Showing papers on "Politics published in 2008"

The use of knowledge about society

Abstract: Selection of efficient institutions or policies in politics requires constituents to estimate the net benefits of political reforms. Political competition fails to inform constituents of the costs of forgone political alternatives. Ignorance of ‘political opportunity costs’ prevents the adoption of welfare enhancing reforms of public institutions and policies. The empirical record supports this contention.

Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics

Abstract: Preface Contributors 1. Governance, order and change in world politics James N. Rosenau 2. Governance with government: polyarchy in nineteenth-century European international politics K. J. Holsti 3. The decaying pillars of the Westphalian temple: implications for international order and governance Mark W. Zacher 4. The 'Triumph' of neoclassical economics in the developing world: policy convergence and bases of governance in the international economic order Thomas J. Biersteker 5. Towards a post-hegemonic conceptualization of world order: reflections on the relevancy of Ibn Khaldun Robert W. Cox 6. The effectiveness of international institutions: hard cases and critical variables Oran R. Young 7. Explaining the regulation of transnational practices: a state-building approach Janice E. Thomson 8. 'And Still It Moves' state interests and social forces in the European Community Linda Cornett and James A. Caporaso 9. Governance and democratization Ernst-Otto Czempiel 10. Micro sources of a changing global order James N. Risenau Index.

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

Abstract: The first edition of Unequal Democracy was an instant classic, shattering illusions about American democracy and spurring scholarly and popular interest in the political causes and consequences of escalating economic inequality This revised and expanded edition includes two new chapters on the political economy of the Obama era One presents the Great Recession as a “stress test” of the American political system by analyzing the 2008 election and the impact of Barack Obama’s “New New Deal” on the economic fortunes of the rich, middle class, and poor The other assesses the politics of inequality in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2012 election, and the partisan gridlock of Obama’s second term Larry Bartels offers a sobering account of the barriers to change posed by partisan ideologies and the political power of the wealthy He also provides new analyses of tax policy, partisan differences in economic performance, the struggle to raise the minimum wage, and inequalities in congressional representation President Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time” Unequal Democracy is the definitive account of how and why our political system has failed to rise to that challenge Now more than ever, this is a book every American needs to read

The end of poverty: economic possibilities for our time.

Abstract: He has been cited by "The New York Times Magazine" as "probably the most important economist in the world" and by Time as "the world's best-known economist." He has advised an extraordinary range of world leaders and international institutions on the full range of issues related to creating economic success and reducing the world's poverty and misery. Now, at last, he draws on his entire twenty-five-year body of experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring big-picture vision of the keys to economic success in the world today and the steps that are necessary to achieve prosperity for all. Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past two hundred years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The groundwork laid, he explains his methods for arriving, like a clinical internist, at a holistic diagnosis of a country's situation and the options it faces. Rather than deliver a worldview to readers from on high, Sachs leads them along the learning path he himself followed, telling the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa as a way to bring readers to a broad-based understanding of the array of issues countries can face and the way the issues interrelate. He concludes by drawing on everything he has learned to offer an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that most frequently hold societies back. In the end, he leaves readers with an understanding, not of how daunting the world's problems are, but how solvable they are-and why making the effort is a matter both of moral obligation and strategic self-interest. A work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, "The End of Poverty" is a road map to a safer, more prosperous future for the world. From "probably the most important economist in the world" ("The New York Times Magazine"), legendary for his work around the globe on economies in crisis, a landmark exploration of the roots of economic prosperity and the path out of extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens.

Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World

Abstract: Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Scales of Justice, the Balance, and the Map2. Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World3. Two Dogmas of Egalitarianism4. Abnormal Justice5. Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Postwestphalian World6. Mapping the Feminist Imagination: From Redistribution to Recognition to Representation7. From Discipline to Flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the Shadow of Globalization8. Threats to Humanity in Globalization: Arendtian Reflections on the Twenty-First Century9. The Politics of Framing: An Interview with Nancy Fraser by Kate Nash and Vikki BellNotes ReferencesIndex

Governing the present: administering economic, social and personal life

Abstract: * Acknowledgments * Chapter One: Introduction: Governing Economic and Social Life * Chapter Two: Governing Economic Life * Chapter Three: Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government * Chapter Four: The Death of the Social? Refiguring the Territory of Government * Chapter Five: Mobilising the Consumer: Assembling the Subject of Consumption * Chapter Six: On Therapeutic Authority * Chapter Seven: Production, Identity and Democracy * Chapter Eight: Accounting and Objectivity: The Invention of Calculating Selves and Calculable Spaces * Chapter Nine: Governing 'Advanced' Liberal Democracies * Bibliography: Consolidated reference list

The Myth of Digital Democracy

Abstract: Is the Internet democratizing American politics? Do political Web sites and blogs mobilize inactive citizens and make the public sphere more inclusive? The Myth of Digital Democracy reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse but in fact empowers a small set of elites--some new, but most familiar. Matthew Hindman argues that, though hundreds of thousands of Americans blog about politics, blogs receive only a miniscule portion of Web traffic, and most blog readership goes to a handful of mainstream, highly educated professionals. He shows how, despite the wealth of independent Web sites, online news audiences are concentrated on the top twenty outlets, and online organizing and fund-raising are dominated by a few powerful interest groups. Hindman tracks nearly three million Web pages, analyzing how their links are structured, how citizens search for political content, and how leading search engines like Google and Yahoo! funnel traffic to popular outlets. He finds that while the Internet has increased some forms of political participation and transformed the way interest groups and candidates organize, mobilize, and raise funds, elites still strongly shape how political material on the Web is presented and accessed. The Myth of Digital Democracy. debunks popular notions about political discourse in the digital age, revealing how the Internet has neither diminished the audience share of corporate media nor given greater voice to ordinary citizens.

Political Polarization in the American Public

Abstract: For more than two decades political scientists have discussed rising elite polarization in the United States, but the study of mass polarization did not receive comparable attention until fairly recently. This article surveys the literature on mass polarization. It begins with a discussion of the concept of polarization, then moves to a critical consideration of different kinds of evidence that have been used to study polarization, concluding that much of the evidence presents problems of inference that render conclusions problematic. The most direct evidence—citizens' positions on public policy issues—shows little or no indication of increased mass polarization over the past two to three decades. Party sorting—an increased correlation between policy views and partisan identification—clearly has occurred, although the extent has sometimes been exaggerated. Geographic polarization—the hypothesized tendency of like-minded people to cluster together—remains an open question. To date, there is no conclusive e...

A New Era of Minimal Effects? The Changing Foundations of Political Communication

Abstract: The great thinkers who influenced the contemporary field of political communication were preoccupied with understanding the political, social, psychological, and economic transformations in modern industrial society. But societies have changed so dramatically since the time of these landmark contributions that one must question the continuing relevance of paradigms drawn from them. To cite but a few examples, people have become increasingly detached from overarching institutions such as public schools, political parties, and civic groups, which at one time provided a shared context for receiving and interpreting messages. What are the implications of this detachment on how people respond to media messages? Information channels have proliferated and simultaneously become more individualized. Is it still relevant to conceive of ‘‘mass media’’ or has that concept been made obsolete by audience fragmentation and isolation from the public sphere? Does this new environment foreshadow a return to a time of minimal effects? If we are looking at a new minimal effects era, how can we distinguish it from the last such period? Retracing some of the intellectual origins of the field may help us identify the fundamental changes in society and communication technologies that are affecting the composition of audiences, the delivery of information, and the experience of politics itself. In particular, we are concerned with the growing disjuncture between the prevailing research strategies and the sociotechnological context of political communication, which may give rise to unproductive battles over findings (Donsbach, 2006). To the extent that research paradigms fail to reflect prevailing social and technological patterns, the validity of results will be in serious question. Consider just one case in point: the famous earlier era of ‘‘minimal effects’’ that emerged from studies done in the 1940s and early 1950s (Klapper, 1960). The underlying context for this scholarship consisted of a premass communication media system and relatively dense memberships in a group-based society networked through political parties, churches, unions, and service organizations (Putnam, 2000). At this time, scholars concluded that media messages were filtered through social reference processes as described in the two-step flow model proposed by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955; Bennett & Manheim, 2006). Although the classic study by Lang

Political Institutions under Dictatorship

Abstract: 1. The world of dictatorial institutions 2. Three illustrative cases 3. The use of institutions to co-opt 4. Institutions and policies under dictatorship 5. Institutions and outcomes under dictatorship 6. Institutions and the survival of dictators.

In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work

Abstract: This article introduces a special section concerned with precariousness and cultural work. Its aim is to bring into dialogue three bodies of ideas — the work of the autonomous Marxist `Italian laboratory'; activist writings about precariousness and precarity; and the emerging empirical scholarship concerned with the distinctive features of cultural work, at a moment when artists, designers and (new) media workers have taken centre stage as a supposed `creative class' of model entrepreneurs. The article is divided into three sections. It starts by introducing the ideas of the autonomous Marxist tradition, highlighting arguments about the autonomy of labour, informational capitalism and the `factory without walls', as well as key concepts such as multitude and immaterial labour. The impact of these ideas and of Operaismo politics more generally on the precarity movement is then considered in the second section, discussing some of the issues that have animated debate both within and outside this movement, wh...

The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory 1

Abstract: Primordialist and constructivist authors have debated the nature of ethnicity “as such” and therefore failed to explain why its characteristics vary so dramatically across cases, displaying different degrees of social closure, political salience, cultural distinctiveness, and historical stability. The author introduces a multilevel process theory to understand how these characteristics are generated and transformed over time. The theory assumes that ethnic boundaries are the outcome of the classificatory struggles and negotiations between actors situated in a social field. Three characteristics of a field—the institutional order, distribution of power, and political networks—determine which actors will adopt which strategy of ethnic boundary making. The author then discusses the conditions under which these negotiations will lead to a shared understanding of the location and meaning of boundaries. The nature of this consensus explains the particular characteristics of an ethnic boundary. A final section i...

National Responsibility and Global Justice

Abstract: This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national responsibility is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ‘political’ theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worl...

Framing Contests: Strategy Making Under Uncertainty

Abstract: I develop a model of framing contests to elucidate how cognitive frames influence organizational strategy making. By using ethnographic techniques to study the day-to-day practices of strategy making in one firm, I examine the ways actors attempted to transform their own cognitive frames of a situation into predominant frames through a series of interactions. Frames are the means by which managers make sense of ambiguous information from their environments. Actors each had cognitive frames about the direction the market was taking and about what kinds of solutions would be appropriate. Where frames about a strategic choice were not congruent, actors engaged in highly political framing practices to make their frames resonate and to mobilize action in their favor. Those actors who most skillfully engaged in these practices shaped the frame that prevailed in the organization. This framing perspective suggests that frames are not only instrumental tools for the ex post justification of actions taken through p...

Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation

Abstract: A growing chorus of scholars laments the apparent decline of political participation in America, and the negative implications of this trend for American democracy. This article questions this position – arguing that previous studies misdiagnosed the sources of political change and the consequences of changing norms of citizenship for Americans' political engagement. Citizenship norms are shifting from a pattern of duty-based citizenship to engaged citizenship. Using data from the 2005 ‘Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy’ survey of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS) I describe these two faces of citizenship, and trace their impact on political participation. Rather than the erosion of participation, this norm shift is altering and expanding the patterns of political participation in America.

Doing Narrative Research

Abstract: List of Contributors Introduction: What is Narrative Research? - Maria Tamboukou and Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire Narratives of Events: Labovian Narrative Analysis and its Limitations - Wendy Patterson From Experience-Centred to Socioculturally-Oriented Approaches to Narrative - Corinne Squire Analysing Narrative Contexts - Ann Phoenix A Foucauldian Approach to Narratives - Maria Tamboukou Practising a Rhizomatic Perspective in Narrative Research - Gerrit Loots, Kathleen Coppens and Jasmina Sermijn Bodies, Embodiment and Stories - Lars-Christer Hyden Seeing Narratives - Susan E Bell Doing Research 'On and Through' New Media Narrative - Mark Davis Approaches to Narrative Worldmaking - David Herman Looking Back on Narrative Research: An Exchange - Phillida Salmon and Catherine Kohler Riessman Never the Last Word: Revisiting Data - Molly Andrews Narrating Sensitive Topics - Margareta Hyden The Public Life of Narratives: Ethics, Politics, Methods - Paul Gready Concluding Comments - Catherine Kohler Riessman Afterword: The Monkey Wrenches of Narrative - Jens Brockmeier Index

Introduction to Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages

Abstract: Where does the nation-state end and globalization begin? In Territory, Authority, Rights , one of the world's leading authorities on globalization shows how the national state made today's global era possible. Saskia Sassen argues that even while globalization is best understood as "denationalization," it continues to be shaped, channeled, and enabled by institutions and networks originally developed with nations in mind, such as the rule of law and respect for private authority. This process of state making produced some of the capabilities enabling the global era. The difference is that these capabilities have become part of new organizing logics: actors other than nation-states deploy them for new purposes. Sassen builds her case by examining how three components of any society in any age--territory, authority, and rights--have changed in themselves and in their interrelationships across three major historical "assemblages": the medieval, the national, and the global. The book consists of three parts. The first, "Assembling the National," traces the emergence of territoriality in the Middle Ages and considers monarchical divinity as a precursor to sovereign secular authority. The second part, "Disassembling the National," analyzes economic, legal, technological, and political conditions and projects that are shaping new organizing logics. The third part, "Assemblages of a Global Digital Age," examines particular intersections of the new digital technologies with territory, authority, and rights. Sweeping in scope, rich in detail, and highly readable, Territory, Authority, Rights is a definitive new statement on globalization that will resonate throughout the social sciences.

Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope

Abstract: Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

Persistence of Power, Elites and Institutions

Abstract: We construct a model to study the implications of changes in political insti? tutions for economic institutions. A change in political institutions alters the distribution of de jure political power, but creates incentives for investments in de facto political power to partially or even fully offset change in de jure power. The model can imply a pattern of captured democracy, whereby a democratic regime may survive but choose economic institutions favoring an elite. The model provides conditions under which economic or policy outcomes will be invariant to changes in political institutions, and economic institutions them? selves will persist over time. (JEL D02, D72) The domination of an organized minority ... over the unor? ganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minor? ity. At the same time, the minority is organized for the very reason that it is a minority.

The Economic Vote: How Political and Economic Institutions Condition Election Results

Abstract: 1. Introduction Part I. Describing the Economic Vote in Western Democracies: 2. Defining and measuring the economic vote 3. Patterns of retrospective economic voting in western democracies 4. Estimation, measurement, and specification Part II. A Contextual Theory of Rational Retrospective Economic Voting: Competency Signals: 5. Competency signals and rational retrospective economic voting 6. What do voters know about economic variation and its sources? 7. Political control of the economy Part III. A Contextual Theory of Rational Retrospective Economic Voting: Strategic Voting: 8. Responsibility, contention, and the economic vote 9. The distribution of responsibility and economic voting 10. The pattern of contention and the economic vote Part IV. Conclusion and Summary: 11. Conclusion.

Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement

Abstract: What effect, if any, does the extent of economic inequality in a country have upon the political engagement of its citizens? This study examines this question using data from multiple cross-national surveys of the advanced industrial democracies. It tests the theory that greater inequality increases the relative power of the wealthy to shape politics in their own favor against rival arguments that focus on the effects of inequality on citizens' objective interests or the resources they have available for political engagement. The analysis demonstrates that higher levels of income inequality powerfully depress political interest, the frequency of political discussion, and participation in elections among all but the most affluent citizens, providing compelling evidence that greater economic inequality yields greater political inequality.

The Post-American World

Abstract: "This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"-the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others-as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

The Bass handbook of leadership : theory, research, and managerial applications

Abstract: For thirty-three years and through three editions, Bass & Stodgill'sHandbook of Leadershiphas been the indispensable "bible" for every serious student of leadership. Since the 3rd edition came out in 1990, the field of leadership has exploded. This completely revised and updated fourth edition reflects the growth and changes in the study of leadership over the past 17 years. This new edition offers shifts in both content and method. Ethics and transformational leadership, for example, have become increasing subjects of inquiry. Distinctly separate fields of inquiry, such as political science and psychology, have been joined in this edition to build a broader appreciation of the phenomenon of leadership. Throughout the Handbook, the contributions from cognitive social psychology and the social, political, communications, and administrative sciences have been expanded.

West European Politics in the Age of Globalization

Abstract: Over the past three decades the effects of globalization and denationalization have created a division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in Western Europe. This study examines the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK) using opinion surveys, as well as newly collected data on election campaigns. The authors argue that, as a result of structural transformations and the strategic repositioning of political parties, Europe has observed the emergence of a tripolar configuration of political power, comprising the left, the moderate right, and the new populist right. They suggest that, through an emphasis on cultural issues such as mass immigration and resistance to European integration, the traditional focus of political debate - the economy - has been downplayed or reinterpreted in terms of this new political cleavage. This new analysis of Western European politics will interest all students of European politics and political sociology.

Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War

Abstract: A range of seemingly rival theories attempt to explain why some individuals take extraordinary risks by choosing to participate in armed conflict. To date, however, competing accounts have typically not been grounded in systematic, empirical studies of the determinants of participation. In this article, we begin to fill this gap through an examination of the determinants of participation in insurgent and counterinsurgent factions in Sierra Leone’s civil war. We find some support for all of the competing theories, suggesting that the rivalry between them is artificial and that theoretical work has insufficiently explored the interaction of various recruitment strategies. At the same time, the empirical results challenge standard interpretations of grievance-based accounts of participation, as poverty, a lack of access to education, and political alienation predict participation in both rebellion and counterrebellion. Factors that are traditionally seen as indicators of grievance or frustration may instead proxy for a more general susceptibility to engage in violent action or a greater vulnerability to political manipulation by elites. hy do some individuals take enormous risks to participate as fighters in civil war? What differentiates those who are mobilized from those who remain on the sidelines? What distinguishes those who rebel from those who fight to defend the status quo? In spite of a large literature on the topic, scholars continue to debate the conditions under which men and women take up arms to participate in deadly combat. In this article, we examine the evidence for prominent, competing arguments in the context of Sierra Leone’s civil war, drawing on a unique dataset that records the attitudes and behavior of 1,043 excombatants alongside a sample of 184 noncombatants.

Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”

Abstract: To sketch an institutional approach, this paper elaborates ideas presented over 20 years ago in The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life (March and Olsen 1984). Institutionalism, as that term is used here, connotes a general approach to the study of political institutions, a set of theoretical ideas and hypotheses concerning the relations between institutional characteristics and political agency, performance and change. Institutionalism emphasizes the endogenous nature and social construction of political institutions. Institutions are not simply equilibrium contracts among self-seeking, calculating individual actors or arenas for contending social forces. They are collections of structures, rules and standard operating procedures that have a partly autonomous role in political life. The paper ends with raising some research questions at the frontier of institutional studies.

Oil, Islam, and Women

Abstract: Women have made less progress toward gender equality in the Middle East than in any other region. Many observers claim this is due to the region's Islamic traditions. I suggest that oil, not Islam, is at fault; and that oil production also explains why women lag behind in many other countries. Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I support this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. This argument has implications for the study of the Middle East, Islamic culture, and the resource curse.