preferred outcome. WTO rules that restrict use of coercive tactics outside of the WTO generate a selection process that filters the most difficult trade issues into WTO trade rounds or dispute adjudication while easier issues are settled in bilateral and regional fora. This selection dynamic creates a challenge at the negotiation stage by disaggregating interest group pressure for liberalization commitments. The narrowing of interest group lobbying for the multilateral process may impede negotiation of liberalization agreements that could only gain political support through a broad coalition of exporter mobilization. At the enforcement stage international regime complexity creates the potential for contradictory legal rulings that undermine compliance, but also adds greater penalties for noncompliance if reputation effects operate across agreements.

Institutional Proliferation and the Global Refugee Regime

Abstract: This article explores the impact of institutional proliferation on the politics of refugee protection. The refugee regime mainly comprises the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Recently, however, new parallel and overlapping institutions have emerged in relation to two previously unregulated areas: internally displaced persons (IDPs) and international migration. This institutional proliferation has affected both state strategy and IO strategy in relation to refugee protection. It has enabled Northern states to engage in regime shifting. They have used the new institutions to prevent refugees reaching their territory, thereby avoiding incurring UN rules on refugee protection, and transferring burdens to Southern states. The resulting reduction in international cooperation in the refugee regime has contributed to UNHCR fundamentally redefining its strategy in order to become more relevant to Northern states. In particular, it has pursued states into the migration and IDP regimes into which they have shifted through a combination of stretching its mandate, engaging in the politics of the emerging regimes, and issue-linkage. The article's analysis draws attention to the potentially significant relationship between institutional proliferation and IO adaptation and change. © 2009 Copyright American Political Science Association.

Response to Joseph E. Lowndes' review of Trucking Country: The Road to America's Wal-Mart Economy

Abstract: Joseph Lowndes questions whether the independent truckers I write about were “central to the rise of the Right.” He suggests that truckers were mere dupes of “the architects of the modern Right,” who “selectively appropriated various forms of discontent in the land and turned it to their own purposes.” I disagree for at least three reasons.

The More the Merrier? The Effects of Having Multiple International Election Monitoring Organizations

Abstract: As the pressure to invite international election monitors rose at the end of the Cold War, states refused to grant the United Nations a dominant role. Thus, today multiple intergovernmental, regional, and international non-governmental organizations often monitor the same elections with equal authority. This article examines the costs and benefits of this complex regime to highlight some possible broader implications of regime complexity. It argues that the availability of many different organizations facilitates action that might otherwise have been blocked for political reasons. Furthermore, when different international election monitoring agencies agree, their consensus can bolster their individual legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of the international norms they stress, and thus magnify their influence on domestic politics. Unfortunately the election monitoring example also suggests that complex regimes can engender damaging inter-organizational politics and that the different biases, capabilities, and standards of organizations sometime can lead organizations to outright contradict each other or work at cross-purposes.

Homo Politicus and Argument (Nearly) All the Way Down: Persuasion in Politics

Abstract: Much theorizing about world politics and many policy recommendations are predicated on a rather thin view of homo politicus, often assuming that humans are rational and self-interested strategic actors and that force is the ultima ratio of politics. This thin notion should be replaced by a richer understanding of homo politicus that includes the characteristic activities of political actors: we fight, we feel, we talk, and we build institutions. This understanding helps illuminate the scope and limits of strategic action, argument and persuasion in world politics in both empirical and normative senses. I describe the spectrum of political action that situates the role of argument and persuasion within the extremes of brute force on one side and mutual communication on the other. I also discuss barriers to argument and communication. Noting the role of argument in this spectrum of international and domestic political practice suggests that it is argument (nearly) all the way down and that the scope of argument can be and in some cases has increased over the longue duree. Coercion, by itself, has a limited role in world politics. The claim that there are distinctive logics of argumentation, strategic action, or appropriateness misses the point. Argument is the glue of politics - its characteristic practice. Understanding politics as argumentation has radical empirical and normative implications for the study and practice of politics.

Looking for Sex in All the Wrong Places: Press Coverage and the Electoral Fortunes of Gubernatorial Candidates

Abstract: Although female candidates have achieved parity on some dimensions, political institutions remain deeply gendered in how they structure the parameters of electoral competition. We rely on a new data set of gubernatorial races from the 1990s to address the theoretical and empirical challenges created by the interaction of gender, media content, and electoral institutions. Based on an analysis of 1,365 newspaper articles for 27 contests in which a woman held a major party nomination, we uncover evidence of continuing bias in media coverage. Yet significant coefficients on candidate sex tell only part of the story. Gendered contextual factors linked to the contest and state in which candidates compete, as well as the newspapers that cover their races, also affect women's experiences on the campaign trail. The major finding, however, is the presence of a powerful baseline effect favoring male candidates that is deeply embedded in U.S. politics. All else equal, women gubernatorial candidates suffer a substantial vote deficit that results from non-observable influences. The results support the emerging consensus among feminist theorists that greater focus on the political context is likely to produce bigger scholarly payoffs than is continued attention to observable differences between male and female candidates.

The Unrealism of Contemporary Realism: The Tension between Realist Theory and Realists' Practice

Abstract: Realist International Relations thinkers often intervene in political debates and criticize their governments’ policies even as they pride themselves on theorizing politics as it “really” is. They rarely reflect on the following contradictions between their theory and their practice: if there is a “real world” impervious to political thought, why bother to try to influence it? And, is realist theory not putatively disconfirmed by the fact that realist thinkers have so often opposed existing foreign policies (e.g., the wars in Vietnam and Iraq)? I argue that these contradictions are not inherent in realism per se so much as in the commitment of contemporary realists to naturalistic methodological and epistemological postulates. I show that Hans Morgenthau and especially E. H. Carr, far from being naive “traditionalists,” have grappled with these questions in a sophisticated manner; they have adopted non-naturalistic methodological and epistemological stances that minimize the tension between realist theory and the realities of realists’ public activism. I conclude with a call for contemporary realists to adjust their theory to their practice by trading the dualism underlying their approach— subject-object; science-politics; purpose-analysis—for E. H. Carr’s dictum that “political thought is itself a form of political action.”

Longing, Nostalgia, and Golden Age Politics: The American Jeremiad and the Power of the Past

Abstract: I assess several politically powerful ways of drawing on the past in the search for solutions to problems in the present. To probe these dynamics, I turn to the American jeremiad, a longstanding form of political rhetoric that explicitly invokes the past and laments the nation's falling-away from its virtuous foundations. I begin by focusing on the Christian Right's traditionalist jeremiad, which offers both nostalgic and Golden Age rhetoric in its assessment of the United States' imperiled national promise. I argue that, despite differences in the historical location of their ideals and the significant rhetorical power that they bring to political life, such nostalgic and Golden Age narratives represent a constraining political ideal, one ultimately incapable of doing justice to an increasingly diverse American society. I argue furthermore that there is another strand of the American jeremiad and conclude by sketching a different way of drawing on the past, a progressive jeremiad epitomized by the thought of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Such a jeremiad is also deeply rooted in the American tradition and offers a far more promising contribution to a diverse and pluralistic American future.

The "Israel Lobby" and American Politics

Abstract: In their recent book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that American support for Israel does not serve American interests. Nevertheless, they observe that American foreign policy regarding the Middle East, especially in recent years, has tilted strongly toward support for Israel, and they attribute this support to the influence of the “Israel lobby” in American domestic politics. Their book is principally an attempt to make a causal argument about American politics and policymaking. I examine three aspects of this argument—its causal logic, the use of evidence to support hypotheses, and the argument's connection with the state of knowledge about American politics—and conclude that the case for the Israel lobby as the primary cause of American support for Israel is at best a weak one, although it points to a number of interesting questions about the mechanisms of power in American politics. Mearsheimer and Walt's propositions about the direct influence of the Israel lobby on Congress and the executive branch are generally not supported by theory or evidence. Less conclusive and more suggestive, however, are their arguments about the lobby's apparent influence on the terms and boundaries of legitimate debate and discussion of Israel and the Middle East in American policymaking. These directions point to an alternative approach to investigating the apparent influence of the Israel lobby in American politics, focusing less on direct, overt power over policy outcomes and more on more subtle pathways of influence over policy agendas and the terms of policy discourse.

The Politics of Immigration in France, Britain, and the United States: A Comparative Study. By Martin A. Schain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 352p. $95.00 cloth, $31.00 paper.

Abstract: author’s equilibriumsolution treats it as anexogenousparameter. Thus, a conflict of interest over conditionality targets is assumed, rather than allowed to arise endogenously. In fact, given the parameters of the model, the IMF would choose the same target as the government if it were allowed to choose an optimal target for economic reform. This is unfortunate, since the conflict of interest between the IMF and the government is an important focus of the author’s argument and plays a central role in the case studies. From Economic Crisis to Reform joins a rapidly growing political science literature on the IMF, and so some comparisons may be helpful. Pop-Eleches uses his case studies as substantive illustrations of his quantitative results, moving lightly over a number of cases and relying on secondary sources. Two other recent contributions to the politics of IMF programs have similarly combined qualitative and quantitative research strategies, but have been based on substantial archival research at the IMF. Erica Gould’s Money Talks (2006) emphasizes the role of supplementary financiers in shaping conditionality, and Mark Copelovitch’s forthcoming Banks, Bonds, and Bailouts focuses on variations in the coherence of the interests of the Group of 5 and in the forms of private financing to explain conditionality and the size of IMF loans. Jeffrey Chwieroth’s forthcoming A Capital Idea similarly makes use of rich historical material from the IMF archives but addresses the role of the staff in shaping IMF policy advice about liberalizing capital controls. Pop-Eleches’s signal contribution to this literature is a synthetic perspective, which brings together international credibility anddomesticpartisanshipanddraws important distinctions between regions and time periods.

The Power Politics of Regime Complexity: Human Rights Trade Conditionality in Europe

Abstract: This article argues that international regime complexity has shaped Europe's politics of human rights trade conditionality by creating opportunities for various types of “forum shopping,” and, consequently, that some of the most significant politics of human rights enforcement have occurred in an entirely separate issue area—trade—which are being worked out partly during lawmaking and partly during implementation. The presence of nested and overlapping institutions creates incentives for rival political actors—whether states, institutions, or policymakers—to (1) forum shop for more power, (2) advantage themselves in the context of a parallel or overlapping regime, and (3) invoke institutions a la carte to govern a specific issue but not others. Each tactic creates competition between institutions and actors for authority over the rules, setting hurdles for IO performance. Even so, (4) regime complexity can make enforcement of rules that are impossible to implement in one area possible in another area.

Response to Alexander Cooley's review of Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West

Abstract: I am grateful to Alexander Cooley for his insightful comments and questions.

The Politics of Intercountry Adoption: Explaining Variation in the Legal Requirements of Sub-Saharan African Countries

Abstract: What determines whether a country has more or less restrictive policies regarding intercountry adoption? Despite the growing importance of intercountry adoption as a political issue, and as an explicitly human face of globalization, there is virtually no systematic empirical work on intercountry adoption. We introduce a measure of the restrictiveness of the adoption laws in Sub-Saharan African countries and test possible explanations for the variations in legal restrictions on intercountry adoption among these countries.

The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works . By Ziad W. Munson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 248p. $60.00 cloth, $22.50 paper.

Abstract: workers; (3) the Opportunities Industrial Centers (OIC), Sullivan’s training program for inner-city African Americans that sought to combat the problem of skills mismatch in a community dealing with increasingly chronic unemployment; (4) the OIC-Progress Movement, Sullivan’s effort at creating community-controlled capitalist enterprises, which depended on technology transfer and subcontracts from better-established companies and on military contracts; (5) the Philadelphia Plans—affirmative action programs mainly targeting the construction trades and their unions—that, while opening up a few jobs to African Americans, also exacerbated tensions in the liberal coalition; and (6) the Johnson-era Model Cities program, which, when coupled in the early 1970s with PIDC, provided the kinds of federally funded, locally driven programming that, if generalized and implemented earlier, could have put the problem of jobs at the forefront of urban policy. Federalism and its sometimes-ironic effects on the problem of jobs is a leitmotif of the book. McKee highlights the importance of federal funding in urban economic development, whether in the form of tax subsidies or programmatic grants. He argues that federal funding, rather than federal mandates, was most effective in aiding local liberals. For example, he indicates that the Great Society’s funding was crucial to the successes of OIC, but that its emphasis on community participation actually undercut the potential of comprehensive planning that had begun to show promise for tying together Philadelphia’s problems of deindustrialization and economic segregation by prompting local struggles for control. McKee skillfully probes the fragility of postwar liberalism and its coalition, indicating differences and contradictions between commercial and social Keynesian strategies and between a laborand racial-justice liberalisms. Both sets of tensions were real, and clashes between these visions extended—as did all the issues in this book—far beyond Philadelphia. He also probes the relationship between radicalism and militancy on one hand, and moderate liberalism on the other. McKee approvingly cites Leon Sullivan’s brand of “build, Baby, build” black power, which sought pragmatic solutions and business partners rather than transformations in social and political power. Nevertheless, in spite of his reliance on Sullivan’s autobiography in several key chapters of the book, McKee is forthright in his assessment of Sullivan’s failures and those of the other efforts he studies. Though McKee clearly prefers moderate styles, militants still supply moderates with a radical flank effect that they needed to remain moderate and, often, to win the day. The Problem of Jobs can be difficult going. The level of detail is impressive, but the prose might have been enlivened with more summary statements or a stronger authorial voice. The organization of the book as a series of temporally overlapping case studies can get confusing, as the reader is forced to circle back several times and piece together what is happening in Philadelphia and when. Further, McKee often tries to cast an optimistic light on policies that only forestalled the worst effects of deindustrialization. Though this trains our focus on the real potential immanent in some liberal policy interventions, it also tends to magnify the larger contradictions of urban liberalism under a rapidly globalizing postwar capitalism, and thus begs the question of whether liberals’ failure to embrace more radical positions interfered with more transformative politics. McKee does not think so. But in his concluding assessment that a “political culture that is fundamentally conservative” is the main obstacle to liberal solutions to poverty and urban problems (pp. 288–89), he risks mistaking the lessons of his own research. Liberalism was beset by its own contradictory stances toward capitalism, its own factions, its own indecision about federalism, and its own hesitancy about race. These weakened its political power in the face of conservative opposition, whether this came from chambers of commerce in the early 1960s or from federal disinvestment in the 1980s. McKee never defines conservative political culture, and so cannot clinch the case. But these are mainly arguments I have with the book, rather than criticisms of its quality, and even these also indicate the book’s strengths. McKee’s careful case studies and historical reconstructions put The Problem of Jobs in the company of some of the finest recent work in urban and policy history, adding each genre’s strengths to the other. The Problem of Jobs will be important in any assessment of liberal policy successes and failures, and of liberalism’s future prospects. It should be featured prominently in any graduate course on economic development, urban policy, and race and public policy. The book’s combination of historical rigor with sober political argument should provoke further research on other cities’ experiences, and further dispute about what lessons we should draw from them.

The Primacy of Economics versus the Primacy of Politics: Understanding the Ideological Dynamics of the Twentieth Century

Abstract: The current economic crisis has once again bought debates about capitalism and globalization to the forefront of the political agenda. Until very recently almost everyone seemed to be convinced that the world was at the dawn of a new era. Yet, the issue at the heart of globalization debates—whether political forces can dominate economic ones or must bow before them—is not new at all. I show that many of the great ideological and political battles of the last century were fought over precisely this ground, and argue that because we have forgotten or misunderstood these earlier debates our current discourse is thin and impoverished. To understand where we are and where we are going, we have to first step back and look closely at where we have been.

Theorizing Politics, Politicizing Theory, and the Responsibility That Runs Between

Abstract: What are social science theorists' responsibilities for the effects of their theories in the real world? I maintain that politicians and ideologues place theories in their political agendas without necessarily heeding their actual content. Hence, the ramifications of theories in the real world are mostly the result of political uses and, at times, political abuses. Consequently, theorists cannot be held morally responsible for these. They do, however, bear the obligation to examine if there are some intrinsic features of theorization and theory that render these susceptible to public misinterpretation and vulnerable to political abuse. Pointing to the rhetorical capital inherent in theories, and supported by examples involving democratic-peace theory and its political destinies, I conclude that, to discharge this task, social science theorists should substitute the prevailing objective ethic with a normative one. lives of theories are tumultuous. Conceived in the serenity of the academy, they are, at times, forced into the real world, where the upheavals of politics dominate. This migration from academy to the real world raises the issue of theorists' social responsibility. Do theorists bear responsibility for the real world's ramifications of their theorizing? Though the question is relevant to any sort of theorizing (normative, natural sciences, social sciences), I focus my argument on social science theorization and theorists.