Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Elections And Economic Turbulence In Brazil: Candidates, Voters, And Investors, Tony Petros Spanakos, Lucio R. Renno

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of candidate campaign rhetoric and investor preferences in elections. When politicians propose policies that can appease voters and investors, elections may have a limited effect on economic indicators, such as inflation. But when voter and investor priorities differ significantly, deterioration of economic indicators is more likely. Moreover, voter and investor …

The Politic 2008 Fall (Special Issue), The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

The Politic 2008 Fall, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

You Get What You Pay For: Historicizing Business Metaphors Of Government, Principles Of Justice In Taxation, And “Benefit Theory”, Mindy Peden

Political Science

The ideas that governments ought to operate on business principles and that citizens are no different than consumers have become increasingly commonplace in neoliberal times. Many have pointed to the threat this poses for democratic government. Mindy Peden explores the vulnerability of liberal ideology to such a way of thinking by showing how even liberals who wish to reject it, such as John Stuart Mill, are unable to free themselves from the line of reasoning inherent in the benefit theory that underpins the dominant approach to taxation. Economic imperatives have always been a central driving force of Canadian immigration policy. …

Nietzsche/Pentheus: The Last Disciple Of Dionysus And Queer Fear Of The Feminine, C. Heike Schotten

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

This article examines the scholarly preoccupation with the hypothesis that Nietzsche was gay by offering a reading of Nietzsche's texts as autobiographical that puts them in conversation with Euripides's drama The Bacchae. Drawing a number of parallels between Nietzsche, self-avowed disciple of Dionysus, and Pentheus, the main character of The Bacchae and demonstrated antidisciple of Dionysus, I argue that both men experience their sexual attraction to women as somehow intolerable, and they negotiate this discomfort—which is simultaneously an unjustified paranoia and fear of the feminine—through the appropriation of feminine capacities and qualities for themselves. This appropriation ultimately expresses these men's …

Can Deliberative Democracy Work In Hierarchical Organizations?, Jason Pierce, Grant W. Neeley, Jeffrey Budziak

Political Science Faculty Publications

Some measure of equality is necessary for deliberative democracy to work well, yet empirical scholarship consistently points to the deleterious effect that hierarchy and inequalities of epistemological authority have on deliberation. This article tests whether real-world deliberative forums can overcome these challenges. Contrary to skeptics, it concludes that the act of deliberation itself and the presence of trained moderators ameliorate inequalities of epistemological authority, thus rendering deliberative democracy possible, even within hierarchical organizations.

The Devil’S Calculus: Mathematical Models Of Civil War, Ajay Shenoy

Honors Scholar Theses

In spite of the movement to turn political science into a real science, various mathematical methods that are now the staples of physics, biology, and even economics are thoroughly uncommon in political science, especially the study of civil war. This study seeks to apply such methods - specifically, ordinary differential equations (ODEs) - to model civil war based on what one might dub the capabilities school of thought, which roughly states that civil wars end only when one side’s ability to make war falls far enough to make peace truly attractive. I construct several different ODE-based models and then test …

The Politic 2008 Fall, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

Why Brazil Has Not Grown: A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian, Indian, And Chinese Economic Management, Fernando Ferrari, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper does not aim to dispute that Brazil would benefit from reforms in any or all of these areas. Rather, the paper offers a skeptical perspective on reform menus and proposes an alternative explanation for the faster growth of Brazil’s peers India and China2. The paper begins by introducing (section 1) the idea of the BRICs countries, to establish the basis for comparisons of most similar cases. It then surveys the results of a generation of Washington Consensus era growth (section 2). Although there is a considerable amount of divergence over what causes growth, it seems that something approaching …

Macroeconomic Policy Change: Ireland In Comparative Perspective, John Hogan

Articles

This paper sets out to develop an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This a priori framework is a significant improvement over existing critical juncture frameworks that lack any predictive element. It is an advance for historical institutionalism in particular, and political science in general. After the new framework is set out in detail here, it is tested. The framework is used to examine a number of potential critical junctures in macroeconomic policy, drawn from Ireland, Sweden, Britain, and America in the latter half of the twentieth century

The Politic 2008 Winter, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming Egalitarianism In The Political Theory Of Campaign Finance Reform, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Recent advocacy for campaign finance reform has been based on an ideal of the democratic process which is unrealistic and unhelpful. Scholars should instead return to its egalitarian roots. This article examines how deliberative democratic theory became the main justification for campaign finance reform. It exposes the shortcomings of this deliberativist detour and instead models campaign spending as an effort to commodify issue-salience. Given this dominant function of money in politics, a more effective paradigm for reform is equalizing influence. Advocates of campaign regulation should return to the original principles of reformers; not an idealized vision of the democratic process, …

Complementary Institutions And Reflexive Governance In Autonomous Social Law, Richard R. Weiner

Faculty Publications

We approach institutions as stabilizing structures with consequences of functional incorporateness. Yet we also imagine, assert and enact claims and warrants as institutionalizable practices. There are functional supports. And there are the warranted claims of categorical normativity. Normativity in itself can be understood in terms of compliance with or acquiescence in legitimating structures. Yet normativity itself can be understood as a solidarism we intersubjectively co-constitute. The challenge in political thought has been dealing with the disincorporateness associated with modernity, specifically how a new order and dialogue may be of heterogeneous social values. A new way of ordering socioeconomic relationships of …

Agenda Power In The Italian Chamber Of Deputies, 1988-2000, Gary W. Cox, William B. Heller, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We find strong evidence that governing coalitions in Italy exercise significant negative agenda powers. First, governing parties have a roll rate that is nearly zero, and their roll rate is lower than opposition parties’ roll rates, which average about 20% on all final passage votes. Second, we find that, controlling for distance from the floor median, opposition parties have higher roll rates than government parties. These results strongly suggest that governing parties in Italy are able to control the legislative agenda to their benefit. We also document significantly higher opposition roll rates on decree-conversion bills and budget bills that on …

Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars debate whether a competition between experts in legal, political, or economic contexts elicits truthful information and, in turn, enables people to make informed decisions. Thus, we analyze experimentally the conditions under which competition between experts induces the experts to make truthful statements and enables jurors listening to these statements to improve their decisions. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to game theoretic predictions and contrary to critics of our adversarial legal system, competition induces enough truth telling to allow jurors to improve their decisions. Then, when we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or the threat of …

Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Voters Make Laws: How Direct Democracy Is Shaping American Cities, Elizabeth Garrett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The Foundation Of Rights To Political Self-Determination: Secession, Non-Intervention, And Democratic Governance, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

From a justificatory standpoint, perhaps the most basic question with respect to secession is what, if anything, provides the moral foundation for a group’s right to secede. My aim here is to make a start to answering this question. I do so, however, by considering a different, albeit closely related, question, namely what is the nature of the wrong done to members of a qualified group denied secession by the state that currently rules them? A compelling answer to this latter question, I suggest, will contribute significantly to a satisfactory answer of the former one.

(Dis)Solving The Chronological Paradox In Customary International Law: A Hartian Approach, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As traditionally conceived, the creation of a new rule of customary international law requires that states believe the law to already require the conduct specified in the rule. Distinguishing the process whereby a customary rule comes to exist from the process whereby that customary rule becomes law dissolves this chronological paradox. Creation of a customary rule requires only that states come to believe that there exists a normative standard to which they ought to adhere, not that this standard is law. What makes the customary rule law is adherence by officials in the international legal system to a rule of …

Anarcho-Multiculturalism: The Pure Theory Of Liberalism, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Most modern states today are, at least to some degree, culturally diverse.Trade, tourism, international dialogue among scholars, scientists, and artists,and the movement of skilled labor—as well as migration—have ensured thatfew countries do not contain within them significant numbers of people fromalien cultures. The one cultural minority found almost everywhere is the international frequent flyer. Many societies today are multicultural because theyare open to a diversity of peoples who come and go and, sometimes, stay.

For Whom The Tel Tolls: Can State Tax And Expenditure Limits Effectively Reduce Spending?, Thad Kousser, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Ellen Moule

Faculty Scholarship

Can voters stop state governments from spending at high rates through the enactment of tax and expenditure limits (TELs), or do these laws become dead letters? We draw upon the principal-agent literature to theorize that TELs – one of the most frequent uses of the initiative process across the country – may be circumvented by the sorts of elected officials who would inspire their passage.

In order to investigate our claim, we conduct an event study. First, we test for the effectiveness of TELs across states using a differences-in-differences model. Second, we dissect our treatment variable using different legal provisions …

Self-Defense And The State, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is a contribution to a symposium honoring Sandy Kadish. This article seeks to explore whether and to what extent our understanding of self-defense depends upon a citizen's relationship with the state. Part II begins by setting forth Professor Kadish's claim that self-defense is "a right to resist aggression" that is held by a citizen against the state. After contending that such an account is insufficient to justify self-defense, the remainder of the article seeks to explore the relationship between the state and self-defense. Part III argues that self-defense is a pre-political moral right, as opposed to a political …

Silence Of The Laws? Conceptions Of International Relations And International Law In Hobbes, Kant, And Locke, Michael W. Doyle, Geoffrey S. Carlson

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explains how the political theorists Hobbes, Kant, and Locke interpret the decision to go to war (us ad bellum) and the manner in which the war is conducted (just in bello). It also considers the implications of the three theories for compliance with international law more generally. It concludes that although all three can lay claim to certain key features of modern international law, it is Locke who provides the most complete support for both the laws of war, in particular, and with international law, in general.